We have now said then what the abstract Just and Unjust are, and these
having been defined it is plain that just acting is a mean between
acting unjustly and being acted unjustly towards: the former being
equivalent to having more, and the latter to having less.
But Justice, it must be observed, is a mean state not after the same
manner as the forementioned virtues, but because it aims at producing
the mean, while Injustice occupies _both_ the extremes.
And Justice is the moral state in virtue of which the just man is said
to have the aptitude for practising the Just in the way of moral
choice, and for making division between, himself and another, or
between two other men, not so as to give to himself the greater and to
his neighbour the less share of what is choice-worthy and contrariwise
of what is hurtful, but what is proportionably equal, and in like
manner when adjudging the rights of two other men.
Injustice is all this with respect to the Unjust: and since the Unjust
is excess or defect of what is good or hurtful respectively, in
violation of the proportionate, therefore Injustice is both excess and
defect because it aims at producing excess and defect; excess, that is,
in a man’s own case of what is simply advantageous, and defect of what
is hurtful: and in the case of other men in like manner generally
speaking, only that the proportionate is violated not always in one
direction as before but whichever way it happens in the given case. And
of the Unjust act the less is being acted unjustly towards, and the
greater the acting unjustly towards others.[20]
Let this way of describing the nature of Justice and Injustice, and
likewise the Just and the Unjust generally, be accepted as sufficient.