The answer to the second of the two questions indicated above, “whether
it is possible for a man to deal unjustly by himself,” is obvious from
what has been already stated.
In the first place, one class of Justs is those which are enforced by
law in accordance with Virtue in the most extensive sense of the term:
for instance, the law does not bid a man kill himself; and whatever it
does not bid it forbids: well, whenever a man does hurt contrary to the
law (unless by way of requital of hurt), voluntarily, i.e. knowing to
whom he does it and wherewith, he acts Unjustly. Now he that from rage
kills himself, voluntarily, does this in contravention of Right Reason,
which the law does not permit. He therefore acts Unjustly: but towards
whom? towards the Community, not towards himself (because he suffers
with his own consent, and no man can be Unjustly dealt with with his
own consent), and on this principle the Community punishes him; that is
a certain infamy is attached to the suicide as to one who acts Unjustly
towards the Community.
Next, a man cannot deal Unjustly by himself in the sense in which a man
is Unjust who only does Unjust acts without being entirely bad (for the
two things are different, because the Unjust man is in a way bad, as
the coward is, not as though he were chargeable with badness in the
full extent of the term, and so he does not act Unjustly in this
sense), because if it were so then it would be possible for the same
thing to have been taken away from and added to the same person:[29]
but this is really not possible, the Just and the Unjust always
implying a plurality of persons.
Again, an Unjust action must be voluntary, done of deliberate purpose,
and aggressive (for the man who hurts because he has first suffered and
is merely requiting the same is not thought to act Unjustly), but here
the man does to himself and suffers the same things at the same time.
Again, it would imply the possibility of being Unjustly dealt with with
one’s own consent.
And, besides all this, a man cannot act Unjustly without his act
falling under some particular crime; now a man cannot seduce his own
wife, commit a burglary on his own premises, or steal his own property.
After all, the general answer to the question is to allege what was
settled respecting being Unjustly dealt with with one’s own consent.