Kitap 5
7
(It is further manifest that, though both to suffer and to do injustice are evils—for the former is to have less and the latter to have more than the mean, correspondingThis clause has no grammatical connection with the rest of the sentence; Ramsauer brackets it, Rassow supplies before it τὸ δὲ δικαιοπραγεῖν μέσον, whereas just conduct is a mean. to what is health-giving in medicine and conducive to fitness in athletic training—nevertheless to do injustice is the worse evil, for it is reprehensible, implying vice in the agent, and vice utter and absolute—or nearly so, for it is true that not every unjust act voluntarily committed implies vice—, whereas to suffer injustice does not necessarily imply vice or injustice in the victim.
8
Thus in itself to suffer injustice is the lesser evil, though accidentally it may be the greater. With this however science is not concerned; science pronounces pIeurisy a more serious disorder than a sprain, in spite of the fact that in certain circumstances a sprain may be accidentally worse than pleurisy, as for instance if it should happen that owing to a sprain you fell and in consequence of falling were taken by the enemy and killed.)
9
In a metaphorical and analogical sense however there is such a thing as justice, not towards oneself but between different parts of one’s nature; not, it is true, justice in the full sense of the term, but such justice as subsists between master and slave, or between the head of a household and his wife and children. For in the discourses on this questionPlato’s Republic and the writings of Plato’s followers: cf. 1.13.9. a distinction is set up between the rational and irrational parts of the soul; and this is what leads people to suppose that there is such a thing as injustice towards oneself, because these parts of the self may be thwarted in their respective desires, so that there may be a sort of justice between them, such as exists between ruler and subject.
