Page - 2198 - in The Complete Aristotle

difference. There are also wrongs of a kind that shame prevents the victim speaking about, such as outrages done to the women in his household or to himself or to his sons. Also those for which you would be thought very litigious to prosecute any one-trifling wrongs, or wrongs for which people are usually excused. The above is a fairly complete account of the circumstances under which men do wrong to others, of the sort of wrongs they do, of the sort of persons to whom they do them, and of their reasons for doing them. 13 It will now be well to make a complete classification of just and unjust actions. We may begin by observing that they have been defined relatively to two kinds of law, and also relatively to two classes of persons. By the two kinds of law I mean particular law and universal law. Particular law is that which each community lays down and applies to its own members: this is partly written and partly unwritten. Universal law is the law of Nature. For there really is, as every one to some extent divines, a natural justice and injustice that is binding on all men, even on those who have no association or covenant with each other. It is this that Sophocles’ Antigone clearly means when she says that the burial of Polyneices was a just act in spite of the prohibition: she means that it was just by nature. Not of to-day or yesterday it is, But lives eternal: none can date its birth. And so Empedocles, when he bids us kill no living creature, says that doing this is not just for some people while unjust for others, Nay, but, an all-embracing law, through the realms of the sky Unbroken it stretcheth, and over the earth’s immensity. And as Alcidamas says in his Messeniac Oration… . The actions that we ought to do or not to do have also been divided into two classes as affecting either the whole community or some one of its members. From this point of view we can perform just or unjust acts in either of two ways-towards one definite person, or towards the community. The man who is guilty of adultery or assault is doing wrong to some definite person; the man who avoids service in the army is doing wrong to the community. Thus the whole class of unjust actions may be divided into two classes, those affecting the community, and those affecting one or more other persons. 2198