[Sidenote: 1138a] It is clear then what the Equitable
is; namely that it is Just but better than one form
of Just: and hence it appears too who the Equitable
man is: he is one who has a tendency to choose
and carry out these principles, and who is not apt
to press the letter of the law on the worse side but
content to waive his strict claims though backed by
the law: and this moral state is Equity, being
a species of Justice, not a different moral state
from Justice.
XI
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: 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.
