The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

unjust.
    Again, if the distributor gave his judgement in ignorance, he
does not act unjustly in respect of legal justice, and his
judgement is not unjust in this sense, but in a sense it is unjust
(for legal justice and primordial justice are different); but if
with knowledge he judged unjustly, he is himself aiming at an
excessive share either of gratitude or of revenge. As much, then,
as if he were to share in the plunder, the man who has judged
unjustly for these reasons has got too much; the fact that what he
gets is different from what he distributes makes no difference, for
even if he awards land with a view to sharing in the plunder he
gets not land but money.
    Men think that acting unjustly is in their power, and therefore
that being just is easy. But it is not; to lie with one’s
neighbour’s wife, to wound another, to deliver a bribe, is easy and
in our power, but to do these things as a result of a certain state
of character is neither easy nor in our power. Similarly to know
what is just and what is unjust requires, men think, no great
wisdom, because it is not hard to understand the matters dealt with
by the laws (though these are not the things that are just, except
incidentally); but how actions must be done and distributions
effected in order to be just, to know this is a greater achievement
than knowing what is good for the health; though even there, while
it is easy to know that honey, wine, hellebore, cautery, and the
use of the knife are so, to know how, to whom, and when these
should be applied with a view to producing health, is no less an
achievement than that of being a physician. Again, for this very
reason men think that acting unjustly is characteristic of the just
man no less than of the unjust, because he would be not less but
even more capable of doing each of these unjust acts; for he could
lie with a woman or wound a neighbour; and the brave man could
throw away his shield and turn to flight in this direction or in
that. But to play the coward or to act unjustly consists not in
doing these things, except incidentally, but in doing them as the
result of a certain state of character, just as to practise
medicine and healing consists not in applying or not applying the
knife, in using or not using medicines, but in doing so in a
certain way.
    Just acts occur between people who participate in things good in
themselves and can have too much or too little of them; for some
beings (e.g. presumably the gods) cannot have too much of them, and
to others, those who are incurably bad, not even the smallest share
in them is beneficial but all such goods are harmful, while to
others they are beneficial up to a point; therefore justice is
essentially something human.
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10
    Our next subject is equity and the equitable (to epiekes), and
their respective relations to justice and the just. For on
examination they appear to be neither absolutely the same nor
generically different; and while we sometime praise what is
equitable and the equitable man (so that we apply the name by way
of praise even to instances of the other virtues, instead of ‘good’
meaning by epieikestebon that a thing is better), at other times,
when we reason it out, it seems strange if the equitable, being
something different from the just, is yet praiseworthy; for either
the just or the equitable is not good, if they are different; or,
if both are good, they are the same.
    These, then, are pretty much the considerations that give rise
to the problem about the equitable; they are all in a sense correct
and not opposed to one another; for the equitable, though it is
better than one kind of justice, yet is just, and it is not as
being a different class of thing that it is better than the just.
The same thing, then, is just and equitable, and while both are
good the equitable is superior. What creates the problem is that
the equitable is just, but not the legally just but a correction of
legal justice. The reason is that all law is universal but about
some things it is not possible to make a universal statement which
shall be correct. In those cases, then, in which it is necessary to
speak universally, but not possible to do so correctly, the law
takes the usual case, though it is not ignorant of the possibility
of error. And it is none the less correct; for the error is in the
law nor in the legislator but in the nature of the thing, since the
matter of practical affairs is of this kind from the