The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

away in small corners, or things so like
others of which you have plenty already that nobody can tell the
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. We will next, before going further, remind
ourselves of what ‘being wronged’ means. Since it has already been
settled that ‘doing a wrong’ must be intentional, ‘being wronged’
must consist in having an injury done to you by some one who
intends to do it. In order to be wronged, a man must (1) suffer
actual harm, (2) suffer it against his will. The various possible
forms of harm are clearly explained by our previous, separate
discussion of goods and evils. We have also seen that a voluntary
action is one where the doer knows what he is doing. We now see
that every accusation must be of an action affecting either the
community or some individual. The doer of the action must either
understand and intend the action, or not understand and intend it.
In the former case, he must be acting either from deliberate choice
or from passion. (Anger will be discussed when we speak of the
passions the motives for crime and the state of mind of the
criminal have already been discussed.) Now it often happens that a
man will admit an act, but will not admit the prosecutor’s label
for the act nor the facts which that label implies. He will admit
that he took a thing but not that he ‘stole’ it; that he struck
some one first, but not that he committed ‘outrage’; that he had
intercourse with a woman, but not that he committed ‘adultery’;
that he is guilty of theft, but not that he is guilty of
‘sacrilege’, the object stolen not being consecrated; that he has
encroached, but not that he has ‘encroached on State lands’; that
he has been in communication with the enemy, but not that he has
been guilty of ‘treason’. Here therefore we must be able to
distinguish what is theft, outrage, or adultery, from what is not,
if we are to be able to make the justice of our case clear, no
matter whether our aim is to establish a man’s guilt or to
establish his innocence. Wherever such charges are brought against
a man, the question is whether he is or is not guilty of a criminal
offence. It is deliberate purpose that constitutes