The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

wickedness and
criminal guilt, and such names as ‘outrage’ or ‘theft’ imply
deliberate purpose as well as the mere action. A blow does not
always amount to ‘outrage’, but only if it is struck with some such
purpose as to insult the man struck or gratify the striker himself.
Nor does taking a thing without the owner’s knowledge always amount
to ‘theft’, but only if it is taken with the intention of keeping
it and injuring the owner. And as with these charges, so with all
the others.
    We saw that there are two kinds of right and wrong conduct
towards others, one provided for by written ordinances, the other
by unwritten. We have now discussed the kind about which the laws
have something to say. The other kind has itself two varieties.
First, there is the conduct that springs from exceptional goodness
or badness, and is visited accordingly with censure and loss of
honour, or with praise and increase of honour and decorations: for
instance, gratitude to, or requital of, our benefactors, readiness
to help our friends, and the like. The second kind makes up for the
defects of a community’s written code of law. This is what we call
equity; people regard it as just; it is, in fact, the sort of
justice which goes beyond the written law. Its existence partly is
and partly is not intended by legislators; not intended, where they
have noticed no defect in the law; intended, where find themselves
unable to define things exactly, and are obliged to legislate as if
that held good always which in fact only holds good usually; or
where it is not easy to be complete owing to the endless possible
cases presented, such as the kinds and sizes of weapons that may be
used to inflict wounds-a lifetime would be too short to make out a
complete list of these. If, then, a precise statement is impossible
and yet legislation is necessary, the law must be expressed in wide
terms; and so, if a man has no more than a finger-ring on his hand
when he lifts it to strike or actually strikes another man, he is
guilty of a criminal act according to the unwritten words of the
law; but he is innocent really, and it is equity that declares him
to be so. From this definition of equity it is plain what sort of
actions, and what sort of persons, are equitable or the reverse.
Equity must be applied to forgivable actions; and it must make us
distinguish between criminal acts on the one hand, and errors of
judgement, or misfortunes, on the other. (A ‘misfortune’ is an act,
not due to moral badness, that has unexpected results: an ‘error of
judgement’ is an act, also not due to moral badness, that has
results that might have been expected: a ‘criminal act’ has results
that might have been expected, but is due to moral badness, for
that is the source of all actions inspired by our appetites.)
Equity bids us be merciful to the weakness of human nature; to
think less about the laws than about the man who framed them, and
less about what he said than about what he meant; not to consider
the actions of the accused so much as his intentions, nor this or
that detail so much as the whole story; to ask not what a man is
now but what he has always or usually been. It bids us remember
benefits rather than injuries, and benefits received rather than
benefits conferred; to be patient when we are wronged; to settle a
dispute by negotiation and not by force; to prefer arbitration to
motion-for an arbitrator goes by the equity of a case, a judge by
the strict law, and arbitration was invented with the express
purpose of securing full power for equity.
    The above may be taken as a sufficient account of the nature of
equity.
14
    The worse of two acts of wrong done to others is that which is
prompted by the worse disposition. Hence the most trifling acts may
be the worst ones; as when Callistratus charged Melanopus with
having cheated the temple-builders of three consecrated half-obols.
The converse is true of just acts. This is because the greater is
here potentially contained in the less: there is no crime that a
man who has stolen three consecrated half-obols would shrink from
committing. Sometimes, however, the worse act is reckoned not in
this way but by the greater harm that it does. Or it may be because
no punishment for it is severe enough to be adequate; or the harm
done may be incurable-a difficult and even hopeless crime to
defend; or the sufferer may not be able to get his injurer legally
punished, a fact that makes the harm incurable,