Since then justice has reference to persons, the same distinctions
must be made with respect to persons which are made with respect to
things, in the manner that I have already described in my Ethics.
As to the equality of the things, these they agree in; but their
dispute is concerning the equality of the persons, and chiefly for the
reason above assigned; because they judge ill in their own cause; and
also because each party thinks, that if they admit what is right in
some particulars, they have done justice on the whole: thus, for
instance, if some persons are unequal in riches, they suppose them
unequal in the whole; or, on the contrary, if they are equal in
liberty, they suppose them equal in the whole: but what is absolutely
just they omit; for if civil society was founded for the sake of
preserving and increasing property, every one's right in the city
would be equal to his fortune; and then the reasoning of those who
insist upon an oligarchy would be valid; for it would not be right
that he who contributed one mina should have an equal share in the
hundred along with him who brought in all the rest, either of the
original money or what was afterwards acquired.
Nor was civil society founded merely to preserve the lives of its
members; but that they might live well: for otherwise a state might
be composed of slaves, or the animal creation: but this is not so; for
these have no share in the happiness of it; nor do they live after
their own choice; nor is it an alliance mutually to defend each other
from injuries, or for a commercial intercourse: for then the
Tyrrhenians and Carthaginians, and all other nations between whom
treaties of commerce subsist, would be citizens of one city; for they
have articles to regulate their exports and imports, and engagements
for mutual protection, and alliances for mutual defence; but [1280b]
yet they have not all the same magistrates established among them, but
they are different among the different people; nor does the one take
any care, that the morals of the other should be as they ought, or
that none of those who have entered into the common agreements should
be unjust, or in any degree vicious, only that they do not injure any
member of the confederacy.
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