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are like standard measures.
Corn and wine measures are not equal in all places, but are larger in wholesale and
smaller in retail markets. Similarly the rules of justice ordained not by nature but by
man are not the same in all places, since forms of government are not the same, though in
all places there is only one form of government that is natural, namely, the best
form.
[6]
The several rules of justice and of law are related to the actions conforming with them
as universals to particulars, for the actions done are many, while each rule or law is
one, being universal.
[7]
There is a difference between ‘that which is unjust’ and
‘unjust conduct,’ and between ‘that which is just’
and ‘just conduct.’ Nature or ordinance pronounces a thing unjust:
when that thing is done, it is ‘unjust conduct’; till it is done, it
is only ‘unjust.’ And similarly with ‘just
conduct,’ a dikaioma (or more
correctly, the general term is dikaiopragema, dikaioma denoting the rectification of an act of
injustice).
We shall have later1 to consider
the several rules of justice and of law, and to enumerate their various kinds and describe
them and the things with which they deal.8.
Such being an account of just and unjust actions, it is their voluntary performance that
constitutes just and unjust conduct. If a man does them involuntarily, he cannot be said
to act justly, or unjustly, except incidentally, in the sense that he does an act which
happens to be just or unjust.
[2]
Whether therefore an action
is or is not an act of injustice,
1 Possibly a reference to an intended (or now lost) book of the Politics on laws (Ross).