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he is himself taking
more than his share, either of favor or of vengeance.
[13]
Hence a judge who gives an unjust judgement for these motives takes more than his due
just as much as if he shared the proceeds of the injustice; for even a judge who assigns a
piece of land on that condition does not receive land but money.
[14]
Men think that it is in their power to act unjustly and therefore that it is easy to be
just. But really this is not so. It is easy to lie with one's neighbor's wife or strike a
bystander or slip some money into a man's hand, and it is in one's power to do these
things or not; but to do them as a result of a certain disposition of mind is not easy,
and is not in one's power.
[15]
Similarly men suppose it
requires no special wisdom to know what is just and what is unjust, because it is not
difficult to understand the pronouncements of the law. But the actions prescribed by law
are only accidentally just actions. How an action must be performed,
how a distribution must be made to be a just action or a just
distribution—to know this is a harder task than to know what medical treatment
will produce health. Even in medicine, though it is easy to know what honey, wine and
hellebore, cautery and surgery are, to know how and to whom and when to apply them so as
to effect a cure is no less an undertaking than to be a physician.
[16]
And for this very reason1 men think that the just man will act
unjustly no less than justly, because the just man is not less but rather more able than
another to do any particular unjust thing: for example, he can
1 i.e., that acting unjustly is in our own power, 9.14.