everywhere the
same; yet there is one political constitution only that is by nature
the best everywhere (VII.).

To constitute Justice and Injustice in acts, the acts must be
voluntary; there being degrees of culpability in injustice according to
the intention, the premeditation, the greater or less knowledge of
circumstances. The act that a person does may perhaps be unjust; but he
is not, on that account, always to be regarded as an unjust man
(VIII.).

Here a question arises, Can one be injured voluntarily? It seems not,
for what a man consents to is not injury. Nor can a person injure
himself. Injury is a relationship between two parties (IX.). Equity
does not contradict, or set aside, Justice, but is a higher and finer
kind of justice, coming in where the law is too rough and general.

Book Sixth treats of Intellectual Excellences, or Virtues of the
Intellect. It thus follows out the large definition of virtue given at
the outset, and repeated in detail as concerns each of the ethical or
moral virtues successively.

According to the views most received at present, Morality is an affair
of conscience and sentiment; little or nothing is said about estimating
the full circumstances and consequences of each act, except that there
is no time to calculate correctly, and that the attempt to do so is
generally a pretence for evading the peremptory order of virtuous
sentiment, which, if faithfully obeyed, ensures virtuous action in each
particular case. If these views be adopted, an investigation of our
intellectual excellences would find no place in a treatise on Ethics.
But the theory of Aristotle is altogether different. Though he
recognizes Emotion and Intellect as inseparably implicated in the mind
of Ethical agents, yet the sovereign authority that he proclaims is not
Conscience or Sentiment, but Reason. The subordination of Sentiment to
Reason is with him essential. It is true that Reason must be supplied
with First Principles, whence to take its start; and these First
Principles are here declared to be, fixed emotional states or
dispositions, engendered in the mind of the agent by a succession of
similar acts. But even these dispositions themselves, though not
belonging to the department of Reason, are not exempt from the
challenge and scrutiny of Reason; while the proper application of them
in act to the complicated realities of life, is the work of Reason
altogether. Such an ethical theory calls upon Aristotl