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Moral Philosophy by S. J. Joseph Rickaby
page 103 of 356 (28%)
1. Justice is a habit residing in the will, prompting that power
constantly to render unto everyone his own. The fundamental notion of
Justice is some sort of equality. Equality supposes two terms,
physically distinct, or capable of existing separately, one from the
other. Between such terms alone can equality be properly predicated.
Any less distinction than this leaves room only for equality
improperly so called, and therefore no room for what is properly
termed Justice. When therefore Plato, going about to find a definition
of Justice, which is a main object in his _Republic_, acquiesces in
this position, that Justice consists in every part of the soul,
rational, irascible, and concupiscible, fulfilling its own proper
function, and not taking up the function of another, he fails for this
reason, that all Justice is relative to another, but the different
parts of one soul are not properly _other_ and _other_, since all go
to make up one man: therefore, however much Justice may be identical
with doing your own business, and leaving your neighbour free to do
his, yet this relation obtaining among the various parts of the soul
cannot properly be called Justice. What Plato defines is the beauty,
good order, and moral comeliness of the soul, but not Justice in any
sense, inasmuch as it is not referred to any being human or divine,
collective or individual, outside of the man himself.

2. Going upon the principle that all Justice is of the nature of
_equality_, and is therefore relative to _another_, we arrive at the
definition of _general justice_, which is all virtue whatsoever,
inasmuch as it bears upon another person than him who practises it.
This Justice is perfect social virtue, the crown and perfection of all
virtue from a statesman's point of view; and in that aspect, as
Aristotle says, "neither morning star nor evening star is so
beautiful." Whoever has this virtue behaves well, not by himself
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