The next virtue is Good-breeding in society, a balance between surliness on the one hand, and weak assent or interested flattery on the other. It is a nameless virtue, resembling friendship without the special affection. Aristotle shows what he considers the bearing of the finished gentleman, studying to give pleasure, and yet expressing disapprobation when it would be wrong to do otherwise (VI.).
Closely allied to the foregoing is the observance of a due mean, in the matter of Boastfulness. The boastful lay claim to what they do not possess; false modesty [Greek: eironeia] is denying or underrating one's own merits. The balance of the two is the straightforward and truthful character; asserting just what belongs to him, neither more nor less. This is a kind of truthfulness,—distinguished from 'truth' in its more serious aspect, as discriminating between justice and injustice—and has a worth of its own; for he that is truthful in little things will be so in more important affairs (VII.).
In the playful intercourse of society, there is room for the virtue of Wit, a balance or mean between buffoonish excess, and the clownish dulness that can neither make nor enjoy a joke. Here the man of refinement must be a law to himself (VIII.).
MODESTY [Greek: aidos] is briefly described, without being put through the comparison with its extremes. It is more a feeling than a state, or settled habit. It is the fear of ill-report; and has the physical expression of fear under danger—the blushing and the pallor. It befits youth as the age of passion and of errors. In the old it is no virtue, as they should do nothing to be ashamed of (IX.).
Book Fifth (the first of the so-called Eudemian books), treats of Justice, the Social virtue by pre-eminence. Justice as a virtue is defined, the state of mind, or moral disposition, to do what is just. The question then is—what is the just and the unjust in action? The words seem to have more senses than one. The just may be (1) the Lawful, what is established by law; which includes, therefore, all obedience, and all moral virtue (for every kind of conduct came under public regulation, in the legislation of Plato and Aristotle). Or (2) the just may be restricted to the fair and equitable as regards property. In both senses, however, justice concerns our behaviour to some one else: and it thus stands apart from the other virtues, as (essentially and in its first character) seeking another's good—not the good of the agent himself (I.).
The first kind of justice, which includes all virtue, called Universal Justice, being set aside, the enquiry is reduced to the Particular Justice, or Justice proper and distinctive. Of this there are two kinds, Distributive and Corrective (II.). Distributive Justice is a kind of equality or proportion in the distribution of property, honours, &c., in the State, according to the merits of each citizen; the standard of worth or merit being settled by the constitution, whether democratic, oligarchic, or aristocratic (III.). Corrective, or Reparative Justice takes no account of persons; but, looking at cases where unjust loss or gain has occurred, aims to restore the balance, by striking an arithmetical mean (IV.). The Pythagorean idea, that Justice is Retaliation, is inadequate; proportion and other circumstances must be included. Proportionate Retaliation, or Reciprocity of services,—as in the case of Commercial Exchange, measured through the instrument of money, with its definite value,—is set forth as the great bond of society. Just dealing is the mean between doing injustice and suffering injustice (V.). Justice is definitely connected with Law, and exists only between citizens of the State, and not between father and children, master and slave, between whom there is no law proper, but only a sort of relation analogous to law (VI.). Civil Justice is partly Natural, partly conventional. The natural is what has the same force everywhere, whether accepted or not; the conventional varies with institutions, acquiring all its force from adoption by law, and being in itself a matter of indifference prior to such adoption. Some persons regard all Justice as thus conventional. They say—'What exists by nature is unchangeable, and has everywhere the same power; for example, fire burns alike in Persia and here; but we see regulations of justice often varied—differing here and there.' This, however, is not exactly the fact, though to a certain extent it is the fact. Among the gods indeed, it perhaps is not the fact at all: but among men, it is true that there exists something by nature changeable, though everything is not so. Nevertheless, there are some things existing by nature, other things not by nature. And we can plainly see, among those matters that admit of opposite arrangement, which of them belong to nature and which to law and convention; and the same distinction will fit in other cases also. Thus the right hand is by nature more powerful than the left; yet it is possible that all men may become ambidextrous. Those regulations of justice that are not by nature, but by human appointment, are not the same everywhere; nor is the political constitution 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 Aristotle to indicate, more or less fully, those intellectual excellences, whereby alone we are enabled to overcome the inherent difficulties of right ethical conduct; and he indicates them in the present Book, comparing them with those other intellectual excellences which guide our theoretical investigations, where conduct is not directly concerned.