y, I must endeavour to find some other mode of classifying
them. Hurts are voluntary and involuntary, but all hurts are not
injuries: on the other hand, a benefit when wrongly conferred may be an
injury. An act which gives or takes away anything is not simply just;
but the legislator who has to decide whether the case is one of hurt or
injury, must consider the animus of the agent; and when there is hurt,
he must as far as possible, provide a remedy and reparation: but if
there is injustice, he must, when compensation has been made, further
endeavour to reconcile the two parties. 'Excellent.' Where injustice,
like disease, is remediable, there the remedy must be applied in word
or deed, with the assistance of pleasures and pains, of bounties and
penalties, or any other influence which may inspire man with the love
of justice, or hatred of injustice; and this is the noblest work of
law. But when the legislator perceives the evil to be incurable, he will
consider that the death of the offender will be a good to himself,
and in two ways a good to society: first, as he becomes an example to
others; secondly, because the city will be quit of a rogue; and in such
a case, but in no other, the legislator will punish with death.
'There is some truth in what you say. I wish, however, that you would
distinguish more clearly the difference of injury and hurt, and the
complications of voluntary and involuntary.' You will admit that anger
is of a violent and destructive nature? 'Certainly.' And further, that
pleasure is different from anger, and has an opposite power, working by
persuasion and deceit? 'Yes.' Ignorance is the third source of crimes;
this is of two kinds--simple ignorance and ignorance doubled by conceit
of knowledge; the latter, when accompanied with power, is a source of
terrible errors, but is excusable when only weak and childish. 'True.'
We often say that one man masters, and another is mastered by pleasure
and anger. 'Just so.' But no one says that one man masters, and another
is mastered by ignorance. 'You are right.' All these motives actuate men
and sometimes drive them in different ways. 'That is so.' Now, then, I
am in a position to define the nature of just and unjust. By injustice I
mean the dominion of anger and fear, pleasure and pain, envy and desire,
in the soul, whether doing harm or not: by justice I mean the rule of
the opinion of the best, whether in states or individuals, extending to
the whole of l