When we come to early races who have given their thoughts and feelings literary form we find this conception of justice, as involving equalness of action, becoming distinct. Among the Jews, David expressed in words this association of ideas when, praying to God to "hear the right," he said, "Let my sentence come forth from thy presence; let thine eyes behold the things that are equal;" as also, among early Christians, did Paul when to the Colossians he wrote, "Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal." Commenting on the different meanings of justice, Aristotle concludes that "the just will, therefore, be the lawful and the equal, and the unjust the unlawful and the unequal. But since the unjust man is also one who takes more than his share," etc. And that justice was similarly conceived by the Romans they proved by including under it such meanings as exact, proportionate, impartial, severally implying fairness of division, and still better by identification of it with equity, which is a derivative of _æquus_: the word _æquus_ itself having for one of its meanings just or impartial. This coincidence of view among ancient peoples respecting the nature of justice, has extended to modern peoples; who by a general agreement in certain cardinal principles which their systems of law embody, forbidding direct aggressions, which are forms of unequal actions, and forbidding indirect aggressions by breaches of contract, which are other forms of unequal actions, one and all show us the identification of justice with equalness. Bentham, then, is wrong when he says--"But what justice is--this is what on every occasion is the subject-matter of dispute." He is more wrong, indeed, than has thus far appeared. For, in the first place, he misrepresents utterly by ignoring the fact in ninety-nine out of every hundred daily transactions between men, no dispute about justice arises; but the business done is recognized on both sides as justly done. And in the second place if, with respect to the hundredth transaction there is a dispute, the subject matter of it is not "what justice is," for it is admitted to be equity or equalness; but the subject matter of dispute always is what, under these particular circumstances, constitutes equalness?--a widely different question.