[Side-note: Different senses of justice--wider and narrower sense.] The ambiguous meaning of the word _justice_ is known to Plato himself (as it is also to Aristotle). One professed purpose of the dialogue called the Republic is to remove such ambiguity. Apart from the many other differences of meaning (arising from dissentient sentiments of different men and different ages), there is one duplicity of meaning which Aristotle particularly dwells upon.[13] In the stricter and narrower sense, justice comprehends only those obligations which each individual agent owes to others, and for the omission of which he becomes punishable as unjust--though the performance of them, under ordinary circumstances, carries little positive merit: in another and a larger sense, justice comprehends these and a great deal more, becoming co-extensive with wise, virtuous, and meritorious character generally. The narrower sense is that which is in more common use; and it is that which Plato assumes provisionally when he puts forward the case of opponents in the speeches of Glaukon and Adeimantus. But when he comes to set forth his own explanation, and to draw up his own case, we see that he uses the term justice in its larger sense, as the condition of a mind perfectly well-balanced and well-regulated: as if a man could not be just, without being at the same time wise, courageous, and temperate. The just man described in the counter-pleadings of Glaukon and Adeimantus, would be a person like the Athenian Aristeides: the unjust man whom they contrast with him, would be one who maltreats, plunders, or deceives others, or usurps power over them. But the just man, when Sokrates replies to them and unfolds his own thesis, is made to include a great deal more: he is a person in whose mind each of the three constituent elements is in proper relation of controul or obedience to the others, so that the whole mind is perfect: a person whose Reason, being illuminated by contemplation of the Universals or self-existent Ideas of Goodness, Justice, Virtue, has become qualified to exercise controul over the two inferior elements: one of which (Energy) is its willing subordinate and auxiliary--while the lowest of the three (Appetite) is kept in regulation by the joint action of the two. The just man, so described, becomes identical with the true philosopher: no man who is not a philosopher can be just.[14] Aristeides would not at all correspond to the Platonic ideal of justice. He would be a stranger to the pleasure extolled by Plato as the exclusive privilege of the just and virtuous--the pleasure of contemplating universal Ideas and acquiring extended knowledge.[15] [Footnote 13: Aristotel. Eth. Nikom. v. 2 (1), 1129, a. 25. [Greek: e)/oike de\ pleonachô=s le/gesthai ê( dikaiosu/nê kai\ ê( a)diki/a.]