meanness; proper pride, between vanity and humility; ready wit, between buffoonery and
boorishness; modesty, between bashfulness and shamelessness. Some virtues do not seem to fit
into this scheme; for instance, truthfulness. Aristotle says that this is a mean between boastfulness
and mock-modesty (1108a), but this only applies to truthfulness about oneself. I do not see how
truthfulness in any wider sense can be fitted into the scheme. There was once a mayor who had
adopted Aristotle's doctrine; at the end of his term of office he made a speech saying that he had
endeavoured to steer the narrow line between partiality on the one hand and impartiality on the
other. The view of truthfulness as a mean seems scarcely less absurd.
Aristotle's opinions on moral questions are always such as were conventional in his day. One
some points they differ from those of our time, chiefly where some form of aristocracy comes in.
We think that human beings, at least in ethical theory, all have equal rights, and that justice
involves equality; Aristotle thinks that justice involves, not equality, but right proportion, which is
only sometimes equality (1131b).
The justice of a master or a father is different thing from that of a citizen, for a son or slave is
property,a and there can be no injustice to one's own property (1134b). As regards slaves,
however, there is slight modification of this doctrine in connection with the question whether it is
possible for a man to be a friend of his slave: "There is nothing in common between the tow
parties; the slave is a living tool.... Qua slave, then, one cannot be friends with him. But qua man
one can; for there seems to be some justice between any man and any other who can share in a
system of law or be a party to an agreement; therefore can also be friendship with him in so far as
he is a man" (1161b).
A father can repudiate his son if he is wicked, but a son cannot repudiate his father, because he
owes him more than he can possibly repay, especially existence (1163b). In unequal relations, it is
right, since everybody should be loved in proportion to his worth, that the inferior should love the
superior more than the superior love the inferior: wives, children, subjects, should have more love
for husbands, parents, and monarchs than the latter have for them. In a good marriage, "the man
rules in accordance with his worth, and in those matters in which a man should rule, but the
matters that