Polus' Treatise On Justice (Dharma)

Justice as Justice

Justice* may be called the mother and the nurse of the other virtues.

Without this, a man can neither be temperate, nor brave, nor prudent.

It is the harmony and peace, in conjunction with elegance, of the whole soul.

The strength of this virtue will become more manifest, if we direct our attention to the other habits.

Our habits have a partial utility and refer to one thing. Justice, on the other hand, refers to whole systems, and to a multitude.

In the world therefore, justice:

• conducts the whole government of things
• is providence, harmony, and Dice, by the decree of a certain genus of Gods.

But in a city, justice is called peace and equitable legislation.

In a house, justice is:

• the concord between the husband and wife
• the benevolence of the servant towards the master
• the anxious care of the master for his servant’s welfare

In the body, justice is health and intireness of all the parts.

But in the soul, justice is the wisdom, which among men subsists from science and justice.

Justice disciplines and saves both the whole and the parts of every thing. This renders things concordant and familiar with each other.

Justice as Dharma

Dharma may be called the mother and the nurse of the other virtues. Without dharma, a man can neither be temperate, nor brave, nor prudent.

Dharma is the harmony and peace, in conjunction with elegance, of the whole soul. The strength of this virtue will become more manifest, if we direct our attention to the other habits.

Our habits have a partial utility and refer to one thing.

Dharma, on the other hand, refers to whole systems, and to a multitude.

In the world therefore, dharma:

• conducts the whole government of things
• is providence, harmony, and Dice, by the decree of a certain genus of Gods.

But in a city, dharma is called peace and equitable legislation.

In a house, dharma is:

• the concord between the husband and wife
• the benevolence of the servant towards the master
• the anxious care of the master for his servant’s welfare

In the body, dharma is health and intireness of all the parts.

But in the soul, dharma is the wisdom, which among men subsists from science and justice.

Dharma disciplines and saves both the whole and the parts of every thing. This renders things concordant and familiar with each other.

Why is it not be called by the decision of all men, the mother and the nurse of all things?

Iamblichus preserves Archytas’ Treatise on Wisdom.

1. Wisdom is the best of all human affairs just as:

• the sight is the best of the corporeal senses
• intellect is the best of the soul
• the sun is the best of the stars.

The sight is the most far-darting and most multiform of all the senses.

Intellect is the supreme part of the soul, judging by reason and dianoïa what is fit, and existing as the sight and power of the most honorable things.

The sun is the eye and soul of things which have a natural subsistence. Through it, all things become visible, are generated, and rise into existence.[74]

Deriving also their roots, and being generated from thence, they are nourished, increased and excited by it in conjunction with sense.

2. Man was generated by far as the wisest of all animals.

He is able to:

• contemplate the things which exist
• obtain from all things science and wisdom.

Divinity has engraved and exhibited in him the system of universal reason, in which all the forms of things in existence are distributed, and the significations of nouns and verbs.

For a place is assigned for the sounds of the voice, viz. the pharynx, the mouth, and the nostrils.

But as man was generated the instrument of the sounds, through which nouns and verbs are signified, so likewise of the conceptions which are beheld in the things that have an existence.

This appears to me to be the work of wisdom, for the accomplishment of which man was generated and constituted, and received organs and powers from divinity.

3. Man was generated and constituted, for the purpose of contemplating the reason of the whole of nature.

Man himself was the work of wisdom.*

In this way, he might survey the wisdom of the things which exist.

• Human reason is contemplative of the reason of the whole of nature.
• Human wisdom also perceives and contemplates the wisdom of the things in existence.

This means that man is a part of universal reason, and of the whole of the intellectual nature.*

4. Wisdom is not conversant with a certain definite existing thing.

It is simply conversant with all the things that exist.

Wisdom should not first investigate the principles of itself, but the common principles of all beings.

This is because wisdom subsists with reference to all beings, that it is its job to know and contemplate the universal accidents of all things.

This is how wisdom discovers the principles of all beings.

5. Whoever is able to analyze all the genera which are contained under one and the same principle, and again to compose and con-numerate them, is the wisest of men.

He has the most perfect veracity.

He will also have discovered a beautiful place of survey, from which it will be possible to behold divinity, and all things that are in co-ordination with, and successive to him, subsisting separately, or distinct from each other.[75]

He is impelled in a right direction by intellect. In the end, he will:

• have conjoined beginnings with ends
• know that God is the principle, middle, and end, of all things which are accomplished according to justice and right reason.[76]