Outline of the Question

1. Importance of the question. This first question can seem rather contemplative and at the same time painstaking; but it is a threshold that must necessarily be crossed if you wish an approach to lie open for you into the inner parts of the house—that is, to the more definite questions which, from present controversies and difficulties, have become of such great importance that they have turned the minds of nearly all men toward themselves. Therefore we earnestly exhort the benevolent Reader to survey this vestibule with the greatest attention, so that the rationale of the entire edifice may become plainer and more readily accessible to his mind.

2. Three matters, however, are to be treated in this place, which will furnish the subject of as many conclusions:

First, we shall define the virtue of justice;

Then we shall divide it into its parts;

Finally, we shall explain its properties.

3. A notion to be set down beforehand. But because justice is from right and for the sake of right, the notion of justice cannot be distinctly disclosed unless you have first attained the very rationale of right. We shall therefore devote our attention first of all to explaining this.