As for the life of money-making, it is one of constraint, and wealth
manifestly is not the good we are seeking, because it is for use, that
is, for the sake of something further: and hence one would rather
conceive the forementioned ends to be the right ones, for men rest
content with them for their own sakes. Yet, clearly, they are not the
objects of our search either, though many words have been wasted on
them.[10] So much then for these.
Again, the notion of one Universal Good (the same, that is, in all
things), it is better perhaps we should examine, and discuss the
meaning of it, though such an enquiry is unpleasant, because they are
friends of ours who have introduced these εἴδη.[11] Still perhaps it
may appear better, nay to be our duty where the safety of the truth is
concerned, to upset if need be even our own theories, specially as we
are lovers of wisdom: for since both are dear to us, we are bound to
prefer the truth. Now they who invented this doctrine of εἴδη, did not
apply it to those things in which they spoke of priority and
posteriority, and so they never made any ἰδέα of numbers; but good is
predicated in the categories of Substance, Quality, and Relation; now
that which exists of itself, i.e. Substance, is prior in the nature of
things to that which is relative, because this latter is an off-shoot,
as it were, and result of that which is; on their own principle then
there cannot be a common ἰδέα in the case of these.
In the next place, since good is predicated in as many ways as there
are modes of existence [for it is predicated in the category of
Substance, as God, Intellect—and in that of Quality, as The Virtues—and
in that of Quantity, as The Mean—and in that of Relation, as The
Useful—and in that of Time, as Opportunity—and in that of Place, as
Abode; and other such like things], it manifestly cannot be something
common and universal and one in all: else it would not have been
predicated in all the categories, but in one only.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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