t, or of a domestic animal, or of a wild beast?

12. What kind of things those are which appear good to the many, we may
learn even from this. For if any man should conceive certain things as
being really good, such as prudence, temperance, justice, fortitude, he
would not after having first conceived these endure to listen to
anything+ which should not be in harmony with what is really good.+ But
if a man has first conceived as good the things which appear to the many
to be good, he will listen and readily receive as very applicable that
which was said by the comic writer. +Thus even the many perceive the
difference.+ For were it not so, this saying would not offend and would
not be rejected [in the first case], while we receive it when it is said
of wealth, and of the means which further luxury and fame, as said fitly
and wittily. Go on then and ask if we should value and think those
things to be good, to which after their first conception in the mind the
words of the comic writer might be aptly applied,--that he who has them,
through pure abundance has not a place to ease himself in.

13. I am composed of the formal and the material; and neither of them
will perish into non-existence, as neither of them came into existence
out of non-existence. Every part of me then will be reduced by change
into some part of the universe, and that again will change into another
part of the universe, and so on forever. And by consequence of such a
change I too exist, and those who begot me, and so on forever in the
other direction. For nothing hinders us from saying so, even if the
universe is administered according to definite periods [of revolution].

14. Reason and the reasoning art [philosophy] are powers which are
sufficient for themselves and for their own works. They move then from a
first principle which is their own, and they make their way to the end
which is proposed to them; and this is the reason why such acts are
named Catorthoseis or right acts, which word signifies that they proceed
by the right road.

15. None of these things ought to be called a man's, which do not belong
to a man, as man. They are not required of a man, nor does man's nature
promise them, nor are they the means of man's nature attaining its end.
Neither then does the end of man lie in these things, nor yet that which
aids to the accomplishment of this end, and that which aids toward this
end is that which is good. Besides, if any of these things