ate of good health is formed expressly with reference to its
duration; of virtue with reference to its fitness of time; so that men who
argue in this manner, seem as if they would speak of a good death, or a
good labour, and call one which lasted long, better than a short one. They
do not perceive that some things are reckoned of more value in proportion
to their brevity; and some in proportion to their length. Therefore, it is
quite consistent with what has been said, that according to the principles
of those who think that that end of goods which we call the extreme or
chief good, is susceptible of growth, they may also think that one man can
be wiser than another; and, in like manner then, one man may sin more, or
act more rightly than another. But such an assertion is not allowable to
us, who do not think the end of goods susceptible of growth. For as men
who have been submerged under the water, cannot breathe any more because
they are at no great depth below the surface, (though they may on this
account be able at times to emerge,) than if they were at the bottom, nor
can the puppy who is nearly old enough to see, as yet see any more than
one who is but this moment born; so the man who has made some progress
towards the approach to virtue, is no less in a state of misery than he
who has made no such advance at all.

XV. I am aware that all this seems very strange. But as unquestionably the
previous propositions are true and uncontrovertible, and as these others
are in harmony with, and are the direct consequences of them; we cannot
question their truth also. But although some people deny that either
virtues or vices are susceptible of growth, still they believe that each
of them is in some degree diffused, and as it were extended. But Diogenes
thinks that riches have not only such power, that they are, as it were,
guides to pleasure and to good health, but that they even contain them:
but that they have not the same power with regard to virtue, or to the
other arts to which money may indeed be a guide, but which it cannot
contain. Therefore, if pleasure or if good health be among the goods,
riches also must be classed among the goods; but if wisdom be a good, it
does not follow that we are also to call riches a good; nor can that which
is classed among the goods be contained by anything which is not placed in
the same classification. And on that account, because the knowledge and
comprehension of those things by whic