SMALL LETTER PHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}, it occurs to me to translate _indifferens_. Nor, indeed, was it
at all possible that there should be nothing left intermediate, which was
either according to nature or contrary to it; nor, when that was left,
that there should be nothing ranked in this class which was tolerably
estimable; nor, if this position were once established, that there should
not be some things which are preferred. This distinction, then, has been
made with perfect propriety, and this simile is employed by them to make
the truth more easily seen. For as, say they, if we were to suppose this
to be, as it were, the end and greatest of goods, to throw a die in such a
manner that it should stand upright, then the die which is thrown in such
a manner as to fall upright, will have some particular thing preferred as
its end, and _vice versa_. And yet that preference of the die will have no
reference to the end of which I have been speaking. So those things which
have been preferred are referred indeed to the end, but have no reference
at all to its force or nature.

Next comes that division, that of goods some have reference to that end
(for so I express those which they call {~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER KAPPA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH VARIA~}, for we must here, as we
have said before, endure to express in many words, what we cannot express
by one so as to be thoroughly intelligible,) some are efficient causes,
and some are both together. But of those which have reference to that end,
nothing is good except honourable actions; of those which are efficient
causes, nothing is good except a friend. But they assert that wisdom is
both a referential and an efficient good. For, because wisdom is suitable
action, it is of that referential character which I have mentioned; but
inasmuch as it brings and causes honourable actions, it may be so far
called efficient.

XVII. Now these things which we have spoken of as preferred, are preferred
some for their own sake, some because they effect something else, and some
for both reasons. Some are preferred for their own sake, such as some
particular appearance or expression of countenance, some particular kind
of gait, or motion, in which there are some things which may well be
preferre