m any one else, but he thought just the same as all
the rest. Nor did he think those things deserving of being valued less
which he himself denied to be goods, than they did who considered them as
goods. What, then, did he wish to effect by having altered these names? At
least he would have taken something from their weight, and would have
valued them at rather less than the Peripatetics, in order to appear to
think in some respects differently from them, and not merely to speak so.

What more need I say? What do you say about the happy life to which
everything is referred? You affirm that it is not that life which is
filled with everything which nature requires; and you place it entirely in
virtue alone. And as every controversy is usually either about a fact or a
name, both kinds of dispute arise if either the fact is not understood or
if a mistake is made as to the name; and if neither of these is the case,
we must take care to use the most ordinary language possible, and words as
suitable as can be,--that is, such as make the subject plain. Is it, then,
doubtful that if the former philosophers have not erred at all as to the
fact itself, they certainly express themselves more conveniently? Let us,
then, examine their opinions, and then return to the question of names.

XXI. They say that the desire of the mind is excited when anything appears
to it to be according to nature; and that all things which are according
to nature are worthy of some esteem; and that they deserve to be esteemed
in proportion to the weight that there is in each of them: and that of
those things which are according to nature, some have in themselves
nothing of that appetite of which we have already frequently spoken, being
neither called honourable nor praiseworthy; and some, again, are
accompanied by pleasure in the case of every animal, and in the case of
man also with reason. And those of them which are suitable are honourable,
beautiful, and praiseworthy; but the others, mentioned before, are
natural, and, when combined with those which are honourable, make up and
complete a perfectly happy life. But they say, too, that of all these
advantages--to which those people do not attribute more importance who say
that they are goods, than Zeno does, who denies it--by far the most
excellent is that which is honourable and praiseworthy; but that if two
honourable things are both set before one, one accompanied with good
health and the other with si