Ethics 237
because they consist of acts of cognition and contain something which
is rational and methodical. They think, though, that we find false assent
more uncongenial than anything else which is contrary to nature ....
- Let us move on, then, since we began from these natural principles
and what follows should be consistent with them. There follows this
primary division: they say that what has value (we are to call it that, I
think) is that which is either itself in accordance with nature or productive
of it, so that it is worthy of selection because it has a certain 'weight'
which is worth valuing (and this [value] they call axia); by contrast, what
is opposite to the above is disvalued. The starting point being, then, so
constituted that what is natural is to be taken for its own sake and what
is unnatural is to be rejected, the first appropriate action (for that is what
I call kathekon) is that it should preserve itself in its natural constitution;
and then that it should retain what is according to nature and reject what
is contrary to nature. After this [pattern of] selection and rejection is
discovered, there then follows appropriate selection, and then constant
[appropriate] selection, and finally [selection] which is stable and in
agreement with nature; and here for the first time we begin to have and
to understand something which can truly be called good. 21. For man's
first sense of congeniality is to what is according to nature; but as soon
as he gets an understanding, or rather a conception (which they call an
ennoia) and sees the ordering and, I might say, concord of things which
are to be done, he then values that more highly than all those things
which he loved in the beginning, and he comes to a conclusion by
intelligence and reasoning, with the result that he decides that this is
what the highest good for man consists in, which is is to be praised and
chosen for its own sake. And since it is placed in what the Stoics call
homologia, let us call it agreement, if you please. Since, therefore, this
constitutes the good, to which all things are to be referred, honourable
actions and the honourable itself-which is considered to be the only
good-although it arises later [in our lives], nevertheless it is the only
thing which is to be chosen in virtue of its own character and value; but
none of the primary natural things is to be chosen for its own sake. 22.
Since, however, those things which I called appropriate actions proceed
from the starting points [established] by nature, it is necessary that they
be referred to them; so it is right to say all appropriate actions are referred
to acquisition of the natural principles, not however in the sense that
this is the highest good, since honourable action is not among the primarily
and naturally congenial things. That, as I said, is posterior and arises
later. But [such action] is natural and encourages us to choose it much
more than all the earlier mentioned things.
But here one must first remove a misunderstanding, so that no one
