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LAMPRIAS. There is much then of Jupiter’s Corinth (that is, much reasoning in a circle) admitted into their arguments. For I would have you let alone the saying about the turning of the pestle, lest you should seem to mock them; although an accident like to that has insinuated itself into their discourse. For it seems that, to the understanding of good, one has need to understand prudence, and to seek for prudence in the understanding of good, being forced always to pursue the one by the other, and thus failing of both; since to the understanding of each we have need of that which cannot be known without the other be first understood.
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DIADUMENUS. But there is yet another way, by which you may perceive not only the perversion but the eversion of their discourse, and the reduction of it entirely to nothing. They hold the essence of good to be the reasonable election of things according to Nature. Now the election is not reasonable which is not directed to some end, as has been said before. What then is this end? Nothing else, say they, but to reason rightly in the election of things according to Nature. First then, the conception of good is lost and gone. For to reason rightly in election is an operation proceeding from an habit of right reasoning; and therefore being constrained to learn this from the end, and the end not without this, we fail of understanding either of them. Besides, which is more, this reasonable election ought in strict justice to be a choice of things good and useful, and co-operating to the end; for how can it be reasonable to choose things which are neither convenient nor honorable nor at all eligible? For be it, as they say, a reasonable election of things having a fitness for the causing felicity; see then to what a beautiful and grave conclusion their discourse brings them. For the end is (it seems), according to them, to reason rightly in the choice of things which are of worth in causing us to reason rightly.
