What is the highest end of action?

The Chief Good or End is Happiness.

Men form their notions from the different modes of life.

The masses and low ranks conceive it to be pleasure. Hence, they are content with the life of sensual enjoyment.

There are 3 lines of life which stand out prominently to view:

1. Life of pleasure
2. Life in society
3. The life of contemplation

The masses are plainly quite slavish. They choose a life like that of brute animals. Yet they obtain some consideration, because many of the higher ranks share the tastes of Sardanapalus.

The refined and active again conceive it to be honour which is the goal of the life in society.

Yet it is plainly too superficial for the object of our search, because it is thought to rest with those who pay rather than with him who receives it.

Whereas the Chief Good we feel instinctively must be something which is our own, and not easily to be taken from us.

Besides, men pursue honour, that they may believe themselves to be good:[6]

For instance, they seek to be honoured by the wise, and by those among whom they are known, and for virtue.

To these men, virtue is higher than honour.

In truth, one would be much more inclined to think this to be the end of the life in society.

Yet this itself is plainly not sufficiently final: for it is conceived possible, that a man possessed of virtue might sleep or be inactive all through his life, or, as a third case, suffer the greatest evils and misfortunes.

The man who should live thus no one would call happy, except for mere disputation’s sake.[7]

And for these let thus much suffice, for they have been treated of at sufficient length in my Encyclia.[8]

Contemplation is a third line of life.[9]

The life of money-making is one of constraint. Wealth manifestly is not the good we are seeking, because it is for use, that is, for the sake of something further.

Hence, one would rather conceive the forementioned ends to be the right ones, for men rest content with them for their own sakes.

Yet utility is not the objects of our search either, though many words have been wasted on them.[10]

I shall discuss the notion of one Universal Good (the same, that is, in all things).

The inventors of this doctrine of εἴδη did not apply it to those things in which they spoke of priority and posteriority. And so they never made any ἰδέα of numbers.

Instead, good is predicated in the categories of Substance, Quality, and Relation.

1. Substance is that which exists of itself.

It is prior in the nature of things to that which is relative, because this latter relative is an off-shoot and result of that which is.

On their own principle then, there cannot be a common ἰδέα in the case of these.

2. Good is predicated in as many ways as there are modes of existence:

• In the category of Substance, it is God and Intellect
• In the category of Quality, it is The Virtues
• In the category of Quantity, it is The Mean
• In the category of Relation, it is The Useful
• In the category of Time, it is Opportunity
• In the category of Place, it is Abode
• and so on

The good cannot be something common and universal and one in all. Otherwise, it would not have been predicated in all the categories, but in one only.

3. Since those things which range under one ἰδέα are also under the cognisance of one science, there would have been, on their theory, only one science taking cognisance of all goods collectively*.

But in fact, there are many even for those which range under one category.

For instance, Opportunity or Seasonableness is under the category of Time. Its science:

• in war is generalship
• in disease is the medical science

The Mean is under the category of Quantity. Its science:

• in food is the medical science
• in labour or exercise is the gymnastic science.

They say that Humanity is one and the same in the person-in-general and the individual person.

• These are both human and will not differ at all

If so, then general good and the individual good will not differ, in so far as both are good.

They do not say that the eternity of the very-good makes it to be more good just as an eternal white is not whiter than a momentary white.