Good was defined as that which benefits. To confer benefit was no
less essential to good than to impart warmth was to heat. If one
asked in what 'to benefit' lay one received the reply that it lay in
producing an act or state in accordance with virtue, and similarly it
was laid down that 'to hurt' lay in producing an act or state in
accordance with vice.
The indifference of things other than virtue and vice was apparent
from the definition of good which made it essentially beneficial.
Such things as health and wealth might be beneficial or not according
to circumstances; they were therefore no more good than bad. Again,
nothing could be really good of which the good or ill depended on the
use made of it, but this was the case with things like health and
wealth.
The true and only good then was identical with what the Greeks called
'the beautiful' and what we call 'the right'. To say that a thing was
right was to say that it was good, and conversely to say that it was
good was to say that it was right; this absolute identity between the
good and the right and, on the other hand, between the bad and wrong,
was the head and front of the Stoic ethics.
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