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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: proposes as a definition of temperance, 'doing one's own business,' and
then says that there is no reason why those who do the business of others
should not be temperate.
Nay (The English reader has to observe that the word 'make' (Greek), in
Greek, has also the sense of 'do' (Greek).), said he; did I ever
acknowledge that those who do the business of others are temperate? I
said, those who make, not those who do.
What! I asked; do you mean to say that doing and making are not the same?
No more, he replied, than making or working are the same; thus much I have
learned from Hesiod, who says that 'work is no disgrace.' Now do you
imagine that if he had meant by working and doing such things as you were
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