|
The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Eryxias by Platonic Imitator: part as enemies instead of as friends. But now, when we are contending
about a thing of which the usefulness continues during the whole of life,
and it makes an enormous difference whether we are to regard it as
beneficial or not,--a thing, too, which is esteemed of the highest
importance by the Hellenes:--(for parents, as soon as their children are,
as they think, come to years of discretion, urge them to consider how
wealth may be acquired, since by riches the value of a man is judged):--
When, I say, we are thus in earnest, and you, who agree in other respects,
fall to disputing about a matter of such moment, that is, about wealth, and
not merely whether it is black or white, light or heavy, but whether it is
a good or an evil, whereby, although you are now the dearest of friends and
|
