is not the end of aiming after natural
things, but the taking and choosing them is, and that the desire and
endeavor after health is not in every one terminated in the enjoyment of
health, but on the contrary, the enjoyment of health is referred to the
desire and endeavor after it, and that certain walkings and contentions
of speech and suffering incisions and taking of medicines, so they are
done by reason, are the end of health, and not health of them, they,
I say, trifle like to those who say, Let us sup, that we may offer
sacrifice, that we may bathe. But this rather changes order and custom,
and all things which these men say carry with them the total subversion
and confusion of affairs. Thus, we do not desire to take a walk in fit
time that we may digest our meat; but we digest our meat that we may
take a walk in fit time. Has Nature also made health for the sake of
hellebore, instead of producing hellebore for the sake of health?
For what is wanting to bring them to the highest degree of speaking
paradoxes, but the saying of such things? What difference is there
between him who says that health was made for the sake of medicines and
not medicines for the sake of health, and him who makes the choice
of medicines and their composition and use more desirable than health
itself?--or rather who esteems health not at all desirable, but placing
the end in the negotiation about these things, prefers desire to
enjoyment, and not enjoyment to desire? For to desire, forsooth (they
affirm), is joined the proceeding wisely and discreetly. It is true
indeed, we will say, if respect be had to the end, that is, the
enjoyment and possession of the things it pursues; but otherwise, it is
wholly void of reason, if it does all things for the obtaining of that
the enjoyment of which is neither honorable nor happy.

Now, since we are fallen upon this discourse, anything may rather
be said to agree with common sense, than that those who have neither
received nor have any conception of good do nevertheless desire
and pursue it. For you see how Chrysippus drives Ariston into this
difficulty, that he should understand an indifference in things
inclining neither to good nor to bad, before either good or bad is
itself understood; for so indifference will appear to have subsisted
even before itself, if the understanding of it cannot be perceived
unless good be first understood, while the good is nothing else than
this very indifference. Unde