[357c]
“I
recognise that kind,” said I. “And again a kind that we
love both for its own sake and for its consequences,1 such as understanding,2 sight, and health?3 For
these presume we welcome for both reasons.”
“Yes,” I said. “And can you discern a third
form of good under which falls exercise and being healed when sick and the
art of healing and the making of money generally? For of them we would say
that they are laborious and painful yet beneficial, and for their own sake
1 Isocrates i. 47 has this distinction, as well as Aristotle.
2 Some philosophers, as Aristippus (Diogenes Laertius x. 1. 138), said that intelligence is a good only for its consequences, but the opening sentences of Aritotle's Metaphysics treat all forms of knowledge as goods in themselves.
3 Plutarch (1040 C) says that Chrysippus censured Plato for recognizing health as a good, but elsewhere Plato explicitly says that even health is to be disregarded when the true interests of the soul require it.
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969.
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