Chrysippus says, that nothing is profitable to the
wicked, that the wicked have neither use nor need of any
thing. Having said this in his First Book of Good Deeds,
he says again, that both commodiousness and grace pertain
to mean or indifferent things, none of which, according to
them, is profitable. In the same place he affirms, that
there is nothing proper, nothing convenient for a vicious
man, in these words: ‘On the same principle we declare
that there is nothing foreign or strange to the good man,
and nothing proper or rightfully belonging to the bad
man, since the one is good and the other bad.’ Why
then does he break our heads, writing particularly in every
one of his books, as well natural as moral, that as soon as
we are born, we are appropriated to ourselves, our parts,
and our offspring? And why in his First Book of Justice
does he say that the very brutes, proportionably to the
necessity of their young, are appropriated to them, except
fishes, whose young are nourished by themselves? For
neither have they sense who have nothing sensible, nor
they appropriation who have nothing proper; for appropriation seems to be the sense and perception of what is
proper.
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