Platos Gorgias
POLUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Are these indifferent things done for the sake of the good, or the good for the sake of the indifferent?
SOCRATES: And is not this universally true? If a man does something for the sake of something else, he wills not POLUS: Clearly, the indifferent for the sake of the good.
that which he does, but that for the sake of which he does it.
SOCRATES: When we walk we walk for the sake of the good, and under the idea that it is better to walk, and when POLUS: Yes.
we stand we stand equally for the sake of the good?
SOCRATES: And are not all things either good or evil, or POLUS: Yes.
intermediate and indifferent?
SOCRATES: And when we kill a man we kill him or exile POLUS: To be sure, Socrates.
him or despoil him of his goods, because, as we think, it will conduce to our good?
SOCRATES: Wisdom and health and wealth and the like you would call goods, and their opposites evils?
POLUS: Certainly.
POLUS: I should.
SOCRATES: Men who do any of these things do them for the sake of the good?
SOCRATES: And the things which are neither good nor evil, and which partake sometimes of the nature of good POLUS: Yes.
and at other times of evil, or of neither, are such as sitting, walking, running, sailing; or, again, wood, stones, and the SOCRATES: And did we not admit that in doing some-like:these are the things which you call neither good nor thing for the sake of something else, we do not will those evil?
things which we do, but that other thing for the sake of which we do them?
POLUS: Exactly so.