Kitap 3
9
Again, we wish rather for ends than for means, but choose the means to our end; for example we wish to be healthy, but choose things to make us healthy; we wish to be happy, and that is the word we use in this connection, but it would not be proper to say that we choose to be happy; since, speaking generally, choice seems to be concerned with things within our own control.
10
(4) Nor yet again can it be opinion. It seems that anything may be matter of opinion—we form opinions about what is eternal,Cf. 3.3 and note. or impossible, just as much as about what is within our power. Also we distinguish opinion by its truth or falsehood, not by its being good or bad, but choice is distinguished rather as being good or bad.
11
Probably therefore nobody actually identifies choice with opinion in general. But neither is it the same as some particular opinion.i.e., an opinion or belief that so-and-so is good, and is within our power to obtain. For it is our choice of good or evil that determines our character, not our opinion about good or evil.
12
And we choose to take or avoid some good or evil thing, but we opine what a thing is, or for whom it is advantageous, or how it is so:Perhaps to be emended how it is to be achieved. we do not exactly form an opinion to take or avoid a thing.
