effecting more in old age. So also prudence in old age is preferable, because no one chooses the young as leaders from not deeming them prudent. Courage indeed is contrary, for courageous energy is more necessary in youth; so also temperance, for the young are more burdened by desires than elderly men.
Whatever also is useful at every time or at most times, is more useful, thus justice ami temperance than courage, for the former are always, but the latter is sometimes useful. Again, that which all men possessing we require nothing else, (is more eligible) than that which (all) possessing we should require something else beside, as in the case of justice and courage, for if all men were just, courage would not at all be useful, but though all men were courageous, justice would be useful.
Further, (we can derive arguments) from corruptions and rejections, generations, assumptions, and contraries, for those, the corruptions of which are more to be avoided, are themselves more eligible. Likewise with rejections and contraries, for whether the rejection or the contrary is more to be avoided, it is itself more eligible. Still in generations and assumptions the contrary occurs, and those are more eligible whose assumptions and generations are so.
Another place is, that the nearer to the good is better and preferable, also the more similar to the good, as justice than a just man. Likewise what is more similar to the better than itself, as some say that Ajax was better than Ulysses, because he was more similar to Achilles. The objection to this is that it is not true, since nothing prevents Ajax from being more similar to Achilles, not so far as Achilles was the best; the other (Ulysses) being indeed good, yet not similar. We must also see whether the similar exists in things more ridiculous, as an ape is like a man, when a horse is not so, since the ape is not more beautiful, but more similar to man. Again, in two things, if one more resembles the better, but the other the worse, that will be the better which more resembles the better. Yet this also has an
