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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Eryxias by Platonic Imitator: stone, we should say that he was very rich?
ERASISTRATUS: Of course.
SOCRATES: The reason is that the one is useless and the other useful?
ERASISTRATUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And in the same way among the Scythians a house has no value
because they have no use for a house, nor would a Scythian set so much
store on the finest house in the world as on a leather coat, because he
could use the one and not the other. Or again, the Carthaginian coinage is
not wealth in our eyes, for we could not employ it, as we can silver, to
procure what we need, and therefore it is of no use to us.
ERASISTRATUS: True.
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