All the proverbs, too,
agree with this, e.g. 'a single soul', and 'what friends have is
common property', and 'friendship is equality', and 'charity begins at
home'; for all these marks will be found most in a man's relation to
himself; he is his own best friend and therefore ought to love himself
best. It is therefore a reasonable question, which of the two views we
should follow; for both are plausible.
Perhaps we ought to mark off such arguments from each other and
determine how far and in what respects each view is right. Now if we
grasp the sense in which each school uses the phrase 'lover of
self', the truth may become evident. Those who use the term as one
of reproach ascribe self-love to people who assign to themselves the
greater share of wealth, honours, and bodily pleasures; for these
are what most people desire, and busy themselves about as though
they were the best of all things, which is the reason, too, why they
become objects of competition. So those who are grasping with regard
to these things gratify their appetites and in general their
feelings and the irrational element of the soul; and most men are of
this nature (which is the reason why the epithet has come to be used
as it is-it takes its meaning from the prevailing type of self-love,
which is a bad one); it is just, therefore, that men who are lovers of
self in this way are reproached for being so.
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