Some seek good in authority, others in scientific research, others in
pleasure. Others, who are in fact nearer the truth, have considered it
necessary that the universal good, which all men desire, should not consist
in any of the particular things which can only be possessed by one man, and
which, when shared, afflict their possessors more by the want of the part he
has not than they please him by the possession of what he has. They have
learned that the true good should be such as all can possess at once,
without diminution and without envy, and which no one can lose against his
will. And their reason is that this desire, being natural to man, since it
is necessarily in all, and that it is impossible not to have it, they infer
from it...
426. True nature being lost, everything becomes its own nature; as the true
good being lost, everything becomes its own true good.
427. Man does not know in what rank to place himself. He has plainly gone
astray and fallen from his true place without being able to find it again.
He seeks it anxiously an