(8) Reading {tout auto}, or if {tout au} with Sauppe, transl. "Yes,
that is another position we may fairly subscribe to."
(9) i.e. "without knowledge of how to use them."
(10) Or, "our discussion marches on all-fours, as it were."
Yes! (rejoined Socrates), presuming the owner knows how to sell them; since, supposing again he were to sell them for something which he does not know how to use, (11) the mere selling will not transform them into wealth, according to your argument.
(11) Reading {pros touto o}, or if {pros touton, os}, transl. "to a
man who did not know how to use them."
Crit. You seem to say, Socrates, that money itself in the pockets of a man who does not know how to use it is not wealth?
Soc. And I understand you to concur in the truth of our proposition so far: wealth is that, and that only, whereby a man may be benefited. Obviously, if a man used his money to buy himself a mistress, to the grave detriment of his body and soul and whole estate, how is that particular money going to benefit him now? What good will he extract from it?
Crit. None whatever, unless we are prepared to admit that hyoscyamus, (12) as they call it, is wealth, a poison the property of which is to drive those who take it mad.
(12) "A dose of henbane, 'hogs'-bean,' so called." Diosc. 4. 69; 6.
15; Plut. "Demetr." xx. (Clough, v. 114).
Soc. Let money then, Critobulus, if a man does not know how to use it aright—let money, I say, be banished to the remote corners of the earth rather than be reckoned as wealth. (13) But now, what shall we say of friends? If a man knows how to use his friends so as to be benefited by them, what of these?
(13) Or, "then let it be relegated... and there let it lie in the
category of non-wealth."
Crit. They are wealth indisputably, and in a deeper sense than cattle are, if, as may be supposed, they are likely to prove of more benefit to a man than wealth of cattle.