A Guide to Stoicism 4 ¶28 — St. George Stock (modern guide)

St. George Stock (modern guide), A Guide to Stoicism 4 ¶28

All things that were in accordance with nature had 'value' and all things that were contrary to nature had what we must call 'disvalue'. In the highest sense indeed of the term 'value'--namely that of absolute value or worth--things indifferent did not possess any value at all. But still there might be assigned to them what Antipater expressed by the term 'a selective value' or what he expressed by its barbarous privative, 'a disselective disvalue'. If a thing possessed a selective value you took that thing rather than its contrary, supposing that circumstances allowed, for instance, health rather than sickness, wealth rather than poverty, life rather than death. Hence such things were called takeable and their contraries untakeable. Things that possessed a high degree of value were called preferred, those that possessed a high degree of disvalue were called rejected. Such as possessed no considerable degree of either were neither preferred nor rejected. Zeno, with whom these names originated, justified their use about things really indifferent on the ground that at court "preferment" could not be bestowed upon the king himself, but only on his ministers.