“…the value of every person is what he does well.’

The gnostics add, ‘The value of every person is what he seeks.’

One of the ancient books states, ‘I pay no attention to a sage’s words; I look rather at the stature of his aspiration.’

These speculative philosophers never included this dimension in their discussion of the soul’s perfection. Instead, they restricted its practical perfection to tempering appetite and anger through chastity and forbearance—whose utmost outcome is merely to curb excess in appetite and anger.

Appetite is the faculty that draws whatever benefits the body and preserves the species, while anger is the power that repels whatever harms the body. They never addressed the goal of the spirit—what it loves for its own sake—even though their entire discourse relates to the body. They treated that as a reform of the body, which is only an instrument of the soul, and then claimed that the soul’s perfection lies in sheer knowledge alone.

We have discussed their error on this foundational point at length elsewhere and shown that the soul possesses a perfection in action and in will, just as it has