All Good Things

Wealth, Pleasure, Health and Virtue competed at the Olympic Games. The Olympic Games of ancient times, which is why the narrator (the present included) does not say in which fields they participated; all you need to know is that each came first.
The prize was an apple; a single apple. Which it is presumed was golden, though there is no proof of this, nor any evidence to say that it was not. It could have been from the tree for the fruit might have been scarce in those parts.
Golden or edible, it was an apple and they all had claim to it.
Wealth wanted to possess it whole, for 'with me all goods are bought.' Pleasure thought it should be possessed by Wealth and herself in turns, since 'wealth is sought only to have me.' Health wanted to divide it equally, to cut it in half and half again, although she asserted that without her there is no pleasure and that wealth is useless; however she was prepared to be just. And Virtue, in this version, made no claim. At this point in the proceedings she said nothing.
There being no consensus, the others were content to argue on. Wealth would never, he said, consent to share or cut up the prize. Neither Pleasure or Health would award it to Wealth, and Pleasure was insulted by Health's assertions, which Wealth didn't care for either but had not the patience to contest. Pleasure, too, didn't think the prize should be cut up into equal parts, for although they had all won their events they were not equal and never would be. Health had made her case very plain, and now stated it again in plainer terms, 'You are right, Pleasure,' she said, 'the apple belongs to me, for, like me, it is health-giving. You don't need wealth to buy it and pleasure comes from partaking of it.'
('Ask Adam, ask Eve', interjected one narrator of this fable, 'they may not concord'; but as he is only here in spirit alone I will continue.)
Pleasure now too, having listened to these changed terms, decided the apple should be all hers, for what was health and what was wealth without her. Each were meaningless on their own.
Virtue had still said nothing. In truth, Wealth, Pleasure and Health had forgotten she was there and, though yet to make a claim, had an equal claim.
She piped up now, astonishing the other three with the clarity of her speech: ' I am superior to you all, because with gold, pleasure and health one can become very wretched if one misbehaves.'
She was right of course and each knew it, but the truth of her words was not enough. Wealth, Pleasure and Health could not deny themselves the apple. (They were not as magnanimous as the original (and beautifully short) fable reported.) Their claims, they felt, though less good, were still valid and worth debating further.
A philosopher, by the name of Crantor, had at this moment stopped to congratulate them on their singular wins. Their dilemma explained to him he was appealed to to act as judge. At first he demurred, he was having a day off he said from moral philosophizing, and besides he had no wish to be another Paris, though none of the contenders for the prize, it should be noted, had offered him anything.

Wealth had been on the verge of doing so, but had decided philosophers needed very little. Pleasure didn't think philosophers sought her at all, for their own sake; they only desired to think freely. Health was confident a bribe was not required and Virtue gave no thought to it.
Crantor having decided to settle their dispute on condition they abide by his judgement, make him no offers and in the aftermath start no wars, had each state their case to him again for thinking the apple belonged to them, and then arranged these good things in the following order (being a philosopher of some renown he did not have to give his reasons): Virtue, Health, Pleasure and Riches.
His ordering of them has been argued for and against ever since by his fellows and by those who consider themselves amateurs. However, that day, as on this, Virtue, goodness itself, was awarded the apple.

Picture credit: This is not an Apple, 1964, Rene Magritte

Fable by Crantor, A Greek moral philosopher of the fourth century B.C., as related by Voltaire in his Philosophical Dictionary and altered and expanded upon.

Written October 2020.