But what about good and evil? What about beautiful and ugly? What about right and wrong behavior? What about happiness and misfortune? What about proper and improper conduct? What about what we should and shouldn't do? Who comes into the world without having a natural sense of these things? That's why we all use these words. We try to match our built-in ideas to specific situations: "He did the right thing." "He did the wrong thing." "He acted properly." "He didn't act properly." "He got unlucky." "He got lucky." "He's unfair." "He's fair." Who doesn't use these words? Who waits to learn them first, the way we wait to learn about geometry or music?
But as to good and evil, and beautiful and ugly, and becoming and unbecoming, and happiness and misfortune, and proper and improper, and what we ought to do and what we ought not to do, who ever came into the world without having an innate idea of them? Wherefore we all use these names, and we endeavor to fit the preconceptions to the several cases (things) thus: he has done well; he has not done well; he has done as he ought, not as he ought; he has been unfortunate, he has been fortunate; he is unjust, he is just; who does not use these names? who among us defers the use of them till he has learned them, as he defers the use of the words about lines (geometrical figures) or sounds?