The Good is in God alone — for God alone lacks nothing
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Hermes — Τὸ ἀγαθόν, ὦ ᾿Ασκληπιέ, ἐν οὐδενί ἐστιν, εἰ μὴ ἐν μόνῳ τῷ θεῷ, μᾶλλον δὲ τὸ ἀγαθὸν αὐτός ἐστιν ὁ θεὸς ἀεί· εἰ δὲ οὕτως, οὐσίαν εἶναι δεῖ πάσης κινήσεως καὶ γενέσεως (ἔρημον δὲ οὐδέν ἐστιν αὐτῆς), περὶ δὲ αὐτὴν στατικὴν ἐνέργειαν ἔχουσαν, ἀνενδεῆ καὶ ἀπέριττον, πληρεστάτην, χορηγόν, ἐν δὲ ἀρχῇ πάντων· πᾶν γὰρ τὸ χορηγοῦν ἀγαθὸν ὅταν λέγω, καὶ πάντα καὶ ἀεὶ ἀγαθόν ἐστι. τοῦτο δὲ ἐν οὐδενὶ ἄλλῳ πρόσεστιν, εἰ μὴ μόνῳ τῷ θεῷ· οὔτε γὰρ ἐνδεής ἐστί τινος, ἵνα ἐπιθυμήσας αὐτὸ κτήσασθαι κακὸς γένηται, οὔτε τῶν ὄντων οὐδὲν ἀπόβλητόν ἐστιν αὐτῷ, ὃ ἀποβαλὼν λυπηθήσεται (λύπη γὰρ κακίας μέρος) οὔτε κρεῖττον αὐτοῦ ἐστιν οὐδέν, ὑφ' οὗ πολεμηθήσεται (οὐδὲ σύζυγόν ἐστιν αὐτῷ τὸ ἀδικηθῆναι), οὔτε κάλλιον, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο αὐτοῦ ἐρασθήσεται, οὔτε ἀνήκοον, ᾧ ὀργισθήσεται, οὔτε σοφώτερον, ὃ ζηλώσει.
The Good, O Asclepius, is in nothing except in God alone — rather, the Good itself is God always. And if so, it must be the essence of all motion and generation (nothing is bereft of it), having about itself a static energy: needing nothing, without excess, most full, a supplier, at the beginning of all. For everything that supplies good, when I call it so, is wholly and always good. And this belongs to no other but God alone. For neither is he deficient in anything, such that, desiring to acquire it, he would become bad; nor is any of the beings castable-off to him, which by losing he would grieve (for grief is a part of vice); nor is anything greater than him, by which he would be warred upon (nor is there a consort to him, that he could be wronged); nor more beautiful, that he would desire it; nor disobedient, at which he would be angered; nor wiser, which he would envy.
The Good, Asclepius, is in nothing except in God alone — rather, the Good itself is God, always. And if so, it must be the essence of all motion and generation (nothing is bereft of it), having about itself a static energy: needing nothing, without excess, most full, a supplier, at the beginning of all. For everything that supplies good, when I call it so, is wholly and always good. And this belongs to no other but God alone. For he is not deficient in anything, such that, desiring to acquire it, he would become bad; nor is any of the beings castable-off to him, which by losing he would grieve (for grief is a part of vice); nor is anything greater than him, by which he would be warred upon (nor is there a consort to him, that he could be wronged); nor more beautiful, that he would desire it; nor disobedient, at which he would be angered; nor wiser, which he would envy.
The sixth treatise states its thesis in its first breath — 'the Good is in nothing except in God alone (ἐν οὐδενί… εἰ μὴ ἐν μόνῳ τῷ θεῷ)' — and then sharpens it: not merely that God has the Good, but that 'the Good itself is God always.' Goodness is not an attribute God possesses but his very identity, and CH IV.16's equation (God = the Good) is here made exclusive: nowhere else, in nothing else. The Good is called the 'static energy (στατικὴ ἐνέργεια)' at the root of all motion and becoming — the moving-unmoved of CH II, now named as the Good that furnishes all while resting in itself: 'needing nothing, without excess, most full, a supplier (ἀνενδεῆ… ἀπέριττον, πληρεστάτην, χορηγόν).'
The heart of the section is a rigorous proof by elimination, and the interlinear lays out its anatomy of the passions one under another. Why can the Good belong to God alone? Because every evil is a form of lack, and God lacks nothing. Run the list: he is not 'deficient (ἐνδεής),' so no desire (ἐπιθυμία) can make him grasp and so 'become bad'; nothing is 'castable-off (ἀπόβλητον)' from him, so no loss can make him 'grieve (λυπηθήσεται)' — 'for grief is a part of vice (λύπη… κακίας μέρος)'; nothing is greater, so no fear of war; no consort, so no injustice; nothing more beautiful, so no longing; nothing disobedient, so no anger (ὀργή); nothing wiser, so no envy (ζῆλος). Desire, grief, fear, longing, anger, envy — the whole Stoic catalogue of πάθη — are each shown to presuppose a deficiency, and each is therefore impossible in the one Being who is complete. The reveal layer earns its place by keeping the passion-words visible in a row: the treatise is arguing that goodness just is self-sufficiency, and that only the God who wants for nothing can be, without remainder, the Good.
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