Everyone came expecting they would acquire one of the sorts of thing people normally regard as good, on a par with wealth, good health or strength. In sum, they came looking for some wonderful kind of happiness. But when the discussion turned out to be about mathematics, about numbers and geometry and astronomy, and then, to cap it all, he claimed that Good is One (kai to peras hoti agathon estin hen), it seemed to them, I imagine, something utterly paradoxical. The result was that some of them sneered at the lecture, and others were full of reproaches. (Aristoxenus, Elementa Harmonica 2.1, p. 30.20–31.2 Meibom)

They [members of the Academy] ought in fact to demonstrate [the nature of] the Good itself in the opposite way to the way they do it now. At present, they begin with things that are not agreed to have goodness and proceed to show the goodness of things which are agreed to be goods. For example, starting from numbers they show that justice and health are goods, on the grounds that justice and health are types of order (taxeis) and numbers (arithmoi), while numbers and units possess goodness because unity is the Good itself (dia to einai to hen auto to agathon). They ought rather to start from agreed goods such as health, strength, temperance, and argue that the beautiful is present even more in unchanging things, which are all examples of order (taxis) and stability (êremia). Then, if the former are goods, a fortiori the latter must be goods, because they have order and stability to a greater degree. (Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics 1.8, 1218a15–24) 1