For even as it would be a blameable action to make a spade of a beautiful sword, or to make a fair basin of a lovely lute; so it is wrong to move anything from a place where it may be useful, and to carry it into a place where it may be less useful.

And since it is blameable to work in vain, it is wrong not merely to put the thing in a place where it may be less useful, but even in a place where it may be equally useful.

Hence, in order that the changing of the place of a thing may be laudable, it must always be for the better, because it ought to be especially praiseworthy; and this the gift cannot be, if by transformation it become not more precious.

Nor can it become more precious, if it be not more useful to the receiver than to the giver.
Wherefore, one concludes that the gift must be useful to him who receives it, in order that it may be in itself ready liberality.
Thirdly, because the exercise of the virtue of itself ought to be the acquirer of friends.

For our life has need of these, and the end of virtue is to make life happy.