Well, I'd be curious to see if that is only my misconstruction. It is an interesting contrast with the Tao te Ching I've been reading lately, with its theme of not-doing (yet accomplishing), which I admit I still find mysterious, but worthy of contemplation. I also keep thinking about it in terms of someone like Alexenos, or Jammie. Perhaps they don't 'do' much in either quality or quantity (except Alexenos' big deed in book 2), yet can be said to posses worthy qualities simply in themselves, in being. How does that fit into it? Can a person be good in an intrinsic way, simply by being rather than doing? Or, in the Commonwealth schema, would that simply lead to the pitfalls of valuing one person over another for nontangible reasons?