The Wise Man accepts the established order and accommodates himself to it. He is not like the Stoic Wise Man, indifferent to all pleasures, but he is nevertheless independent of them. He is superior to the world, a king and a god. Accidents cannot disturb him, for his virtuous happiness lies within himself. He cannot control the world without, but he can control the world within himself. He can be happy with few or many satisfactions, and he is master over the world if he is master of the effects of the world upon himself. To rest unmoved in one’s inner self――that is the Epicurean ideal of the Wise Man. In contrast to the Cyrenaic happiness, the Epicurean happiness seems passive; in contrast to the Stoic happiness it is satisfaction. =The Epicurean Wise Man in Society.= Nevertheless the Wise Man is only a spectator of the world. He does not enter the world’s work nor does he enlist as a soldier to fight its moral battles. His individual independence gives a peculiar character to his social relations. He will have no ties on account of their complications. Moreover, his inner world offers him no compensation for his loss of social relationship, except that the good within is strong and the evil weak. He looks upon political government as a matter of selfish convenience. He is opposed to civic life, and therefore a supporter of absolute government. He refuses the responsibility of marriage, but accepts friendship as the only worthy social relationship, and only because friendship is of mutual advantage. Friendship means intellectual intercourse, compassion, and forgiveness. While there were many famous Epicurean friendships, one must admit that the Epicurean took an unfair advantage of the state. His happiness presupposed a highly developed civilization of refined tastes and noble sentiments. He is a parasite upon the community and appropriates the labor of others. The Epicurean ideal offers much to the individual, but nothing to society as a means of spiritual productivity. =The Great Obstacles to Happiness.= To universalize pleasure, however paradoxical it may seem, is to set up an individualism. It is to abandon all the claims of the society of other beings upon us. The logic of any pleasure theory is anarchism. But Epicurus is no anarchist, for anarchism would be too disturbing to repose. Epicurus stopped far short of interfering with political conditions. His teaching did not have as its end a logical theory, but a practical accomplishment. He therefore accommodated his theory to the practical circumstances of his time. He pointed out that in the seething times of the third century B. C. the individual could be happy if he banished from his world two obstacles. These were religion and culture.