that is ascribed to Pythagoras, made it a special object of mental discipline, by continually meditating on death, and evoking, by an effort of the imagination, whole societies that had passed away, to acquire a realised sense of the vanity of posthumous fame. The younger Pliny painted faithfully the ideal of stoicism when he described one of his friends as a man "who did nothing for ostentation but all for conscience; who sought the reward of virtue in itself, and not in the praise of man." Nor were the Stoics less emphatic in distinguishing the obligation from the attraction of virtue. It was on this point that they separated from the more refined Epicureans, who were often willing to sublimate to the highest degree the kind of pleasure they proposed as an object, provided only it were admitted that pleasure is necessarily the ultimate end of our actions. But this the Stoics firmly denied. "Pleasure," they argued, "is the companion, not the guide, of our course." "We do not love virtue because it gives us pleasure, but it gives us pleasure because we love it." "The wise man will not sin, though both gods and men should overlook the deed, for it is not through the fear of punishment or of shame that he abstains from sin. It is from the desire and obligation of what is just and good." "To ask to be paid for virtue is as if the eye demanded a recompense for seeing, or the feet for walking." In doing good, man "should be like the vine which has produced grapes, and asks for nothing more after it has produced its proper fruit." His end, according to these teachers, is not to find peace either in life or in death. It is to do his duty, and to tell the truth.