The frequency with which this new class of moral reformers is mentioned in the literature of the time shows the large place which it filled. 2. The moral reformation affected the contents of ethical teaching chiefly by raising them from the sphere of moral philosophy to that of religion. In Epictetus there are two planes of ethical teaching. The one is that of orthodox and traditional Stoicism: in the other, Stoicism is transformed by the help of religious conceptions, and the forces which led to the practice of it receive the enormous impulse which comes from the religious emotions. The one is summed up in the maxim, Follow Nature; the other in the maxim, Follow God. On the lower plane the purpose of philosophy is stated in various ways, each of which expresses the same fact. It is the bringing of the will into harmony with nature. It consists in making the “dealing with ideas” what it should be, that is, in dealing with them according to nature.[253] It is the thorough study of the conceptions of good and evil, and the right application of them to particular objects.[254] It is the endeavour to make the will unthwarted in its action,[255] to take sorrow and disappointment out of a man’s life,[256] and to change its disturbed torrent into a calm and steady stream. The result of the practice of philosophy is happiness.[257] The means of attaining that result are marked out by the constitution of human nature itself and the circumstances which surround it. That nature manifests itself in two forms, desires to have or not to have, efforts to do or not to do.[258] The one is stimulated by the presentation to the mind of an object which is judged to be “good,” the other by that of one which is judged to be “fitting.” The one mainly concerns the individual man in himself, the other concerns him in his relations with other men. The “state according to nature” of desire is that in which it never fails of gratification, the corresponding state of effort is that in which it never fails of its mark. Both the one and the other are determined by landmarks which nature itself has set in the circumstances that surround us. The natural limits of desire are those things that are in our power: the direction of effort is determined by our natural relations. For example:[259] “Bear in mind that you are a son. What is involved in being a son? To consider all that he has to be his father’s property, to obey him in all things, never to disparage him to any one, never to say or do anything to harm him, to stand out of his way and give place to him in all things, to help him by all means in his power.