The united weight of all these points of resemblance is sufficient to warrant the assertion that, notwithstanding their differences, the Stoics and Epicureans stand on the same footing, and that the sharpness of the contrast between them is owing to their laying hold of opposite sides of one and the same principle. Abstract personality, and self-consciousness developed into a generic idea, is for both the highest aim. Compared with it not only the state of the senses, but the scientific knowledge of things, and the realisation of moral ideas in a commonwealth, are of minor importance. In this self-consciousness happiness consists. To implant it in man is the object of philosophy, and knowledge is only of value when and in as far as it ministers to this end. The point of difference between the two Schools is their view of the conditions under which that certainty of consciousness is attained. The Stoics hope to attain it by the entire subordination of the individual to universal law. The Epicureans, on the other hand, are of opinion that man can only then be content in himself when he is restrained by nothing external to himself. The first condition of happiness consists in liberating individual life from all dependence on others, and all disturbing causes. The former, therefore, make virtue, the latter make personal well-being or pleasure, the highest good. By the Epicureans, however, pleasure is usually conceived as of a purely negative character, as being freedom from pain, and is referred to the whole of human life. Hence it is always made to depend on the moderation of desires, on indifference to outward ills, and the state of the senses, on intelligence and actions conformable with intelligence, in short, on virtue and wisdom. Hence, too, the Epicureans arrive by a roundabout course at the same result as the Stoics—the conviction that happiness can only be the lot of those who are altogether independent of external things, and enjoy perfect inward harmony. [(2) Relation to Aristippus.]