appears to be useful: emotions are, under all circumstances, faults; and were an emotion to be useful, virtue would be advanced by means of what is wrong. [609] The right relation, therefore, towards emotions—indeed, the only one morally tenable—is an attitude of absolute hostility. The wise man must be emotionless. [610] Pain he may feel, but, not regarding it as an evil, he will suffer no affliction, and know no fear. [611] He may be slandered and ill-treated, but he cannot be injured or degraded. [612] Being untouched by honour and dishonour, he has no vanity. To anger [613] he never yields, nor needs this irrational impulse, not even for valour and the championship of right. But he also feels no pity, [614] and exercises no indulgence. [615] For how can he pity others for what he would not himself consider an evil? How can he yield to a diseased excitement for the sake of others, which he would not tolerate for his own sake? If justice calls for punishment, feelings will not betray him into forgiveness. We shall subsequently have an opportunity for learning the further application of these principles. [(2) Idea of virtue.] [(a) Positive and negative aspects.] Virtue is thus negatively defined as the being exempt from emotions, as apathy. [616] There is also a positive side to supplement this negative view. Looking at the matter of virtuous action, this may be said to consist in subordination to the general law of nature; looking at its manner, in rational self-control. [617] Virtue is exclusively a matter of reason [618]—in short, it is nothing else but rightly ordered reason. [619] To speak more explicitly, virtue contains in itself two elements—one practical, the other speculative. At the root, and as a condition of all rational conduct, lies, according to the Stoics, right knowledge. On this point they are at one with the well-known Socratic doctrine, and with the teaching of the Cynics and Megarians. Natural virtue, or virtue acquired only by exercise, they reject altogether. After the manner of Socrates, they define virtue as knowledge, vice as ignorance, [620] and insist on the necessity of learning virtue. [621] Even the avowed enemy of all speculative enquiry, Aristo of Chios, was on this point at one with the rest of the School. All virtues were by him referred to wisdom, [622] and, consequently, he denied the claims of most to be virtues at all. [623]