want of agreement between our wishes and the course of the world. Therefore one of these two must be changed and adapted to the other. Since now the course of things is not in our power (ουκ εφ᾽ ἡμιν), we must direct our volitions and desires according to the course of things: for the will alone is εφ᾽ ἡμιν. This adaptation of volition to the course of the external world, thus to the nature of things, is very often understood under the ambiguous κατα φυσιν ζην. See the “Discourses of Epictetus,” ii. 17, 21, 22. Seneca also denotes this point of view (Ep. 119) when he says: “_Nihil interest, utrum non desideres, an habeas. Summa rei in utroque est eadem: non torqueberis._” Also Cicero (_Tusc._ iv. 26) by the words: “_Solum habere velle, summa dementia est._” Similarly Arrian (iv. 1. 175): “Ου γαρ εκπληρωσει των επιθυμουμενων ελευθερια παρασκευαζεται, αλλα ανασκευη της επιθυμιας.” (_Non enim explendis desideriis libertas comparatur, sed tollenda cupiditate._) The collected quotations in the “_Historia Philosophiæ Græco-Romanæ_” of Ritter and Preller may be taken as proofs of what I have said, in the place referred to above, about the ὁμολογουμενως ζῃν of the Stoics. Also the saying of Seneca (Ep. 31, and again Ep. 74): “_Perfecta virtus est æqualitas et tenor vitæ per omnia consonans sibi._” The following passage of Seneca’s indicates the spirit of the Stoa generally (Ep. 92): “_Quid est beata vita? Securitas et perpetua tranquillitas. Hanc dabit animi magnitudo, dabit constantia bene judicati tenax._” A systematical study of the Stoics will convince every one that the end of their ethics, like that of the ethics of Cynicism from which they sprang, is really nothing else than a life as free as possible from pain, and therefore as happy as possible. Whence it follows that the Stoical morality is only a special form of _Eudæmonism_. It has not, like the Indian, the Christian, and even the Platonic ethics, a metaphysical tendency, a transcendental end, but a completely immanent end, attainable in this life; the steadfast serenity (αταραξια) and unclouded happiness of the wise man, whom nothing can disturb. Yet it cannot be denied that the later Stoics, especially Arrian, sometimes lose sight of this end, and show a really ascetic tendency, which is to be attributed to the Christian and Oriental spirit in general which was then already spreading. If we consider closely and seriously the goal of Stoicism, that αταραξια, we find in it merely a hardening and insensibility to the blow of fate which a man attains to because he keeps ever present to his mind the shortness of life, the emptiness of pleasure, the instability of happiness, and has also discerned that the difference between happiness and unhappiness is very much less than our anticipation of both is wont to represent. But this is yet no state of happiness; it is only the patient endurance of sufferings which one has foreseen as irremediable.