ed those self-regarding emotions that placed him in hostility
with others, he learnt to respect the self of another man as well as
his own. Epictetus advises to deal mildly with a man that hurts us
either by word or deed; and advises it upon the following very
remarkable ground. 'Recollect that in what he says or does, he follows
his own sense of propriety, not yours. He must do what appears to him
right, not what appears to you; if he judges wrongly, it is he that is
hurt, for he is the person deceived. Always repeat to yourself, in such
a case: The man has acted on his own opinion.'

The reason here given by Epictetus is an instance, memorable in ethical
theory, of respect for individual dissenting conviction, even in an
extreme case; and it must be taken in conjunction with his other
doctrine, that damage thus done to us unjustly is really little or no
damage, except so far as we ourselves give pungency to it by our
irrational susceptibilities and associations. We see that the Stoic
submerges, as much as he can, the pre-eminence of his own individual
self, and contemplates himself from the point of view of another, only
as one among many. But he does not erect the happiness of others into a
direct object of his own positive pursuit, beyond the reciprocities of
family, citizenship, and common humanity. The Stoic theorists agreed
with Epicurus in inculcating the reciprocities of justice between all
fellow-citizens; and they even went farther than he did, by extending
the sphere of such duties beyond the limits of city, so as to
comprehend all mankind. But as to the reciprocities of individual
friendship, Epicurus went beyond the Stoics, by the amount of
self-sacrifice and devotion that he enjoined for the benefit of a
friend.

There is also in the Stoical system a recognition of duties to God, and
of morality as based on piety. Not only are we all brethren, but also
the 'children of one Father.'

The extraordinary strain put upon human nature by the full Stoic
_ideal_ of submerging self in the larger interests of being, led to
various compromises. The rigid following out of the ideal issued in one
of the _paradoxes_, namely.--That all the actions of the wise man are
equally perfect, and that, short of the standard of perfection, all
faults and vices are equal; that, for example, the man that killed a
cock, without good reason, was as guilty as he that killed his father.
This has a meaning only when we draw a line be