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PREFACE. the Encheiridion might present itself as unpractical, to others it might seem to be quite sufficiently practised already. For Stoicism is often taken to be merely a synonym for intellectual self-sufficiency and heartlessness, for scorn of human affection and an ascetic disregard of at any rate the material welfare of others as well as of oneself. It is no answer to this accusation to point out passages in Epictetus (such as Ench. xxx. xxxii. xliii.; Frag. ii. xvii.), which are full of a quite different spirit; they would only prove that the philosopher may have been better than his creed. But the creed itself is a more profound and a more expansive one than is commonly supposed; for, its fundamental principle being merely to place Good and Ill in the things dependent on the will, it leaves room for any doctrine as to right living which can establish itself upon this basis. Thus it leaves room for asceticism, or for indifferentism; and many Stoics were, as a matter of fact, ascetics or in- differentists.