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xxiv whom all things have power to penetrate with a sense of the divine is not less satisfying to the real self than to deal patiently and nobly with their pains—'despising not the chastening of the Eternal.' It accords with Stoicism; but whether it accords with Epictetus is a different question, Asceticism was certainly a cachet of eminence among Stoics, and Epictetus says much that appears to favour it. 'In things that concern the body,' he says, 'you must accept only what is absolutely needful—all that makes for show and luxury you must utterly proscribe' (Ench. xxxiii. η). And, again, in Ench. xxxix. he makes the needs of the body the standard of gain, as the foot is for the shoe. And in various other places (as Ench. xxxiv.) he seems to advise the abstention from pleasure simply as pleasure. Yet to condemn the enjoyments of the senses in this strenuous way, to insist so emphatically upon the necessity of living in an environment of a certain special character, whether