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432 pain or misfortune overtook a man, not through his own misdeeds, but through the inscrutable decrees of Providence, such pain was not to be regarded by the wise man as evil, for to him there is no evil except vice, no good except virtue. And it is obvious that such pain or calamity is not in itself moral evil; it is not wickedness, it is only distress, distress either of body or of mind, and by the endurance and resignation which it calls forth it may be the means of eliciting the loftiest virtues of the soul.

12. A third paradox of the Stoics is that they inculcated apathy, , as the highest condition of the wise and virtuous mind. This is a point of some importance, for their doctrine of apathy () has frequently been misunderstood. By apathy they are frequently supposed to mean an entire deadening of the affections, a total suppression or extirpation of the passions; in short a state of cold and heartless insensibility. That some of the Stoics, both by their theory and their practice, may have afforded grounds for such an interpretation of their doctrine, is quite possible. But it is still more certain that the Stoical apathy admits of a very different interpretation, and that no such paradoxical doctrine as that which is here indicated was taught by the genuine philosopher of that sect. Let us inquire, then, what the Stoics meant by apathy.

13. The Greek word , which is usually