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Rh it as a duty arising out of our very nature not to neglect the welfare of public society, but to be ever ready, according to our station or capacity, to act either the magistrate or the private citizen. Their apathy was no more than a freedom from perturbations, from irrational and excessive agitations of the soul; it was an antagonism put forth against the passions, not with a view of extinguishing them, but merely of preventing them from running into excess; and consequently that paradoxical apathy commonly laid to their charge, and in the demolishing of which so many imaginary triumphs have been achieved, was an imaginary apathy for which they were in no way accountable.

17. Epicurus, the founder of the Epicurean school of philosophy, and from whose name the common and somewhat opprobrious word epicure is derived, was born in the island of Samos, in the year 342 B.C. We may assume him to have been in his prime about the year 300. He was thus contemporary with Zeno, and the two schools of Stoicism and Epicurism arose and flourished simultaneously in ancient Greece. Epicurus came to Athens when he was 18 years old. After residing here for a short time, and studying probably under Xenocrates, who was then at the head of the Platonic school of philosophy, Epicurus went to Colophon, and afterwards to Mytilene and Lampsacus, where he was engaged for five years in studying and in teaching philosophy. In