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Rh nature is, nor in regard to what man's virtue is. All, or nearly all, moralists agree in holding that happiness is, in some sense, the end of man; that the life of nature and of virtue are the means to this end. The question on which much difference of opinion has prevailed is, What is this happiness which we admit to be the end of man? What is this natural and virtuous life which we admit to be the means to this end? It is a question, not about the that, but about the what. On this question moralists have differed widely, and among them the Stoics and the Epicureans have more particularly differed.

25. We ask, then, in what respect do the Stoics and the Epicureans differ in their doctrines respecting happiness, and nature, and virtue? We shall ascertain the fundamental point of disagreement between them if we revert to the distinction referred to a short way back, the distinction between feeling and thought, sensation and reason, the flesh and the spirit, or, if you choose so to express it, the body and the soul. When a man says, as all men do, that happiness is the chief end of man, does he mean that man's chief end is the happiness of the feelings, the happiness of sensation, the satisfaction of the passions, of the flesh, of the body? or does he mean that man's chief end is the happiness of thought, of reason, of the spirit, of the soul? The latter should be rather called the perfecting, than the happiness, of his nature; but let us call it happiness at present. You