The ethical branch of philosophy [the Stoics] divide as follows: (1) the topic of impulse; (2) the topic of things good and evil; (3) that of the passions; (4) that of virtue; (5) that of the end; (6) that of primary value and of actions; (7) that of duties or the befitting; and (8) of inducements to act or refrain from acting....

    An animals first impulse, say the Stoics, is to self-preservation, because nature from the outset endears it to itself, as Chrysippus affirms in the first book of  his work On Ends: his words are, "The dearest thing to every animal is its own constitution and its consciousness thereof"; for it was not likely that nature should estrange the living thing from itself  or that she should leave the creature she has made without either estrangement from or affection for its own constitution.  We are forced then to conclude that nature in constituting the animal made it near and dear to itself; for so it comes to repel all that is injurious and give free access to all that is serviceable or akin to it.

     As for the assertion made by some people that pleasure is the object to which the first impulse of animals is directed, it is shown by the Stoics to be false.  For pleasure, if it  is really  felt, they declare to be a by-product, which never comes until nature by itself has sought and found the means suitable to the animal's existence or constitution; it is an aftermath comparable to the condition of animals thriving and plants in full bloom.  And nature, they say, made no difference originally between plants and animals, for she regulates the life of plants too, in their case without impulse and sensation, just as also certain processes go on of a vegetative kind in us.  But when in the case of animals impulse has been superadded, whereby they are enabled to go in quest of their proper aliment, for them, say the Stoics, Nature's rule is to follow the direction of impulse.  But when reason by way of a more perfect leadership has been bestowed on the beings we call rational, for them life according to reason rightly becomes the natural life.  For reason supervenes to shape impulse scientifically.

     This is why Zeno was the first (in his treatise On the Nature of Man) to designate as the end "life in agreement with nature" (or living agreeably to nature), which is the same as a virtuous life, virtue being the goal towards which nature guides us.  So too Cleanthes in his treatise On Pleasure, as also Posidonius, and Hecato in work ON End.  Again, living virtuously is equivalent to living in accordance with experience of the actual course of nature, as Chrysippus says in the first book of his De finibus;  for our individual natures are parts of the nature of the whole universe.  And this is why the end may be defined as life in accordance with nature, or, in other words, in accordance with our own human nature as well as that of the universe, a life in which we refrain from every action forbidden by the law common to all things, that is to say, the right reason which pervades all things, and is identical with this Zeus, lord and ruler of all that is.  And this very thing constitutes the virtue of the happy man and the smooth current of life, when all actions promote the harmony of the spirit dwelling in the individual man with the will of him who orders the universe.  Diogenes then expressly declares the end to be to act with good reason in the selection of what is natural.  Archedemus says the end is to live in the performance of all befitting actions.

     By the nature with which our life ought to be in accord, Chrysippus understands both universal nature and more particularly the  nature of man, whereas Cleanthes takes the nature of the universe alone as that which should be followed, without adding the nature of the individual.

    And virtue, he holds, is harmonious disposition, choice-worthy for its own sake and not from hope or fear or any external motive.  Moreover, it is in virtue that happiness consists; for virtue is the state of mind which tends to make the whole of life harmonious.  When a rational being is perverted, this is due to the deceptiveness of external pursuits or sometimes to the influence of associates.  For the starting-points of nature are never perverse.... 

    Good in general is that from which some advantage comes, and more particularly what is either identical with or not distinct from benefit.  From this it follows that virtue itself and whatever partakes of virtue is called good in these three senses--namely, as being (1) the source from which all benefit results; or (2) that in respect of which benefit results, e.g., the virtuous act; or (3) that by the agency of which benefit results, e.g., the good man who partakes in virtue.

    Another particular definition of good which they give is "the natural perfection of a natural being qua rational."  To this answers virtue and, as being partakers in virtue, virtuous acts and good men; as also its supervening accessories, joy and gladness and the like.  So with evils: either they are vices, folly, cowardice, injustice, and the like; or things which partake of vice, including vicious acts and wicked persons as well as their accompaniments, despair, moroseness, and the like.

    Again, some goods are goods of the mind and others external,  while some are neither mental nor external.  The former include the virtues and virtuous acts; external goods are such as having a good country or a good friend, and the prosperity of such.  Whereas to be good and happy oneself is of the class of goods neither mental nor external.  Similarly of things evil some are mental evils, namely, vices and vicious actions; others are outward evils, as to have a foolish country or a foolish friend and the unhappiness of such; other evils again are neither mental nor outward, e.g. to be yourself band and unhappy...

    The virtues (they say) are goods of the nature at once of ends and of means.  On the one hand, in so far as they cause happiness they are means, and on the other hand, in so far as they make it complete, and so are themselves part of it, they are ends.  Similarly of evils some are of the nature of ends and some of means, while others are at once both means and ends.  Your enemy and the harm he does you are means; consternation, abasement, slavery, gloom, despair, excess of grief, and every vicious action are of the nature of ends.  Vices are evils both as ends and as means, since in so far as they cause misery they are means, but in so far as they make it complete, so that they become part of it, they are ends...

    And they say that only the morally beautiful is good.  So Hecato is his treatise On Goods,  book iii., and Chrysippus in his work On the Morally Beautriful.  They hold, that is that virtue and whatever partakes of virtue consists in this;  which is equivalent to saying that all that is good is beautiful, or that the term "good" has equal force with the term "beautiful," which comes to the same thing.  "Since a thing is good, it is beautiful; now it is beautiful, therefore it is  good."  They hold that all goods are equal and that all good is desirable in the highest degree and admits of no lowering or heightening of intensity.  Of things that are, some, they say, are good, some are evil, and some neither good nor evil (that is, morally indifferent).

    Goods comprised the virtues of prudence, justice, courage, temperance, and the rest; while the opposites of these are evil, namely folly, injustice, and the rest.  Neutral (neither good nor evil, that is) are all those things which neither benefit nor harm a man: such as life, health, pleasure, beauty, strength, wealth, fair fame and noble birth, and their opposites, death disease, pain ugliness, weakness, poverty, ignominy, low birth, and the like.  This Hecato affirms in hid De fine, book vii., and also Apollodorus in his Ethics,  and Chrysippus.  for, say they, such things (as life, health, and pleasure) are not in themselves goods, but are morally indifferent, though falling under the species or subdivision "things preferred."  for as the property of hot is to warm, not to cool, so the property of good is to benefit, not to injure; but wealth and health do no more benefit than injury, therefore neither wealth nor health is good.  Further, they say that that is not good of which both good and bad use can be made; but of wealth and health both good and bad use can be made; therefore wealth and health are not goods.

   On the other hand, Posidonius maintains that these things too are among goods.  Hecato in the nineth book of his treatise On Goods,  and Chrysippus in his work On Pleasure,  deny that pleasure is a good either; for some pleasures are disgraceful, and nothing disgraceful is good.  To benefit is to set in motion or sustain in accordance with virtue; whereas to harm is to set in motion or sustain in accordance with vice.

    The term "indifferent" has two meanings: in the first it denotes the things which do not contribute either to happiness or to misery, as wealth, fame, health, strength, and the like; for it is possible to be happy without having these, although, if they are used in a certain way, such use of them tends to happiness or misery.  In quite another sense those things are said to be indifferent which are without the power of stirring inclination or aversion; e.g. the fact that the number of hairs on one's head is odd or even or whether you hold out your finger straight or bent.  But it was not in this sense that the things mentioned above were termed indifferent, they being quite capable of exciting inclination or aversion.  Hence of these latter some are taken by preference, others are rejected, whereas indifference in the other sense affords no ground for either choosing or avoiding. 

    Of things indifferent, as they express it, some are "preferred." others "rejected."  Such as have value, they say, are "preferred," while such as have negative, instead of positive, value are "rejected."  Value they define as, first, any contribution to harmonious living, such as attaches to every good; secondly, some faculty or use which indirectly contributes to the ki8fe according to nature: which is as much as to say " any assistance brought by wealth or health towards living a natural life"; thirdly, value is the full equivalent of an appraiser, as fixed by an expert acquainted with the facts-as when it is said that wheat exchanges for so much barley with a mule thrown in.

    Thus things of the preferred class are those which have positive value, e.g. amongst mental qualities, natural ability, skill, moral improvement, and the like; among bodily qualities, life, health, strength, good condition, soundness of organs, beauty, and so forth; and in the sphere of external things, wealth, fame, noble birth, and the like. To the class of  things "rejected" belong, of mental qualities, lack of ability, want of skill, and the like; among bodily qualities, death, disease, weakness, being out of condition, mutilation, ugliness, and the like; in the sphere of external things, poverty, ignominy, low birth, and so forth.  But again there are things belonging  to neither class; such as not preferred, neither are they rejected....

    The main, or most universal emotions, according to Hecato in his treatise On the Passions, book ii., and Zeno in his treatise with the same title, constitute four great classes, grief, fear, desire  or craving, pleasure.  They hold the emotions to be judgments, as is stated by Chrysippus  in his treatise On The Passions:  avarice being a supposition that money is a good, while the case is similar with that money is a good, while the case is similar with drunkenness and profligacy and all the other emotions.

    And grief or pain they hold to be an irrational mental contraction.  Its species are pity, envy, jealousy, rivalry, heaviness, annoyance, distress, anguish, distraction.  Pity is grief felt at undeserved suffering; envy, grief at others' prosperity; jealousy, grief at the possession by another of  that which one desires for oneself; rivalry, pain at the possession by another of what one has oneself.  heaviness or vexation is grief which weighs us down, annoyance that which coops us up and straitens us for want of room, distress a pain brought on by anxious thought that lasts and increases, anguish painful grief, distraction irrational grief, rasping and hindering us from viewing the situation as a whole.

     Fear is an expectation of evil. Under fear are ranged the following emotions:  terror, nervous shrinking, shame, consternation, panic, mental agony.  Terror is a fear which produces fright; shame is fear of disgrace; nervous shrinking is a fear that one will have to act; consternation is fear due to a presentation of some unusual occurrence; panic is fear with pressure exercised by sound; mental agony is fear felt when some issue is still in suspense. 

    Desire or craving is irrational appetency, and under it are ranged the following states:  want, hatred, contentiousness, anger, love wrath, resentment.  Want, then, is a craving when it is baulked and, as it were, cut off from its object, but kept at full stretch and attracted towards it in vain.  Hatred is a growing and lasting desire or craving that it should go ill with somebody.  Contentiousness is a craving or desire connected with partisanship; anger a craving or desire to punish one who is thought to have done you an undeserved injury.  The passion of love is a craving from which good men are free; for it is an effort to win affection due to the visible presence of beauty.  Wrath is anger which has long rankled and has become malicious, waiting for its opportunity, as is illustrated by the lines:   "Even though for the one day he swallow his anger, yet doth he still keep his displeasure thereafter in his heart, till he accomplish it."  Resentment is anger in an early stage.

    Pleasure is an irrational elation at the accruing of what seems to be choice-worthy; and under it are ranged ravishment, malevolent joy, delight, transport.  Ravishment is pleasure which charms the ear.  Malevolent joy is pleasure at another's ills.  Delight is the minds propulsion to weakness, its name in Greek (           ) akin to (      ) or turning.  To be in transports of delight is the melting away of virtue.

    And as there are said to be certain infirmities in the body, as for instant gout and arthritic disorders, so too there is in the soul love of fame, love of pleasure, and the like.  By infirmity is meant disease accompanied by weakness; and by disease is meant a fond imagining of  something that seems desirable.  And as in the body there are tendencies to certain maladies such as colds and diarrhoea, so it is with the soul, there are tendencies like enviousness, pitifulness, quarrelsomeness, and the like....

    Now they say that the wise man is passionless, because he is not prone to fall into such infirmity.  But they add that in another sense the term apathy is applied to the bad man, when, that is, it means that he is callous and relentless.  Further, the wise man is said to be free from vanity; for he is indifferent to good or evil report.  However, he is not alone in this, there being another who is also free from vanity, he who is ranged among the rash, and that is the bad man.  Again, they tell us that all good men are austere or harsh, because they neither have dealings with pleasure themselves nor tolerate those who have.  The term harsh is applied, however, to others as well, and in much the same sense as a wine is said to be harsh when it is employed medicinally and not for drinking at all.

    Again, the goods are genuinely in earnest and vigilant for their own improvement, using a manner of life which banishes evil out of sight and makes what good there is in things appear.  At the same time they are free from pretence; for they have stripped off all pretence or "make-up" whether in voice or in look.  Free too are they from all business cares, declining to do anything which conflicts with duty.  They will take wine, but not get drunk.  Nay more, they will not be liable to madness either; not but what there will at times occur to the good man strange impressions due to melancholy or delirium, ideas not determined by the principle of what is choice-worthy but contrary to nature.  Nor indeed will the wise man ever feel grief; seeing that grief is irrational contraction of the soul, as Apollodorus says in his Ethics.

    They are also, it is declared, godlike;  for they have a something divine within them; whereas the bad man is godless.  And yet of this word-godless or ungodly-there are tow senses, one in which it is the opposite of the term "godly," the other denoting the man who ignores the divine altogether: in this latter sense, as they note, the term does not apply to every bad man.  The good, it is added are also worshippers of God; for they have acquaintance with the rites of the gods, and piety is the knowledge of how to serve the gods.  Further, they will sacrifice to the gods and they keep themselves pure; for they avoid all acts that are offences against the gods, and the goods think highly of them: for they are holy and just in what concerns the gods.  The wise too are the only priests; for they have made sacrifices their study, as also the building of temples purifications and all the other matters appertaining to the gods...

    Again, the Stoics say that the wise man will take part in politics, if nothing hinders him-so, for instance, Chrysippus in the firs book of his work On Various Types of Life-since thus he will restrain vice and promote virtue.  Also (they maintain) he will marry Zeno says in his Republic, and beget children.  Moreover, they say that the wise man will never form mere opinions, that is to say, he will never give assent to anything that is false; that he will also play the Cynic, Cynicism being a short cut to virtue, as Apollodorus calls it in his Ethics; that he will even turn cannibal under stress of circumstances.  They declare that he alone is free and bad men are slaves, freedom being power of independent action, whereas slavery is privation of the same: though indeed there is also a second form of slavery consisting in subordination, and a third which implies possession of the slave as well as his subordination; the correlative of such servitude being lordship; and this too is evil....  

    They hold that the virtues involve one another, and that the possessor of one is the possessor of all,  inasmuch as they have common principles, as Chrysippus says in the first book of his work.  On Virtues, i Apollodorus  in his Physics according to the Early School, and Hecato in the third book of his treatise is at once able to discover and to put into practice what he ought to do.  Now such rules of conduct comprise rules for choosing, enduring, staying, and distributing; so that if a man does some things by intelligent choice, some things with fortitude, some thing by way of just distribution, and some steadily, he is at once wise, courageous, just, and temperate.  And each of the virtues has a particular subject with which it deals, as for instance, courage is concerned with things that must be endured, practical wisdom with acts to be done, acts from which one must abstain, and those which fall under neither head.  Similarly each of the other virtues is concerned with its own proper sphere.  To wisdom are subordinate good counsel and understanding; to temperance, good discipline and orderliness; to justice, equality and fair-mindedness; to courage, constancy and vigour. 

    It is a tenet of theirs that between virtue and vice that there is nothing intermediate, whereas according to the Peripatetics there is, namely, the state of moral improvement.  For, say the Stoics, just as a stick must be either straight or crooked, so a  man must be either just or unjust.  Nor again are there degrees of justice and injustice; and the same rule applies to the other virtues.  Further, while Chrusippus holds that virtue can be lost, Cleanthes maintains that it cannot.  According to the former it may be lost in consequence of drunkenness or melancholy; the latter takes it to be inalienable owing to the certainty of our mental apprehension.  And virtue in itself they hold to be worthy of choice for its own sake.  At all events we are ashamed of bad conduct as if we knew that nothing is really good but the morally beautiful.  Moreover, they hold that it is in itself sufficient to ensure well-being: thus Zeno, and Chrysippus in the first book of his treatise On Virtues,  and Hecato in the second book of his treatise On Goods: "For if magnanimity by itself alone can raise us far above everything, and if magnanimity is but a part of virtue, then too virtue as a whole will be sufficient in itself for well-being-despising all things that seem troublesome."  Panaetius, however, and Posidonius deny that virtue is self-sufficing: on the contrary, health is necessary, and some means of living and strength.

    Another tenet of their is the perpetual exercise of virtue, as held by Cleanthes and his followers.  For virtue can never be lost, and the good man is always exercising his mind, which is perfect.  Again, they say that justice, as well as law and right reason, exists by nature and not by convention:  so Chrysippus in his work On the Morally Beautiful.  Neither do they think that the divergence of opinion between philosophers is any reason for abandoning the study of philosophy, since at that rate we should have to give up life altogether: so Posidonius in his Exhortations.  Chrysippus allows that the ordinary Greek education is serviceable....