The younger
Pliny painted faithfully the ideal of stoicism when he described one of
his friends as a man "who did nothing for ostentation but all for
conscience; who sought the reward of virtue in itself, and not in the
praise of man." Nor were the Stoics less emphatic in distinguishing the
obligation from the attraction of virtue. It was on this point that they
separated from the more refined Epicureans, who were often willing to
sublimate to the highest degree the kind of pleasure they proposed as an
object, provided only it were admitted that pleasure is necessarily the
ultimate end of our actions. But this the Stoics firmly denied.
"Pleasure," they argued, "is the companion, not the guide, of our
course." "We do not love virtue because it gives us pleasure, but it
gives us pleasure because we love it." "The wise man will not sin,
though both gods and men should overlook the deed, for it is not through
the fear of punishment or of shame that he abstains from sin. It is from
the desire and obligation of what is just and good.
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