ation of our
vital manifestations. The Peripatetics, after him, put pleasure down to
a lower level, as derivative and accidental; the Stoics went farther in
the same direction--possibly from antithesis against the growing school
of Epicurus.

The primary _officium_ (in a larger sense than our word Duty) of man is
(they said) to keep himself in the state of nature; the second or
derivative _officium_ is to keep to such things as are _according to
nature_, and to avert those that are _contrary to nature_; our
gradually increasing experience enabled us to discriminate the two. The
youth learns, as he grows up, to value bodily accomplishments, mental
cognitions and judgments, good conduct towards those around him,--as
powerful aids towards keeping up the state of nature. When his
experience is so far enlarged as to make him aware of the order and
harmony of nature and human society, and to impress upon him the
comprehension of this great _ideal_, his emotions as well as his reason
become absorbed by it. He recognizes this as the only true Bonum or
Honestum, to which all other desirable things are referable,--as the
only thing desirable for itself and in its own nature. He drops or
dismisses all those _prima naturae_ that he had begun by desiring. He
no longer considers any of them as worthy of being desired in itself,
or for its own sake.

While therefore (according to Peripatetics as well as Stoics) the love
of self and of preserving one's own vitality and activity, is the
primary element, intuitive and connate, to which all rational
preference (_officium_) was at first referred,--they thought it not the
less true, that in process of time, by experience, association, and
reflection, there grows up in the mind a grand acquired sentiment or
notion, a new and later light, which extinguishes and puts out of sight
the early beginning. It was important to distinguish the feeble and
obscure elements from the powerful and brilliant aftergrowth; which
indeed was fully realized only in chosen minds, and in them, hardly
before old age. This idea, when once formed in the mind, was _The
Good_--the only thing worthy of desire for its own sake. The Stoics
called it the only Good, being sufficient in itself for happiness;
other things being not good, nor necessary to happiness, but simply
preferable or advantageous when they could be had: the Peripatetics
recognized it as the first and greatest good, but said also that it was
not suffi