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 sufficient in itself; there were two other inferior varieties of good, of which something must be had as complementary (what the Stoics called praeposita or sumenda).  Thus the Stoics said, about the origin of the Idea of Bonum or Honestum, much the same as what Aristotle says about ethical virtue.  It is not implanted in us by nature; but we have at birth certain initial tendencies and capacities, which, if aided by association and training, enable us (and that not in all cases) to acquire it.

2. The Freedom of the Will.  A distinction was taken by Epictetus and other Stoics between things in our power and things not in our power.  The things in our power are our opinions and notions about objects, and all our affections, desires, and aversions; the things not in our power are our bodies, wealth, honour, rank, authority, &c., and their opposites.  The practical application is this:  wealth and high rank may not be in our power, but we have the power to form an idea of these—­namely, that they are unimportant, whence the want of them will not grieve us.  A still more pointed application is to death, whose force is entirely in the idea.

With this distinction between things in our power and things not in our power, we may connect the arguments between the Stoics and their opponents as to what is now called the Freedom of the Will.  But we must first begin by distinguishing the two questions.  By things in our power, the Stoics meant, things that we could do or acquire, if we willed:  by things not in our power, they meant, things that we could not do or acquire if we willed.  In both cases, the volition was assumed as a fact:  the question, what determined it—­or whether it was non-determined, i.e. self-determining—­was not raised in the abovementioned antithesis.  But it was raised in other discussions between the