The Stoic recognized the gods (or Universal Nature, equivalent expressions in his creed) as managing the affairs of the world, with a view to producing as much happiness as was attainable on the whole.  Towards this end the gods did not want any positive assistance from him; but it was his duty and his strongest interest, to resign himself to their plans, and to abstain from all conduct tending to frustrate them.  Such refractory tendencies were perpetually suggested to him by the unreasonable appetites, emotions, fears, antipathies, &c., of daily life; all claiming satisfaction at the expense of future mischief to himself and others.  To countervail these misleading forces, by means of a fixed rational character built up through meditation and philosophical teaching, was the grand purpose of the Stoic ethical creed.  The emotional or appetitive self was to be starved or curbed, and retained only as an appendage to the rational self; an idea proclaimed before in general terms by Plato, but carried out into a system by the Stoics, and to a great extent even by the Epicureans.

The Stoic was taught to reflect how much that appears to be desirable, terror-striking, provocative, &c., is not really so, but is made to appear so by false and curable associations.  And while he thus discouraged those self-regarding emotions that placed him in hostility with others, he learnt to respect the self of another man as well as his own.  Epictetus advises to deal mildly with a man that hurts us either by word or deed; and advises it upon the following very remarkable ground.  ’Recollect that in what he says or does, he follows his own sense of propriety, not yours.  He must do what appears to him right, not what appears to you; if he judges wrongly, it is he that is hurt, for he is the person deceived.  Always repeat to yourself, in such a case:  The man has acted on his own opinion.’

The reason here given by Epictetus is an instance, memorable in ethical theory, of respect for individual dissenting conviction, even in an extreme case; and it must be taken in conjunction with his other doctrine, that damage thus done to us unjustly is really little or no damage, except so far as we ourselves give pungency to it by our irrational susceptibilities and associations.  We see that the Stoic submerges, as much as he can, the pre-eminence of his own individual self, and contemplates himself from the point of view of another, only as one among many.  But he does not erect the happiness of others into a direct object of his own positive pursuit, beyond the reciprocities of family, citizenship, and common humanity.  The Stoic theorists agreed with Epicurus in inculcating the reciprocities of justice between all fellow-citizens; and they even went farther than he did, by extending the sphere of such duties beyond the limits of city, so as to comprehend all mankind.  But as to the reciprocities of individual friendship, Epicurus went beyond the Stoics, by the amount of self-sacrifice and devotion that he enjoined for the benefit of a friend.