On the ground of this distinction they may be understood to take up opposite positions, the one party founding their system on what they conceive to be the superior claims of the soul, and the other party founding their scheme on what they hold to be the more stringent demands of the body.
27. Assuming happiness to be in both cases the goal, we perceive that the happiness which the Stoics represent as the end at which man should aim, is very different from the felicity which the Epicureans propose as his aim. The Stoical happiness is a perfection of the mind in which we rise above the thraldom of the passions. It is an inner life in which we are conscious of our intellectual freedom and independency. It is a victorious antagonism exerted against sensation, passion, and desire; and in this victory our true being is realised. And thus our wellbeing consists, not in the gratification of our natural impulses, but in the limits which, by an act of freedom and of will, we impose on these impulses, a limit which prevents, them from monopolising us completely, and which affords room for our free personality to be developed "and to work along with them. It is not in the passion, or in its indulgence, that our happiness and perfection consist: it is in the limit, the check, which, in our very character as rational and conscious beings, we impose upon the passion: it is in this that our true wellbeing is to be looked for. Epicurism, on the other hand,
