ABSTRACT
The extreme doctrine is that of Aristippus: Pleasure is the only good; the highest pleasure is the aim of life, but the most intense is the highest. Of all doctrines, that of Aristippus is the most vulnerable. The virtue of the Stoics is unthankfulness towards life, towards the world and reality. The Stoic is acquainted with a sublime realm of the perfect; it is the realm of the logos, which is the law, the meaning and the soul of the world. The belief in another world introduces it. However little this belief may be Christian in origin, early Christianity absorbed it, and with it a considerable part of an inveterate other-worldliness. With the appearance of the modern problems of the community and the State and of law, it has brought forth a social eudaemonism. Social euaemonism, therefore, in its most essential characteristics stands upon an entirely different ground from the ancient forms of eudaeonism.
