Points of Friction
to the final conversion of Satan. His attitude was full of nobleness because he had suffered grievously at the heathen's hands; but not even by the alchemy of compassion is evil transmutable to good.
The Stoics, who proposed that men should practise virtue without compensation, were logically unassailable, but not persuasive to the average mind. It does not take much perspicuity to distinguish between an agreeable and a disagreeable happening, and once the difference is perceived, no argument can make them equally acceptable. "Playing at mummers is one thing," says the sapient tanner in Kenneth Grahame's "Headswoman," "and being executed is another. Folks ought to keep them separate." On the other hand, the assurance of the Epicureans that goodness and temperance were of value because they conduced to content was liable to be set aside by the man who found him-
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