Stoics and Epicureans. – The Epicurean seeks out the situation, the persons, and even the events that suit his extremely sensitive intellectual constitution; he forgoes the rest – that is, almost everything – because it would be too strong and heavy a diet. The Stoic, by contrast, trains himself to swallow stones and worms, glass shards and scorpions without nausea; he wants his stomach to be ultimately insensible to everything the chance of existence pours into him – he brings to mind the Arabian sect of the Assua that one encounters in Algiers:14 like these insensitive people, he likes to act out his insensitivity before an invited audience, which is precisely what the Epicurean gladly eschews – for he has his ‘garden’!15 Stoicism may well be advisable for those with whom fate improvises and who live in violent times and depend on impulsive and changeable people. But someone who more or less expects fate to allow him to spin a long thread does well to take an Epicurean orientation; people engaged in work of the spirit have always done so! For it would be the loss of all losses, for them, to forfeit their subtle sensitivity in exchange for a hard Stoic skin with porcupine spines.