The Peripatetics, after him, put pleasure down to a lower level, as derivative and accidental; the Stoics went farther in the same direction--possibly from antithesis against the growing school of Epicurus.
The primary _officium_ (in a larger sense than our word Duty) of man is (they said) to keep himself in the state of nature; the second or derivative _officium_ is to keep to such things as are _according to nature_, and to avert those that are _contrary to nature_; our gradually increasing experience enabled us to discriminate the two.

The youth learns, as he grows up, to value bodily accomplishments, mental cognitions and judgments, good conduct towards those around him,--as powerful aids towards keeping up the state of nature.

When his experience is so far enlarged as to make him aware of the order and harmony of nature and human society, and to impress upon him the comprehension of this great _ideal_, his emotions as well as his reason become absorbed by it.

He recognizes this as the only true Bonum or Honestum, to which all other desirable things are referable,--as the only thing desirable for itself and in its own nature.

He drops or dismisses all those _prima naturae_ that he had begun by desiring.