Editing Cleanthes (section)

===Ethics===
Cleanthes maintained that pleasure is not only not a good, but is "contrary to nature" and "worthless."<ref name="davidson148">{{Harvnb|Davidson|1907|p=148}}</ref> It was his opinion that the [[Stoic passions|passions]] (love, fear, grief) are weaknesses: they lack the strain or tension which he persistently emphasized, and on which the strength of the soul, no less than that of the body, depends, and which constitutes in human beings self-control, and moral strength, and also conditions every virtue.<ref name="davidson148"/> He said in a striking passage: "People walk in wickedness all their lives or, at any rate, for the greater part of it. If they ever attain to virtue, it is late and at the very sunset of their days."<ref>{{Harvnb|Hicks|1910|p=89}}</ref>

Zeno had said that the goal of life was "to live consistently," the implication being that no life but the passionless life of reason could ultimately be consistent with itself. Cleanthes is credited with having added the words "with nature," thus completing the well-known Stoic formula that the goal is "to live consistently with nature."<ref>{{Harvnb|Stock|1908|p=7}}</ref> For Cleanthes, this meant, in the first place, living conformably to the course of the universe; for the universe is under the governance of reason, and everyone has it as their privilege to know or become acquainted with the world-course, to recognize it as rational and cheerfully to conform to it.<ref name="davidson143">{{Harvnb|Davidson|1907|p=143}}</ref> This, according to him, is true freedom of will not acting without motive, or apart from set purpose, or capriciously, but humbly acquiescing in the universal order, and, therefore, in everything that befalls one.<ref name="davidson143"/> The direction to follow [[Logos|Universal Nature]] can be traced in his famous prayer:
{{poemquote|Lead me, [[Zeus]], and you too, [[Destiny]],
To wherever your decrees have assigned me.
I follow readily, but if I choose not,
Wretched though I am, I must follow still.
Fate guides the willing, but drags the unwilling.<ref>Epictetus, ''Enchiridion'', 53; Seneca, ''Epistles'', cvii, 11. The fifth line is not found in Epictetus.</ref>}}