of birth were rejected.

In this way all mundane and marketable goods, after having been
solemnly refused admittance by the Stoics at the front door, were
smuggled in at a kind of tradesman's entrance under the name of
things indifferent. We must now see how they had, as it were, two
moral codes, one for the sage and the other for the world in general.

The sage alone could act rightly, but other people might perform "the
proprieties." Any one might honor his parents, but the sage alone did
it as the outcome of wisdom, because he alone possessed the art of
life, the peculiar work of which was to do everything that was done
as the result of the best disposition. All the acts of the sage were
"perfect proprieties," which were called "rightnesses." All acts of
all other men were sins or "wrongnesses." At their best they could
only be "intermediate proprieties." The term "propriety," then, is a
generic one. But, as often happens, the generic term got determined
in use to a specific meaning, so that intermediate acts are commonly
spoken of as "proprieties" in opposition to "rightnesses." Instances
of "rightnesses" are displaying wisdom and dealing justly, instances
of proprieties or intermediate acts are marrying, going on an
embassy, and dialectic.

The word "duty" is often employed to translate the Greek term which
we are rendering by "propriety." Any translation is no more than a
choice of evils, since we have no real equivalent for the term. It
was applicable not merely to human conduct, but also to the acting of
the lower animals, and even to the growth of plants. Now, apart from
a craze of generalization we should hardly think of the "stern
daughter of the voice of God" in connection with an amoeba