 Impulse is the key to understanding the relation between virtue and happiness. An impulse is a propositional attitude that, when assented to, leads to action, e.g., ‘I should eat this bread now.’ However, impulses do not arise in a separate, non-rational part of the soul. Stoics deny there are any non-rational desires of appetite capable of impelling action. The soul, insofar as it provides motivations and is the cause of our actions, consists of the commanding faculty (hêgemonikon) which is also reason (SVF I 202). We can distinguish correct impulses into those which treat virtue as the only good and those which treat things indifferent as indifferent. By contrast, emotions or passions ( pathê) are incorrect impulses that treat what is indifferent as good. However, they do not come from a non-rational part of the soul but are false judgments about the good, where judgment is understood as assent to some impulse. Emotions, such as desire, fear, pleasure, and pain, embody such erroneous judgments (SVF III 391, 393, 394). For instance, the desire for health arises from assenting to the impulse that embodies the false judgment that health is good, instead of a preferred indifferent. The sage – someone perfected in virtue – would never assent to such false propositions and thus would never have emotions in this sense, no feelings that carried him beyond reason’s true assessment. He would, however, experience feelings attuned to reason,  eupatheiai  –literally good emotions or feelings. For instance, he would feel joy over his virtue, but not pleasure – the latter being an emotion that treats the actual possession of an indifferent as a good.