 An alternative explanation is that Shaftesbury used his unpublished notebooks as a means to work on improving himself with Stoic ideas during psychologically fraught times, but that those notebooks do not necessarily reflect the essence of his true philosophy (see Klein 1994). The essays he worked hard to polish and publish as Characteristicks might be a better reflection of his considered views. Another possibility is that he thought different things at different times: the notebooks might accurately reflect a Stoic orientation at some points in his life, but for all that he still might have held non-Stoic ideas about aesthetics and public concern at other points. In response, the strong Stoic interpretation may contend that even in Characteristicks there are indications (esoteric perhaps, but evident to those who know where to look) that seemingly non-Stoic ideas are but a decoy.