 In Introductio ad sapientiam, inspired by the teaching of the Stoics, he recommends self-knowledge as the first step toward virtue, which he regards as the culmination of human perfection. We should not, in his judgment, call anything our own except our soul, in which learning and virtue, or their opposites, are to be found. The body is “a bondslave of the soul” (mancipium animi), while such things as riches, power, nobility, honor, dignity, and their contraries, are completely external to man (I, 2; VI, 401). Vice follows from a wrong judgment about the value of things: “Nothing – he writes – is more destructive in human life than a corrupt judgment which gives no object its proper value” (I, 1). To be wise, however, is not only to have true opinions about things, but also to translate this knowledge into action by desiring honorable things and avoiding evil (I, 2). Wisdom therefore requires the subordination of the passions to the control of the intellect.