 The principal Stoic element in the Letters on Sympathy is the way in which Grouchy describes the development of sympathy as reminiscent of the Stoic “cradle arguments,” that is, offering a description of infant behavior as evidence of what is natural to human beings and not merely conventional. Stoic cradle arguments often invoke the concept of oikeiosis. The Stoics claim that what can be observed in infants is a natural concern for self-preservation. This tendency, oikeiosis, naturally grows to extend one’s tendencies towards self-preservation to an impartial concern for all (Annas 1993: 265). Animals and young children are capable of the early stages of the process—that of recognizing their own bodies as belonging to them, and learning how to use them for their own survival. Mature animals are also able to engage in later stage of oikeiosis, that of caring for their young. Human oikeiosis starts as it does with animals, but develops further—as far as cosmopolitanism.