  The reports indicate that Democritus was committed to a kind of enlightened hedonism, in which the good was held to be an internal state of mind rather than something external to it.  The good is given many names, amongst them euthymia or cheerfulness, as well as privative terms, e.g.  for the absence of fear.  Some fragments suggest that moderation and mindfulness in one's pursuit of pleasures is beneficial; others focus on the need to free oneself from dependence on fortune by moderating desire.  Several passages focus on the human ability to act on nature by means of teaching and art, and on a notion of balance and moderation that suggests that ethics is conceived as an art of caring for the soul analogous to medicine's care for the body (Vlastos 1975, pp. 386–94). Others discuss political community, suggesting that there is a natural tendency to form communities.  