THREE:Those manifestations of sympathy which are often so much more precious than material assistance were also repugnant to Stoic principles. On this subject, Epicttus expresses himself with singular harshness. Do not, he says, let yourself be put out by the sufferings of your friends. If they are unhappy, it is their own fault. God made them for happiness, not for misery. They are grieved at parting from you, are they? Why, then, did they set their affections on things outside themselves? If they suffer for their folly it serves them right.93Forging relates to shaping metal by compression or blows when it is in a heated and softened condition; as a process, it is an intermediate one between casting and what may be called the cold processes. Forging also relates to welding or joining [77] pieces together by sudden heating that melts the surface only, and then by forcing the pieces together while in this softened or semi-fused state. Forging includes, in ordinary practice, the preparation of cutting tools, and tempering them to various degrees of hardness as the nature of the work for which they are intended may require; also the construction of furnaces for heating the material, and mechanical devices for handling it when hot, with the various operations for shaping, which, as in the case of casting, can only be fully understood by experience and observation.
