BOOK IV
other single polity can the whole race of mankind be said to be fellow-members?—and from it, this common State, we get the intellectual, the rational, and the legal instinct, or whençe do we get them? For just as the earthy part has been portioned off for me from some earth, and the watery from another element, and the aerial[1] from some source, and the hot and fiery from some source of its own—for nothing comes from the non-existent, any more than it disappears into nothingness—so also the intellect has undoubtedly come from somewhere.
5. Death like birth is a secret of Nature—a combination of the same elements, a breaking up into the same—and not at all a thing in fact for any to be ashamed of,[2] for it is not out of keeping with an intellectual creature or the reason of his constitution.
6. Given such men, it was in the nature of the case inevitable that their conduct should be of this kind.[3] To wish it otherwise, is to wish that the fig-tree had no acrid juice.[4] As a general conclusion call this to mind, that within a very short time both thou and he will be dead, and a little later not even your names will be left behind you.
7. Efface the opinion, I am harmed, and at once the feeling of being harmed disappears; efface the feeling, and the harm disappears at once.[5]
8. That which does not make a man himself worse than before cannot make his life worse[6] either, nor injure it whether from without or within.
9. The nature of the general good could not but have acted so.
