BOOK IV
10. Note that all that befalls befalleth justly. Keep close watch and thou wilt find this true, I do not say, as a matter of sequence merely but as a matter of justice also, and as would be expected from One whose dispensation is based on desert.[1] Keep close watch, then, as thou hast begun, and whatsoever thou doest, do it as only a good man should in the strictest sense of that word. In every sphere of activity safeguard this.
11. Harbour no such opinions as he holds who does thee violence, or as he would have thee hold. See things in all their naked reality.
12. Thou shouldest have these two readinesses always at hand; the one which prompts thee to do only what thy reason in its royal and law-making capacity shall suggest for the good of mankind; the other to change thy mind,[2] if one be near to set thee right, and convert thee from some vain conceit. But this conversion should be the outcome of a persuasion in every case that the thing is just or to the common interest—and some such cause should be the only one—not because it is seemingly pleasant or popular.
13. Hast thou reason? I have. Why then not use it? For if this performs its part, what else[3] wouldest thou have?
14. Thou hast subsisted as part of the Whole.[4] Thou shalt vanish into that which begat thee, or rather thou shalt be taken again into its Seminal Reason[5] by a process of change.
15. Many little pellets of frankincense fall upon the same altar, some are cast on it sooner, some later: but it makes no difference.
