BOOK VI
1. The Universal Substance is docile[1] and ductile; and the Reason that controls it has no motive in itself to do wrong. For it hath no wrongness and doeth no wrong, nor is anything harmed by it. But all things come into being and fulfil their purpose as it directs.
2. Make no difference in doing thy duty[2] whether thou art shivering or warm, drowsy[3] or sleep-satisfied, defamed or extolled, dying or anything else. For the act of dying too is one of the acts of life.[4] So it is enough in this also to get the work in hand done well.[5]
3. Look within. Let not the special quality[6] or worth of anything escape thee.
4. All objective things will anon be changed and either etherialized into the Universal Substance, if that indeed be one, or dispersed abroad.[7]
5. The controlling Reason knows its own bent and its work and the medium it works in.
- ↑ Not so all Stoics; cp. Sen. de Prov. 5: non potest artifex mutare materiem.
- ↑ vi. 22.
- ↑ Galen (xiv. 3, Kühn) says of Marcus that, owing to the theriac which he prescribed him, συνέβαινεν αὐτῷ νυστάζειν καρωδῶς ἐν ταῖς ὁσημέραις πράξεσιν.
- ↑ cp. Sen. Ep. 77 ad fin.: Unum ex vitae officiis, mori.
- ↑ A saying of the "Wise Men." See Suidas. cp. Luc. Necy. 21. It was a trait of Marcus, Dio 71. 26, § 4.
- ↑ = that which makes a thing what it is.
- ↑ viii. 25 ad fin.; x. 7, § 2.
