BOOK VII
O Imagination?[1] Avaunt, in God's name, as thou camest, for I desire thee not! But thou art come according to thine ancient wont. I bear thee no malice; only depart from me!
18. Does a man shrink from change? Why, what can come into being save by change? What be nearer or dearer to the Nature of the Universe? Canst thou take a hot bath unless the wood for the furnace suffer a change? Couldst thou be fed, if thy food suffered no change, and can any of the needs of life be provided for apart from change? Seest thou not that a personal change is similar, and similarly necessary to the Nature of the Universe?
19. Through the universal Substance as through a rushing torrent[2] all bodies pass on their way, united with the Whole in nature and activity, as our members are with one another.
How many a Chrysippus,[3] how many a Socrates, how many an Epictetus[4] hath Time already devoured! Whatsoever man thou hast to do with and whatsoever thing, let the same thought strike thee.
20. I am concerned about one thing only, that I of myself do not what man's constitution does not will, or wills not now, or in a way that it wills not.
21. A little while and thou wilt have forgotten everything, a little while and everything will have forgotten thee.
22. It is a man's especial privilege[5] to love even those who stumble. And this love follows as soon as
- ↑ vii. 29; cp. Ecclesiasticus, xxxvii. 3.
- ↑ iv. 43; v. 23; vi. 15.
- ↑ Referred by some (see Zeller, Stoics, p. 158, Engl. trans.) to the theory that at each cyclical regeneration of the world the same persons and events repeat themselves. But see x. 31.
- ↑ Aul. Gellius ii. 18 speaks of Epict. as recently dead; Them. Or. v. p. 63 D. implies that he was alive under the Antonines. Lucian, adv. Ind. 13 speaks of his earthenware lamp having been bought by an admirer for 3,000 drachmas.
- ↑ Fronto, ad Ver. ii. 2: Hominis maxime proprium ignoscere. cp. St. Matt. v. 44; Dio 71. 26, § 2.
