BOOK IX
14. All these are things of familiar experience[1]; in their duration ephemeral,[2] in their material foul. Everything is now as it was in the days of those whom we have buried.[3]
15. Objective things stand outside the door, keep- ing themselves to themselves, without knowledge of or message about themselves. What then has for us a message about them? The ruling Reason.
16. Not in being acted upon but in activity lies the evil and the good of the rational and civic creature, just as his virtue too and his vice lie in activity and not in being acted upon.
17. The stone that is thrown into the air is none the worse for falling down, or the better for being carried upwards.[4]
18. Find the way within into their ruling Reason, and thou shalt see what these judges are whom thou fearest and what their judgment of themselves is worth.[5]
19. Change is the universal experience.[6] Thou art thyself undergoing a perpetual transformation and, in some sort, decay[7]: aye and the whole Universe as well.
20. Another's wrong-doing should be left with him.[8]
21. A cessation of activity, a quiescence from impulse and opinion and, as it were, their death, is no evil. Turn now to consider the stages of thy life—childhood, boyhood, manhood, old age—each step in the ladder of change a death. Is there anything terrible here? Pass on now to thy life under thy grandfather, then under thy mother, then under thy
