BOOK XI
17. Think whence each thing has come, of what it is built up,[1] into what it changes, what it will be when changed; and that it cannot take any harm.
18. Firstly: Consider thy relation[2] to mankind and that we came into the world for the sake of one another[3]; and taking another point of view, that I have come into it to be set over men, as a ram over a flock or a bull over a herd.[4] Start at the beginning from this premiss: If not atoms,[5] then an all-controlling Nature. If the latter, then the lower are for the sake of the higher and the higher for one another.[6]
Secondly: What sort of men they are at board and in bed and elsewhere.[7] Above all how they are the self-made slaves of their principles, and how they pride themselves on the very acts in question.
Thirdly: That if they are acting rightly in this, there is no call for us to be angry. If not rightly, it is obviously against their will and through ignorance.[8] For it is against his will that every soul is deprived, as of truth, so too of the power of dealing with each man as is his due. At any rate, such men resent being called unjust, unfeeling, avaricious, and in a word doers of wrong to their neighbours.
Fourthly: That thou too doest many a wrong thing thyself and art much as others are,[9] and if thou dost refrain from certain wrong-doings, yet hast thou a disposition inclinable thereto[10] even supposing that through cowardice or a regard for thy good name or some such base consideration thou dost not actually commit them.
