BOOK XII
1. All those things, which thou prayest to attain by a roundabout way, thou canst have at once if thou deny them not to thyself[1]; that is to say, if thou leave all the Past to itself and entrust the Future to Providence,[2] and but direct the Present in the way of piety and justice: piety, that thou mayest love thy lot, for Nature brought it to thee and thee to it; justice, that thou mayest speak the truth freely and without finesse, and have an eye to law and the due worth of things[3] in all that thou doest; and let nothing stand in thy way, not the wickedness of others, nor thine own opinion, nor what men say, nor even the sensations of the flesh that has grown around thee[4]; for the part affected will see to that.
If then, when the time of thy departure is near, abandoning all else thou prize thy ruling Reason alone and that which in thee is divine,[5] and dread the thought, not that thou must one day cease to live, but that thou shouldst never yet have begun to live according to Nature, then shalt thou be a man worthy of the Universe that begat thee, and no longer an alien[6] in thy fatherland, no longer shalt thou marvel at what happens every day as if it
