through which alone freedom and happiness are born.
ε. Straightway, then, practise saying to every harsh-seeming phantasm, You are a Phantasm, and not by any means the thing you appear to be. Then realize it, and test it according to the criterions you possess; but especially by this supreme criterion, whether it concerns anything that depends upon ourselves, or something that does not depend upon ourselves. And if the latter, then be the thought instantly at hand, It is nothing to me.
II.α.Remember that desire announces the aim of attaining the thing desired, and aversion that of not falling into the thing shunned; and that to miss what you desire is unfortunate, but it is misfortune to fall into what you shun. But you can never fall into anything that you shun, if you will shun only things contrary to Nature which lie within your power: but if you shun disease, or death, or poverty, you will have misfortune. Withdraw then your aversion from those things that do not depend upon ourselves, and place it upon those
