BOOK I. XI. 35-XII. 2
do it, and we shall endeavour to destroy and excise that cause more earnestly than we try to destroy and excise from the body its tumours and abscesses. And in the same way we shall declare the same thing to be the cause of our good actions. And we shall no longer blame either slave, or neighbour, or wife, or children, as being the causes of any evils to us, since we are persuaded that, unless we decide that things are thus-and-so,[1] we do not perform the corresponding actions; and of our decision, for or against something, we ourselves, and not things outside of ourselves, are the masters.—Even so, he said.—From this very day, therefore, the thing whose nature or condition we shall investigate and examine will be neither our farm, nor our slaves, nor our horses, nor our dogs, but only the decisions of our will.—I hope so, he said.—You see, then, that it is necessary for you to become a frequenter of the schools,—that animal at which all men laugh,—if you really desire to make an examination of the decisions of your own will. And that this is not the work of a single hour or day you know as well as I do.
CHAPTER XII
Of contentment
Concerning gods there are some who say that the divine does not so much as exist; and others, that it exists, indeed, but is inactive and indifferent, and takes forethought for nothing;[2] and a third set, that it exists and takes forethought, though only for great and heavenly things and in no case for terrestrial things; and a fourth set, that it also takes
