BOOK III. X. 17-XI. 4
there, then, any longer for fear? What proper occasion, then, any longer for anger? Or for fear about things that are not his own concern, worthless things? For here are the two principles that you ought to have ready at hand: Outside the sphere of the moral purpose there is nothing either good or bad; and, We ought not to lead events, but to follow them. "My brother ought not to have treated me so." No; but it is for him to look to that. As for me, no matter how he behaves, I shall observe all my relations to him as I ought. For this is my part, the other does not belong to me; in this nobody can hinder me, the other is subject to hindrance.
CHAPTER XI
Some scattered sayings
There are certain punishments, assigned as it were by law, for those who are disobedient to the divine dispensation. "Whoever shall regard as good anything but the things that fall within the scope of his moral purpose, let him envy, yearn, flatter, feel disturbed; whoever shall regard anything else as evil, let him sorrow, grieve, lament, be unhappy." Nevertheless, for all that we are so severely punished, we cannot desist.
Remember what the poet[1] says about the stranger:
Stranger, I may not with right dishonour a stranger, not even
Worse man were he than art thou; for of God are all strangers and beggars.
- ↑ Homer (frequently so designated, especially in late antiquity), in the Odyssey, XIV. 56-8.
