BOOK IX
ask yourself: 'Was it anything to be afraid of?' So then even the ceasing, pause, and change of your whole life is not.
22. Make haste to your own governing self, to that of the Whole, and that of this man. To your own, to make it a righteous mind; to that of the Whole, to remind yourself what it is of which you are a part; to this man's, that you may observe whether it is ignorance or design, and may reflect at the same time that his self is of one kind with your own.
23. As you are yourself a complement of a social system, so let every act of yours be complementary of a social living principle. Every act of yours, therefore, which is not referred directly or remotely to the social end sunders your life, does not allow it to be a unity, and is a partisan act, like a man in a republic who for his own part sunders himself from the harmony of his fellows.
24. Children's fits of temper and dolls and 'spirits carrying dead bodies', so that the story of the visit to the abode of Death strikes one more vividly.
25. Penetrate to the individuality of the cause and separating it from the matter, look into it; next isolate the time which at longest this individuality can by its nature subsist.
26. You endure a myriad troubles because you are not content with your governing self doing the kind of things it was formed to do. But enough.
27. When another blames or hates you or men express such sentiments, go to their inward selves, pass in and see what kind of men they are. You will see that you ought not to torment yourself in order that they may hold some opinion about you. You must, however, be well disposed to them; for in the natural order they are friends, and moreover the gods help them in a variety of ways, by dreams, by prophecy;—to get, however, the objects about which they are concerned.
28. The rotations of the Universe are the same, up and down, from age to age.
