measure be subject unto, be not thou discontented with them;
but however, love and affect that only which thou dust return unto:
a philosopher's life, and proper occupation after the most exact manner.
And when thou dust return to thy philosophy, return not unto it
as the manner of some is, after play and liberty as it were,
to their schoolmasters and pedagogues; but as they that have sore
eyes to their sponge and egg: or as another to his cataplasm;
or as others to their fomentations: so shalt not thou make it a matter
of ostentation at all to obey reason but of ease and comfort.
And remember that philosophy requireth nothing of thee, but what
thy nature requireth, and wouldest thou thyself desire anything
that is not according to nature? for which of these sayest thou;
that which is according to nature or against it, is of itself
more kind and pleasing? Is it not for that respect especially,
that pleasure itself is to so many men's hurt and overthrow,
most prevalent, because esteemed commonly most kind, and natural?
But consider well whether magnanimity rather, and true liberty,
and true simplicity, and equanimity, and holiness; whether these be
not most kind and natural? And prudency itself, what more kind
and amiable than it, when thou shalt truly consider with thyself,
what it is through all the proper objects of thy rational
intellectual faculty currently to go on without any fall or stumble?
As for the things of the world, their true nature is in a manner
so involved with obscurity, that unto many philosophers,
and those no mean ones, they seemed altogether incomprehensible.
and the Stoics themselves, though they judge them not
altogether incomprehensible, yet scarce and not without
much difficulty, comprehensible, so that all assent of ours
is fallible, for who is he that is infallible in his conclusions?
>From the nature of things, pass now unto their subjects and matter: