profit out of food-stuffs, farm-plots and the like. . . . Whereas, I
entreat you to learn what the administration of the World is, and what
place a Being endowed with reason holds therein: to consider what you
are yourself, and wherein your Good and Evil consists.




XXV

A man asked me to write to Rome on his behalf who, as most people
thought, had met with misfortune; for having been before wealthy and
distinguished, he had afterwards lost all and was living here. So I
wrote about him in a humble style. He however on reading the letter
returned it to me, with the words: "I asked for your help, not for your
pity. No evil has happened unto me."




XXVI

True instruction is this:--to learn to wish that each thing should come
to pass as it does. And how does it come to pass? As the Disposer has
disposed it. Now He has disposed that there should be summer and winter,
and plenty and dearth, and vice and virtue, and all such opposites, for
the harmony of the whole.