"To the jaundiced honey tastes bitter, and to those bitten by mad dogs
water causes fear; and to little children the ball is a fine thing. Why
then am I angry? Dost thou think that a false opinion has less power
than the bile in the jaundiced, or the poison in him who is bitten by a
mad dog?" (vi. 52.)

"How easy it is to repel and to wipe away every impression which is
troublesome and unsuitable, and immediately to be at tranquillity."
(v. 2.)

The passages in which Marcus speaks of evil as a _relative_ thing,--as
being good in the making,--the unripe and bitter bud of that which shall
be hereafter a beautiful flower,--although not expressed with perfect
clearness, yet indicate his belief that our view of evil things rises in
great measure from our inability to perceive the great whole of which
they are but subservient parts.

"All things," he says, "come from that universal ruling power, either
directly or by way of consequence. _And accordingly the lion's gaping
jaws, and that which is poisonous, and every hurtful thing, as a thorn,
as mud, are after-products of the grand and beautiful_. Do not therefore
imagine that they are of another kind from that which thou dost
venerate, but form a just opinion of the source of all."

In another curious passage he says that all things which are natural and
congruent with the causes which produce them have a certain beauty and
attractiveness of their own; for instance, the splittings and
corrugations on the surface of bread when it has been baked. "And again,
figs when they are quite ripe gape open; and in the ripe olives the very