anything else than how I shall at last become earth? and why am I
disturbed, for the dispersion of my elements will happen whatever I do?
But if the other supposition is true, I venerate, and I am firm, and I
trust in him who governs (IV. 27).

11. When thou hast been compelled by circumstances to be disturbed in a
manner, quickly return to thyself, and do not continue out of tune longer
than the compulsion lasts; for thou wilt have more mastery over the
harmony by continually recurring to it.

12. If thou hadst a step-mother and a mother at the same time, thou
wouldst be dutiful to thy step-mother, but still thou wouldst constantly
return to thy mother. Let the court and philosophy now be to thee
stepmother and mother: return to philosophy frequently and repose in
her, through whom what thou meetest with in the court appears to thee
tolerable, and thou appearest tolerable in the court.

13. When we have meat before us and such eatables, we receive the
impression that this is the dead body of a fish, and this is the dead
body of a bird or of a pig; and again, that this Falernian is only a
little grape-juice, and this purple robe some sheep's wool dyed with the
blood of a shell-fish: such then are these impressions, and they reach
the things themselves and penetrate them, and so we see what kind of
things they are. Just in the same way ought we to act all through life,
and where there are things which appear most worthy of our approbation,
we ought to lay them bare and look at their worthlessness and strip them
of all the words by which they are exalted. For outward show is a
wonderful perverter of the reason, and when thou art most sure that thou
art employed about things worth thy pains, it is then that it cheats thee
most. Consider then what Crates says of Xenocrates himself.