universe devoid of gods or devoid of providence? But in truth they
do exist, and they do care for human things, and they have put all the
means in man's power to enable him not to fall into real evils. And as
to the rest, if there was anything evil, they would have provided for
this also, that it should be altogether in a man's power not to fall
into it. Now that which does not make a man worse, how can it make a
man's life worse? But neither through ignorance, nor--having the
knowledge but not the power to guard against or correct these things, is
it possible that the nature of the universe has overlooked them; nor is
it possible that it has made so great a mistake, either through want of
power or want of skill, that good and evil should happen
indiscriminately to the good and the bad. But death certainly, and life,
honor and dishonor, pain and pleasure,--all these things equally happen
to good men and bad, being things which make us neither better nor
worse. Therefore they are neither good nor evil.

[A] Or it may mean, "since it is in thy power to depart;" which
gives a meaning somewhat different.

[B] See Cicero, Tuscul., i. 49.

12. How quickly all things disappear,--in the universe the bodies
themselves, but in time the remembrance of them. What is the nature of
all sensible things, and particularly those which attract with the bait
of pleasure or terrify by pain, or are noised abroad by vapory fame; how
worthless, and contemptible, and sordid, and perishable, and dead they
are,--all this it is the part of the intellectual faculty to observe. To
observe too who these are whose opinions and voices give reputation;
what death is, and the fact that, if a man looks at it in itself, and by
the abstractive power of reflection resolves into their parts all the
things which present themselves to the imagination in it, he will then
consider it to be nothing else than an operation of nature; and if any
one is afraid of an operation of nature, he is a child. This, however,
is not only an operation of nature, but it is also a thing which
conduces to the purposes of nature. To observe too how man comes near to
the Deity, and by what part of him, and when this part of man is so
disposed+ (vi. 28).

13. Nothing is more wretched than a man who traverses everything in a
round, and pries into the things beneath the earth, as the poet[A] says,
and seeks by conjecture what is in the minds of his neighbors, without
pe