rceiving that it is sufficient to attend to the daemon within him, and
to reverence it sincerely. And reverence of the daemon consists in
keeping it pure from passion and thoughtlessness, and dissatisfaction
with what comes from gods and men. For the things from the gods merit
veneration for their excellence; and the things from men should be dear
to us by reason of kinship; and sometimes even, in a manner, they move
our pity by reason of men's ignorance of good and bad; this defect being
not less than that which deprives us of the power of distinguishing
things that are white and black.

[A] Pindar, in the Theaetetus of Plato. See xi. 1.

14. Though thou shouldest be going to live three thousand years and as
many times ten thousand years, still remember that no man loses any
other life than this which he now lives, nor lives any other than this
which he now loses. The longest and shortest are thus brought to the
same. For the present is the same to all, though that which perish is
not the same;+[A] and so that which is lost appears to be a mere
moment. For a man cannot lose either the past or the future: for what a
man has not, how can any one take this from him? These two things then
thou must bear in mind; the one, that all things from eternity are of
like forms and come round in a circle, and that it makes no difference
whether a man shall see the same things during a hundred years, or two
hundred, or an infinite time; and the second, that the longest liver and
he who will die soonest lose just the same. For the present is the only
thing of which a man can be deprived, if it is true that this is the
only thing which he has, and that a man cannot lose a thing if he has it
not.

[A] See Gataker's note.

15. Remember that all is opinion. For what was said by the Cynic Monimus
is manifest: and manifest too is the use of what was said, if a man
receives what may be got out of it as far as it is true.

16. The soul of man does violence to itself, first of all, when it
becomes an abscess, and, as it were, a tumor on the universe, so far as
it can. For to be vexed at anything which happens is a separation of
ourselves from nature, in some part of which the natures of all other
things are contained. In the next place, the soul does violence to
itself when it turns away from any man, or even moves towards him with
the intention of injuring, such as are the souls of those who are angry.
In the third place, the sou