, and to be dependent on this
or that.

2. God sees the minds [ruling principles] of all men bared of the
material vesture and rind and impurities. For with his intellectual part
alone he touches the intelligence only which has flowed and been derived
from himself into these bodies. And if thou also usest thyself to do
this, thou wilt rid thyself of thy much trouble. For he who regards not
the poor flesh which envelops him, surely will not trouble himself by
looking after raiment and dwelling and fame and such like externals and
show.

3. The things are three of which thou art composed: a little body, a
little breath [life], intelligence. Of these the first two are thine, so
far as it is thy duty to take care of them; but the third alone is
properly thine. Therefore if thou shalt separate from thyself, that is,
from thy understanding, whatever others do or say, and whatever thou
hast done or said thyself, and whatever future things trouble thee
because they may happen, and whatever in the body which envelops thee or
in the breath [life], which is by nature associated with the body, is
attached to thee independent of thy will, and whatever the external
circumfluent vortex whirls round, so that the intellectual power exempt
from the things of fate can live pure and free by itself, doing what is
just and accepting what happens and saying the truth: if thou wilt
separate, I say, from this ruling faculty the things which are attached
to it by the impressions of sense, and the things of time to come and of
time that is past, and wilt make thyself like Empedocles' sphere,

"All round and in its joyous rest reposing;"[A]

and if thou shalt strive to live only what is really thy life, that is,
the present,--then thou wilt be able to pass that portion of life which
remains for thee up to the time of thy death free from perturbations,
nobly, and obedient to thy own daemon [to the god that is within thee]
(ii. 13, 17; iii. 5, 6; xi. 12).

4. I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more
than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinion of
himself than on the opinion of others. If then a god or a wise teacher
should present himself to a man and bid him to think of nothing and to
design nothing which he would not express as soon as he conceived it, he
could not endure it even for a single day.[B] So much more respect have
we to what our neighbors shall think of us than to what we shall t