Leaves, also, are thy children; and leaves, too, are they who cry out as if they were worthy of credit and bestow their praise, or on the contrary curse, or secretly blame and sneer; and leaves, in like manner, are those who shall receive and transmit a man’s fame to after-times.  For all such things as these “are produced in the season of spring,” as the poet says; then the wind casts them down; then the forest produces other leaves in their places.  But a brief existence is common to all things, and yet thou avoidest and pursuest all things as if they would be eternal.  A little time, and thou shalt close thy eyes; and him who has attended thee to thy grave another soon will lament.

    [A] Homer, II., vi. 146.

35.  The healthy eye ought to see all visible things and not to say, I wish for green things; for this is the condition of a diseased eye.  And the healthy hearing and smelling ought to be ready to perceive all that can be heard and smelled.  And the healthy stomach ought to be with respect to all food just as the mill with respect to all things which it is formed to grind.  And accordingly the healthy understanding ought to be prepared for everything which happens; but that which says, Let my dear children live, and let all men praise whatever I may do, is an eye which seeks for green things, or teeth which seek for soft things.

36.  There is no man so fortunate that there shall not be by him when he is dying some who are pleased with what is going to happen.[A] Suppose that he was a good and wise man, will there not be at least some one to say to himself, Let us at last breathe freely, being relieved from this schoolmaster?  It is true that he was harsh to none of us, but I perceived that he tacitly condemns us.—­This is what is said of a good man.  But in our own case how many other things are there for which there are many who wish to get rid of us?  Thou wilt consider this, then, when thou art dying, and thou wilt depart more contentedly by reflecting thus:  I am going away from such a life, in which even my associates in behalf of whom I have striven so much, prayed, and cared, themselves wish me to depart, hoping perchance to get some little advantage by it.  Why then should a man cling to a longer stay here?  Do not, however, for this reason go away less kindly disposed to them, but preserving thy own character, and friendly and benevolent and mild, and on the other hand not as if thou wast torn away; but as when a man dies a quiet death, the poor soul is easily separated from the body, such also ought thy departure from men to be, for nature united thee to them and associated thee.  But does she now dissolve the union?  Well, I am separated as from kinsmen, not however dragged resisting, but without compulsion; for this, too, is one of the things according to nature.

    [A] He says [Greek:  kakon], but as he affirms in other places
    that death is no evil, he must mean what others may call an
    evil, and he means only “what is going to happen.”