26.  When thou art troubled about anything, thou hast forgotten this, that all things happen according to the universal nature; and forgotten this, that a man’s wrongful act is nothing to thee; and further thou hast forgotten this, that everything which happens, always happened so and will happen so, and now happens so everywhere; forgotten this too, how close is the kinship between a man and the whole human race, for it is a community, not of a little blood or seed, but of intelligence.  And thou hast forgotten this too, that every man’s intelligence is a god and is an efflux of the Deity;[A] and forgotten this, that nothing is a man’s own, but that his child and his body and his very soul came from the Deity; forgotten this, that everything is opinion; and lastly thou hast forgotten that every man lives the present time only, and loses only this.

    [A] See Epictetus, ii. 8, 9, etc.

27.  Constantly bring to thy recollection those who have complained greatly about anything, those who have been most conspicuous by the greatest fame or misfortunes or enmities or fortunes of any kind:  then think where are they all now?  Smoke and ash and a tale, or not even a tale.  And let there be present to thy mind also everything of this sort, how Fabius Catellinus lived in the country, and Lucius Lupus in his gardens, and Stertinius at Briae, and Tiberius at Capreae, and Velius Rufus [or Rufus at Velia]; and in fine think of the eager pursuit of anything conjoined with pride;[A] and how worthless everything is after which men violently strain; and how much more philosophical it is for a man in the opportunities presented to him to show himself just, temperate, obedient to the gods, and to do this with all simplicity:  for the pride which is proud of its want of pride is the most intolerable of all.

    [A] [Greek:  met’ oieseos.  Oiesis kai typhos], Epict. i. 8, 6.

28.  To those who ask, Where hast thou seen the gods, or how dost thou comprehend that they exist and so worshippest them, I answer, in the first place, they may be seen even with the eyes;[A] in the second place, neither have I seen even my own soul, and yet I honor it.  Thus then with respect to the gods, from what I constantly experience of their power, from this I comprehend that they exist, and I venerate them.

[A] “Seen even with the eyes.”  It is supposed that this may be explained by the Stoic doctrine, that the universe is a god or living being (iv. 40), and that the celestial bodies are gods (viii. 19).  But the emperor may mean that we know that the gods exist, as he afterwards states it, because we see what they do; as we know that man has intellectual powers, because we see what he does, and in no other way do we know it.  This passage then will agree with the passage in the Epistle to the Romans (i. v. 20), and with the Epistle to the Colossians (i. v. 15), in which Jesus Christ is named “the