[A] Plutarch, adversus Stoicos, c. 14.

43.  Does the sun undertake to do the work of the rain, or Aesculapius the work of the Fruit-bearer [the earth]?  And how is it with respect to each of the stars—­are they not different and yet they work together to the same end?

44.  If the gods have determined about me and about the things which must happen to me, they have determined well, for it is not easy even to imagine a deity without forethought; and as to doing me harm, why should they have any desire towards that? for what advantage would result to them from this or to the whole, which is the special object of their providence?  But if they have not determined about me individually, they have certainly determined about the whole at least, and the things which happen by way of sequence in this general arrangement I ought to accept with pleasure and to be content with them.  But if they determine about nothing,—­which it is wicked to believe, or if we do believe it, let us neither sacrifice nor pray nor swear by them, nor do anything else which we do as if the gods were present and lived with us,—­but if however the gods determine about none of the things which concern us, I am able to determine about myself, and I can inquire about that which is useful; and that is useful to every man which is conformable to his own constitution and nature.  But my nature is rational and social; and my city and country, so far as I am Antoninus, is Rome, but so far as I am a man, it is the world.  The things then which are useful to these cities are alone useful to me.

45.  Whatever happens to every man, this is for the interest of the universal:  this might be sufficient.  But further thou wilt observe this also as a general truth, if thou dost observe, that whatever is profitable to any man is profitable also to other men.  But let the word profitable be taken here in the common sense as said of things of the middle kind [neither good nor bad].

46.  As it happens to thee in the amphitheatre and such places, that the continual sight of the same things, and the uniformity, make the spectacle wearisome, so it is in the whole of life; for all things above, below, are the same and from the same.  How long then?

47.  Think continually that all kinds of men and all kinds of pursuits and of all nations are dead, so that thy thoughts come down even to Philistion and Phoebus and Origanion.  Now turn thy thoughts to the other kinds [of men].  To that place then we must remove, where there are so many great orators, and so many noble philosophers, Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Socrates; so many heroes of former days, and so many generals after them, and tyrants; besides these, Eudoxus, Hipparchus, Archimedes, and other men of acute natural talents, great minds, lovers of labor, versatile, confident, mockers even of the perishable and ephemeral life of man, as Menippus and such as are like him.  As to all these consider that they have long been in the dust.  What harm then is this to them; and what to those whose names are altogether unknown?  One thing here is worth a great deal, to pass thy life in truth and justice, with a benevolent disposition even to liars and unjust men.