perfection for all animals which are of the same stock and participate in the same reason.
Everything material soon disappears in the substance of the whole; and everything formal [causal] is very soon taken back into the universal reason; and the memory of everything is very soon overwhelmed in time.
To the rational animal the same act is according to nature and according to reason.
Be thou erect, or be made erect.
Just as it is with the members in those bodies which are united in one, so it is with rational beings which exist separate, for they have been constituted for one cooperation. And the perception of this will be more apparent to thee, if thou often sayest to thyself that I am a member [ μέλος ] of the system of rational beings.
But if [using the letter r ] thou sayest that thou art a part [ μέρος ] thou dost not yet love men from thy heart; beneficence does not yet delight thee for its own sake; thou still doest it barely as a thing of propriety, and not yet as doing good to thyself.
Let there fall externally what will on the parts which can feel the effects of this fall.
For those parts which have felt will complain, if they choose.
But I, unless I think that what has happened is an evil, am not injured. And it is in my power not to think so.
Whatever anyone does or says, I must be good, just as if the gold, or the emerald, or the purple were always saying this. Whatever anyone does or says, I must be emerald and keep my colour.