§ xvii. And since generally speaking some things which happen against our will pain and trouble us by their very nature, while in the case of most we accustom ourselves and learn to be disgusted with them from fancy, it is not unprofitable to counteract this to have ever ready that line of Menander,
For what, if they touch you neither in soul nor body, are such things to you as the low birth of your father, or the adultery of your wife, or the loss of some prize or precedence, since even by their absence a man is not prevented from being in excellent condition both of body and soul. And with respect to the things that seem to pain us by their very nature, as sickness, and anxieties, and the deaths of friends and children, we should remember, that line of Euripides,
For no argument has so much weight with emotion when it is borne down with grief, as that which reminds it of the common and natural necessity to which man is exposed owing to the body, the only handle which he gives to fortune, for in his most important and influential part31 he is secure against external things. When Demetrius captured Megara, he asked Stilpo if any of his things had been plundered, and Stilpo answered, "I saw nobody carrying off anything of mine."32 And so when fortune has plundered us and stripped us of everything else, we have that within ourselves
So that we ought not altogether to abase and lower nature, as if she had no strength or stability against fortune; but on the contrary, knowing that the rotten and perishable part of man, wherein alone he lies open to