9781945186240

And as you try to keep these epithets in mind, it will help you a great
deal to keep the gods in mind as well. What they want is not flattery, but for
rational things to be like them. For figs to do what figs were meant to do—
and dogs, and bees . . . and people.
9. Operatics, combat and confusion. Sloth and servility. Every day they
blot out those sacred principles of yours—which you daydream
thoughtlessly about, or just let slide.
Your actions and perceptions need to aim:
• at accomplishing practical ends
• at the exercise of thought
• at maintaining a confidence founded on understanding. An
unobtrusive confidence—hidden in plain sight.
When will you let yourself enjoy straightforwardness? Seriousness? Or
understanding individual things—their nature and substance, their place in
the world, their life span, their composition, who can possess them, whose
they are to give and to receive?
10. Spiders are proud of catching flies, men of catching hares, fish in a
net, boars, bears, Sarmatians . . .
Criminal psychology.
11. How they all change into one another—acquire the ability to see
that. Apply it constantly; use it to train yourself. Nothing is as conducive to
spiritual growth.
11a. He has stripped away his body and—realizing that at some point
soon he will have to abandon mankind and leave all this behind—has
dedicated himself to serving justice in all he does, and nature in all that
happens. What people say or think about him, or how they treat him, isn’t
something he worries about. Only these two questions: Is what he’s doing
now the right thing to be doing? Does he accept and welcome what he’s
been assigned? He has stripped away all other occupations, all other tasks.
He wants only to travel a straight path—to God, by way of law.