2. When you are about to take in hand some action, bethink you what it is that you are about to do. If you go to the bath, represent to yourself all that takes place there—the squirting of water, the slapping, the scolding, the pilfering; and then shall you take the matter in hand more safely, saying straightway: _I desire to be bathed, and maintain my purpose according to Nature._ And even so with each and every action. For thus, if aught should occur to cross you in your bathing, this thought shall be straightway at hand: _But not this alone did I desire; but also to maintain my purpose according to Nature. And I shall not maintain it if I have indignation at what happens here._ 3. The first difference between the vulgar man[1] and the philosopher: The one saith, _Woe is me for my child, my brother, woe for my father_; but the other, if ever he shall be compelled to say, _Woe is me_, checks himself, and saith, _for myself_. For nothing that the Will willeth not can hinder or hurt the Will, but itself only can hurt itself. If then, indeed, we too incline to this, that when we are afflicted we accuse ourselves, and recollect that nothing else than Opinion can cause us any trouble or unsettlement, I swear by all the Gods we have advanced! But as it is, we have from the beginning traveled a different road. While we are still children, if haply we stumbled as we were gaping about, the nurse did not chide us, but beat the stone. For what had the stone done? Ought it to have moved out of the way for your child’s folly? Again, if we find nothing to eat after coming from the bath, never doth the tutor check our desire, but he beats the cook. Man, we did not set thee to be a tutor of the cook, but of our child—him shall you train, him improve. And thus, even when full-grown, we appear as children. For a child in music is he who hath not learned music, and in letters, one who hath not learned letters, and in life, one undisciplined in philosophy. 4. It is not things, but the opinions about the things, that trouble mankind. Thus Death is nothing terrible; if it were so, it would have appeared so to Socrates. But the opinion we have about Death, that it is terrible, _that_ it is wherein the terror lieth. When, therefore, we are hindered or troubled or grieved, never let us blame any other than ourselves; that is to say, our opinions. A man undisciplined in philosophy blames others in matters in which he fares ill; one who begins to be disciplined blames himself, one who is disciplined, neither others nor himself.