35. Loss is nothing else than change. But the universal nature delights
in change, and in obedience to her all things are now done well, and
from eternity have been done in like form, and will be such to time
without end. What, then, dost thou say,—that all things have been and
all things always will be bad, and that no power has ever been found in
so many gods to rectify these things, but the world has been condemned
to be bound in never ceasing evil (IV. 45; VII. 88)?
36. The rottenness of the matter which is the foundation of everything:
water, dust, bones, filth: or again, marble rocks, the callosities of
the earth; and gold and silver, the sediments; and garments, only bits
of hair; and purple dye, blood; and everything else is of the same
kind. And that which is of the nature of breath is also another thing
of the same kind, changing from this to that.
37. Enough of this wretched life and murmuring and apish tricks. Why
art thou disturbed? What is there new in this? What unsettles thee? Is
it the form of the thing? Look at it. Or is it the matter? Look at it.
But besides these there is nothing. Towards the gods then, now become
at last more simple and better. It is the same whether we examine these
things for a hundred years or three.
38. If any man has done wrong, the harm is his own. But perhaps he has
not done wrong.
39. Either all things proceed from one intelligent source and come
together as in one body, and the part ought not to find fault with what
is done for the benefit of the whole; or there are only atoms, and
nothing else than mixture and dispersion. Why, then, art thou
disturbed? Say to the ruling faculty, Art thou dead, art thou
corrupted, art thou playing the hypocrite, art thou become a beast,
dost thou herd and feed with the rest?