your kinsmen, your brothers, the offspring of God.
"But I paid a price for them, not they for me."
Do you see whither you are looking--down to the earth, to
the pit, to those despicable laws of the dead? But to the laws of
the Gods you do not look.

XXXV

When we are invited to a banquet, we take what is set before
us; and were one to call upon his host to set fish upon the table
or sweet things, he would be deemed absurd. Yet in a word, we ask
the Gods for what they do not give; and that, although they have
given us so many things!

XXXVI

Asked how a man might convince himself that every single act
of his was under the eye of God, Epictetus answered:--
"Do you not hold that things on earth and things in heaven
are continuous and in unison with each other?"
"I do," was the reply.
"Else how should the trees so regularly, as though by God's
command, at His bidding flower; at His bidding send forth shoots,
bear fruit and ripen it; at His bidding let it fall and shed
their leaves, and folded up upon themselves lie in quietness and
rest? How else, as the Moon waxes and wanes, as the Sun
approaches and recedes, can it be that such vicissitude and
alternation is seen in earthly things?
"If then all things that grow, nay, our own bodies, are thus
bound up with the whole, is not this still truer of our souls?
And if our souls are bound up and in contact with God, as being
very parts and fragments plucked from Himself, shall He not feel
every movement of theirs as though it were His own, and belonging
to His own nature?"

XXXVII

"But," you say, "I cannot comprehend all this at once."
"Why, who told you that your powers were equal to God's?"
Yet God hath placed by the side of each a man's own Guardian
Spirit, who is charged to watch over him--a Guardian who sleeps
not nor is deceived. For to what better or more watchful Guardian
could He have committed wach of us? So when you have shut the
doors and made a darkness within, remember never to say that you
are alone; for you are not alone, but God is within, and your
Guardian Spirit, and what light do they need to behold what you
do? To this God you also should have sworn allegiance, even as
soliders unto Caesar. They, when their service is hired, swear to
hold the life of Caesar dearer than all else: and will you not
swear your oath, that are deemed worthy of so many and great