Book 3
In what manner we ought to bear sickness.
10
WHEN the need of each opinion comes, we ought to have it in readiness:M. Antoninus, iii. 13. As physicians have always their instruments and knives ready for cases which suddenly require their skill, so do thou have principles (δόγματα) ready for the understanding of things divine and human, and for doing every thing, even the smallest, with a recollection of the bond which unites the divine and human to one another. For neither wilt thou do anything well which pertains to man without at the same time having a reference to things divine; nor the contrary. on the occasion of breakfast, such opinions as relate to breakfast; in the bath, those that concern the bath; in bed, those that concern bed.
