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is
wounding me, and which I cannot reach."

343. The beak of the parrot, which it wipes, although it is clean.

344. Instinct and reason, marks of two natures.

345. Reason commands us far more imperiously than a master; for in
disobeying the one we are unfortunate, and in disobeying the other we are
fools.

346. Thought constitutes the greatness of man.

347. Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a
thinking reed. The entire universe need not arm itself to crush him. A
vapour, a drop of water suffices to kill him. But, if the universe were to
crush him, man would still be more noble than that which killed him, because
he knows that he dies and the advantage which the universe has over him; the
universe knows nothing of this.

All our dignity consists, then, in thought. By it we must elevate ourselves,
and not by space and time which we cannot fill. Let us endeavour, then, to
think well; this is the principle of morality.

348. A thinking reed.--It is not from space that I must seek my dignity, but
from the government of my thought. I shall have no more if I possess worlds.
By space the universe encompasses and swallows me up like an atom; by
thought I comprehend the world.

349. Immateriality of the soul--Philosophers who have mastered their
passions. What matter could do that?

350. The Stoics.--They conclude that what has been done once can be done
always, and that, since the desire of glory imparts some power to those whom
it possesses, others can do likewise. There are feverish movements which
health cannot imitate.

Epictetus concludes that, since there are consistent Christians, every man
can easily be so.

351. Those great spiritual efforts, which the soul sometimes assays, are
things on which it does not lay hold. It only leaps to them, not as upon a
throne, for ever, but merely for an instant.

352. The strength of a man's virtue must not