With regard to practical matters they maintain that popular ideas of good and bad are wrong: many people who appear to be in dire circumstances are actually happy provided they deal with their situation bravely; others, regardless of how many possessions they have, are miserable, because they do not know how to use the gifts of fortune wisely.

[Epicureans] insist that heaven is unconcerned with our birth and death – is unconcerned, in fact, with human beings generally – with the result that good people often suffer while wicked people thrive. [The Stoics] disagree, maintaining that although things happen according to fate, this depends not on the movement of the planets but on the

the only logical step is to do as Socrates did, never replying to the question of where he was from with, ‘I am Athenian,’ or ‘I am from Corinth,’ but always, ‘I am a citizen of the world.’

Impressions come to us in four ways: things are and appear to be; or they are not, and do not appear to be; or they are, but do not appear to be; or they are not, and yet appear to be.

So what is the divine nature? Is it flesh? Be serious. Do we associate it with real estate and status? Hardly. It is mind, intelligence and correct reason.

Human impressions have ‘propositional content’, that is, our minds automatically frame them as a statement, such as ‘that is a good thing to have’ or ‘this is the right thing to do’. They also involve an intermediate step: the impression requires our ‘assent’ before it generates the impulse to act on it.

‘If we saw things differently we would act differently, in line with our different idea of what is right and wrong.

If a man objects to truths that are all too evident, it is no easy task finding arguments that will change his mind.

In conversation, exercise, discourse – do you remember that it is God you are feeding, God you are exercising? You carry God around with you and don’t know it, poor fool. [13] Don’t imagine I am talking about some external deity made of silver or gold. You carry the living God inside you and are blind to the fact that you desecrate him with your