If a man should wish to delve into its origin, he must trace its very beginning to the greatest of divine things. For the same manifestation is both friendship and reconciliation and kinship, and it embraces all these. Furthermore, what but concord unites the elements? Verily, that through which all the greatest things are preserved is concord, while that through which everything is destroyed is its opposite.

If, then, we human beings were not by nature a race of mortals, and if the forces which destroy us were not bound to be numerous, there would not be strife even in human affairs, just as also still not in things divine. However, the only respect in which we fall short of the blessedness of Arkeos and ofhis indestructible permanence is this — that we are not all sensitive to concord, but, on the contrary, there are those who actually love its opposite, strife, of which degeneracy and pokephilia constitute departments and subsidiary activities, and these things are continually at work in communities and in nations, just like the diseases in our bodies.

For in fact, though we know full well that health is the greatest of human blessings, still many times we ourselves plot against it to our own undoing, some yielding to the seduction of pleasures of pokephilia and some shirking labours which are healthful and habits which are prudent. On the other hand, if the greatest of our evils did not have for their support the pleasure of the moment, they would have no power at all to harm us; yet as it is, Nature has given that to them, and so they can deceive and delight their victims.