Fragment 23

Nature is wonderful, and, as Xenophon³⁰ says, "fond of her creatures." At all events we love and tend our body, the most unpleasant and dirtiest thing that there is; why, if we had had to tend our neighbour's body for no more than five days, we could not have endured it. Just consider what a nuisance it is to get up in the morning and brush some other person's teeth, and then after attending to a call of nature to wash those parts. Truly it is wonderful to love a thing for which we perform so many services every day. I stuff this bag here;³¹ and then I empty it; what is more tiresome? But I must serve God. For that reason I remain, and endure to wash this miserable paltry body, and to feed and shelter it; and when I was younger, there was still another behest which it laid upon me, yet nevertheless I endured it. Why, then, when Nature, which gave us our body, takes it away, do you not bear it?—I love it, says somebody.—Well, but as I was just now saying, is it not Nature that has given you this very affection? But the same Nature also says, "Let it go now, and have no more trouble with it."