But if you see yourself as a human being and part of a larger whole, then sometimes that whole needs you to get sick. Sometimes it needs you to travel and face danger. Sometimes it needs you to go without. And sometimes it needs you to die young. So why does this upset you? Don't you realize that just like a foot is no longer a foot when cut off from the body, you're no longer human when separated from other humans? What is a human being anyway? You're part of a community. First, the universal community of gods and humans. Then the smaller community right around you — which is just a tiny version of that universal one.
But if you consider yourself as a man and a part of a certain whole, it is for the sake of that whole that at one time you should be sick, at another time take a voyage and run into danger, and at another time be in want, and in some cases die prematurely. Why then are you troubled? Do you not know, that as a foot is no longer a foot if it is detached from the body, so you are no longer a man if you are separated from other men. For what is a man? A part of a state, of that first which consists of gods and of men; then of that which is called next to it, which is a small image of the universal state.