The true nature of worldly things is so hidden in darkness that many great philosophers found them completely beyond understanding. Even the Stoics, who think these things can be grasped, say they are barely comprehensible and only with great effort. So all our judgments are shaky. Who among us never makes mistakes in reasoning? Move from thinking about the nature of things to considering what actually possesses them. How temporary and worthless these things are! They might belong to some disgusting person, some prostitute, or some cruel tyrant who bleeds people dry.
As for the things of the world, their true nature is in a manner so involved with obscurity, that unto many philosophers, and those no mean ones, they seemed altogether incomprehensible, and the Stoics themselves, though they judge them not altogether incomprehensible, yet scarce and not without much difficulty, comprehensible, so that all assent of ours is fallible, for who is he that is infallible in his conclusions? From the nature of things, pass now unto their subjects and matter: how temporary, how vile are they I such as may be in the power and possession of some abominable loose liver, of some common strumpet, of some notorious oppressor and extortioner.