A hand, a foot, or a head cut off and lying apart from the body (χεὶρ ἀποκεκομμένη) is the image of the person who has severed himself from the Whole. The severing is done in two ways: by murmuring at fate (μὴ θέλων τὸ συμβαῖνον — "unwilling to accept what happens") and by an unsocial act (ἀκοινώνητόν τι πράσσων). Both are a falling "out of the natural unity" (ἡ κατὰ φύσιν ἕνωσις), in which a human was by nature a part (μέρος).

But the image is turned into consolation. A real severed hand is dead and will not grow back; to a human, however, is granted the unheard-of thing (κομψόν, χρηστότης): once broken off, to return, grow together, and resume the place of a part. This is a power of self-repair that god has given to no other part of the world. Repentance, reconciliation, the return to the common — no humiliation, but the unique gift of a rational being.

Med. 08-34 — the image in pure form: the severed hand/foot/head; whoever will not accept what happens, or acts unsocially, makes himself such; but the "exquisite" thing (κομψόν) is that a human can ἑνῶσαι himself again — a privilege given to him alone.

• Med. 11.8 — the developed twin: the cut-off branch. The branch is severed by another, but a human severs himself — by hatred and turning away from his neighbour; yet here too god has granted a return and a re-grafting to that from which one fell (which the branch, cut by another's hand, does not have).
• Cf. Med. 2.16 — another image of the same self-separation: one discontented with what happens makes himself an abscess on the cosmos (ἀπόστημα). There the metaphor is a tumour, here an amputation; the shared thesis: to murmur is to sever oneself from nature.
• Cf. Med. 09-09 — the same image in a cosmological key: you will sooner find earth touching nothing earthy than a man severed from a man (ἄνθρωπον ἀνθρώπου ἀπεσχισμένον); sociability is a physical law, and the breach is against nature.
• Cf. Med. 09-23 — an act with no reference to the common end "tears apart" one's life and turns out στασιώδης, "seditious": like a citizen who breaks from the concord in the assembly, he severs himself from the whole.

The image serves at once the discipline of action (not to do the ἀκοινώνητον, not to cut oneself off from people) and the discipline of desire (not to murmur at the συμβαῖνον, not to cut oneself off from fate). Its ontological ground is the DOGMAunity of the cosmos: a human is a TERMco-working part, TERMkindred to the other rational beings; to fall away is contrary to nature. The positive paired image is the members of one body (cooperation as the organism's health): the severed-member shows what happens when a member drops out of that cooperation. The practical upshot lies in reversibility: since the breach can be undone (a change of mind is free), the DOGMAreturn to the common and the DOGMAacceptance of fate are always available; "to grow back" is an act of which the rational alone is capable.