A second borrowed exercise in a row. As at 11.26, Marcus copies out the practice of another school while borrowing nothing of its teaching: Pythagorean arithmetic and metempsychosis are of no use to him; one morning gesture is. The two neighbouring passages form a small collection of devices without doctrines.
An exact hour and an exact direction. EXERCISEἕωθεν — "at first light"; EXERCISEεἰς τὸν οὐρανὸν EXERCISEἀφορᾶν — "to look away to the heavens" (ἀφοράω means to look off from one thing toward another): not contemplation in general but the tearing of the eyes from one's own and turning them upward. The exercise is set for the moment before the day has begun to pull attention to itself.
To what end. Three objects of reminding are named, and the first is not beauty but reliability: EXERCISEτῶν ἀεὶ EXERCISEκατὰ τὰ αὐτὰ καὶ ὡσαύτωςEXERCISE τὸ ἑαυτῶν ἔργον διανυόντων — "of those that always, in the same respects and in the same way, carry through their own work." The formula κατὰ τὰ αὐτὰ καὶ ὡσαύτως belongs to the school's language of unchangingness; here it is applied not to the eternity of the stars but to their work. The heavenly bodies are set as an example not as everlasting but as punctual.
Three nouns. τάξις ("order"), καθαρότης ("purity"), γυμνότης ("nakedness"). The last is unexpected and settles the whole: a star is covered by nothing, and this is said as the ground — οὐδὲν γὰρ προκάλυμμα ἄστρου, "for a star has no screen." The word προκάλυμμα means both a curtain and a pretext, an excuse. Hence a moral conclusion Marcus does not spell out: do your own work in the open, without cover. Cf. 11.15, where simplicity can neither be announced nor hidden, and 11.12, where the sphere of soul "shines with light."
Why this is the discipline of assent. The work here is neither on an act nor on a desire but on optics: the gaze is shifted in order to get the right measure for the day's business. Cf. 7.47 — survey the courses of the stars, and such impressions "wash off the grime of the life below." The governing discipline is assent, the sustaining one desire.