Botany in place of anatomy. At 8.34 the same thesis is put surgically: a severed hand, foot, head. Here Marcus shifts to a garden image — MOTIFκλάδος, a branch — and with the image he gains what amputation cannot offer: grafting. The whole construction of the passage rests on that shift.

The logic of the first move. A branch cut from the adjacent branch is thereby cut from the whole plant. The transfer is literal: the man who breaks with one man has fallen away from TERMκοινωνία entire, and DOGMA"has at the same time cut himself off from the whole πολίτευμα". There is no such thing as a selective enmity: to break with one is to break with all, because the bond is single.

The difference the image was chosen for. κλάδον μὲν οὖν ἄλλος ἀποκόπτει· ἄνθρωπος δὲ αὐτὸς ἑαυτὸν χωρίζει — "a branch is cut off by another, but a man separates himself." And the two movements of soul by which it is done are named: μισήσας καὶ ἀποστραφείς — "having hated and turned away." From which the consoling half follows: since he cut himself off, he can restore himself.

The gift of Zeus. DOGMAἔξεστι γὰρ ἡμῖν πάλιν DOGMAσυμφῦναι — "it is open to us to grow together again" and to become συμπληρωτικοί, "such as complete" the whole. This is called a δῶρον, a gift of "Zeus who framed the community": the power of return is given to a human alone, and is beyond the branch (cf. 8.34, where the same privilege is called κομψόν, "exquisite").

And at once a proviso that keeps the consolation from coming cheap. πλεονάκις μέντοι γινόμενον — "happening often, however," the division renders what detaches itself δυσένωτον καὶ δυσαποκατάστατον ("hard to reunite and hard to restore"). Return is possible, but neither free nor unlimited: each further break heals worse.

The gardeners, and the limit of grafting. The closing distinction is between the branch that ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς συμβλαστήσας καὶ σύμπνους συμμείνας ("grew together from the first and remained of one breath") and the branch grafted back after severance. The aside ὅ τι ποτὲ λέγουσιν οἱ φυτουργοί — "whatever the gardeners may say" — is a rare argument with the experts: he grants the taking, he denies the identity. And the verdict in two words built on one prefix: Ὁμοθαμνεῖν μέν, μὴ ὁμοδογματεῖν δέ — "to share a bush, but not to share a doctrine." One may be grafted back without agreeing; real unity is a unity of δόγματα, not proximity. The governing discipline is action, the sustaining one assent.