A proof from the part to the whole. The passage is built as a formal inference, which is rare in a notebook. Premise: a single ἐνέργεια that has ceased κατὰ καιρόν suffers no evil by having ceased — nor does the man who performed it. Then a definition: a life is the σύστημα, the composite, of all one's acts. Therefore what was said of the part applies to it.

The qualification without which the inference would be a fraud. Twice we get κατ’ αὐτὸ τοῦτο, καθὸ πέπαυται — "in this very respect, in that it has ceased." Marcus does not claim that death is no evil at all; he claims exactly what he has proved: that it is no evil qua ceasing. The precision here is that of a jurist, and it is the best answer to the usual charge that the Stoics substitute consolation for argument.

Who appoints the time. τὸν καιρὸν καὶ τὸν ὅρον δίδωσιν ἡ TERMφύσις: sometimes one's "own" nature (in old age), but in every case the nature of the whole. And then at once the ground the whole entry exists for: ἧς τῶν μερῶν TERMμεταβαλλόντων νεαρὸς ἀεὶ καὶ ἀκμαῖος ὁ σύμπας κόσμος διαμένει — "by the changing of whose parts the entire cosmos remains ever young and at its prime." The death of the parts is what keeps the world young; cf. 8.6, 12.21 ("so that others may come to be in succession") and 8.20 — nature aimed at the ending no less than at the beginning.

A double test, both by the school definition. Not an evil — because not shameful; and not shameful, εἴπερ καὶ TERMἀπροαίρετον καὶ οὐκ TERMἀκοινώνητον: outside our choice and not anti-social. That is the Stoic definition of the shameful, applied strictly. Then a step further: not merely not an evil but a TERMgood, if for the whole it is καίριον καὶ συμφέρον καὶ συμφερόμενον: timely, advantageous, and borne along with it.

A close built on one root. The last words of the main thought (συμφέρον, συμφερόμενον) and the whole final sentence turn on φέρω: θεοφόρητος ὁ φερόμενος κατὰ ταὐτὰ θεῷ καὶ ἐπὶ ταὐτὰ τῇ γνώμῃ φερόμενος. Θεοφόρητος is a word for the possessed, for the man the god carries away; Marcus takes the frenzy out of it and leaves the direction: god-borne is the man who is carried the same way as god, and who goes the same way in his judgement. Agreement with the whole is described not as submission but as holding the same course. The governing discipline is desire, the sustaining one assent.