Three rules, and each one a technique already known. Πρόχειρα ἔχειν, "to have ready to hand," is the very term whose image is given in 12.9: the pancratiast's hand. What is to be kept there is set out in numbered points, and each point is a folded-up name for a practice: (1) the rule of action, (2) EXERCISEanalysis, (3) the EXERCISEview from above.

First: the measure of an act is not utility but Justice. ὡς ἂν ἡ Δίκη αὐτὴ ἐνήργησεν — "as Dike herself would have acted." Marcus does not say "justly"; he introduces a person: Δίκη is a goddess, and the standard taken is not a rule but her way of acting. To this is joined the disjunction about externals: κατ’ ἐπιτυχίαν ἢ κατὰ TERMπρόνοιαν — "by a chance hit or by providence" — and both branches are closed the same way: neither blame chance nor arraign providence (cf. the threefold fork of 12.14).

Second: the life of a thing from seed to the return of the soul. ἀπὸ σπέρματος μέχρι ψυχώσεως, and from ψύχωσις to τοῦ τὴν ψυχὴν ἀποδοῦναι — "to the giving back of the soul." The verb ἀποδίδωμι is used of repaying a debt: the soul is not lost but returned. And to this longitudinal section a transverse one is added — ἐξ οἵων ἡ σύγκρισις καὶ εἰς οἷα ἡ λύσις, out of what it was compounded and into what it dissolves; cf. 12.10 and 12.18.

Third: the ascent, and what is seen every time. μετέωρος ἐξαρθείς — "lifted up on high"; cf. 9.30. But Marcus's conclusion is not contempt for the small; it is sameness: ὁσάκις ἂν ἐξαρθῇς, ταὐτὰ ὄψῃ, "however often you are lifted up, you will see the same things." Two words carry the result — τὸ ὁμοειδές, τὸ ὀλιγοχρόνιον, "sameness of kind, shortness of duration." And the last clause strikes flat: ἐπὶ τούτοις ὁ τῦφος — "and over these, the conceit." Τῦφος is "smoke, fume," and by transference "puffed-up vanity"; the word returns in 12.27, where vanity about one's freedom from vanity is called the worst of all. The governing discipline is assent, the sustaining one action.