The one place where Marcus answers an objection from outside. Πρὸς τοὺς ἐπιζητοῦντας — "to those who press the question." The Meditations ordinarily hold a conversation with the writer himself; here an answer is prepared for someone else's question, which gives the entry the look of a school exercise — a χρεία, a ready-made reply.

The first argument, and it is oddly brief. πρῶτον μὲν καὶ ὄψει ὁρατοί εἰσιν — "first, they are visible even to sight." Marcus does not explain: most probably the heavenly bodies are meant, which the Stoics held to be divine and rational. The argument is left unexpanded, as common knowledge, and the whole weight is shifted to the second.

The second argument is from analogy, and it is the real one. οὐδὲ τὴν TERMψυχὴν τὴν ἐμαυτοῦ ἑώρακα καὶ ὅμως τιμῶ: I have not seen my own soul either — and yet I honour it. The move is rigorous: if the demand "show me" disposes of the gods, then by the same stroke it disposes of the soul, which the objector is not prepared to dispose of. The argument does not prove that the gods exist; it shows that the demand for proof by sight is inconsistent.

What takes the place of seeing. ἐξ ὧν τῆς δυνάμεως αὐτῶν ἑκάστοτε πειρῶμαι — "from those things in which I experience their power at every turn." Not vision but the experience of an activity: the gods are known by what proceeds from them, as the soul is known by what it does. And the conclusion is doubled: καταλαμβάνω καὶ αἰδοῦμαι — "I grasp, and I revere." Knowledge and reverence are set down in one motion, with no interval between; cf. 12.5, where the justice of the gods is the premise of the very quarrel with them. The governing discipline is assent, the sustaining one desire.