Genre and place in the book. The seventh passage of Book II — the most distinctly diagnostic. If 02-04, 02-05, and 02-06 were turned inward as self-reproach or instruction, 02-07 is a clinical analysis: here are two symptoms, here is their cause, here is the remedy. Structurally it is a pair: two outwardly different kinds of worthless life (distraction vs. busy activity) are reduced to a single defect (the absence of a TERMσκοπός).

Structure of the argument. A double diagnosis and a single diagnostic.

1. The first kind of error. "Are external things falling upon you and distracting you?" — περισπᾷ τί σε τὰ ἔξωθεν ἐμπίπτοντα. The first symptom is passive scatter: attention is swept off by every new impression; the TERMruling part does not hold its course. First-order remedy: "give yourself the leisure to learn something TERMgood and MOTIFstop drifting" (παῦσαι ῥεμβόμενος).
2. The second kind of error. "But guard against the other kind of circling, too" — τὴν ἑτέραν περιφορὰν φυλακτέον. The second symptom looks the opposite: continuous activity, exhaustion by affairs (κεκμηκότες τῷ βίῳ), outwardly appearing as "life in action." Marcus qualifies this by the word ληροῦσι — "they talk nonsense," "they play the fool." Activity without direction is the same drift, only at another tempo.
3. Common diagnosis. μὴ ἔχοντες TERMσκοπόν, ἐφ' ὃν πᾶσαν TERMὁρμὴν καὶ καθάπαξ TERMφαντασίαν ἀπευθύνουσιν — "having no target toward which to direct every impulse and (in a word) every impression." The remedy is one: to have a TERMσκοπός — a mark to which all ὁρμή and every φαντασία are drawn.

The principal concept — TERMσκοπός. A Stoic technical term taken from archery: σκοπός is the thing one aims at. Antipater of Tarsus (in Stobaeus, Eclogae, book II; precise Wachsmuth sub-section to verify [verify:wachsmuth]) distinguishes σκοπός from τέλος: τέλος is "to obtain what accords with nature"; σκοπός is "to do everything in our power to obtain it." Cicero gives the image of the archer (De finibus, book III; precise sub-section to verify [verify:loeb]): the moral worth lies in the right aim, not in the hit. The distinction is the foundation of the Stoic ethics of action: I am answerable for the σκοπός (it is DOGMAup to us), not for the outcome. Marcus does not unfold the distinction here, but he presupposes it: without a σκοπός it is impossible to direct one's impulses; with one, any result becomes "an attempt to hit," not a chance drift.

The disciplines. The principal one is action: a σκοπός organises the TERMὁρμή, the very initiation of an act. The secondary is assent: the σκοπός also organises the TERMφαντασίαι, preventing side-impressions from pulling assent in various directions. The discipline of desire is engaged obliquely (through DOGMAdetachment from the external).

Stylistics. The Greek vocabulary of the two defects is built on a single metaphorical axis of "motion along an arc":

• περισπάω — to drag round, to twitch in various directions;
• ῥέμβομαι — to wander, to ramble;
• περιφέρομαι — to be whirled around.

All three verbs describe motion that does not go in a straight line to a single point. Grammatically Marcus opposes to them the nominative — σκοπός: the one point whose presence straightens all these curves.

The double diagnosis as a method. The construction "two different symptoms, one cause" is a characteristic device of Marcus as a Stoic psychotherapist. The same method appears in 02-01 (anger at others) and 02-06 (contempt for oneself): outwardly opposite dispositions, one structural cause — a wrongly drawn boundary "mine / not mine." In 02-07 the pair is passivity and busyness, with the single cause being the absence of a σκοπός. Hadot calls this "structural analysis": the Stoic does not treat symptoms but seeks the invariant beneath them. See MOTIFaimless-wandering — the card for the image.

Parallels. σκοπός is a frequent term in Marcus: Med. 2.16 (the worst — to have no σκοπός); 7.4 (to remember everything with the σκοπός in mind); 7.69; 8.41 (the sage's σκοπός — the common benefit); 11.21 (a coherent life = life with one σκοπός); 12.20 (no action without a relation to a σκοπός). A direct parallel in Seneca — Ep. 23 ("aliud agere et aliud, hoc est insanire"; precise sub-section to verify [verify:loeb]) and the famous Ep. 71 — "ignoranti quem portum petat nullus suus ventus est" ("for the one who does not know which port he is making for, no wind is his"; precise sub-section to verify [verify:loeb]). The standard Stoic definition of σκοπός is in Antipater, cited in Stobaeus, Eclogae, book II [verify:wachsmuth].