Place in the book. A short "rule" of self-examination for every occasion of anxiety — the sibling of 05-22. The discipline of assent.

The double criterion. Anxiety is warranted only if (a) this is my own TERMvice (κακία) or an act springing from it, or (b) a harm to DOGMAthe Whole (τὸ κοινόν). Neither the one nor the other? — DOGMAthen there is no cause to "be troubled" (διαφέρομαι). The only real evil is one's own vice; everything else does not touch the one who is not infected by it.

The rhetorical tail. "And what can harm the Whole at all?" — a hint: the Whole is providentially ordered, and nothing truly harms it (cf. 05-30). So the second criterion almost always drops away, and a single question remains: is this a vice of mine? Thus the circle of anxieties contracts to one point — the point that is up to me.

Discipline and parallels. The principal discipline is assent (the test "is this an evil?"); the secondary is desire (not to be troubled). Parallels: 05-22 (what does no harm to the city does no harm to the citizen); 05-25 (another's fault is his own affair); the doctrine that "DOGMAharm is only vice."