Wax and diminutives. TERMThe nature of the Whole moulds from the DOGMAsingle universal substance, "as from wax": it shaped a little horse — crushed it — from the same mass a little tree — then a little man — then something else. The whole series runs in diminutives (ἱππάριον, δενδρύφιον, ἀνθρωπάριον): at the scale of the Whole a horse, a tree, and a man are figurines, and the human is not set apart from the series even grammatically. What matters is that the wax is one: the shapes succeed one another, the mass is the same (the οὐσία μία of 7.9). Hence too the brevity of every shape (πρὸς ὀλίγιστον ὑπέστη — "subsisted for the briefest while") — not a defect of the products but the master's way of working: the same argument as in 7.18 (the firewood and the food) and 7.25 (the renewal of the world).

The little box. The closing sentence shifts the image from wax to joinery: "nothing dreadful (δεινόν) for the little box (κιβώτιον) in being taken apart — as nothing [good] in being fastened together." The symmetry disarms the fear: if assembly was no event for the little chest, why should disassembly be one? Death and birth are equalized as two operations on an indifferent container. This is the aphoristic version of the doctrine of 4.5: death, like birth, is σύγκρισις and λύσις of the same elements, a process κατὰ φύσιν, and therefore no evil. Cf. also 06-24 (Alexander and his groom — dissolved into the same principles). The discipline is desire: a contemplation that quenches both the fear of dissolution and the pride of form.