Seven commands. The densest passage of the book: seven imperatives in a row, without connectives — not an argument but a drill-book of the soul, a conspectus of nearly the whole of Marcus's askesis at one verb per exercise. (1) TERMἘξάλειψον τὴν φαντασίαν — "wipe out the impression" (a verb of erasing an inscription: imagination as writing on the mind's wax; cf. 8.29 — "wipe out the impressions, saying to yourself…"). (2) MOTIFστῆσον τὴν νευροσπαστίαν — "stop the pulling of the strings": passion as puppeteer (2.2; 7.3; 12.19); Rogovin renders the sense — "put an end to the pullings." (3) EXERCISEπερίγραψον τὸ ἐνεστώς — "circumscribe the present" (the technical ἐνεστώς, the "present" of Stoic grammar; live inside the drawn line: 8.36). (4) γνώρισον τὸ συμβαῖνον — "recognize what is happening" to you or to another: the event before the appraisal.

The core and the close. (5) EXERCISEδίελε καὶ μέρισον — "divide and part" the object into the causal and the material (τὸ αἰτιῶδες καὶ ὑλικόν): the Stoic physical analysis that dissolves a thing's frightening wholeness into two harmless halves (cf. 7.10; 8.11 — "what is it in substance and material?"; 12.10; 12.18). (6) EXERCISEἐννόησον τὴν ἐσχάτην ὥραν — "think on the last hour": the horizon at which the small is small. (7) Another's TERMwrong — "leave it there where it arose" (ἐκεῖ κατάλιπε ὅπου ὑπέστη — a juridical topography of guilt: the offence has a domicile, and it is not your soul; cf. 9.20 and 7.16). The governing discipline is assent; the sustaining one, desire. The passage serves as a pocket rule-book: seven verbs cover the day.