To run with the stars. One sentence — a doubled exercise. The first: "survey the courses of the stars (ἄστρων δρόμους) as one running the round with them" (συμπεριθέοντα): not an observer below but a participant in the circular race — an imagined ascent into the EXERCISEsupralunary sphere, from which earthly scales shrink (cf. 11.1 — the soul "goes round the whole cosmos"; 7.48 — Plato's view from above). The second: "consider without ceasing (συνεχῶς) the mutual TERMtransformations of the TERMelements" — Hadot's EXERCISEphysiologia: to keep in mind that all is earth-water-air-fire in perpetual exchange (4.46; 2.17).

A hygiene of the gaze. Both contemplations are given as cleansing: ἀποκαθαίρουσι… τὸν ῥύπον τοῦ χαμαὶ βίου — "they wash off the filth of the life below." The metaphor is bath-like and almost ritual: astronomy and the physics of the elements work as a lustration of the mind from the "earthly" (χαμαί — "on the ground, down here") film of pettiness, fear, and vanity. The mechanism runs through TERMimpressions (φαντασίαι): not argument but a change of the picture before the inner eye — for the market's bustle (7.48) is substituted the wheeling of the stars and the cycle of the elements, and the grime falls away of itself. The discipline is desire.