Dig within. Two words, and a whole exercise: Ἔνδον σκάπτε — "within, dig." The imperative of EXERCISEthe inner retreat (4.3), but given not as "withdraw to a refuge" but as a digger's labor: TERMthe good is not brought from outside, it is already there — "within is the spring (πηγή) of good." The image of the well-spring inverts the ordinary economy of happiness: not to search where to get it, but to clear it so that one's own may flow. The DOGMAruling part is itself this spring; a human being is not empty without external goods — he is silted over.

As long as you dig. The condition is in the doubled ἀεί: the spring is "ever able to well up (ἀεὶ ἀναβλύειν δυναμένη), if you ever dig (ἐὰν ἀεὶ σκάπτῃς)." Not "dug once, and done": the spring lives while it is kept open; abandoned, it silts up (cf. 7.2 — dogmas go out without rekindling; 7.24 — frequent anger extinguishes comeliness so that "it cannot be again lighted up at all"). For the Stoic, the good is not a stock but a practice: the ceaseless clearing of judgments, so that clean water may come again from under the deposits of impressions. Cf. 08-51 (the spring that clears itself of the mud thrown in; "a perpetual fountain and not a mere well"), 3.4. The governing discipline is desire (the good is within, not in the external); the sustaining one, action (digging is labor).