Diagnosis by doctrines. A rule for meeting people: not to judge the act at once, but "immediately to say to yourself" (εὐθὺς σαυτῷ πρόλεγε) — what doctrines (δόγματα) does he hold about TERMgood and TERMbad? Behaviour is deduced from convictions: if a person takes TERMpleasure for a good and pain, disrepute, and death for evils, then his acts follow from that scale of necessity. Then "nothing will be surprising" (οὐδὲν θαυμαστόν) — astonishment and anger arise only from a failure to grasp the cause.

"He is compelled" (ἀναγκάζεται). The key move is a determinism by way of moral psychology: a person "is compelled to act so" by his false doctrines. This is the Stoic version of the Socratic "no one errs willingly": a fault is ignorance of the true good (cf. 7.22 — to teach or to bear; 02-01 — those who err through ignorance of what is kin). The therapeutic conclusion is not exculpation but the removal of personal offence: another's fault is impersonal, like the juice of a fig-tree (8.15, 04-06). The strict terms by the word are ἀγαθόν, κακόν, ἡδονή; δόξα (fame) and the rest are left uncarded. The governing discipline is assent (to grasp the cause of the act), the sustaining one action (how to bear oneself toward people).