The fig-tree and the world. A therapy of astonishment by analogy with nature: "it is shameful to be surprised (ξενίζεσθαι) if the MOTIFfig-tree bears figs" — just as shameful to be surprised DOGMA"if the world brings forth what it is the producer of" (ὧν ἐστι φορός). An event is no anomaly but a fruit of the nature of the Whole; to be surprised at it is like demanding that the fig-tree not bear (cf. the image of the MOTIFfig-tree's juice, 04-06).

The physician and the helmsman. The second image turns the argument to competence: the physician should be ashamed to be surprised at a fever, the helmsman at a contrary wind. This is their "material"; whoever takes up a craft has accepted its typical difficulties too. So too a person who has taken up living in this world should be ashamed to "wonder" at what the world by nature produces — sickness, enmity, death. Astonishment (ξενισμός) betrays a hidden claim that the world ought to be otherwise; to dissolve it is the work of the DOGMAdiscipline of desire (cf. 8.6: "nothing is new"). There are no term-lemmata in the text. The governing discipline is desire (not to wonder at the natural course), the sustaining one assent (not to judge an event "strange").