A cosmic power — and ours. An analogy of capacity: as TERMthe nature of the Whole (ἡ τῶν λογικῶν φύσις) has endowed rational beings with all their other powers, so it has given this one too — to turn a hindrance to one's own use. The model is the cosmos itself: "everything that resists and opposes" (πᾶν τὸ ἐνιστάμενον καὶ ἀντιβαῖνον) it "turns about" (ἐπιπεριτρέπει), TERM"orders into fate" (εἰς τὴν εἱμαρμένην), and makes a part of itself. No resistance stays outside the world-order — it is absorbed as material.

The obstacle as fuel. Hence the ethical conclusion: the rational animal "can make every obstacle (κώλυμα) its own material (ὕλη) and use it" — for the very end it was set upon (ἐφ’ οἷον ὥρμησεν). This is the exact formula of MOTIFthe fire that turns a hindrance into its food (4.1; 5.20 — "the impediment to action becomes a furtherance to action; the obstacle in the road becomes the road"). A pair to 8.32: there a thwarted act is replaced by another; here the metaphysical guarantee is given — the power to transform the hindrance is inherited from the nature of the Whole, which does just this with everything. DOGMAAcceptance is thereby not passive: to accept is to convert into the material of virtue. The strict terms by the word are φύσις, εἱμαρμένη. The governing discipline is desire (to accept the hindrance as material), the sustaining one action (to put it to use).