Two movements — and one superfluous addition. The practical rule is given as a pair of instant reactions: MOTIF"a cucumber is bitter? — throw it away; brambles in the road? — turn aside" (σίκυος πικρός; ἄφες). Enough (ἀρκεῖ) — and here comes the ban on the third step: DOGMA"do not add, 'and why is there such a thing in the world?'" (μὴ προσεπείπῃς). The worldview-complaint against the existence of the unpleasant is the very superfluous "addition" to the impression (8.49) that breeds passion.

The joke about the workshop. One who grumbles "why is there evil in the world" would be "laughed at by a man who studies nature" (φυσιολόγος): it is like faulting a carpenter or cobbler because shavings and offcuts (ξέσματα καὶ περιτμήματα) lie about their workshop. "Waste" is the inevitable companion of production; bitterness, brambles, decay are the "shavings" of the cosmic workshop, not a flaw in the design.

Nature the enclosed artist. But the analogy at once breaks in nature's favour: the craftsman has somewhere to throw his scraps, while TERM"the nature of the Whole has nothing outside itself" (ἔξω οὐδὲν ἔχει). And in this lies EXERCISE"the wonder of her art" (τὸ θαυμαστὸν τῆς τέχνης): "having circumscribed herself" (περιορίσασα ἑαυτήν), she turns "what spoils, ages, and grows useless" into herself, and out of the same makes new-and-young — needing neither "substance from outside" (οὐσίας ἔξωθεν) nor a "dump" for the rot. A perfect circulation: nothing imported, nothing discarded (cf. all is the seed of the next; 7.25 — out of the substance of some things others, that the world may be ever young; the closed unity). She is content (ἀρκεῖται) with "her own space, her own matter, her own art." The strict term by the word is φύσις. The governing discipline is desire (to accept nature's scrap without a "why"), the sustaining one assent (not to add the worldview-complaint).