Toil without a pose. Three rejected motives of effort: not "as a wretch" (ἄθλιος, a sufferer against his will), not for pity (ἐλεεῖσθαι), not for admiration (θαυμάζεσθαι). The first is covert murmuring, the other two are vanity: to act for show, to provoke a feeling in the onlooker. Against all of this — "will one thing only" (μόνον ἓν θέλε).

Motion and checking. The sole object of the will is κινεῖσθαι καὶ ἴσχεσθαι, "to move and to be checked": the pure discipline of action — to release the impulse and to hold it back in time, "as the civic reason requires" (ὁ πολιτικὸς TERMλόγος). The measure of an act is neither its effect on others nor one's own feeling, but agreement with the common reason of a rational-social being. Unfolded at 9.16 (the good lies in ἐνέργεια, activity, not in πείσει, passivity). The governing discipline is action.