The good is in action, not in what is undergone. A sharp localization of value: the TERMgood and TERMevil (and equally the TERMἀρετή and TERMκακία) of a rational-social being lie "not in passivity (πεῖσις) but in activity (ἐνέργεια)." What happens to a person (pain, illness, loss) is material, neither good nor evil; good and evil lie only in what he does — in the acts of his ruling part. This is the Stoic break with the ordinary ethics of fortune: TERMvirtue is an active state, not a passive possession or experience.

Against a passive morality. The passage directly underwrites 9.12 (the will is directed to one thing only, "to put thyself in motion and to check thyself," not to being pitied): since the good lies in ἐνέργεια, the measure of an act is the action itself, not its echo in feeling or in another's gaze. The governing discipline is action.