 Lipsius’s Politicorum sive Civilis doctrinae libri sex (“Six Books on Politics or Civil Doctrine”, 1589), dedicated to Count Maurice of Nassau, can be considered a sequel to De constantia: “just as in On Constancy we instructed citizens how to endure and obey, so here [we instruct] those who rule how to govern,” Lipsius stated in “The Letter to the Reader.” In the same way that the citizen had to follow reason (ratio), the ruler had to apply reason and political virtue to government, but first of all to his own life, since if “he desires to subject all things to himself, he should subject himself to reason first.”