  We also see Marcus’ reliance on Stoic physics in his innovative derivation of the Stoic doctrine of the indifference of everything except virtue and vice from providence.  Since wealth, reputation, and health are distributed among the virtuous and the vicious indiscriminately, he reasons, they cannot be good, for that would be contrary to providence (ii.11).  This does not mean Marcus is generally grounding ethics in physics,  however.[6]  According to the Stoics, the beliefs of anyone other than a wise and fully virtuous person are weak and unstable (since not anchored in an understanding of the whole), and so we should expect a non-wise Stoic like Marcus to seek out all kinds of reasons to shore up his ethical beliefs. Marcus can consistently regard these ‘back-up’ arguments for a moment of weakness as weaker and less plausible than the Stoic arguments and at the same time as important to have at hand—as, if you’re trying to quit smoking, you might hang on to ‘it gives you wrinkles’ for the moments in which ‘it gives you cancer’ isn’t doing the trick.