Meditations

Introduction

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.

This is a modern-English reading of Meditations, based on George Long’s English translation.

Written in Greek during the second century, these twelve books preserve the personal reflections of Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor and student of Stoic philosophy. They are reminders addressed to himself: to govern his judgments, fulfill his duties, treat others with justice, and face change and death with courage. Across these pages, an emperor returns to the questions of an ordinary human life: how to meet adversity, how to live among difficult people, and how to use the brief time we are given. At its heart is a discipline of attention and character: accepting what lies beyond our control, while taking responsibility for our own judgments and actions.

This is Meditations.

Book One

From my grandfather Verus I learned good character and control of my temper.

From my father's reputation and the memory of him, modesty and a manly character.

From my mother, reverence for the gods, generosity, and restraint, not only from evil deeds but even from evil thoughts. Also, a simple way of life, far removed from the habits of the rich.

From my great-grandfather, the benefit of avoiding public schools and having good teachers at home, and the knowledge that we should spend generously on such things.

From my tutor, to support neither the Green nor the Blue faction at the Circus, and neither the small-shield nor the large-shield fighters in the gladiatorial contests. From him I also learned to endure hard work, to need little, to work with my own hands, to leave other people's affairs alone, and to resist listening to slander.

From Diognetus, to avoid occupying myself with trivial things, and to disbelieve the claims of miracle-workers and conjurers about spells, the driving out of spirits, and such things. Also, not to breed quails for fighting or become passionately absorbed in such pursuits; to tolerate freedom of speech; and to become familiar with philosophy. Through him I attended the teaching first of Bacchius, then of Tandasis and Marcianus, wrote dialogues in my youth, and desired a bed of planks with an animal skin, and the other practices of the Greek discipline.

From Rusticus I came to understand that my character needed improvement and discipline. From him I learned not to be drawn into competing with sophists, writing about speculative matters, giving little speeches of encouragement, or displaying myself as someone who practices great discipline or does good deeds for show. I learned to abstain from rhetoric, poetry, and elaborate writing; not to walk around the house in my outdoor clothes or do similar things; and to write simple letters, like the one Rusticus wrote from Sinuessa to my mother.

Toward those who had offended me in words or wronged me, I learned to be ready for peace and reconciliation as soon as they showed a willingness to be reconciled. I learned to read carefully, rather than settle for a superficial understanding of a book, and not to give hasty agreement to people who talk too much. I also owe him my acquaintance with the discourses of Epictetus, which he shared with me from his own collection.

From Apollonius I learned freedom of will and unwavering steadiness of purpose; to look to reason alone, without turning away even for a moment; and to remain the same in severe pain, in the loss of a child, and in long illness. In him I saw clearly that the same person can be both thoroughly resolute and accommodating, and can give instruction without irritability. I had before my eyes a man who plainly considered his experience and his skill in explaining philosophical principles the least of his merits. From him I also learned how to receive what are considered favors from friends, without being humbled by them or letting them pass unnoticed.

From Sextus, benevolence, the example of a household governed with fatherly care, and the idea of living according to nature. Also, dignity without affectation, careful attention to the interests of friends, and tolerance for the ignorant and those who form opinions without thought. He could readily adapt himself to everyone, so that his company was more pleasant than any flattery, while those who knew him held him in the highest respect. He could discover and arrange, intelligently and systematically, the principles necessary for life. He never displayed anger or any other passion, but was entirely free from passion and also deeply affectionate. He could express approval without noisy display, and had great knowledge without showing it off.

From Alexander the grammarian, to avoid fault-finding, and not to rebuke people for expressions that are uneducated, grammatically incorrect, or strange-sounding. Instead, skillfully introduce the expression they should have used, through an answer, a confirmation, a shared inquiry into the subject itself rather than the word, or some other suitable suggestion.

From Fronto I learned to recognize the envy, deceit, and hypocrisy of a tyrant, and that those among us who are called patricians generally show rather little fatherly affection.

From Alexander the Platonist, not to tell people frequently or unnecessarily, in conversation or in letters, that I have no time; and not to keep using urgent business as an excuse for neglecting the duties that arise from our relationships with those around us.

From Catulus, not to dismiss a friend's criticism, even when it is unjustified, but to try to restore the friend's usual goodwill. Also, to be ready to speak well of teachers, as Domitius and Athenodotus are said to have done, and to love my children sincerely.

From my brother Severus, to love my family, truth, and justice. Through him I came to know Thrasea, Helvidius, Cato, Dion, and Brutus. From him I received the idea of a state with the same law for everyone, governed with respect for equal rights and equal freedom of speech, and of a monarchy that values above all the freedom of those it governs. I also learned from him consistency and unwavering devotion to philosophy; a willingness to do good, to give readily, to cherish good hopes, and to believe that my friends love me. I observed that he did not conceal his opinions of those he condemned. His friends had no need to guess what he wanted or did not want: it was entirely clear.

From Maximus I learned self-control, and not to be diverted by anything; cheerfulness in every circumstance, including illness; the right mixture of gentleness and dignity in character; and to do the work before me without complaint. I observed that everyone believed he thought as he spoke, and that nothing he did had a bad intention. He never showed astonishment or surprise, never hurried, never put things off, and was never confused or dejected. He never laughed to conceal irritation, nor was he passionate or suspicious. He regularly did good, readily forgave, and was free from falsehood. He seemed a man who could not be turned from what was right, rather than one who had been corrected. I also observed that no one could think Maximus despised him, or dare to consider himself a better man. He also knew how to be humorous in a pleasant way.

In my father I observed gentleness of temper and an unchanging resolve in decisions reached after careful thought. He had no vanity about what people call honors. He loved work and persevered in it, readily listened to proposals for the common good, and was firmly consistent in giving everyone what they deserved. Experience had taught him when to act vigorously and when to relax his efforts.

I observed that he had overcome all sexual passion for boys, and considered himself no more than any other citizen. He freed his friends from any obligation to dine with him or accompany him when he traveled. Those who could not accompany him because of urgent circumstances always found him unchanged toward them. In deliberations he investigated everything carefully and persistently, never stopping because the first appearances satisfied him. He kept his friends, neither quickly tiring of them nor being excessive in his affection. He was content and cheerful in every circumstance. He looked far ahead and provided for the smallest matters without display. He immediately checked public applause and every form of flattery.

He continually watched over everything necessary to govern the empire, managed its expenditure well, and patiently endured the criticism this brought him. He was neither superstitious about the gods nor eager to win people over with gifts, attempts to please them, or flattery of the crowd. In everything he showed restraint and firmness, without petty thoughts or actions, or a love of novelty. He used the comforts that fortune supplied abundantly without arrogance or excuses. When he had them, he enjoyed them without affectation; when he lacked them, he did not miss them.

No one could call him a sophist, a flippant household slave, or a pedant. Everyone acknowledged him as a mature and accomplished man, beyond flattery, capable of managing both his own affairs and those of others. He honored true philosophers. He did not reproach those who pretended to be philosophers, but neither was he easily led by them. His conversation was easy, and he was pleasant without offensive affectation. He took reasonable care of his health, neither clinging to life, attending to his appearance, nor neglecting himself. Because of this care, he very seldom needed a physician, medicine, or external treatment.

He readily and without envy gave recognition to those with a particular ability, whether eloquence, knowledge of law, knowledge of morals, or anything else. He helped each of them gain the reputation they deserved. He always acted according to his country's institutions, without making a show of doing so. He was neither fond of change nor unsettled, but liked to remain in the same places and pursue the same occupations. After attacks of headache he immediately returned, fresh and vigorous, to his usual work.

His secrets were very few and rare, and concerned only public affairs. He was prudent and economical in public spectacles, public buildings, gifts to the people, and such matters, because he looked to what needed doing rather than to the reputation his acts might bring. He did not bathe at unsuitable hours. He was not fond of building houses, particular about his food or the texture and color of his clothes, or concerned with the beauty of his slaves. His clothing came from Lorium, his villa on the coast, and generally from Lanuvium. We know how he treated the toll collector at Tusculum who asked his pardon; this was typical of all his conduct.

There was nothing harsh, unforgiving, or violent in him, and nothing, so to speak, carried to the point of sweating. He examined matters one by one, as though he had abundant time, without confusion, in an orderly way, vigorously and consistently. What is recorded of Socrates could also be said of him: he could both abstain from and enjoy the things that many people are too weak to abstain from and cannot enjoy without excess. Strength enough to endure abstinence and remain restrained in enjoyment marks a complete and invincible soul, such as he showed during the illness of Maximus.

To the gods I owe good grandfathers, good parents, a good sister, good teachers, good companions, good relatives and friends: almost everything good. I also owe them that I was not swept into offending any of these people, although my disposition might have led me to do so if the opportunity had arisen. Through their favor, circumstances never combined to put me to that test.

I am also thankful to the gods that I was not brought up any longer with my grandfather's concubine; that I preserved the flower of my youth; and that I did not exercise my sexual powers before the proper time, but even delayed it. I was placed under a ruler and father who could remove all pride from me, and show me that a man can live in a palace without needing guards, embroidered clothes, torches, statues, and such display. He can approach the way of life of a private citizen without lowering his thoughts or becoming less active in doing what the public interest requires of a ruler.

I thank the gods for a brother whose moral character prompted me to watch over myself, and whose respect and affection gave me pleasure; that my children have been neither unintelligent nor physically deformed; and that I did not become more accomplished in rhetoric, poetry, and the other studies, which might have absorbed me completely if I had seen myself making progress. I promptly gave those who brought me up the positions of honor they seemed to desire, without postponing them with the hope of doing so later because they were still young.

I thank the gods that I knew Apollonius, Rusticus, and Maximus; that I received clear and frequent impressions of what it means to live according to nature. So far as depended on the gods, their gifts, help, and inspiration, nothing prevented me from living that way immediately. That I still fall short is my own fault, through failing to heed their warnings and, I might almost say, their direct instructions.

I thank them that my body has endured this kind of life for so long; that I never touched either Benedicta or Theodotus; that I was cured after falling into passions of love; and that, although I was often irritated with Rusticus, I never did anything I had to regret. Although my mother was destined to die young, she spent her last years with me. Whenever I wished to help someone in need, or on any other occasion, I was never told that I lacked the means. Nor did I myself ever have the same need to receive help from another.

I thank the gods for a wife so obedient, affectionate, and simple; for plentiful good teachers for my children; and for remedies revealed to me in dreams, including remedies for spitting blood and dizziness, as well as others. When I turned toward philosophy, I did not fall into the hands of a sophist, waste my time on writers of histories, work on resolving syllogisms, or occupy myself with investigating appearances in the heavens. All these things require the help of the gods and fortune.

Among the Quadi, at the Granua.

Book Two

Begin the morning by saying to yourself: I will meet the meddlesome, the ungrateful, the arrogant, the deceitful, the envious, and the unsociable. They are this way because they do not know what is good and evil. But I have seen that the nature of good is beautiful and that of evil is ugly, and that the wrongdoer's nature is akin to mine. We share not only blood or descent, but the same intelligence and the same portion of the divine. None of them can injure me, because none can fasten moral ugliness upon me. Nor can I be angry with my relative or hate him. We were made to work together, like feet, hands, eyelids, and the upper and lower rows of teeth. To act against one another is contrary to nature; and to be irritated and turn away is to act against one another.

Whatever this thing I am may be, it is a little flesh, breath, and a ruling mind. Put away your books. Stop distracting yourself: you are not permitted to do so. As though you were dying now, look down on the flesh. It is blood, bones, and a network of nerves, veins, and arteries. Consider the breath too: air, and not always the same air, but breathed out and drawn in again every moment. The third part, then, is the ruling mind. Consider this: you are an old man. Stop letting it be enslaved, pulled by strings like a puppet into unsociable impulses, dissatisfied with your present lot, or shrinking from the future.

Everything from the gods is full of providence. What comes from fortune is neither separate from nature nor without interconnection and interweaving with what providence orders. From there everything flows. There is also necessity, and what benefits the whole universe, of which you are a part. What the nature of the whole brings, and what preserves that nature, is good for every part of nature. The universe is preserved through changes in the elements and through changes in the things composed of them. Let these principles be enough for you, and hold them as settled convictions. Put aside your thirst for books, so that you may die without grumbling, cheerfully, sincerely, and grateful to the gods from your heart.

Remember how long you have put these things off, and how often the gods have given you an opportunity that you have failed to use. At last you must recognize the universe of which you are a part, and the ruler of the universe from whom your existence flows. A limit has been set to your time. If you do not use it to clear the clouds from your mind, it will pass, and you will pass, and it will never return.

At every moment, think steadily as a Roman and a man: do the work in your hands with complete and simple dignity, affection, freedom, and justice. Give yourself relief from all other thoughts. You will find that relief if you perform every act of your life as though it were your last, setting aside carelessness, passionate resistance to reason's commands, hypocrisy, self-love, and discontent with the portion allotted to you. You see how few things a person needs to grasp to live a life that flows quietly and resembles the existence of the gods. For the gods themselves require nothing more of someone who observes these things.

Go on wronging yourself, go on wronging yourself, my soul. But you will no longer have the opportunity to honor yourself. Everyone's life is sufficient. But yours is nearly finished, and your soul still does not respect itself: it places your happiness in the souls of others.

Do external events distract you? Give yourself time to learn something new and good, and stop being whirled around. But avoid being carried away in the other direction too. Those who wear themselves out with activity, yet have no goal toward which to direct every movement and, in a word, all their thoughts, are also occupied with trifles.

People have seldom been seen to become unhappy because they failed to observe what was in someone else's mind. But those who do not observe the movements of their own minds must necessarily be unhappy.

Always keep these things in mind: What is the nature of the whole? What is my own nature? How is one related to the other? What kind of part am I, and of what kind of whole? No one prevents you from always doing and saying what accords with the nature of which you are a part.

In comparing wrongful acts, as one might do according to the common views of humanity, Theophrastus says, like a true philosopher, that offenses committed through desire deserve more blame than those committed through anger. Someone stirred by anger seems to turn away from reason with a certain pain and an unconscious tightening. Someone who offends through desire, overpowered by pleasure, seems more uncontrolled and, in a way, more womanish in his wrongdoing. Rightly, and in a manner worthy of philosophy, he said that an offense committed with pleasure deserves more blame than one committed with pain. On the whole, the one resembles a person who has first been wronged and is driven by pain into anger. The other moves toward wrongdoing on his own impulse, carried toward the act by desire.

Since you may leave life this very moment, govern every act and thought accordingly. If there are gods, leaving the company of human beings is nothing to fear, because the gods will not involve you in evil. But if they do not exist, or do not concern themselves with human affairs, what does it matter to me to live in a universe without gods or providence? Yet they do exist, and they care about human affairs. They have placed within our power everything we need to avoid real evils. If anything else were evil, they would have provided for that too, so that avoiding it would be entirely within our power.

How can something that does not make a person worse make that person's life worse? The nature of the universe cannot have overlooked these things through ignorance, or through knowing about them but lacking the power to prevent or correct them. Nor can it have made so great a mistake, through lack of power or skill, that good and evil should fall indiscriminately on good people and bad. Yet death and life, honor and dishonor, pain and pleasure, all fall alike on good people and bad. They make us neither better nor worse. Therefore they are neither good nor evil.

How quickly everything disappears: bodies themselves in the universe, and their memory in time. Consider the nature of everything perceived by the senses, especially what lures us with the bait of pleasure, frightens us with pain, or is loudly celebrated by fame as insubstantial as vapor. How worthless, contemptible, sordid, perishable, and dead these things are: this is what the intellect should observe.

Observe too the people whose judgments and voices confer reputation. Consider what death is. If you look at it by itself, using reflection to separate into their parts all the things imagination associates with it, you will consider it simply an operation of nature. Anyone afraid of an operation of nature is a child. Death is not only an operation of nature, but something that serves nature's purposes. Observe also how a human being approaches the Deity, through what part of himself, and when that part is in the appropriate condition.

Nothing is more wretched than a person who circles through everything, probes beneath the earth, as the poet says, and guesses at what is in the minds of his neighbors, without realizing that it is enough to attend to the divine spirit within and honor it sincerely. Honoring this spirit means keeping it free from passion, thoughtlessness, and dissatisfaction with what comes from gods and human beings. What comes from the gods deserves reverence for its excellence. What comes from human beings should be dear to us because of our kinship. Sometimes it should also move us to pity, because people are ignorant of good and evil. This disability is no less serious than the loss of the ability to distinguish white from black.

Even if you were to live three thousand years, and as many times ten thousand years, remember that no one loses any life except the one he is living now, or lives any life except the one he is now losing. The longest life and the shortest therefore come to the same thing. The present is the same for everyone, though what passes away is not the same. What is lost thus seems only a moment. No one can lose the past or the future. How can anyone take away what a person does not possess?

Keep these two things in mind. First, everything has taken similar forms from eternity and comes around in a circle. It makes no difference whether someone sees the same things for a hundred years, two hundred, or an infinite time. Second, the longest-lived person and the one who dies soonest lose exactly the same thing. The present is the only thing a person can be deprived of, if it is true that it is the only thing he possesses, and that he cannot lose what he does not have.

Remember that everything is opinion. What Monimus the Cynic said is clear, and its usefulness is clear too, if a person accepts what can be drawn from it only so far as it is true.

The human soul first does violence to itself when, as far as it can, it becomes an abscess, a kind of tumor on the universe. For being irritated by anything that happens separates us from nature, within some part of which the natures of all other things are contained. Second, the soul does violence to itself when it turns away from another person, or moves against him intending harm, as angry souls do. Third, when it is overpowered by pleasure or pain. Fourth, when it plays a role and acts or speaks insincerely and falsely. Fifth, when it lets any of its acts or impulses have no aim, and does something thoughtlessly, without considering what it is. Even the smallest actions should refer to an end. The end of rational beings is to follow the reason and law of the most ancient city and commonwealth.

The span of human life is a point. Its substance flows, its perception is dim, and the whole body's composition is subject to decay. The soul is a whirl, fortune is hard to predict, and fame lacks judgment. In a word, everything belonging to the body is a stream; everything belonging to the soul is dream and vapor. Life is warfare and a stranger's stay, and after fame comes oblivion.

What, then, can guide a person? One thing alone: philosophy. This means keeping the divine spirit within free from violence and unharmed, above pain and pleasure; doing nothing without a purpose, falsely, or hypocritically; and not depending on whether someone else does or does not do anything. It also means accepting everything that happens and every allotted portion as coming from the same source, wherever it may be, from which he himself came. Finally, it means waiting for death with a cheerful mind, seeing it as simply the dissolution of the elements that compose every living being. If the elements themselves suffer no harm from continually changing into one another, why should a person fear the change and dissolution of them all? It accords with nature, and nothing that accords with nature is evil.

This, in Carnuntum.

Book Three

We should consider not only that our life is wasting away each day and less of it remains, but also this: if someone lives longer, it is quite uncertain whether their understanding will remain sufficient to grasp things and retain the power of reflection that seeks knowledge of the divine and the human. If they begin to grow senile, sweating, nourishment, imagination, appetite, and other functions of that kind will not fail. But the ability to make use of ourselves, fulfill the whole measure of our duty, clearly distinguish all impressions, consider whether it is now time to leave life, and do everything else that absolutely requires disciplined reason—all this is already extinguished. So we must hurry, not only because we draw closer to death each day, but also because our ability to conceive and understand things comes to an end first.

We should also notice that even the things that follow as consequences of what nature produces have something pleasing and attractive about them. When bread is baked, for example, parts of its surface split open. These openings take a form contrary to the baker's intention, yet they are beautiful in a way and give us a particular desire to eat. Again, figs gape open when they are fully ripe, and with ripe olives, the very fact that they are close to rotting adds a particular beauty to the fruit. Ears of grain bending down, a lion's eyebrows, the foam flowing from a wild boar's mouth, and many other things are far from beautiful if examined separately. Yet because they follow from things formed by nature, they help adorn those things and please the mind. If someone has a feeling for and a deeper insight into the things produced in the universe, hardly any of these consequences will fail to seem arranged in some way to give pleasure. They will look with as much pleasure at the actual gaping jaws of wild beasts as at their imitations in painting and sculpture. They will see a certain maturity and beauty in an old woman and an old man, and be able to look at the appealing loveliness of young people with chaste eyes. Many such things will reveal themselves—pleasing not to everyone, but only to someone who has become truly familiar with nature and her works.

Hippocrates cured many diseases, then fell sick himself and died. The Chaldeans foretold many people's deaths, and then fate caught them too. Alexander, Pompey, and Gaius Caesar so often utterly destroyed whole cities and cut tens of thousands of cavalry and infantry to pieces in battle, yet they too eventually left life. Heraclitus speculated so much about the universe's destruction by fire, then filled with water inside and died covered in mud. Lice destroyed Democritus, and other lice killed Socrates. What does all this mean? You have boarded the ship, made the voyage, and reached the shore. Get out. If you are going to another life, there is no shortage of gods there either. If you are going to a state without sensation, you will stop being held by pain and pleasure and being a slave to the vessel. The vessel is as far inferior as what serves it is superior: one is intelligence and divinity; the other is earth and decay.

Do not waste what remains of your life thinking about other people unless you direct those thoughts toward some purpose that serves the common good. You lose the chance to do something else when you think: What is that person doing, and why? What are they saying, thinking, or planning? These and similar thoughts draw us away from observing our own governing mind. So we should remove from the course of our thoughts everything purposeless and useless, above all excessive curiosity and malice. Train yourself to think only about things that would let you answer immediately and with complete openness if someone suddenly asked, What are you thinking about now? This or that, you could say, so that your words would show everything in you to be simple and benevolent, as befits a social creature. They would show someone who pays no attention at all to thoughts of pleasure or sensual enjoyment, who harbors no rivalry, envy, suspicion, or anything else you would blush to admit was in your mind. Someone like this, who no longer postpones taking their place among the best, is like a priest and servant of the gods. They use the divinity planted within them, which keeps them untainted by pleasure, unharmed by any pain, untouched by any insult, feeling no injury—a fighter in the noblest fight, unconquerable by any passion, deeply dyed with justice, accepting with their whole soul everything that happens and is assigned as their share. They do not often imagine what anyone else says, does, or thinks, and only do so out of great necessity and for the general interest. They make only what belongs to them the subject of their activity. They constantly consider the portion assigned to them out of the whole of things, make their own actions beautiful, and are convinced that their own portion is good. The lot assigned to each person is carried along with them and carries them along with it. They also remember that every rational creature is their kin and that caring for all people accords with human nature. A person should attend to the judgment of those who are acknowledged to live according to nature, rather than everyone's judgment. As for those who do not live that way, they always remember what such people are like at home and away, by night and by day, what they are, and with whom they live their impure lives. So they place no value at all on praise from such people, since those people are not even satisfied with themselves.

Do not work unwillingly, without regard for the common interest, without due thought, or with a distracted mind. Do not dress up your thoughts with elaborate ornament. Do not be someone of many words or someone occupied with too many things. Further, let the divinity within you guard a living being who is manly, mature, engaged in public affairs, a Roman and a ruler; someone who has taken his post like a man waiting for the signal that calls him from life, ready to go, needing neither an oath nor anyone's testimony. Be cheerful too, and seek neither outside help nor the peace that others provide. A person must stand upright, rather than be held upright by others.

If you find anything in human life better than justice, truth, self-control, courage—in a word, anything better than your mind's satisfaction with the things it enables you to do according to right reason and with the condition assigned to you without your choosing it—if, I say, you see anything better than this, turn toward it with your whole soul and enjoy what you have found to be best. But if nothing seems better than the divinity planted within you, which has brought all your appetites under its control, carefully examines every impression, has detached itself, as Socrates said, from the persuasions of the senses, has submitted itself to the gods, and cares for humankind; if you find everything else smaller and less valuable, give way to nothing else. Once you turn aside and lean toward it, you will no longer be able, without distraction, to give preference to the good that properly belongs to you and is your own. It is wrong for something of any other kind—praise from the crowd, power, or the enjoyment of pleasure—to compete with what is good in reason and in our life together. Even if all these things seem in a small degree to fit with better things, they suddenly gain the upper hand and carry us away. But simply and freely choose what is better, I say, and hold to it. But what is useful is better. Well then, if it is useful to you as a rational being, keep to it. If it is useful to you only as an animal, say so and maintain your judgment without arrogance. Only take care to make the inquiry by a reliable method.

Never regard anything as beneficial to you if it will force you to break your promise, lose your self-respect, hate someone, grow suspicious, curse, act hypocritically, or desire something that requires walls and curtains. Someone who has preferred their own intelligence, their divine spirit, and reverence for its excellence to everything else acts no tragic part, does not groan, and will need neither solitude nor a large company. Above all, they will live neither pursuing death nor fleeing it. Whether their soul remains enclosed in their body for a longer or a shorter time does not concern them at all. Even if they must leave immediately, they will go as readily as if they were going to do anything else that can be done with decency and order. Throughout life they take care of this alone: that their thoughts do not turn away from anything that belongs to an intelligent creature and a member of a civil community.

In the mind of someone disciplined and purified you will find no corrupt matter, no impurity, and no sore with a skin grown over it. Nor is their life incomplete when fate overtakes them, as one might say of an actor who leaves the stage before the play is finished and brought to its end. Besides, there is nothing servile or affected in them, nothing too closely tied to other things or detached from them, nothing deserving blame, nothing seeking a hiding place.

Revere the faculty that forms judgments. On it alone depends whether your governing mind contains any judgment inconsistent with nature and the constitution of a rational creature. This faculty promises freedom from hasty judgment, friendship toward people, and obedience to the gods.

Cast everything else away, then, and hold only to these few things. Remember also that everyone lives only in this present time, an indivisible point, and that all the rest of their life is either past or uncertain. The time each person lives is short, the corner of the earth where they live is small, and even the longest fame after death is brief. Even that survives only through a succession of poor human beings who will soon die themselves and do not even know themselves, much less someone who died long ago.

Add this further aid to those already mentioned: define or describe for yourself whatever is presented to you, so that you see clearly what sort of thing it is in its substance, stripped bare, in its complete entirety. Tell yourself its proper name and the names of the things from which it is composed and into which it will dissolve. Nothing lifts the mind so much as the ability to examine methodically and truthfully every object presented to you in life, and always to look at things so that you see at the same time what sort of universe this is, what use each thing serves within it, what value it has in relation to the whole, and what value it has for a human being, a citizen of the highest city, of which all other cities are like households. Ask what each thing is, what it is composed of, how long this thing now making an impression on me naturally lasts, and what virtue I need in dealing with it: gentleness, manliness, truth, faithfulness, simplicity, contentment, and the rest. So on every occasion a person should say: This comes from god. This comes through the allotment and spinning of destiny's thread, through such coincidence and chance. This comes from someone of the same stock, a relative and partner, who nevertheless does not know what accords with their nature. But I know, and for that reason I treat them with benevolence and justice, according to the natural law of fellowship. At the same time, in matters that are indifferent, I try to determine each thing's value.

If you work at what lies before you, following right reason seriously, vigorously, and calmly, allowing nothing else to distract you, but keeping your divine part pure, as though you were required to return it immediately; if you hold to this, expecting nothing and fearing nothing, satisfied with your present activity according to nature and with heroic truthfulness in every word and sound you utter, you will live happily. And no one can prevent this.

Just as doctors always keep their instruments and knives ready for cases that suddenly require their skill, keep your principles ready for understanding divine and human things, and for doing everything, even the smallest thing, while remembering the bond that unites the divine and the human. You will not do anything human well without at the same time referring it to the divine, nor anything divine without referring it to the human.

Stop wandering aimlessly. You will not read your own memoirs, the deeds of the ancient Romans and Greeks, or the selections from books you were saving for your old age. Hurry toward the end you have before you. Cast away idle hopes and come to your own aid, if you care at all for yourself, while it is still in your power.

They do not know how many things the words stealing, sowing, buying, keeping quiet, and seeing what ought to be done signify. This seeing is accomplished by another kind of vision, rather than by the eyes.

Body, soul, intelligence: sensation belongs to the body, appetites to the soul, and principles to the intelligence. Even animals receive impressions of forms through appearances. Wild beasts, men who have made themselves into women, and a Phalaris or a Nero are all pulled by the strings of desire. Even those who do not believe in the gods, betray their country, and do their impure deeds behind closed doors have an intelligence that guides them toward things that seem suitable. If everything else is shared by all those I have mentioned, what remains as the distinctive quality of a good person is to be pleased and content with what happens and with the thread spun for them; to avoid defiling the divinity planted in their breast or disturbing it with a crowd of images; and to keep it peaceful, following it obediently as a god, saying nothing contrary to truth and doing nothing contrary to justice. If everyone refuses to believe that they live a simple, modest, contented life, they are neither angry with anyone nor diverted from the path leading to life's end. A person should reach that end pure, peaceful, ready to leave, and completely reconciled to their lot without any compulsion.

Book Four

When the power that governs within us accords with nature, its response to events is always to adapt easily to what is possible and presented to it. It needs no particular material. It moves toward its purpose, though subject to certain conditions, and turns whatever opposes it into material for itself. In the same way, fire takes hold of whatever falls into it, which would have extinguished a small flame. But a strong fire soon takes possession of the material piled upon it, consumes it, and rises higher through that very material.

Do nothing without a purpose or otherwise than according to the complete principles of the art.

People seek retreats for themselves: country houses, seashores, and mountains. You too are accustomed to longing very much for such things. But this is entirely characteristic of the most ordinary people, since whenever you choose you can retreat into yourself. Nowhere can someone retreat more quietly or with greater freedom from trouble than into their own soul, especially when they have thoughts within them that bring perfect peace as soon as they look at them. And I say that peace is nothing other than a well-ordered mind. Constantly give yourself this retreat, then, and renew yourself. Let your principles be brief and fundamental, sufficient, as soon as you return to them, to cleanse your soul completely and send you back without any discontent toward the things you return to. What are you dissatisfied with? People's badness? Recall this conclusion: rational creatures exist for one another, endurance is part of justice, and people do wrong involuntarily. Consider how many people, after mutual hostility, suspicion, hatred, and fighting, have already been laid out dead and reduced to ashes. Be at peace at last. Perhaps you are dissatisfied with the share the universe assigns you. Recall this alternative: either providence exists, or atoms come together by chance. Or remember the arguments proving that the world is a kind of political community, and be at peace at last. Perhaps bodily things will still seize hold of you. Consider further that the mind does not mingle with the breath, whether it moves gently or violently, once it has separated itself and discovered its own power. Think too of everything you have heard and accepted about pain and pleasure, and be at peace at last. Perhaps the desire for what is called fame will torment you. See how soon everything is forgotten, the chaos of infinite time on either side of the present, the emptiness of applause, the changeability and lack of judgment of those who pretend to offer praise, and the narrow space within which that praise is confined. Be at peace at last. The whole earth is a point. How small a corner of it is your dwelling, how few people are in it, and what sort of people are those who will praise you?

This, then, remains: remember to retreat into this little territory of your own. Above all, do not distract or strain yourself. Be free, and look at things as a man, as a human being, as a citizen, as a mortal. Among the things nearest to hand to which you turn, keep these two. First, things do not touch the soul: they are outside it and remain unmoving, while our disturbances come only from the judgment within. Second, all these things you see change at once and will cease to exist. Constantly remember how many of these changes you have already witnessed. The universe is transformation; life is judgment.

If our intellectual part is shared, then the reason by which we are rational beings is shared too. If so, the reason that tells us what to do and what not to do is also shared. If so, there is a shared law. If so, we are fellow citizens. If so, we are members of a political community. If so, the world is, in a way, a state. What other common political community could anyone say the whole human race belongs to? From there, from this common political community, also come our intellectual faculty, our reasoning faculty, and our capacity for law. Where else do they come from? My earthly part is a portion given to me from a certain earth; my watery part comes from another element; my hot and fiery part from some particular source. Nothing comes from nothing, just as nothing returns to nonexistence. In the same way, the intellectual part comes from some source.

Death, like birth, is a mystery of nature: a coming together from the same elements and a breaking apart into those same elements. Altogether it is nothing to be ashamed of, since it is neither contrary to the nature of a rational creature nor contrary to the reason of our constitution.

It is natural, a matter of necessity, that such people should do these things. Someone who refuses to accept this would refuse to let a fig tree have sap. But remember this above all: in a very short time both you and that person will be dead, and soon not even your names will remain.

Remove your judgment, and the complaint, I have been harmed, is removed. Remove the complaint, I have been harmed, and the harm is removed.

What does not make someone worse than they were does not make their life worse either, nor does it harm them from outside or from within.

The nature of what benefits the whole has been compelled to do this.

Consider that everything that happens happens justly. If you observe carefully, you will find this is so. I mean not only in terms of the continuous sequence of things, but in terms of justice, as though it were done by someone assigning each thing its proper value. Continue observing as you have begun. Whatever you do, do it together with this: being good, in the sense in which a person is properly understood to be good. Keep to this in every action.

Do not judge things as the person who wrongs you judges them, or as they want you to judge them. Look at things as they truly are.

A person should always have these two rules ready. First, do only what the reason of the governing and lawgiving faculty suggests for the benefit of people. Second, change your judgment if someone is at hand who corrects you and moves you away from a judgment. But this change must come only from a definite conviction about what is just or serves the common benefit, or something similar, rather than because it seems pleasant or brings you a reputation.

Do you have reason? I do. Then why do you not use it? If it does its own work, what else do you want?

You have existed as a part. You will disappear into what produced you—or rather, through transformation you will be received back into its generative principle.

Many grains of frankincense on the same altar: one falls before another, another falls later. It makes no difference.

Within ten days you will seem a god to those to whom you now seem a beast and an ape, if you return to your principles and the reverence of reason.

Do not act as though you were going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over you. While you live, while it is in your power, be good.

How much trouble someone avoids by paying attention only to what they do themselves, so that it may be just and pure, instead of looking to see what their neighbor says, does, or thinks. Or, as Agathon says, do not look around at other people's corrupt conduct, but run straight along the line without leaving it.

Someone who intensely desires fame after death does not consider that every person who remembers them will also die very soon, and then their successors too, until all remembrance is extinguished as it passes through people who foolishly admire and perish. But suppose those who remember are immortal, and the remembrance is immortal too. What does that mean to you? I am asking what it means to the living, rather than what it means to the dead. What is praise, except insofar as it has some use? For you now reject nature's gift at the wrong time, clinging to something else.

Everything that is beautiful in any way is beautiful in itself and complete in itself, without praise being any part of it. A thing becomes neither worse nor better through being praised. I say this also about things ordinary people call beautiful, such as material things and works of art. What is truly beautiful needs nothing else, any more than law, truth, benevolence, or modesty does. Which of these is beautiful because it is praised, or spoiled because it is blamed? Is an emerald worse than it was if it is not praised? Or gold, ivory, purple cloth, a lyre, a small knife, a flower, a shrub?

If souls continue to exist, how has the air room for them from all eternity? But how has the earth room for the bodies of those buried since such distant times? Here, these bodies change after lasting for some period, whatever it may be, and their dissolution makes room for other dead bodies. In the same way, souls that pass into the air, after existing there for some time, are transformed and dispersed. They take on a fiery nature as they are received into the universe's generative intelligence, and in this way make room for fresh souls that come to dwell there. This is the answer someone might give on the assumption that souls continue to exist. But we must consider not only the number of bodies buried in this way, but also the number of animals eaten every day by us and by other animals. How many are consumed and, in a way, buried in the bodies of those feeding on them! Nevertheless, the earth receives them through their bodies' conversion into blood and their transformation into the airy or fiery element.

What is the investigation into the truth of this matter? Dividing it into what is material and what causes its form.

Do not be whirled around. In every movement, attend to justice, and with every impression, preserve your power of understanding.

Everything in harmony with you is in harmony with me, O universe. Nothing is too early or too late for me if it comes in due time for you. Everything your seasons bring is fruit to me, O nature. All things come from you, all things are in you, and all things return to you. The poet says, Dear city of Cecrops. Will you not say, Dear city of Zeus?

Occupy yourself with few things, says the philosopher, if you want peace. But consider whether it would be better to say: Do what is necessary and whatever the reason of a naturally social creature requires, in the way it requires. This brings both the peace that comes from doing well and the peace that comes from doing few things. Most of what we say and do is unnecessary. Remove it, and you will have more leisure and less uneasiness. So on every occasion a person should ask: Is this one of the unnecessary things? Remove unnecessary thoughts as well as unnecessary actions, so that superfluous actions do not follow.

Try how the life of a good person suits you: the life of someone satisfied with their share of the whole, with their own just actions and benevolent disposition.

Have you seen those things? Look at these as well. Do not disturb yourself. Make yourself entirely simple. Does someone do wrong? They do wrong to themselves. Has something happened to you? Well, from the beginning, everything that happens has been allotted and spun out to you from the universe. In a word, your life is short. Turn the present to good use with the help of reason and justice. Be sober in your relaxation.

Either there is a well-ordered universe, or a chaos thrown together—yet still a universe. But can a certain order exist in you and disorder in the whole? And this when all things are so separated, spread out, and responsive to one another?

A dark character, an effeminate character, a stubborn character; bestial, childish, animal, stupid, counterfeit, foul-mouthed, fraudulent, tyrannical.

If someone who does not know what is in the universe is a stranger to it, someone who does not know what is happening in it is no less a stranger. A person who flees social reason is a runaway. A person who closes the eyes of understanding is blind. A person who needs someone else and does not have within themselves everything useful for life is poor. A person who withdraws and separates themselves from the reason of our common nature through dissatisfaction with what happens is an abscess on the universe: the same nature produces these events and has also produced you. Someone who tears their own soul from the soul of rational creatures, which is one, is a fragment torn from the state.

One is a philosopher without a tunic, another without a book. Here is another, half naked: I have no bread, he says, and I hold to reason. I do not obtain a living from my learning, and I hold to my reason.

Love the art you have learned, however humble it may be, and be content with it. Pass through the rest of life like someone who has entrusted everything they have to the gods with their whole soul, making yourself neither anyone's tyrant nor anyone's slave.

Consider the time of Vespasian, for example. You will see all these things: people marrying, bringing up children, sick, dying, making war, feasting, trading, farming, flattering, stubbornly arrogant, suspicious, plotting, wishing for others to die, complaining about the present, loving, piling up treasure, desiring the consulship or royal power. Well, those people's life no longer exists at all. Move again to the time of Trajan. Again, everything is the same. Their life too is gone. In the same way, look at other periods of time and entire nations. See how many people, after great efforts, soon fell and dissolved into the elements. Above all, think of those you have known yourself who distracted themselves with idle things and neglected to do what accorded with their proper constitution, to hold firmly to it, and to be content with it. Here you must remember that the attention given to everything has its proper value and proportion. Then you will not be dissatisfied if you apply yourself to smaller matters no more than is fitting.

Words once familiar are now outdated. In the same way, the names of those famous long ago are now, in a way, outdated: Camillus, Caeso, Volesus, Leonnatus, and a little later Scipio and Cato, then Augustus, then Hadrian and Antoninus. All things soon pass away and become a mere story, and complete oblivion soon buries them. I say this of those who have shone extraordinarily. As for the rest, as soon as they have breathed their last they are gone, and no one speaks of them. To bring the matter to an end, what is even everlasting remembrance? A mere nothing. What, then, should we devote our serious efforts to? This alone: just thoughts, actions that serve our life together, words that never lie, and a disposition that gladly accepts everything that happens as necessary, as customary, as flowing from a principle and source of the same kind.

Give yourself willingly to Clotho, one of the Fates, allowing her to spin your thread into whatever things she pleases.

Everything lasts only a day: both what remembers and what is remembered.

Constantly observe that all things happen through change. Accustom yourself to considering that the nature of the universe loves nothing so much as changing existing things and making new things like them. Everything that exists is, in a way, the seed of what will be. But you are thinking only of seeds cast into the earth or into a womb. That is a very ordinary notion.

You will soon die, and you are not yet simple, free from disturbances, or free of the suspicion that outside things can hurt you. You are not yet kindly disposed toward everyone, nor do you yet locate wisdom solely in acting justly.

Examine people's governing principles, even those of the wise: what sorts of things they avoid and what sorts they pursue.

What is evil for you does not lie in someone else's governing mind, nor in any alteration or change of your bodily covering. Where is it, then? In the part of you that has the power to form judgments about evils. Let this power refrain from forming such judgments, and all is well. Even if what is nearest to it, the poor body, is cut, burned, filled with pus and decay, let the part that judges these things remain at peace. That is, let it judge that nothing that can happen equally to a bad person and a good one is either bad or good. What happens equally to someone living contrary to nature and someone living according to nature is neither according to nature nor contrary to nature.

Constantly regard the universe as one living being, with one substance and one soul. Observe how all things relate to one perception, the perception of this one living being; how all things act with one movement; and how all things are cooperating causes of everything that exists. Observe too the continuous spinning of the thread and the interweaving of the web.

You are a little soul carrying a corpse around, as Epictetus used to say.

It is no evil for things to undergo change, and no good for things to continue existing as a result of change.

Time is like a river made up of the events that happen, a violent stream. As soon as something has been seen, it is carried away, and something else takes its place. That too will be carried away.

Everything that happens is as familiar and well known as the rose in spring and the fruit in summer. Disease and death are like this, as are slander, treachery, and everything else that delights fools or troubles them.

In the sequence of things, what follows is always fittingly joined to what came before. This sequence is no mere list of disconnected things with only a necessary succession; it is a rational connection. Just as all existing things are harmoniously arranged together, things coming into existence display a certain wonderful relationship, rather than merely succeeding one another.

Always remember Heraclitus's saying: the death of earth is to become water, the death of water is to become air, and the death of air is to become fire—and the reverse. Think too of someone who forgets where the road leads, and of how people quarrel with what they are most constantly in communion with: the reason that governs the universe. Things they encounter every day seem strange to them. Consider that we should not act and speak as though we were asleep, since even in sleep we seem to act and speak. And we should not simply act and speak as we have been taught, like children learning from their parents.

If a god told you that you would die tomorrow or certainly the day after tomorrow, you would not care much whether it was the third day or tomorrow, unless you were utterly small-spirited. How small the difference is! Likewise, consider it no great thing to die after as many years as you can name rather than tomorrow.

Constantly think how many doctors are dead after often furrowing their brows over the sick; how many astrologers after predicting others' deaths with great pretensions; how many philosophers after endless discussions of death or immortality; how many heroes after killing thousands; how many tyrants who used their power over people's lives with terrible insolence, as though immortal themselves. Think how many cities are entirely dead, so to speak: Helice, Pompeii, Herculaneum, and countless others. Add to the reckoning everyone you have known, one after another. One person buries another, then is laid out dead themselves, and another buries them—all within a short time. To conclude, always observe how short-lived and worthless human things are. What was yesterday a little mucus will tomorrow be a mummy or ashes. Pass through this brief stretch of time according to nature, then, and end your journey contentedly, as a ripe olive falls, blessing the nature that produced it and thanking the tree on which it grew.

Be like the headland against which the waves continually break. It stands firm and calms the fury of the water around it.

Am I unhappy because this has happened to me? No: I am happy, though this has happened to me, because I remain free from pain, neither crushed by the present nor afraid of the future. This sort of thing could have happened to anyone, but not everyone would have remained free from pain on such an occasion. Why, then, is that a misfortune rather than this a good fortune? Do you always call something a person's misfortune when it is no departure from human nature? Does something seem to you a departure from human nature when it is not contrary to the will of human nature? Well, you know nature's will. Will what has happened prevent you from being just, generous in spirit, self-controlled, prudent, protected against thoughtless judgments and falsehood? Will it prevent you from having modesty, freedom, and everything else whose presence gives human nature all that belongs to it? Remember too, on every occasion that troubles you, to apply this principle: this is no misfortune; bearing it nobly is good fortune.

A common but still useful aid to looking down on death is to review those who have clung tenaciously to life. What more have they gained than those who died early? In the end they too lie in their tombs somewhere: Cadicianus, Fabius, Julianus, Lepidus, or anyone else like them, who carried many people out for burial and then were carried out themselves. The entire interval between birth and death is small. Consider how much trouble, what sort of company, and what a feeble body accompany the effort of passing through it. Do not, then, consider life something of any value. Look at the immensity of time behind you and the time before you, another boundless space. In this infinity, what difference is there between someone who lives three days and someone who lives three generations?

Always take the short way. The short way is the natural one: say and do everything according to the soundest reason. Such a purpose frees someone from trouble and warfare, and from all cunning and showy display.

Book Five

In the morning, when you get up unwillingly, keep this thought before you: I am getting up to do a human being's work. Why am I dissatisfied if I am going to do the things for which I exist and for which I was brought into the world? Or was I made to lie under the bedclothes and keep myself warm? But this is more pleasant. Do you exist, then, to enjoy yourself and do nothing at all in the way of action or effort? Do you not see the little plants, the little birds, the ants, the spiders, and the bees working together to put their respective parts of the universe in order? Are you unwilling to do a human being's work? Will you not hurry to do what accords with your nature? But rest is necessary too. It is necessary. Yet nature has set limits to that too. She has set limits to eating and drinking, and you go beyond them, beyond what is enough. In your actions, however, you stop short of what you can do. So you do not love yourself. If you did, you would love your nature and what she wills. Those who love their particular arts exhaust themselves working at them, unwashed and without food. But you value your own nature less than a woodturner values turning, a dancer dancing, a lover of money their money, or a vain person their little glory. When such people passionately care about something, they would rather neither eat nor sleep than fail to perfect what they care about. Are actions that concern our life together more contemptible in your eyes, and less worthy of your effort?

How easy it is to repel and wipe away every impression that is troublesome or unsuitable, and immediately be entirely at peace.

Judge every word and deed that accords with nature to be fitting for you. Do not be diverted by anyone's blame or words. If something is good to do or say, do not consider it unworthy of you. Those people have their own governing principle and follow their own movement. Pay no attention to these things, but go straight on, following your own nature and our common nature. The path of both is one.

I pass through what happens according to nature until I fall and rest, breathing out my breath into the element from which I draw it in each day, and falling upon the earth from which my father gathered the seed, my mother the blood, and my nurse the milk; the earth that has supplied me with food and drink for so many years, that bears me when I tread on it and misuse it for so many purposes.

You say people cannot admire the sharpness of your mind. So be it. But there are many other things of which you cannot say, I am not made for them by nature. Show, then, the qualities entirely within your power: sincerity, seriousness, endurance of hard work, aversion to pleasure, contentment with your portion and with few things, benevolence, frankness, no love of excess, freedom from triviality, generosity of spirit. Do you not see how many qualities you can immediately display, for which natural inability or unfitness offers no excuse? Yet you still willingly fall short. Does nature's failure to equip you compel you to complain, be stingy, flatter, find fault with your poor body, try to please people, make a great display, and be so restless in your mind? No, by the gods. You could have freed yourself from these things long ago. Only if you can truly be charged with being somewhat slow and dull in understanding must you make an effort about that too, neither neglecting it nor taking pleasure in your dullness.

One person, after serving another, is ready to enter it in their account as a favor granted. Another is not ready to do that, but still thinks of the other person as their debtor and remembers what they have done. A third, in a way, does not even know what they have done. They are like a vine that has produced grapes and seeks nothing more after yielding its proper fruit. Like a horse after running, a dog after tackling the game, or a bee after making honey, someone who has done a good deed does not call on others to come and see, but proceeds to another deed, just as a vine goes on to produce grapes again in season. Must someone, then, be among those who act like this, in a way without observing it? Yes. But observing what someone is doing is itself necessary. It may be said that a social creature characteristically perceives that they are working socially, and indeed wishes their partner in society to perceive it too. What you say is true, but you do not correctly understand what is being said here. For that reason you will become one of those I mentioned earlier, since they too are misled by a certain appearance of reason. But if you choose to understand the meaning of what is said, do not fear that this will cause you to neglect any social action.

A prayer of the Athenians: Rain, rain, O dear Zeus, on the Athenians' plowed fields and on the plains. In truth, we should either not pray at all or pray in this simple and noble way.

Just as we understand the saying that Aesculapius prescribed riding, bathing in cold water, or going without shoes for someone, we must understand the saying that the nature of the universe prescribed disease, mutilation, loss, or anything else of the kind for someone. In the first, medical case, prescribed means something like this: he prescribed it as a thing suited to producing that person's health. In the second case it means that what happens to each person is in a way set suitably for them according to their destiny. This is what we mean when we say things are suitable for us, as builders call squared stones in walls or pyramids suitable when they fit them to one another in some kind of connection. There is one fitness, one harmony, altogether. Just as all bodies make up the universe as the body it is, all existing causes make up necessity, or destiny, as the cause it is. Even completely ignorant people understand what I mean, since they say: Destiny brought this to that person. So this was brought and this was prescribed for them. Let us accept these things as we accept Aesculapius's prescriptions. Many of his prescriptions too are naturally unpleasant, but we accept them in the hope of health. Regard the perfecting and fulfillment of what our common nature judges good as you regard your own health. Accept everything that happens, even if it seems unpleasant, because it leads to the universe's health and the prosperity and happiness of Zeus, the universe. He would not have brought upon anyone what he has brought if it were not useful for the whole. Nor does the nature of anything, whatever it may be, cause anything unsuitable for what it directs. For two reasons, then, it is right to be content with what happens to you. First, it was done for you and prescribed for you and in a way referred to you, spun together with your destiny from the most ancient causes. Second, even what comes individually to each person contributes to the happiness and perfection of the power that governs the universe—indeed, even to its continued existence. The integrity of the whole is mutilated if you cut anything at all from the union and continuity either of its parts or of its causes. You do cut it off, as far as you can, when you are dissatisfied and try, in a way, to put something out of the way.

Do not be disgusted, discouraged, or dissatisfied if you fail to do everything according to right principles. When you fail, return again, and be content if most of what you do accords with human nature. Love what you return to. Do not return to philosophy as though she were a master. Be like those with sore eyes who apply a piece of sponge and egg, or like someone applying a plaster or soaking with water. Then you will not fail to obey reason, and you will find rest in it. Remember that philosophy requires only what your nature requires, but you want something else that is contrary to nature. Someone may object: But what is more agreeable than what I am doing? Is this not the very reason pleasure deceives us? Consider whether generosity of spirit, freedom, simplicity, evenness of mind, and piety are not more agreeable. What is more agreeable than wisdom itself, when you consider the security and happy course of everything that depends on the faculty of understanding and knowledge?

Things are so wrapped in obscurity that they have seemed entirely unintelligible to many philosophers, and not merely ordinary ones. Even the Stoics themselves find them difficult to understand. All our assent is changeable: where is the person who never changes? Turn your thoughts, then, to the objects themselves. Consider how short-lived and worthless they are, and that they may belong to a filthy wretch, a prostitute, or a robber. Then turn to the conduct of those who live with you. It is hardly possible to endure even the most agreeable of them, to say nothing of how someone can hardly endure themselves. In such darkness and dirt, in such constant change of substance and time, of movement and the things moved, I cannot imagine what deserves to be highly prized or even seriously pursued. Instead, a person's duty is to comfort themselves and wait for natural dissolution, without being annoyed by the delay, resting only in these principles: first, nothing will happen to me that does not accord with the nature of the universe; second, I have the power never to act contrary to my god and divine spirit, since no one can compel me to do so.

What am I now using my own soul for? On every occasion I must ask myself this and inquire: What is now in this part of me that they call the governing principle? Whose soul do I now have—that of a child, a young man, a weak woman, a tyrant, a domestic animal, or a wild beast?

We can learn what sorts of things seem good to the crowd even from this. If someone first conceives certain things as truly good—prudence, self-control, justice, courage—after conceiving them they will not endure hearing anything that conflicts with what is truly good. But if someone first conceives as good the things the crowd thinks good, they will listen to the comic writer's saying and readily accept it as very applicable. So even the crowd perceives the difference. Otherwise this saying would not offend and be rejected in the first case, while we accept it as apt and witty when it is said of wealth and the means that promote luxury and fame. Go on, then, and ask whether we should value and regard as good those things to which, once first conceived in the mind, the comic writer's words might fittingly apply: someone who has them, through sheer abundance, has nowhere to relieve themselves.

I am composed of what gives form and of matter. Neither will perish into nonexistence, just as neither came into existence from nonexistence. Every part of me will therefore change into some part of the universe, which will again change into another part of the universe, and so on forever. Through such change I too exist, and those who begot me, and so on forever in the other direction. Nothing prevents us from saying this, even if the universe is governed through definite periods of revolution.

Reason and the art of reasoning, philosophy, are powers sufficient for themselves and their own works. They move from a first principle of their own and make their way to the end set before them. This is why such actions are called Catorthoseis, or right actions: the word signifies that they proceed by the right road.

None of these things should be called a person's own if they do not belong to a person as a human being. They are not required of a human being, human nature does not promise them, and they are not the means by which human nature reaches its end. So neither the human end nor what helps accomplish that end lies in these things—and what helps toward that end is what is good. Besides, if any of these things did belong to a human being, it would be wrong to despise them and set oneself against them. Someone who showed they did not want these things would not deserve praise, and someone who deprived themselves of any of them would not be good, if these things really were good. But as things are, the more of these or similar things someone denies themselves, or the more patiently they endure being deprived of any of them, the better a person they are, in exactly the same degree.

The character of your mind will be like your habitual thoughts, since thoughts dye the soul. Dye it, then, with a continuous series of thoughts like these: where a person can live, they can also live well. But they must live in a palace. Well, they can also live well in a palace. Consider also that each thing has been formed for the purpose for which it has been formed, and it is carried toward that purpose. Its end lies in what it is carried toward, and where its end lies, there also lie its benefit and its good. The good of a rational creature is society. That we are made for society has been shown already. Is it not clear that the lower exists for the sake of the higher? Things with life are higher than things without life, and among things with life, those with reason are higher.

Seeking the impossible is madness, and it is impossible for bad people never to do something of this kind.

Nothing happens to anyone that they are not naturally formed to bear. The same things happen to someone else, and either because they do not see that they have happened or because they want to show a great spirit, they stand firm and remain unharmed. It is shameful, then, for ignorance and conceit to be stronger than wisdom.

Things themselves do not touch the soul in the least. They do not enter it and cannot turn or move it. The soul alone turns and moves itself, and for itself it makes the things presented to it take whatever character it judges appropriate.

In one respect, a human being is the nearest thing to me, insofar as I must do good to people and endure them. But insofar as some people make themselves obstacles to my proper actions, a human being becomes one of the things indifferent to me, like the sun, the wind, or a wild beast. These may indeed impede my action, but they cannot impede my impulses and disposition, which have the power to act conditionally and to change. The mind converts and changes every hindrance to its activity into an aid. So what hinders becomes something that furthers an action, and an obstacle on the road helps us along that road.

Revere what is best in the universe: what makes use of everything and directs everything. In the same way, revere what is best in yourself, since it is of the same kind. In yourself too, this is what makes use of everything else, and it directs your life.

What does no harm to the state does no harm to the citizen. Whenever harm appears, apply this rule: if the state is not harmed by this, neither am I. But if the state is harmed, you must not be angry with the person who harms it. Show them where their error lies.

Often think of how rapidly things pass by and disappear, both existing things and things coming into being. Substance is like a river in continual flow, things' activities change constantly, and causes operate in endlessly varied ways. Hardly anything stands still. Consider what is close beside you: the boundless abyss of past and future in which everything disappears. How can someone fail to be a fool if these things puff them up or plague them and make them miserable? They trouble them only for a time, and a short one.

Think of the universal substance, of which you have a very small portion; of universal time, of which a short, indivisible interval has been assigned to you; and of what is fixed by destiny, and how small a part of it you are.

Does someone else wrong me? Let them look to it. They have their own disposition and their own activity. I now have what universal nature now wills me to have, and I do what my nature now wills me to do.

Let the part of your soul that leads and governs remain undisturbed by movements in the flesh, whether of pleasure or pain. Let it not join with them, but mark out its own boundary and confine those feelings to their own parts. When these feelings rise into the mind through the other sympathy that naturally exists in a body that is one whole, you must not try to resist the sensation, since it is natural. But let the governing part refrain from adding, on its own, the judgment that the sensation is either good or bad.

Live with the gods. Someone lives with the gods when they constantly show them that their own soul is satisfied with what is assigned to it, and that it does everything the divine spirit wishes. Zeus has given this spirit to everyone as their guardian and guide, a portion of himself. It is each person's understanding and reason.

Are you angry with someone whose armpits stink? Are you angry with someone whose mouth smells foul? What good will this anger do you? They have such a mouth and such armpits: such an odor must necessarily come from such things. But the person has reason, someone will say, and can discover where they offend if they take the trouble. I wish you joy of your discovery. Well then, you have reason too. Use your rational faculty to stir their rational faculty. Show them their error; advise them. If they listen, you will cure them, and anger is unnecessary. Neither tragic actor nor prostitute.

As you intend to live when you have gone out, so you have the power to live here. But if people will not permit you, then leave life, yet as though you were suffering no harm. The house is smoky, and I leave it. Why do you think this is any trouble? But as long as nothing of this sort drives me out, I stay. I am free, and no one will keep me from doing what I choose. I choose to do what accords with the nature of a rational and social creature.

The intelligence of the universe is social. So it has made lower things for the sake of higher ones and fitted the higher ones to one another. You see how it has subordinated, coordinated, assigned each thing its proper share, and brought the best things into harmony with one another.

How have you behaved up to now toward the gods, your parents, brothers, children, teachers, those who cared for you in infancy, your friends, relatives, and slaves? Consider whether you have behaved toward them all in such a way that this can be said of you:

Never wronged a person in deed or word.

Recall how many things you have passed through and how many you have been able to endure; that your life's history is now complete and your service ended; how many beautiful things you have seen; how many pleasures and pains you have disregarded; how many things called honorable you have spurned; and to how many ill-disposed people you have shown kindness.

Why do unskilled and ignorant souls disturb someone with skill and knowledge? What soul, then, has skill and knowledge? One that knows beginning and end, and knows the reason that pervades all substance and governs the universe throughout all time in fixed periods of revolution.

Soon, very soon, you will be ashes or a skeleton, and either a name or not even a name. A name is sound and echo. The things highly valued in life are empty, rotten, and trivial, like little dogs biting one another and little children quarreling, laughing, and then immediately crying. But faithfulness, modesty, justice, and truth have fled

Up to Olympus from the wide-spread earth.

What still holds you here, then, if the objects of sense easily change and never stand still, the organs of perception are dull and readily receive false impressions, and the poor soul itself is an exhalation from blood? To have a good reputation in such a world is an empty thing. Why do you not wait peacefully for your end, whether it is extinction or removal to another state? Until that time comes, what is enough? What else but to revere the gods and bless them, do good to people, and practice tolerance and self-restraint? As for everything beyond the bounds of this poor flesh and breath, remember that it is neither yours nor within your power.

You can pass your life in a steady flow of happiness if you can follow the right way and think and act rightly. These two things are shared by the soul of God, the human soul, and the soul of every rational being: to be unhindered by another, and to hold that good consists in a disposition toward justice and the practice of it, letting your desire find its end there.

If this is neither my own badness nor a result of my own badness, and the common welfare is not injured, why am I troubled by it? What harm is there to the common welfare?

Do not let the appearance of things carry you along thoughtlessly. Help everyone according to your ability and their fitness. If they have suffered a loss in matters that are indifferent, do not imagine it to be an injury: that is a bad habit. But just as the old man, when leaving, asked for his foster-child's top back, remembering that it was a top, so you should do in this case too.

When you are calling out on the Rostra, have you forgotten, man, what these things are? Yes, but these people care greatly about them. Will you too, then, be made a fool by these things? I was once fortunate, but I lost it, I do not know how. But fortunate means that someone has assigned good fortune to themselves. Good fortune is a good disposition of the soul, good emotions, and good actions.

Book Six

The substance of the universe is obedient and compliant. The reason that governs it has no cause within itself for doing evil: it has no malice, does no evil to anything, and harms nothing. All things are made and brought to completion according to this reason.

Let it make no difference to you whether you are cold or warm, as long as you are doing your duty; whether you are drowsy or have had enough sleep; whether people speak badly of you or praise you; whether you are dying or doing something else. For the act by which we die is one of life's acts. In this act too, then, it is enough to do well what we have in hand.

Look within. Do not let the particular quality of anything, or its value, escape you.

All existing things soon change. They will either be reduced to vapor, if indeed all substance is one, or they will be dispersed.

The reason that governs knows its own disposition, what it does, and the material it works on.

The best way to avenge yourself is to avoid becoming like the person who wronged you.

Take pleasure in one thing and rest in it: passing from one act for the good of others to another, with God in your thoughts.

The ruling principle is what rouses and directs itself. As it makes itself what it is and what it wishes to be, it also makes everything that happens appear to itself as it wishes.

Every single thing is accomplished in accordance with the nature of the universe. Certainly nothing is accomplished in accordance with any other nature: neither a nature that contains this one from outside, nor one contained within it, nor one external to it and independent of it.

The universe is either confusion, things entangled with one another, and dispersion; or it is unity, order, and providence. If it is the first, why do I want to linger in a chance combination of things and such disorder? Why do I care about anything beyond how I will finally become earth? And why am I disturbed? My elements will be dispersed whatever I do. But if the other possibility is true, I revere, I stand firm, and I trust the one who governs.

When circumstances have forced you into some disturbance, return quickly to yourself. Do not remain out of tune longer than the pressure lasts. By continually returning to harmony, you will gain greater mastery over it.

If you had both a stepmother and a mother, you would do your duty toward your stepmother, but you would still keep returning to your mother. Let the court and philosophy be your stepmother and mother now. Return frequently to philosophy and rest in her. Through her, what you encounter at court becomes bearable to you, and you become bearable at court.

When meat and other such food are set before us, we can form the impression that this is the dead body of a fish, this the dead body of a bird or a pig. Again, this Falernian wine is only a little grape juice, and this purple robe is sheep's wool dyed with the blood of a shellfish. These impressions reach the things themselves and penetrate them, so that we see what kinds of things they are. We should act in just this way throughout life. When things seem most worthy of our approval, we should lay them bare, look at their worthlessness, and strip away all the words that exalt them. Outward show is a powerful corrupter of reason. When you feel most certain that you are occupied with things worth your effort, that is when it deceives you most. Consider, then, what Crates says about Xenocrates himself.

Most things admired by the crowd belong to the most general classes of objects: those held together by cohesion or natural organization, such as stones, wood, fig trees, vines, and olive trees. People with a little more reason admire things held together by a living principle, such as flocks and herds. Those who are better instructed admire things held together by a rational soul, though not a soul with a universal outlook. It is rational only in being skilled in some art or expert in some other way, or simply in possessing a number of slaves. But the person who values a rational soul with a universal outlook, suited for life in a community, cares for nothing else. Above all, he keeps his soul in a state and an activity consistent with reason and social life, and he cooperates toward this end with others of the same kind as himself.

Some things hurry into existence, and others hurry out of it. Part of what is coming into existence has already been extinguished. Movements and changes continually renew the world, just as the unbroken course of time continually renews the infinite duration of the ages. In this flowing stream, where nothing stays, which of the things rushing past would a person value highly? It would be like falling in love with one of the sparrows flying by when it has already passed out of sight. Every person's life itself is something like this, like the exhalation of the blood and the breathing of air. Drawing air in once and giving it back, as we do at every moment, is just like giving back our whole power of breathing. You received it at your birth, yesterday or the day before, and give it back to the element from which you first drew it.

Neither transpiration, as in plants, nor breathing, as in domestic animals and wild beasts, deserves to be valued. Nor does receiving impressions from the appearances of things, or being moved by desires like puppets by strings, or gathering in herds, or being nourished by food. This last is just like separating and getting rid of the useless part of our food. What, then, deserves to be valued? Being welcomed with clapping hands? No. Nor should we value the clapping of tongues, for the praise of the crowd is a clapping of tongues. Suppose you have given up this worthless thing called fame. What remains that deserves to be valued? In my opinion, this: directing and restraining yourself in accordance with your proper constitution. All occupations and arts lead toward this end. Every art aims to make the thing it produces fit for the work it was made to do. The vine grower who cares for the vine, the horse trainer, and the dog trainer all seek this end. The education and instruction of the young also aim at something. This aim gives education and instruction their value. If all is well with this, you will seek nothing else. Will you not stop valuing so many other things too? Otherwise, you will be neither free, nor able to provide for your own happiness, nor free from passion. You will necessarily envy, be jealous of, and suspect those who can take these things away, and plot against those who possess what you value. A person who wants any of these things must be completely disturbed, and must often find fault with the gods as well. But revering and honoring your own mind will make you content with yourself, in harmony with society, and in agreement with the gods: praising everything they give and have ordered.

The elements move upward, downward, and all around. But the movement of virtue belongs to none of these directions. It is something more divine, advancing along a barely noticeable path and going happily on its way.

How strangely people act! They refuse to praise people living in their own time and alongside them, yet attach great value to being praised by posterity, by people they have never seen and never will see. This is much the same as being distressed because people who lived before you did not praise you.

If something is difficult for you to accomplish, do not think it impossible for a human being. If something is possible for a human being and consistent with human nature, think that you too can achieve it.

Suppose someone scratches you with his nails during athletic exercises, and wounds you by crashing into your head. We show no annoyance, take no offense, and do not afterward suspect him of treachery. Yet we stay on guard against him, without treating him as an enemy or becoming suspicious: we quietly get out of his way. Let your behavior be like this in every other part of life. Let us overlook many things in people who are like our opponents in the gymnasium. As I said, we can get out of the way without suspicion or hatred.

If anyone can convince me and show me that my thinking or actions are wrong, I will gladly change. I seek the truth, which has never injured anyone. The person who persists in error and ignorance is injured.

I do my duty. Other things do not trouble me. They are either things without life, things without reason, or things that have wandered and do not know the way.

As for animals without reason, and generally all things and objects, use them in a generous and liberal spirit, since you have reason and they do not. But behave toward human beings in a social spirit, since they have reason. Call on the gods on every occasion, and do not worry about how long you will be able to do this. Even three hours spent in this way are enough.

Death brought Alexander the Macedonian and his groom to the same state. Either they were received into the same generative principles of the universe, or they were equally dispersed among the atoms.

Consider how many things take place in each of us in the same indivisible instant: things concerning the body and things concerning the soul. Then you will not wonder if many more things, or rather everything that comes into existence in the one whole that we call the Cosmos, exist in it at the same time.

If someone asked you how to spell the name Antoninus, would you strain your voice to say each letter? And if they grew angry, would you become angry too? Would you not continue calmly and count off each letter? In the same way, remember in this life that every duty is made up of certain parts. Your duty is to attend to these parts, and without becoming disturbed or angry at those who are angry with you, continue on your way and finish what is set before you.

How cruel it is to prevent people from striving for what seems to them suited to their nature and beneficial! Yet in a way you prevent them when you are annoyed because they do wrong. They are certainly drawn toward things because they think them suited to their nature and beneficial to them. But these things are not so. Teach them, then, and show them without anger.

Death is the end of impressions received through the senses, of the pulling of the strings that move the appetites, of thoughts moving from one thing to another, and of service to the flesh.

It is shameful for the soul to give way first in this life when your body has not given way.

Take care not to be turned into a Caesar, not to be dyed with that dye: such things happen. Keep yourself simple, good, pure, serious, free from affectation, a friend of justice, a worshipper of the gods, kind, affectionate, and energetic in every proper act. Strive to remain what philosophy wished to make you. Revere the gods and help people. Life is short. This earthly life has only one fruit: a pious disposition and acts for the good of others. Do everything as a disciple of Antoninus. Remember his constancy in every act consistent with reason, his evenness in everything, his piety, his serene expression, his gentleness, his disregard for empty fame, and his efforts to understand things. Remember how he never let anything pass without first examining it with the greatest care and understanding it clearly; how he bore with those who blamed him unjustly without blaming them in return; how he did nothing in a hurry; how he refused to listen to slander; and how precisely he examined people's conduct and actions. He was not given to reproaching people, not timid, not suspicious, and not a sophist. Remember how little satisfied him in lodging, bed, clothing, food, and servants; how hardworking and patient he was; and how, because he ate sparingly, he could last until evening without needing even to relieve himself except at the usual hour. Remember his firmness and consistency in friendship; how he allowed those who opposed his opinions to speak freely; the pleasure he took when anyone showed him something better; and how religious he was without superstition. Imitate all this, so that when your last hour comes, your conscience may be as good as his was.

Return to your sober senses and call yourself back. Once you have roused yourself from sleep and realized that what troubled you was only dreams, look at the things around you in your waking hours as you looked at those dreams.

I consist of a little body and a soul. To this little body, everything is indifferent, since it cannot perceive differences. To the understanding, only things that are not the products of its own activity are indifferent. Everything produced by its own activity is in its power. Even among these, however, only the acts directed toward the present are in its power; the mind's future and past activities are, for the present, indifferent too.

Neither the hand's labor nor the foot's is contrary to nature, as long as the foot does a foot's work and the hand a hand's. Likewise, a human being's labor as a human being is not contrary to nature as long as it does what belongs to a human being. If the labor is not contrary to his nature, it is not an evil to him either.

How many pleasures have been enjoyed by robbers, murderers of their fathers, and tyrants.

Do you not see how craftspeople accommodate themselves up to a point to people unskilled in their craft? Yet they hold to the principles of their art and will not endure departing from them. Is it not strange if the architect and the physician respect the principles of their own arts more than a human being respects his own reason, which he shares with the gods?

Asia and Europe are corners of the universe. The whole sea is a drop in the universe. Mount Athos is a little clod in the universe. The whole present is a point in eternity. Everything is small, changeable, perishable. Everything comes from that universal ruling power, either proceeding from it directly or following as a consequence. Accordingly, the lion's gaping jaws, poisonous things, and every harmful thing, such as thorns and mud, are byproducts of what is grand and beautiful. Do not imagine that they are of a different kind from what you revere. Form a just opinion of the source of everything.

The person who has seen the things of the present has seen everything: all that has happened from all eternity and all that will happen through time without end. All things are of one family and one form.

Frequently consider how all things in the universe are connected and related to one another. In a way, everything is intertwined, and in this way everything is friendly to everything else. One thing follows another in order, through their active movement, their working together, and the unity of their substance.

Adapt yourself to the things among which your lot has been cast. Love the people among whom you have been assigned your portion, and love them sincerely.

Every instrument, tool, or vessel is in good condition if it does what it was made for, even though its maker is absent. But in things held together by nature, the power that made them is within them and remains there. All the more, then, you should revere this power and understand that if you live and act according to its will, everything in you accords with intelligence. In the same way, the things belonging to the universe accord with intelligence.

If you suppose anything outside your power to be good for you or evil, it necessarily follows that, if such an evil happens to you or you lose such a good, you will blame the gods and hate people too: those responsible for the misfortune or loss, or those you suspect may be responsible. Indeed, we commit many injustices because we distinguish between these things, instead of regarding them as indifferent. But if we judge only what is within our power to be good or bad, no reason remains either to find fault with God or to stand in hostility toward another person.

We are all working together toward one end, some knowingly and deliberately, others without knowing what they do. Even people asleep are workers and partners in what happens in the universe, as Heraclitus, I think, says. But people cooperate in different ways. Even those who find fault with what happens, and those who try to oppose and hinder it, contribute abundantly: the universe needed even people like these. Your remaining task is to understand what kind of workers you place yourself among. The one who rules everything will certainly make proper use of you, and receive you into some group of the partners whose labors lead to one end. But do not be the kind of part represented by the worthless, ridiculous verse in the play that Chrysippus speaks of.

Does the sun undertake the work of the rain, or Aesculapius the work of the Fruit-bearer, the earth? What about each of the stars? Are they not different, yet working together toward the same end?

If the gods have made decisions about me and what must happen to me, their decisions are good. It is difficult even to imagine a deity without forethought. And why should they wish to harm me? What benefit would that bring them, or the whole that is the particular object of their providence? If they have made no decisions about me individually, they have certainly made decisions about the whole, at least. I should gladly accept and be content with what follows as a consequence of this general arrangement. But if they decide nothing at all, which it is wicked to believe—or if we do believe it, let us neither sacrifice, pray, nor swear by them, nor do anything else that we do as though the gods were present and lived with us—if, nevertheless, the gods decide nothing about what concerns us, I can make decisions about myself and inquire into what is useful. What is useful to every person is what accords with his own constitution and nature. My nature is rational and social. My city and country, insofar as I am Antoninus, is Rome; insofar as I am a human being, it is the world. Only what is useful to these cities, then, is useful to me.

Whatever happens to each person serves the interest of the whole. This might be enough. But if you observe further, you will also recognize this general truth: whatever benefits one person benefits others too. Here, however, take the word beneficial in its ordinary sense, applied to things in the middle category, neither good nor bad.

At the amphitheater and places like it, the constant sight of the same things and their sameness make the spectacle wearisome. So it is with the whole of life. Everything above and below is the same, and comes from the same. How long, then?

Keep thinking that people of every kind, engaged in every kind of pursuit and belonging to every nation, are dead. Let your thoughts descend even to Philistion, Phoebus, and Origanion. Now turn your thoughts to the other kinds of people. We too must go to the place where there are so many great orators and noble philosophers: Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Socrates; so many heroes of earlier times, and so many generals after them, and tyrants. Besides these are Eudoxus, Hipparchus, Archimedes, and others with keen natural talents, great minds, a love of labor, versatility, and confidence; people who even mocked the perishable, fleeting life of humanity, such as Menippus and others like him. Consider that all these have long been dust. What harm is this to them? And what harm to those whose names are entirely unknown? One thing here is worth a great deal: living your life in truth and justice, with goodwill even toward liars and unjust people.

When you wish to give yourself pleasure, think of the virtues of the people who live with you: one person's energy, another's modesty, a third's generosity, and some other good quality in a fourth. Nothing gives such pleasure as examples of the virtues displayed in the character of those who live with us, presenting themselves in as much abundance as possible. We must therefore keep them before us.

You are not dissatisfied, I suppose, because you weigh only so many Roman pounds rather than three hundred. Then do not be dissatisfied because you must live only so many years rather than more. As you are satisfied with the amount of substance assigned to you, be content with the time as well.

Let us try to persuade people. But act even against their will when the principles of justice lead that way. If, however, someone uses force to stand in your way, turn to contentment and tranquility, and at the same time use the obstacle to exercise some other virtue. Remember that your attempt was conditional: you did not wish to do the impossible. What, then, did you wish? An effort of this kind. But you achieve your aim if the things you were moved to do are not accomplished.

The lover of fame regards another person's activity as his own good; the lover of pleasure, his own sensations. But the person with understanding regards his own actions as his own good.

We have the power to hold no opinion about a thing and to remain undisturbed in our soul. Things themselves have no natural power to form our judgments.

Accustom yourself to listen carefully to what another person says, and as far as possible enter the speaker's mind.

What is not good for the swarm is not good for the bee either.

If sailors abused the helmsman, or the sick abused the doctor, would they listen to anyone else? Or how could the helmsman keep those aboard the ship safe, or the doctor keep his patients healthy?

How many of those who entered the world with me have already left it.

To a person with jaundice, honey tastes bitter. To those bitten by mad dogs, water causes fear. To little children, a ball is a wonderful thing. Why, then, am I angry? Do you think a false opinion has less power than the bile in someone with jaundice, or the poison in someone bitten by a mad dog?

No one will prevent you from living according to the reason of your own nature. Nothing will happen to you contrary to the reason of universal nature.

What kind of people are those whom people want to please? For what aims, and through what kinds of acts? How soon time will cover everything, and how much it has covered already.

Book Seven

What is badness? Something you have often seen. Whatever happens, keep in mind that it is something you have often seen. Everywhere, high and low, you will find the same things: the things that fill the histories of ancient times, the intervening ages, and our own day, and that fill cities and houses now. Nothing is new. Everything is familiar and short-lived.

How can our principles die unless the impressions and thoughts that correspond to them are extinguished? Yet you have the power to keep fanning these thoughts into flame. I can hold the opinion about anything that I ought to hold. If I can, why am I disturbed? Things external to my mind have no relation at all to my mind. Let your feelings be in this state, and you stand upright. You have the power to recover your life. Look at things again as you used to look at them. This is what recovering your life consists in.

The empty business of display, plays on the stage, flocks of sheep, herds, exercises with spears, a bone tossed to little dogs, a bit of bread thrown into fishponds, ants laboring and carrying burdens, frightened little mice running about, puppets pulled by strings: all alike. Your duty amid such things is to be good-humored and avoid an air of pride. Understand, however, that every person is worth just as much as the things he occupies himself with.

In conversation, attend to what is said; in every movement, observe what is being done. In the action, see immediately what end it serves; in the speech, watch carefully for what is meant.

Is my understanding sufficient for this or not? If it is, I use it for the work as an instrument given by universal nature. If it is not, I either withdraw from the work and give way to someone who can do it better, unless there is some reason I should not; or I do it as well as I can, taking as my helper someone who, with the aid of my ruling principle, can do what is now fitting and useful for the common good. Whatever I can do, alone or with someone else, should be directed to this alone: what is useful and well suited to society.

How many people celebrated by fame have been surrendered to oblivion! And how many who celebrated the fame of others have long been dead.

Do not be ashamed of being helped. Your business is to do your duty, like a soldier storming a town. What if you are lame and cannot climb the battlements alone, but can do so with another person's help?

Do not let the future disturb you. If you must come to it, you will come with the same reason that you now use for the present.

All things are intertwined, and their bond is holy. Hardly anything is unconnected to anything else. Things have been arranged together and combine to form the same ordered universe. There is one universe made up of all things, one god pervading all things, one substance, one law, one common reason in all intelligent beings, and one truth—if indeed there is also one perfection for all beings of the same stock who share in reason.

Everything material soon disappears into the substance of the whole. Every causal form is very soon taken back into universal reason. The memory of everything is very soon overwhelmed by time.

For a rational being, the same act is in accordance with nature and with reason.

Stand upright, or be made upright.

As the members of a body are united into one, so rational beings, though they exist separately, have been constituted for a single cooperation. You will perceive this more clearly if you often tell yourself: I am a member, melos, of the system of rational beings. But if, using the letter r, you say that you are a part, meros, you do not yet love people from your heart. Doing good does not yet delight you for its own sake. You still do it merely as something proper, rather than as doing good to yourself.

Let whatever comes from outside fall on the parts that can feel its effects. Those parts that feel it may complain, if they choose. But I am not injured unless I think that what has happened is an evil, and I have the power not to think so.

Whatever anyone does or says, I must be good. It is as though gold, or an emerald, or purple were always saying this: Whatever anyone does or says, I must remain an emerald and keep my color.

The ruling faculty does not disturb itself: I mean, it does not frighten itself or cause itself pain. If anyone else can frighten or hurt it, let him do so. The faculty itself will not turn itself in those directions through its own opinion. Let the body itself take care, if it can, to suffer nothing; and if it suffers, let it speak. But the soul itself, which is subject to fear and pain and has complete power to form an opinion about these things, will suffer nothing. It will never stray into such a judgment. The leading principle in itself lacks nothing unless it creates a need for itself. It is therefore both undisturbed and unimpeded, if it does not disturb or impede itself.

Happiness, eudaemonia, is a good divine spirit, or a good thing. What, then, are you doing here, imagination? Go away, I beg you by the gods, as you came, for I do not want you. But you have come in your old way. I am not angry with you. Only go away.

Is anyone afraid of change? What can happen without change? What is more pleasing or more suitable to universal nature? Can you take a bath unless the wood undergoes change? Can you be nourished unless the food undergoes change? Can anything else that is useful be accomplished without change? Do you not see, then, that change in yourself is just the same, and equally necessary for universal nature?

All bodies are carried through the universal substance as through a raging torrent. By their nature, they are united with the whole and cooperate with it, as the parts of our body cooperate with one another. How many a Chrysippus, how many a Socrates, how many an Epictetus has time already swallowed! Let the same thought occur to you about every person and thing.

Only one thing troubles me: that I might do something the human constitution does not allow, or do it in a way it does not allow, or do something it does not allow at this time.

Soon you will forget everything. Soon everyone will forget you.

It is distinctive of a human being to love even those who do wrong. This happens if, when they do wrong, you remember that they are your kin, that they do wrong through ignorance and unintentionally, and that you will both soon die. Above all, remember that the wrongdoer has done you no harm: he has not made your ruling faculty worse than it was before.

Universal nature molds a horse from the universal substance as though from wax. When it has broken the horse apart, it uses the material for a tree, then for a human being, then for something else. Each of these things lasts for a very short time. Being broken apart is no hardship for the vessel, just as being put together was none.

A scowling expression is altogether unnatural. If you often assume it, all beauty of expression dies away, and eventually is so completely extinguished that it cannot be lit again. Try to infer from this very fact that it is contrary to reason. If even the awareness of doing wrong departs, what reason remains to live any longer?

The nature that governs the whole will soon change everything you see. From its substance it will make other things, and then further things from their substance, so that the world may always be new.

When someone has wronged you, immediately consider what opinion about good or evil led him to do it. Once you see this, you will pity him, and neither wonder nor grow angry. Either you yourself think the same thing good as he does, or you think another thing of the same kind good. It is your duty, then, to pardon him. If you do not think such things either good or evil, you will be all the more ready to show goodwill toward the person in error.

Think less of what you do not have than of what you have. Among the things you have, select the best, and reflect on how eagerly you would have sought them if you did not have them. At the same time, take care that pleasure in them does not accustom you to overvalue them, so that you become disturbed if you ever lose them.

Withdraw into yourself. The rational ruling principle has this nature: it is content with itself when it does what is just, and so secures tranquility.

Wipe away the imagination. Stop the pulling of the strings. Confine yourself to the present. Understand well what happens to you or to someone else. Divide each object into its causal form and its material. Think of your last hour. Let a person's wrongdoing remain where it was done.

Direct your attention to what is said. Let your understanding enter into what is being done and the things that do it.

Adorn yourself with simplicity, modesty, and indifference toward things that lie between virtue and vice. Love humanity. Follow God. The poet says that law rules everything. And it is enough to remember that law rules everything.

About death: whether it is dispersion, dissolution into atoms, or annihilation, it is either extinction or change.

About pain: intolerable pain carries us off; pain that lasts a long time is tolerable. The mind maintains its own tranquility by withdrawing into itself, and the ruling faculty is not made worse. As for the parts harmed by pain, let them give their opinion about it, if they can.

About fame: look at the minds of those who seek it. Observe what they are, what kinds of things they avoid, and what kinds of things they pursue. Consider how heaps of sand piled on one another hide the sand that was there before. In the same way, life's earlier events are soon covered by those that follow.

From Plato: A person whose mind is elevated, who takes a view of all time and all substance—do you suppose he could think human life anything great? It is not possible, he said. Such a person, then, will not think death an evil either. Certainly not.

From Antisthenes: It is kingly to do good and be abused.

It is shameful for the face to obey, regulating and composing itself as the mind commands, while the mind fails to regulate and compose itself.

It is not right to distress ourselves over things, for they care nothing about it.

Give joy to the immortal gods and to us.

Life must be reaped like ripe ears of grain. One person is born; another dies.

If the gods do not care for me and my children, there is a reason for it.

For the good and the just are with me.

No joining others in their wailing, no violent emotion.

From Plato: I would give this man an adequate answer, as follows: You speak wrongly if you think that a person worth anything at all should calculate the risk of life or death, rather than look only to this in everything he does: whether he is doing what is just or unjust, and the acts of a good or a bad person.

For this is the truth, men of Athens: wherever a person has placed himself because he thinks it the best place, or has been placed by a commander, there, in my opinion, he should remain and face the danger. He should put neither death nor anything else before the shame of deserting his post in his reckoning.

But, my good friend, consider whether what is noble and good is not something different from saving and being saved. As for living a certain length of time, at least for someone who is truly a man, consider whether this should be dismissed from his thoughts. There must be no love of life. A person must entrust these matters to the Deity and believe what the women say: no one can escape his destiny. His next inquiry should be how best to live the time he has to live.

Look around at the paths of the stars as though you were traveling with them. Constantly consider how the elements change into one another. Such thoughts wash away the filth of earthly life.

This is a fine saying of Plato: A person discussing human beings should also look at earthly things as though viewing them from a higher place. He should look at their assemblies, armies, farm work, marriages, treaties, births, deaths, the noise of the law courts, deserted places, the various barbarian nations, feasts, lamentations, and markets: a mixture of everything, and an orderly combination of opposites.

Consider the past, with its great changes in political supremacy. You can also foresee what will come. It will certainly take a similar form, and cannot depart from the order of what happens now. Accordingly, contemplating human life for forty years is the same as contemplating it for ten thousand years. What more will you see?

What has grown from the earth returns to the earth. What has sprung from heavenly seed returns to the heavenly realms.

This is either the dissolution of atoms entangled with one another, or a similar dispersion of elements that have no sensation.

With food and drink and cunning magical arts, turning the channel's course to escape death. We must endure the breeze that heaven has sent, and toil without complaining.

Someone else may be more skilled at throwing his opponent. But he is not more social, more modest, better disciplined to meet everything that happens, or more considerate of his neighbors' faults.

Wherever work can be done in accordance with the reason shared by gods and humans, we have nothing to fear. Where we can gain benefit through effective activity that follows our constitution, no harm should be suspected.

Everywhere and at every time, you have the power to accept your present condition with piety, behave justly toward those around you, and apply your skill to your present thoughts, so that nothing enters them without careful examination.

Do not look around for other people's ruling principles. Look straight toward what nature leads you to: universal nature through what happens to you, and your own nature through the acts you must perform. Every being ought to do what accords with its constitution. Everything else has been constituted for the sake of rational beings, just as among things without reason the inferior exists for the sake of the superior. Rational beings, however, exist for one another.

The first principle in the human constitution, then, is the social principle. The second is not to yield to the body's persuasions. The distinctive function of rational and intelligent movement is to set its own boundaries and never be overpowered by the movement of the senses or the appetites, for both are animal. Intelligent movement claims superiority and does not allow the others to overpower it, with good reason: it is formed by nature to use them all. The third feature of the rational constitution is freedom from error and deception. Let the ruling principle hold fast to these things and go straight ahead, and it has what belongs to it.

Consider yourself dead, and your life completed up to the present. Live according to nature the remainder that is allowed you.

Love only what happens to you and is spun into the thread of your destiny. What could be more suitable?

In everything that happens, keep before your eyes those to whom the same things happened: how they were annoyed, treated them as strange, and found fault with them. Where are they now? Nowhere. Why do you choose to act in the same way? Why not leave these disturbances, which are foreign to nature, to those who cause them and those who are stirred by them? Why not give your whole attention to the right way of using what happens to you? Then you will use it well, and it will be material for you to work on. Only attend to yourself, and resolve to be a good person in every act you perform.

Look within. The fountain of good is within, and it will always bubble up if you keep digging.

The body should be composed and show no irregularity in movement or posture. What the mind displays in the face by maintaining an expression of intelligence and propriety should also be required of the whole body. All these things, however, should be observed without affectation.

The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing in this respect: it should stand ready and firm to meet attacks that come suddenly and unexpectedly.

Constantly observe who the people are whose approval you want, and what ruling principles they possess. If you look at the sources of their opinions and appetites, you will neither blame those who do wrong involuntarily nor desire their approval.

Every soul, the philosopher says, is deprived of truth involuntarily. Consequently, it is deprived of justice, self-control, goodwill, and everything of that kind in the same way. It is essential to keep this constantly in mind, for you will then be gentler toward everyone.

In every pain, keep this thought present: there is no dishonor in it, and it does not make the governing intelligence worse. It does not damage intelligence either in its rational nature or in its social nature. Indeed, for most pains let this remark of Epicurus help you: pain is neither intolerable nor everlasting, if you remember that it has limits and add nothing to it in imagination. Remember too that we fail to recognize how many things that displease us are the same as pain, such as excessive drowsiness, being scorched by heat, and having no appetite. When you are discontented about any of these, tell yourself that you are yielding to pain.

Take care not to feel toward inhuman people as they feel toward other people.

How do we know that Telauges was not superior in character to Socrates? It is not enough that Socrates died a nobler death, and argued more skillfully with the sophists, and endured a night in the cold better, and judged it nobler to refuse when ordered to arrest Leon of Salamis, and walked with a swagger through the streets—though there may be considerable doubt whether that last claim is true. We should inquire what kind of soul Socrates possessed, and whether he could be content to act justly toward people and piously toward the gods. Was he free from pointless annoyance at people's villainy, from making himself a slave to anyone's ignorance, from treating anything assigned to him by the whole as strange or enduring it as intolerable, and from allowing his understanding to share the feelings of the miserable flesh?

Nature has not mixed intelligence with the composition of the body so completely that it has denied you the power to set your own boundaries and bring everything that belongs to you under your control. It is entirely possible to be a divine person without anyone recognizing you as such. Always keep this in mind, and this too: very little is needed to live a happy life. Because you have despaired of becoming skilled in dialectic and the knowledge of nature, do not therefore give up hope of being free, modest, social, and obedient to God.

You have the power to live free from all compulsion, in the greatest tranquility of mind, even if the whole world cries out against you as much as it pleases, and even if wild beasts tear apart the limbs of this kneaded matter that has grown around you. Amid all this, what prevents the mind from remaining tranquil, forming a just judgment of everything around it, and making ready use of the objects presented to it? Its judgment can say to what comes under its observation: This is what you are in reality, though in people's opinion you may appear different. Its use can say to what comes into its hand: You are what I was seeking. For whatever presents itself to me is always material for rational and social virtue; in a word, for exercising the art that belongs to a human being or to God. Everything that happens has a relation to either God or humanity. It is neither new nor difficult to handle, but familiar and suitable material to work on.

Perfection of moral character consists in living every day as the last, neither violently excited, nor sluggish, nor playing the hypocrite.

The immortal gods are not annoyed at having to endure people as they are for so long, with so many of them bad. They also care for them in every way. But you, whose end will come so soon, are you weary of enduring the bad, even when you are one of them?

It is ridiculous for someone to fail to flee his own badness, which is possible, yet try to flee other people's badness, which is impossible.

Whatever the rational and social faculty finds neither intelligent nor social, it rightly judges inferior to itself.

When you have done a good act and another person has received it, why do you still look for a third thing besides these, as fools do: either a reputation for doing good or something in return?

No one tires of receiving what is useful. But acting according to nature is useful. Then do not tire of receiving what is useful by doing it for others.

The nature of the All moved to make the universe. Now either everything that happens follows as a consequence or in continuity, or even the chief things toward which the universe's ruling power directs its own movement are governed by no rational principle. Remembering this will make you calmer about many things.

Book Eight

This reflection also helps remove the desire for empty fame: it is no longer in your power to have lived your whole life, or at least your life from youth onward, as a philosopher. Both to many others and to yourself, it is clear that you are far from philosophy. You have fallen into disorder, so that gaining a philosopher's reputation is no longer easy for you. Your plan of life opposes it as well. If you have truly seen where the matter stands, throw away the thought of how you will appear to others, and be content to live the rest of your life as your nature wills. Observe what it wills, and let nothing else distract you. You have experienced many wanderings without finding happiness anywhere: not in syllogisms, wealth, reputation, pleasure, or anywhere else. Where is it, then? In doing what human nature requires. How can a person do this? By having principles from which his feelings and actions arise. What principles? Those concerning good and bad: the belief that nothing is good for a person unless it makes him just, self-controlled, courageous, and free; and that nothing is bad unless it does the opposite of these things.

At every act, ask yourself: How does this stand in relation to me? Will I regret it? In a little while I am dead, and everything is gone. What more do I seek, if what I am doing now is the work of an intelligent living being, a social being, and one under the same law as God?

What are Alexander, Caius, and Pompeius compared with Diogenes, Heraclitus, and Socrates? These philosophers knew things, their causal forms, and their matter; their ruling principles were the same, or conformed to their pursuits. But the others—how many things they had to care for, and how many things they were slaves to!

Consider that people will go on doing the same things even if you burst.

This is the chief thing: do not be disturbed. Everything accords with the nature of the whole. In a little while you will be nobody and nowhere, like Hadrian and Augustus. Next, fix your eyes steadily on your business and examine it. At the same time, remember that your duty is to be a good person, and remember what human nature demands. Do that without turning aside. Speak as seems most just to you, with a good disposition, modesty, and no hypocrisy.

The nature of the whole has this work to do: move things from here to there, change them, take them away from this place, and carry them to that one. Everything is change, yet we need not fear anything new. Everything is familiar to us, and its distribution remains the same.

Every nature is content with itself when it follows its course well. A rational nature follows its course well when its thoughts assent to nothing false or uncertain; when it directs its movements only toward social acts; when it confines its desires and aversions to things within its power; and when it is satisfied with everything assigned to it by common nature. Every particular nature is part of this common nature, as a leaf's nature is part of the nature of the plant. But the leaf belongs to a nature without perception or reason, one that can be hindered. Human nature belongs to a nature that cannot be hindered, and is intelligent and just, since it gives everything equal portions according to its worth: times, substance, causal form, activity, and what happens to it. But do not examine one thing against another single thing to see whether they are equal in every respect. Take all the parts of one thing together and compare them with all the parts of another.

You do not have the leisure, or the ability, to read. But you have the leisure, or the ability, to check arrogance. You have the leisure to rise above pleasure and pain, to rise above the love of fame, and to avoid annoyance at stupid and ungrateful people—indeed, even to care for them.

Let no one hear you finding fault any longer with life at court or with your own life.

Regret is a kind of self-reproach for neglecting something useful. What is good must be useful, and the perfectly good person should attend to it. But such a person would never regret refusing a sensual pleasure. Pleasure, then, is neither good nor useful.

What is this thing in itself, in its own constitution? What is its substance and material? What is its causal nature or form? What is it doing in the world? How long does it last?

When you are reluctant to rise from sleep, remember that performing social acts accords with your constitution and with human nature. Sleeping is shared even with animals without reason. What accords with each individual's nature is more particularly its own, more suited to its nature, and indeed more agreeable as well.

Constantly, and if possible whenever an impression enters the soul, apply to it the principles of natural philosophy, ethics, and dialectic.

Whenever you meet someone, immediately tell yourself: What opinions does this person hold about good and bad? If he holds particular opinions about pleasure and pain and their causes, fame and disgrace, death and life, it will seem neither remarkable nor strange to me if he does particular things. I will remember that he is compelled to do them.

Remember that it is shameful to be surprised when a fig tree produces figs. It is equally shameful to be surprised when the world produces the kinds of things it produces. For a physician or a helmsman, it is shameful to be surprised when someone has a fever or the wind is unfavorable.

Remember that changing your opinion and following someone who corrects your error is as consistent with freedom as persisting in your error. The activity is your own, exercised according to your own impulse and judgment, and indeed according to your own understanding as well.

If a thing is within your own power, why do you do it? If it is in someone else's power, whom do you blame: the atoms—that is, chance—or the gods? Blaming either is foolish. Blame no one. If you can, correct the cause. If you cannot do that, at least correct the thing itself. If you cannot even do that, what use is finding fault to you? Nothing should be done without a purpose.

What has died does not fall outside the universe. If it remains here, it also changes here and dissolves into its proper parts, which are elements of the universe and of yourself. These too change, and they do not complain.

Everything exists for some end: a horse, a vine. Why do you wonder? Even the sun will say, I exist for a purpose; and the rest of the gods will say the same. For what purpose do you exist, then? To enjoy pleasure? See whether common sense allows this.

In everything, nature has considered the end no less than the beginning and the continuation, just like someone tossing a ball into the air. What good is it for the ball to be thrown up, or what harm for it to come down, or even to have fallen? What good comes to a bubble while it holds together, or what harm when it bursts? The same can be said of a light as well.

Turn the body inside out and see what sort of thing it is. See what it becomes when it grows old, and when it is diseased.

Both the person who praises and the one praised are short-lived; so are the person who remembers and the one remembered. All this happens in a nook of this part of the world. Not even here does everyone agree, not even any one person with himself. The whole earth too is a point.

Attend to what is before you, whether an opinion, an act, or a word.

You suffer this justly, because you choose to become good tomorrow rather than be good today.

Am I doing something? I do it with the good of humanity in view. Does something happen to me? I receive it and refer it to the gods and the source of all things, from which everything that happens is derived.

As bathing appears to you—oil, sweat, dirt, filthy water, all disgusting things—so is every part of life, and everything.

Lucilla saw Verus die, and then Lucilla died. Secunda saw Maximus die, and then Secunda died. Epitynchanus saw Diotimus die, and then Epitynchanus died. Antoninus saw Faustina die, and then Antoninus died. Everything is like this. Celer saw Hadrian die, and then Celer died. And those sharp-minded people, whether seers or people inflated with pride, where are they? The sharp-minded Charax, Demetrius the Platonist, Eudaemon, and anyone else like them? All fleeting, all long dead. Some were not remembered even for a short time. Others became heroes of fables, and others disappeared even from the fables. Remember, then, that this little compound, yourself, must either dissolve, or your poor breath must be extinguished, or be removed and placed elsewhere.

It satisfies a human being to do the proper work of a human being. That work is to show goodwill toward his own kind, look down on the movements of the senses, form a just judgment of plausible appearances, and survey the nature of the universe and what happens in it.

You have three relations to other things: first, to the body surrounding you; second, to the divine cause from which everything comes to everyone; and third, to those who live with you.

Pain is either an evil to the body, in which case let the body say what it thinks of it, or an evil to the soul. But the soul has the power to maintain its own serenity and tranquility, and to avoid thinking pain an evil. Every judgment, movement, desire, and aversion is within, and no evil rises so high.

Wipe away your imaginings by often telling yourself: Now I have the power to allow no badness in this soul, no desire, and no disturbance at all. Looking at everything, I see its nature and use each thing according to its value. Remember this power that nature has given you.

Speak appropriately, both in the senate and to every person, whoever he may be. Avoid affectation. Use plain speech.

Augustus's court, his wife, daughter, descendants, ancestors, sister, Agrippa, his relatives, intimates, and friends; Areius, Maecenas, physicians, and priests who performed sacrifices: the whole court is dead. Then turn to the rest, considering the death of a whole family rather than a single person, as with the Pompeii, and the inscription on tombs: The last of his family. Consider the trouble earlier generations took to leave a successor, and then consider that someone must necessarily be the last. Here again, consider the death of an entire family.

Your duty is to order your life well in every individual act. If each act does its duty as far as possible, be content. No one can prevent each act from doing its duty. But something external will stand in the way. Nothing will stand in the way of your acting justly, with self-control and consideration. But perhaps some other active power will be hindered. By accepting the obstacle and being content to transfer your efforts to what is permitted, another opportunity for action immediately presents itself in place of the one that was hindered. This opportunity will suit the ordering of life we are speaking of.

Receive wealth or prosperity without arrogance, and be ready to let it go.

If you have ever seen a severed hand, foot, or head lying apart from the rest of the body, this is what a person makes himself, as far as he can, when he is discontented with what happens, separates himself from others, or does anything unsocial. Suppose you have detached yourself from the natural unity: nature made you a part, but now you have cut yourself off. Yet there is this beautiful provision: you have the power to unite yourself with it again. God has allowed no other part, once separated and cut off, to come together again. Consider the kindness with which he has distinguished humanity. He has given a person the power never to be separated from the whole at all; and when separated, he has allowed him to return, be united, and resume his place as a part.

Just as the nature of the whole has given every rational being all the other powers it possesses, so we have received this power from it as well. Universal nature transforms everything that stands in its way and opposes it, fixes it in its predestined place, and makes it part of itself. In the same way, a rational being can make every obstacle his own material and use it for whatever purposes he has planned.

Do not disturb yourself by thinking of your whole life. Do not let your thoughts embrace at once all the different troubles you expect may happen to you. On each occasion, ask yourself: What is there in this that is intolerable and beyond endurance? You will be ashamed to admit that anything is. Next, remember that neither the future nor the past pains you, only the present. This can be reduced to very little if you set its boundaries, and rebuke your mind if it cannot endure even that.

Does Panthea or Pergamus now sit beside Verus's tomb? Does Chaurias or Diotimus sit beside Hadrian's? That would be ridiculous. Suppose they did sit there: would the dead know it? If the dead knew it, would they be pleased? If they were pleased, would that make them immortal? Was it not destined that these people too should first become old women and old men, and then die? What would the dead do after these people were dead? All this is foul smell and blood in a bag.

If you can see clearly, look and judge wisely, says the philosopher.

In the constitution of a rational being, I see no virtue opposed to justice. But I see a virtue opposed to the love of pleasure, and that is self-control.

If you remove your opinion about what seems to give you pain, you yourself stand in perfect security. Who is this self? Reason. But I am not reason. Let that be so. Then let reason itself avoid troubling itself. If some other part of you suffers, let it have its own opinion about itself.

An obstacle to sense perception is an evil to animal nature. An obstacle to movements of desire is equally an evil to animal nature. Something else is likewise an obstacle and an evil to the constitution of plants. So an obstacle to intelligence is an evil to intelligent nature. Apply all this to yourself. Are you affected by pain or sensual pleasure? The senses will attend to that. Has something blocked your efforts toward an object? If you were making that effort unconditionally, without any reservation, then certainly this obstacle is an evil to you as a rational being. But if you take the usual course of things into consideration, you have not yet been injured, or even hindered. No other person ordinarily hinders what properly belongs to the understanding. Neither fire, iron, tyrant, nor abuse touches it in any way. Once it has been made a sphere, it remains a sphere.

It is not fitting for me to give myself pain, since I have never intentionally given pain even to someone else.

Different people delight in different things. My delight is to keep the ruling faculty sound, without turning away from any person or anything that happens to people. I look at and receive everything with welcoming eyes, and use each thing according to its value.

See that you secure this present time for yourself. Those who pursue fame after death instead do not consider that the people of later times will be exactly like the people they cannot endure now. Both are mortal. What does it matter to you in any way if these later people utter one sound or another, or hold one opinion or another about you?

Take me and cast me wherever you wish. There I will keep my divine part tranquil—that is, content—if it can feel and act according to its proper constitution. Is this change of place sufficient reason for my soul to become unhappy and worse than before: depressed, expanded, shrinking, frightened? What could you find that would be sufficient reason for this?

Nothing can happen to a human being that is not a human occurrence; nothing to an ox that is not in accordance with an ox's nature; nothing to a vine that is not in accordance with a vine's nature; nothing to a stone that is not proper to a stone. If what happens to each thing is both usual and natural, why should you complain? Common nature brings nothing you cannot bear.

If any external thing pains you, it is not the thing that disturbs you, but your own judgment about it. You have the power to wipe away that judgment now. If something in your own disposition gives you pain, who prevents you from correcting your opinion? Even if you are pained because you are not doing something particular that seems right to you, why not act instead of complaining? But an insurmountable obstacle stands in the way. Then do not be distressed: the cause of its not being done does not depend on you. But life is not worth living if this cannot be done. Then depart from life contentedly, just as someone dies in full activity, and be well pleased even with the things that are obstacles.

Remember that the ruling faculty is invincible when, gathered into itself, it is content with itself, provided it does nothing it does not choose to do, even if its resistance comes from mere stubbornness. What, then, will it be when it forms a judgment deliberately and with the aid of reason? The mind free from passions is therefore a citadel. A person has no more secure place to flee for refuge and remain unconquerable from then on. The person who has not seen this is ignorant; the person who has seen it but does not flee to this refuge is unhappy.

Tell yourself nothing beyond what the first appearances report. Suppose you have been told that someone speaks badly of you. That has been reported; that you have been injured has not. I see that my child is sick. I do see that, but I do not see that he is in danger. Always keep to the first appearances in this way, and add nothing yourself from within. Then nothing happens to you. Or rather, add something as a person who knows everything that happens in the world would.

A cucumber is bitter. Throw it away. There are briars in the road. Turn aside from them. This is enough. Do not add: Why were such things made in the world? A person who understands nature will ridicule you, just as a carpenter or shoemaker would ridicule you if you complained because you saw shavings and cuttings from their work in their workshop. Yet they have places to throw these shavings and cuttings, while universal nature has no space outside herself. The wonder of her art is that, though she has set her own boundaries, everything within her that seems to decay, grow old, or become useless she transforms into herself. From these very things she again makes new ones. She requires neither substance from outside nor a place to cast what decays. She is content with her own space, her own matter, and her own art.

Do not be sluggish in your actions, disordered in conversation, or wandering in your thoughts. Let there be neither inward conflict nor outward overflow in your soul, and do not be so busy in life that you have no leisure.

Suppose people kill you, cut you to pieces, and curse you. How can these things prevent your mind from remaining pure, wise, self-controlled, and just? If someone stood beside a clear, pure spring and cursed it, the spring would not stop sending up drinkable water. If he threw clay or filth into it, it would quickly disperse and wash them away, and remain entirely unpolluted. How, then, will you possess a perpetual fountain rather than a mere well? By shaping yourself hour by hour toward freedom joined with contentment, simplicity, and modesty.

The person who does not know what the world is does not know where he is. The person who does not know the purpose for which the world exists does not know who he is or what the world is. Whoever has failed in any one of these things cannot even say for what purpose he himself exists. What, then, do you think of someone who avoids or seeks the praise of those who applaud—people who do not know either where they are or who they are?

Do you want praise from someone who curses himself three times every hour? Would you want to please someone who does not please himself? Does someone please himself when he regrets nearly everything he does?

Do not let only your breathing act in concert with the air around you any longer. Let your intelligence also harmonize with the intelligence that embraces everything. Intelligent power is spread through every part and pervades everything for the person willing to draw it to himself, no less than the power of air does for the person able to breathe it.

In general, wickedness does no harm at all to the universe. In particular, one person's wickedness does no harm to another. It harms only the person who has the power to be free of it as soon as he chooses.

To my own free will, my neighbor's free will is as indifferent as his poor breath and flesh. Though we are made especially for one another, each of our ruling powers still has its own office. Otherwise, my neighbor's wickedness would harm me. God has not willed this, so that my unhappiness may not depend on someone else.

The sun seems to pour down, and is indeed diffused in every direction, yet it does not pour itself away. This diffusion is extension. Accordingly, its rays are called extensions—aktines—because they are extended, ekteinesthai. You can judge what a ray is like by looking at sunlight passing through a narrow opening into a darkened room. It extends in a straight line and is, as it were, divided when it meets a solid body that stands in its way and blocks the air beyond. But the light stays fixed there and does not slide away or fall off. The outpouring and diffusion of understanding should be like this. It should be an extension, never a pouring away, and should make no violent or impetuous collision with obstacles in its path. Nor should it fall down. It should remain fixed and illuminate what receives it. A body will deprive itself of illumination if it does not admit the light.

The person who fears death fears either the loss of sensation or a different kind of sensation. If you have no sensation, you will feel no harm. If you acquire another kind of sensation, you will be another kind of living being and will not cease to live.

People exist for one another. Teach them, then, or bear with them.

An arrow moves in one way, the mind in another. Both when it exercises caution and when it is engaged in inquiry, the mind moves no less straight onward toward its object.

Enter into every person's ruling faculty, and let every other person enter into yours.

Book Nine

Whoever acts unjustly acts impiously. Universal nature made rational animals for one another's sake, to help one another according to what each deserves, and never to harm one another. Whoever goes against her will is therefore plainly guilty of impiety toward the highest divinity. Whoever lies is also guilty of impiety toward that same divinity. Universal nature is the nature of existing things, and existing things are related to everything that comes into being. Moreover, universal nature is called truth and is the first cause of everything true. A person who lies deliberately is guilty of impiety because deception is unjust. A person who lies unintentionally is also guilty, because he is out of harmony with universal nature and disturbs its order by fighting against the nature of the world. Anyone who moves of his own accord toward what is contrary to truth fights against it. Nature gave him powers that he neglected, and because of that neglect he can no longer distinguish falsehood from truth. Anyone who pursues pleasure as a good and avoids pain as an evil is likewise guilty of impiety. Such a person must often blame universal nature, claiming that it gives things to bad and good people contrary to what they deserve. Bad people frequently enjoy pleasure and possess the things that produce it, while good people receive pain and the things that cause it. Furthermore, someone who fears pain will sometimes fear things that are going to happen in the world, and even this is impiety. Someone who pursues pleasure will not refrain from injustice, and this is plainly impiety. Universal nature regards certain things equally. She would not have made both unless she regarded both equally. People who wish to follow nature should therefore share her outlook and regard these things equally. With respect to pain and pleasure, death and life, honor and dishonor, which universal nature uses equally, anyone who does not regard them equally is plainly acting impiously. When I say that universal nature uses them equally, I mean that they happen alike to beings produced in continuous succession and to those who come after them. This follows from a certain original movement of providence. Starting from a particular beginning, providence moved toward this ordering of things, having conceived certain principles of what was to exist and determined powers that would produce beings, changes, and successions of this kind.

A person's happiest fate would be to leave humankind without ever having tasted lying, hypocrisy, luxury, or pride. Still, to breathe out your life when you have had enough of these things is, as the saying goes, the next best voyage. Have you decided to remain with vice? Has experience still not persuaded you to flee this plague? The destruction of understanding is a plague, much more so than any corruption or change in the atmosphere around us. Corruption of the atmosphere is a plague for animals insofar as they are animals. The other is a plague for human beings insofar as they are human.

Do not despise death. Be content with it, since this too is something nature wills. Being young and growing old, increasing in size and reaching maturity, growing teeth, a beard, and gray hair, fathering a child, becoming pregnant, giving birth, and all the other natural processes brought by the seasons of your life: dissolution is a process like these. The character of a thoughtful person therefore calls for neither carelessness, impatience, nor contempt toward death, but for waiting for it as one of nature's processes. Just as you now wait for the child to come out of your wife's womb, be ready for the time when your soul will fall out of this covering. But if you also need an ordinary kind of comfort that will reach your heart, you can best reconcile yourself to death by observing the things you will be taken away from and the character of those with whom your soul will no longer mingle. It is never right to resent people. Your duty is to care for them and bear with them gently. Yet remember that you will not be departing from people who share your principles. If anything could pull us the other way and attach us to life, it would be being allowed to live with people who share our principles. But now you see how much trouble comes from the disagreement of people who live together, so that you may say, 'Come quickly, death, before I too perhaps forget myself.'

Whoever does wrong wrongs himself. Whoever acts unjustly treats himself unjustly, because he makes himself bad.

A person often acts unjustly by failing to do something, as well as by doing something.

Your present judgment grounded in understanding, your present conduct directed toward the common good, and your present willingness to be content with everything that happens: that is enough.

Wipe away imagination. Check desire. Extinguish appetite. Keep the ruling faculty in control of itself.

One life is distributed among animals without reason. One intelligent soul is distributed among rational animals. In the same way, there is one earth for everything of an earthly nature, and all of us who can see see by one light, while all of us who live breathe one air.

Everything that shares something common moves toward what is of its own kind. Earthly things turn toward the earth. Liquids flow together. Things of an airy nature do the same, so force and something to hold them apart are required. Fire moves upward because of the elemental fire, yet it is so ready to join in burning with all the fire here that any somewhat dry substance ignites easily. Less of what hinders ignition is mixed into it. In the same way, everything that shares the common intelligent nature moves toward its own kind, or does so even more strongly. Its readiness to mingle and fuse with what is related to it is greater in proportion to its superiority over other things. Among animals without reason, accordingly, we find swarms of bees, herds of cattle, the care of young birds, and, in a way, love. Even animals have souls, and the power that draws them together acts at a higher degree, in a way never observed in plants, stones, or trees. Among rational animals there are political communities, friendships, families, and gatherings, and in war there are treaties and truces. Among things of a still higher order, a kind of unity exists even when they are separated, as with the stars. Rising to a higher degree can thus produce fellow feeling even among things that are apart. Now look at what happens. Intelligent animals alone have forgotten this mutual desire and inclination, and in them alone this tendency to flow together is not seen. Yet even when people try to avoid this union, they are caught and held by it, because their nature is too strong for them. You will see what I mean if you observe. You could sooner find an earthly thing that touches nothing earthly than a person entirely separated from other people.

Human beings, God, and the universe all produce fruit. Each produces it in the proper seasons. Ordinary usage may have attached these words especially to vines and similar things, but that means nothing. Reason produces fruit both for everyone and for itself, and other things of the same kind as reason itself are produced from it.

If you can, correct those who do wrong by teaching them. If you cannot, remember that you have been given forbearance for this purpose. The gods also show forbearance toward such people, and for certain purposes even help them obtain health, wealth, and reputation. That is how kind they are. You too have this power. Or tell me: who prevents you?

Do not work like someone miserable, or like someone who wants pity or admiration. Direct your will toward one thing alone: to act and to restrain yourself as reason, concerned with our life together, requires.

Today I have escaped all trouble. Or rather, I have thrown all trouble out, because it was within me, in my judgments, instead of outside me.

Everything is the same: familiar in experience, short-lived in time, and worthless in its material substance. Everything now is just as it was in the time of those we have buried.

Things stand outside us, each by itself, knowing nothing about itself and expressing no judgment. What, then, judges them? The ruling faculty.

The evil and the good of a rational, social animal lie in its activity, rather than in what it passively experiences. In the same way, its virtue and vice lie in its activity, rather than in what it passively experiences.

For a stone thrown upward, coming down is no evil, and being carried upward is no good.

Look inward into people's ruling principles. You will see what judges you are afraid of, and what sort of judges they are of themselves.

Everything is changing. You yourself are continually being transformed and, in a sense, continually being destroyed. So is the whole universe.

Your duty is to leave another person's wrongful act where it is.

The ending of activity, the cessation of movement and judgment, and, in a sense, their death, are no evil. Now turn your thoughts to your life: your childhood, youth, manhood, and old age. In these too, every change was a death. Is that anything to fear? Turn your thoughts to your life under your grandfather, then under your mother, then under your father. As you find many other differences, changes, and endings, ask yourself, 'Is that anything to fear?' In the same way, the ending, cessation, and change of your whole life are nothing to be afraid of.

Hurry to examine your own ruling faculty, the universe's, and your neighbor's. Examine your own so that you may make it just; the universe's so that you may remember what you are part of; and your neighbor's so that you may know whether he acted in ignorance or with knowledge, and also consider that his ruling faculty is related to yours.

Just as you are a part of a social system, let every action of yours be a part of social life. Any action that has no connection to a social purpose, either directly or indirectly, tears your life apart and prevents it from being a unity. It is a kind of mutiny, like someone in a public assembly acting alone and standing apart from the common agreement.

Little children's quarrels and games, and poor spirits carrying dead bodies around: such is everything. And so what is displayed in depictions of the dwellings of the dead strikes our eyes more clearly.

Examine the nature of an object's form. Separate it entirely from its material part and contemplate it. Then determine the longest time a thing with that particular form is naturally made to last.

You have suffered endless troubles because you were not content with your ruling faculty when it did what nature formed it to do. But enough of this.

When someone blames or hates you, or when people say hurtful things about you, approach their poor souls, look inside, and see what sort of people they are. You will discover no reason to trouble yourself about whether these people hold this or that opinion of you. Nevertheless, you must be well disposed toward them, because by nature they are friends. The gods too help them in every way, through dreams and signs, toward obtaining the things they value.

The universe's recurring movements are the same, up and down, from age to age. Either universal intelligence sets itself in motion for every separate result, in which case be content with what its activity produces; or it set itself in motion once, and everything else follows in a kind of sequence; or indivisible elements are the origin of everything. Put briefly, if there is a god, all is well. If chance rules, do not let it govern you too.

Soon the earth will cover us all. Then the earth too will change, and what results from that change will keep changing forever, and what follows it will do the same forever. Someone who reflects on these changes and transformations, following one another as rapidly as wave after wave, will hold everything perishable in contempt.

The universal cause is like a winter torrent: it carries everything along. But how worthless are all these poor people occupied with politics and, as they suppose, playing the philosopher! All babblers. Well then, man, do what nature requires now. Act if it is within your power, and do not look around to see whether anyone notices. Do not expect Plato's Republic either. Be content if the smallest thing goes well, and regard that event as no small matter. Who can change people's judgments? Without a change of judgment, what remains except the slavery of people who groan while pretending to obey? Come, tell me about Alexander, Philip, and Demetrius of Phalerum. Let them judge for themselves whether they discovered what our common nature required and trained themselves accordingly. If they acted like tragic heroes, no one has sentenced me to imitate them. Philosophy's work is simple and modest. Do not lead me aside into insolence and pride.

Look down from above at the countless herds of people and their countless ceremonies; their endlessly varied voyages through storms and calm; and the differences among those who are born, live together, and die. Consider too the lives others lived long ago, the lives of those who will live after you, and the lives now lived among barbarian nations. Consider how many do not even know your name, how many will soon forget it, and how those who perhaps praise you now will very soon blame you. Neither a name that survives death, nor reputation, nor anything else has any value.

Be free from disturbance concerning things that come from the external cause. Be just in things done through the internal cause. That is, let your movement and action lead to deeds for our common life, because this accords with your nature.

You can remove many useless things that disturb you, because they lie entirely in your judgment. You will then gain ample room for yourself by grasping the whole universe in your mind, contemplating the eternity of time, and observing how rapidly each individual thing changes: how brief the time is from birth to dissolution, how limitless the time before birth, and how equally boundless the time after dissolution!

Everything you see will quickly perish. Those who witnessed its dissolution will very soon perish too. Someone who dies at the greatest old age will be brought to the same condition as someone who died early.

What are these people's ruling principles? What kinds of things occupy them? For what reasons do they love and honor things? Imagine their poor souls laid bare before you. When they think their blame does harm or their praise does good, what a notion!

Loss is nothing but change. Universal nature delights in change. In obedience to her, everything is now done well, has had the same form from eternity, and will be so for time without end. What are you saying, then? That everything has been bad and always will be? That among so many gods no power has ever been found to set things right, and the world has been condemned to remain bound in unending evil?

How rotten is the material that underlies everything! Water, dust, bones, filth. Or again, marble rocks are the earth's hardened swellings; gold and silver its sediments; garments mere bits of hair; purple dye blood. Everything else is of the same kind. What has the nature of breath is another thing of the same kind too, changing from this to that.

Enough of this miserable life, grumbling, and monkey tricks. Why are you disturbed? What is new here? What unsettles you? Is it the thing's form? Look at it. Is it the material? Look at it. Besides these there is nothing. At last become simpler and better in your dealings with the gods. It makes no difference whether we examine these things for a hundred years or for three.

If someone has done wrong, the harm is his own. But perhaps he has not done wrong.

Either everything proceeds from one intelligent source and comes together as in one body, so that a part should not blame what is done for the whole's benefit; or there are only atoms, with nothing but mixture and dispersal. Why, then, are you disturbed? Say to your ruling faculty, 'Are you dead? Are you corrupted? Are you playing the hypocrite? Have you become a beast? Do you herd and feed with the rest?'

Either the gods have no power, or they have power. If they have no power, why pray to them? If they have power, why not pray for the ability to stop fearing what you fear, stop desiring what you desire, or stop being distressed by anything, instead of praying for these things to happen or not happen? Surely, if they can cooperate with people, they can cooperate for these purposes. Perhaps you will say that the gods have put these abilities within your own power. Well then, is it not better to use what is within your power as a free person than to desire what is outside your power in a servile, abject way? And who told you the gods do not help us even with things within our power? Begin praying for such things, and you will see. One person prays, 'How can I sleep with that woman?' Pray instead, 'How can I stop wanting to sleep with her?' Another prays, 'How can I be released from this?' Pray, 'How can I stop wanting to be released?' Another prays, 'How can I keep from losing my little son?' You should pray, 'How can I stop fearing his loss?' Turn your prayers in this direction and see what follows.

Epicurus says, 'During my illness, my conversation was not about my bodily sufferings, and I did not discuss such things with those who visited me. I continued to discuss the nature of things as before, holding to this main point: how the mind, while sharing in the movements that occur in the poor flesh, can remain free from disturbance and maintain its proper good. Nor did I give the physicians an opportunity to look solemn, as though they were doing something great. My life continued well and happily.' Do as he did, both in illness, if you are ill, and in any other circumstances. Every school of philosophy holds this principle: never abandon philosophy in whatever happens to us, and never engage in trivial conversation with someone ignorant or unacquainted with nature. Attend only to what you are doing now and the instrument by which you do it.

When someone's shameless behavior offends you, immediately ask yourself, 'Is it possible for there to be no shameless people in the world?' It is not possible. Do not demand the impossible. This person too is one of the shameless people who must necessarily exist in the world. Keep the same consideration in mind with a scoundrel, an untrustworthy person, and anyone who does wrong in any way. As soon as you remind yourself that it is impossible for such people not to exist, you will become more kindly disposed toward each individual. It is also useful, as soon as the occasion arises, to recognize what virtue nature has given human beings to set against each wrongful act. Against the foolish person she has given gentleness as an antidote; against another sort of person, some other power. In every case you can correct someone who has gone astray by teaching him, because everyone who errs misses his goal and goes astray. Besides, how have you been harmed? You will find that none of the people who irritate you has done anything that could make your mind worse. What is evil and harmful to you has its foundation only in the mind. What harm has been done, or what is strange, if an uninstructed person behaves like an uninstructed person? Consider whether you should instead blame yourself for not expecting such a person to make such a mistake. Your reason gave you the means to recognize that he was likely to make it, yet you forgot and are amazed that he has erred. Above all, when you blame someone for being untrustworthy or ungrateful, turn toward yourself. The fault is plainly yours, whether you trusted someone with such a character to keep his promise, or gave a kindness without giving it unconditionally, or without receiving all its benefit from the act itself. What more do you want when you have done someone a service? Are you not content to have acted according to your nature? Do you seek payment for it? It is as though the eye demanded payment for seeing, or the feet for walking. These parts are formed for a particular purpose and obtain what is their own by working according to their respective constitutions. In the same way, a human being is formed by nature for acts of kindness. When he has done something kind, or something else that serves the common interest, he has acted according to his constitution and receives what is his own.

Book Ten

Will you, my soul, never be good, simple, unified, and uncovered, more clearly visible than the body surrounding you? Will you never enjoy an affectionate, contented disposition? Will you never be complete and lack nothing of any kind, longing for nothing more and desiring nothing, living or lifeless, for the enjoyment of pleasure? Will you never stop desiring more time for enjoyment, or a place, a pleasant climate, or the company of people with whom you can live in harmony? Will you be satisfied with your present condition and pleased with everything around you? Will you convince yourself that you have everything, that it comes from the gods, that everything is well for you and will be well, whatever pleases them and whatever they give to preserve the perfect living being: the good, just, and beautiful being that generates and holds everything together, contains and embraces everything that dissolves to produce other things of the same kind? Will you never live in community with gods and people in such a way that you neither blame them at all nor are condemned by them?

Observe what your nature requires insofar as you are governed by nature alone. Then do it and accept it, provided your nature as a living being will not be made worse by it. Next, observe what your nature requires insofar as you are a living being. You may allow yourself all of this, provided your nature as a rational animal will not be made worse by it. But a rational animal is consequently also a social animal. Use these rules, then, and trouble yourself about nothing else.

Everything that happens occurs either in a way you are naturally formed to bear or in a way you are not naturally formed to bear. If it happens in a way you are naturally formed to bear, do not complain. Bear it as nature formed you to bear it. If it happens in a way you are not naturally formed to bear, do not complain, because it will perish after it has consumed you. Remember, however, that you are naturally formed to bear anything your own judgment can make endurable and tolerable, by thinking that bearing it is either in your interest or your duty.

If someone is mistaken, teach him kindly and show him his error. If you cannot, blame yourself, or do not even blame yourself.

Whatever happens to you was prepared for you from all eternity. From eternity, the interweaving of causes was spinning the thread of your existence and of everything that happens to it.

Whether the universe is a gathering of atoms or nature is a system, establish this first: I am a part of the whole governed by nature. Next, I am in a way closely related to the parts of the same kind as myself. Remembering that I am a part, I will be discontented with none of the things assigned to me from the whole. Nothing is harmful to the part if it benefits the whole. The whole contains nothing that is not for its benefit. All natures share this principle, but the nature of the universe has this further principle: no external cause can compel it to produce anything harmful to itself. Remembering that I am a part of such a whole, I will be content with everything that happens. And because I am in a way closely related to the parts of the same kind as myself, I will do nothing unsocial. I will direct myself toward what is of my own kind, turn all my efforts toward the common interest, and turn them away from the opposite. If these things are done this way, life must flow on happily. You can observe the same in the happy life of a citizen who continually acts for his fellow citizens' benefit and is content with whatever the state assigns him.

The parts of the whole, by which I mean everything naturally contained in the universe, must necessarily perish. Understand this to mean that they must change. But if this is both an evil and a natural necessity for the parts, the whole could not continue in a good condition, with its parts subject to change and formed to perish in various ways. Did nature herself intend to harm the things that are parts of her, subject them to evil, and make them necessarily fall into it? Or did such results occur without her knowing? Both suppositions are incredible. Even if someone drops the word 'nature' as an active power and merely calls these things natural, it would still be ridiculous to affirm that the parts of the whole are naturally subject to change, yet be surprised or annoyed as though something contrary to nature were happening. This is especially so because things dissolve into what each is composed of. Either the elements from which everything was compounded are dispersed, or the solid changes into the earthy and the airy into the aerial. These parts are thus taken back into universal reason, whether it is consumed by fire at certain intervals or renewed through eternal changes. Do not imagine that your solid and airy parts have belonged to you since your conception. All this accumulation came, so to speak, only yesterday and the day before, from food and the air you breathe in. What changes, then, is what received this accumulation, rather than what your mother brought forth. But suppose what your mother brought forth connects you closely with that other part possessing the particular quality of change. In fact this is no objection to what has been said.

Once you have taken on these names—good, modest, truthful, rational, even-tempered, and magnanimous—take care not to exchange them. If you lose them, return to them quickly. Remember that 'rational' means giving discerning attention to each individual thing, free from neglect; that an even temper means willingly accepting what common nature assigns you; and that magnanimity means raising the intelligent part above the flesh's pleasurable and painful sensations, above that poor thing called fame, above death, and above all such things. If you keep these names without wanting other people to call you by them, you will become another person and enter another life. Continuing as you have been, torn apart and defiled in such a life, marks a very foolish person, too fond of life. It is like those fighters half-devoured by wild beasts who, covered in wounds and blood, still beg to be kept alive until the next day, although in the same condition they will face the same claws and bites. Establish yourself, then, in these few names. If you can remain in them, remain as though you had moved to certain Islands of the Blessed. But if you see yourself falling away from them and losing your hold, go courageously into some quiet corner where you can maintain them. Or even depart from life at once, without passion, but with simplicity, freedom, and modesty, having at least done this one praiseworthy thing in your life: to have left it in this way. To remember these names, it will greatly help to remember the gods. They do not wish to be flattered; they wish all rational beings to become like themselves. Remember also that what does a fig tree's work is a fig tree; what does a dog's work is a dog; what does a bee's work is a bee; and what does a human being's work is a human being.

Mimes, war, amazement, numbness, and slavery will daily wipe away those sacred principles of yours. How many things do you imagine without studying nature, and how many do you neglect? Your duty is to view and do everything so that your ability to deal with circumstances is perfected, your faculty of contemplation is exercised, and the confidence that comes from knowing each particular thing is maintained, neither displayed nor concealed. When will you enjoy simplicity? When dignity? When knowledge of every particular thing: what its substance is, what place it has in the universe, how long it is formed to exist, what it is made of, to whom it can belong, and who can both give it and take it away?

A spider is proud when it catches a fly. Someone else is proud when he catches a poor hare; another when he takes a little fish in a net; another when he takes wild boars; another when he takes bears; and another when he takes Sarmatians. If you examine their judgments, are these not robbers?

Acquire the contemplative habit of seeing how everything changes into everything else. Attend to it constantly and practice this part of philosophy, because nothing is so suited to producing magnanimity. Such a person has put off the body. Seeing that he must leave humankind and everything here, no one knows how soon, he devotes himself entirely to acting justly in all his actions. In everything else that happens, he yields to universal nature. He never even considers what anyone might say or think about him, or do against him. He is content with these two things: acting justly in what he does now, and being satisfied with what is assigned to him now. He puts aside all distracting, busy pursuits and desires only to complete the straight course through the law, and by completing that straight course to follow God.

What need is there for suspicious fear, when you can investigate what should be done? If you see clearly, follow that path contentedly, without turning back. If you do not see clearly, stop and consult the best advisers. If other things oppose you, proceed according to your abilities, with due consideration, holding to what appears just. Reaching that goal is best, and if you fail, let your failure come in attempting it. Whoever follows reason in everything is tranquil and active at the same time, and cheerful and composed as well.

As soon as you wake from sleep, ask yourself whether it will make any difference to you if someone else does what is just and right. It will make no difference.

I suppose you have not forgotten what the people who arrogantly dispense praise and blame are like in bed and at the table. Nor have you forgotten what they do, avoid, and pursue, or how they steal and rob: using their most valuable part, rather than their hands and feet. Through that part, when a person chooses, fidelity, modesty, truth, law, and a good divine spirit, meaning happiness, are produced.

To nature, who gives everything and takes everything back, the instructed and modest person says, 'Give what you will. Take back what you will.' He says this obediently and pleased with her, without pride.

The little life remaining to you is short. Live as though on a mountain. It makes no difference whether someone lives there or here, if everywhere in the world he lives as in a political community. Let me see; let them know a real human being who lives according to nature. If they cannot endure him, let them kill him. That is better than living as people do.

Stop talking altogether about what a good person should be like. Be that person.

Constantly contemplate all of time and all of substance. Consider that each individual thing, in substance, is a fig seed, and in time, one turn of a small drill.

Look at everything that exists. Observe that it is already dissolving and changing, as though rotting or dispersing, or that everything is naturally formed to die.

Consider what people are like while eating, sleeping, reproducing, relieving themselves, and so on. Then consider what they are like when domineering and arrogant, or angry and scolding from their elevated position. Only a short time ago, how many people were they slaves to, and for what things? Consider too what condition they will be in after a little while.

What universal nature brings to each thing is for that thing's good. It is for its good at the very time nature brings it.

'The earth loves the shower,' and 'the solemn ether loves.' The universe loves to make whatever is about to exist. I therefore say to the universe, 'I love as you love.' Do we not also say that this or that 'loves to be produced,' meaning it is accustomed to be produced?

Either you live here and have already grown accustomed to it; or you are going away, which was your own choice; or you are dying, having discharged your duty. There is nothing beyond these things. Be of good cheer, then.

Always be clear that this piece of land is like any other. Everything here is the same as on a mountaintop, on the seashore, or wherever you choose to be. You will find just what Plato says: living within a city's walls as in a shepherd's fold on a mountain.

What is my ruling faculty to me now? What nature am I giving it now? For what purpose am I using it now? Does it lack understanding? Has it broken loose and torn itself apart from social life? Has it melted into and mixed with the poor flesh so that it moves along with it?

Whoever flees his master is a runaway. The law is master, and whoever breaks it is a runaway. Someone who grieves, grows angry, or fears is dissatisfied because something has happened, is happening, or will happen among the things appointed by the ruler of everything. That ruler is Law and assigns to each person what is fitting. Whoever fears, grieves, or grows angry is therefore a runaway.

A man deposits seed in a womb and goes away. Another cause then takes it, works on it, and makes a child. What a thing to come from such material! Again, the child sends food down through the throat. Another cause takes it and produces perception, movement, and finally life, strength, and other things: how many, and how strange! Observe what is produced in this hidden way and see the power, just as we see the power that carries things downward and upward. We see it no less clearly, though not with our eyes.

Constantly consider how everything, just as it is now, also was in the past, and consider that it will be the same again. Set before your eyes entire dramas and stages of the same form, whatever you have learned from experience or earlier history. For example, the whole court of Hadrian, the whole court of Antoninus, and the whole courts of Philip, Alexander, and Croesus. All these were dramas like those we see now, only with different actors.

Imagine anyone who grieves over anything or is discontented as a pig being sacrificed, kicking and squealing.

Someone who silently lies in bed lamenting the bonds that hold us is like that pig too. Consider that only the rational animal is given the ability to follow willingly what happens. Simply to follow it is a necessity imposed on everyone.

With every individual thing you do, pause and ask yourself whether death is dreadful because it deprives you of this.

When someone's fault offends you, immediately turn toward yourself and reflect on how you make similar mistakes: for example, by thinking money is a good, or pleasure, or a little reputation, and so on. Attending to this will quickly make you forget your anger if you also add the thought that the person is compelled. What else could he do? Or, if you can, remove the compulsion from him.

When you see Satyron the Socratic, think of either Eutyches or Hymen. When you see Euphrates, think of Eutychion or Silvanus. When you see Alciphron, think of Tropaeophorus. When you see Xenophon, think of Crito or Severus. When you look at yourself, think of any other Caesar. Do the same in everyone's case. Then keep this thought in mind: 'Where are those people?' Nowhere, or nobody knows where. In this way you will continually regard human things as smoke and nothing at all, especially if at the same time you reflect that what has once changed will never exist again throughout the infinite duration of time. But how brief is your own existence! Why are you not content to pass through this short time in an orderly way? What material and opportunity for your activity are you avoiding? What are all these things except exercises for reason, once it has carefully observed and examined the nature of what happens in life? Persevere until you have made these things your own, as a strong stomach makes everything its own, and a blazing fire makes flame and brightness from everything thrown into it.

Let no one be able to say truthfully that you are not simple or that you are not good. Let anyone who thinks such a thing about you be a liar. This is entirely within your power. Who can prevent you from being good and simple? Only resolve to live no longer unless you are such a person. Reason itself does not allow you to live if you are not.

Given this material, our life, what can be done or said in the way most consistent with reason? Whatever it is, you have the power to do or say it. Do not make excuses that you are prevented. You will not stop lamenting until your mind reaches this condition: doing what agrees with human nature, in whatever material is placed before you, becomes as enjoyable to you as luxury is to people who enjoy pleasure. A person should regard as enjoyable everything he can do according to his own nature. This is within his power everywhere. A cylinder cannot move everywhere by its own motion, nor can water, fire, or anything else governed by nature or an irrational soul, because many things obstruct and check them. But intelligence and reason can pass through everything that opposes them, in the way nature formed them and as they choose. Set before your eyes the ease with which reason passes through everything, like fire going upward, a stone downward, or a cylinder down a slope, and seek nothing further. All other obstacles either affect only the body, which is a dead thing, or they neither crush nor do any harm unless judgment and reason themselves yield. If they did harm, whoever experienced them would immediately become bad. With anything having a certain constitution, whatever harms it makes the affected thing worse. But in the corresponding case, a human being becomes better, if one may say so, and more worthy of praise by making proper use of these events. Finally, remember that nothing harms a true citizen unless it harms the state; nothing harms the state unless it harms law, understood as order; and none of the things called misfortunes harms law. What does not harm law therefore harms neither state nor citizen.

For someone filled with true principles, even the shortest precept, any ordinary precept, is enough to remind him to be free from grief and fear. For example:

'Leaves: the wind scatters some upon the ground. So it is with the human race.'

Your children too are leaves. So are those who cry out as though worthy of belief and give their praise, or instead curse, or secretly blame and sneer. In the same way, those who will receive and hand down someone's fame to later times are leaves. All such things are 'produced in the season of spring,' as the poet says. Then the wind casts them down, and the forest produces other leaves in their place. A brief existence is common to everything, yet you avoid and pursue things as though they were eternal. In a little while you will close your eyes, and someone else will soon mourn the person who accompanied you to your grave.

A healthy eye should see everything visible, without saying, 'I want green things.' That is the condition of a diseased eye. Healthy hearing and smell should likewise be ready to perceive everything that can be heard and smelled. A healthy stomach should stand toward all food as a mill stands toward everything it is formed to grind. In the same way, a healthy understanding should be prepared for everything that happens. But an understanding that says, 'Let my dear children live, and let everyone praise whatever I do,' is an eye seeking green things or teeth seeking soft things.

No one is so fortunate that, as he dies, there will not be someone beside him pleased by what is about to happen. Suppose he was good and wise. Will there not at least be someone saying to himself, 'At last we can breathe freely, relieved of this schoolmaster. It is true he was harsh to none of us, but I felt that he silently condemned us'? This is what people say about a good person. In our own case, how many other reasons are there for which many people want to get rid of us? Consider this when you are dying, and depart more contentedly by reflecting, 'I am leaving a life in which even my companions, for whom I have worked so hard, prayed, and cared, wish me to leave, perhaps hoping for some little advantage from it.' Why should anyone cling to a longer stay here? Yet do not leave with less kindness toward them for this reason. Preserve your own character: friendly, benevolent, and gentle. Nor should you leave as though being torn away. Just as the poor soul separates easily from the body in a quiet death, so should your departure from people be. Nature united you with them and made you their companion. Does she now dissolve that union? Well, I am separated as from relatives, without being dragged away resisting, and without compulsion. This too is one of the things that accord with nature.

Whenever anyone does anything, accustom yourself as much as possible to ask, 'For what purpose is this person doing this?' But begin with yourself, and examine yourself first.

Remember that what pulls the strings is hidden within. This is the power of persuasion; this is life; this, if one may say so, is the human being. When you contemplate yourself, never include the vessel that surrounds you or the instruments attached to it. They are like an axe, differing only because they grow onto the body. Without the cause that moves and checks them, these parts are no more useful than a weaver's shuttle, a writer's pen, or a driver's whip.

Book Eleven

These are the properties of the rational soul: it sees itself, analyzes itself, and makes itself whatever it chooses. It enjoys the fruit it bears, whereas the fruits of plants, and what corresponds to fruit in animals, are enjoyed by others. It achieves its own end wherever life's boundary is set. It is unlike a dance, a play, or something similar, where the whole action remains incomplete if anything cuts it short. In every part, wherever it stops, the soul makes what is set before it full and complete, so that it can say, 'I have what is my own.' Furthermore, it travels through the whole universe and the surrounding emptiness, surveys the universe's form, extends itself into the infinity of time, and embraces and comprehends the periodic renewal of everything. It understands that those after us will see nothing new, and those before us saw nothing more. In a sense, because of the uniformity that prevails, someone forty years old with any understanding at all has seen everything that has been and everything that will be. Love of one's neighbor, truth, modesty, and valuing nothing more highly than itself are also properties of the rational soul. This is also a property of Law. Right reason therefore differs in no way from the reason of justice.

You will place little value on pleasing song, dancing, and the pankration if you separate the voice's melody into its individual sounds and ask of each, 'Does this overpower me?' Shame will prevent you from admitting it. With dancing, do the same for every movement and pose, and likewise with the pankration. In everything except virtue and virtuous actions, remember to examine the separate parts and, by dividing things in this way, come to value them little. Apply this rule to your whole life too.

What a soul it is that is ready, whenever it must separate from the body, either to be extinguished, dispersed, or continue to exist! But let this readiness come from a person's own judgment, thoughtfully and with dignity, in a way that can persuade someone else, without theatrical display; not from mere obstinacy, as with the Christians.

Have I done something for the common interest? Then I have received my reward. Always keep this in mind, and never stop doing such good.

What is your art? To be good. How can this be done well except through general principles: some concerning the nature of the universe, and others concerning the proper constitution of human beings?

At first, tragedies were staged to remind people of what happens to them, that it is natural for things to happen this way, and that if they enjoy what is shown on the stage, they should not be troubled by what happens on the larger stage. You see that these things must be fulfilled in this way, and that even those who cry, 'O Cithaeron,' bear them. Indeed, the dramatists say some things well, especially this:

'If the gods neglect me and my children, that too has its reason.'

And again:

'We must not fret and rage at what happens.'

And:

'Reap life's harvest like the fruitful ear of wheat.'

After tragedy came Old Comedy, with its authoritative freedom of speech. Its very plainness was useful for reminding people to guard against insolence. Diogenes too used to borrow from these writers for this purpose.

As for Middle Comedy, which came next, observe what it was. Then consider why New Comedy was introduced, gradually sinking into a mere contrivance of mimicry. Everyone knows that these writers too say some good things. But toward what goal does the entire design of such poetry and drama look?

How clear it seems that no other condition of life is so well suited to practicing philosophy as the one you now happen to be in.

A branch cut off from the neighboring branch must necessarily be cut off from the whole tree too. Likewise, someone separated from another person has fallen away from the whole social community. Someone else cuts off a branch, but a person separates himself from his neighbor by his own act when he hates him and turns away. He does not realize that he has simultaneously cut himself off from the whole social system. Yet Zeus, who formed society, has certainly given him this privilege: we have the power to grow back into what is close to us and become again a part contributing to the whole. But repeated separation makes it difficult for what detaches itself to be reunited and restored to its former condition. A branch that grew with the tree from the beginning and has continued sharing its life is unlike one that was cut off and then grafted back. This is something like what gardeners mean when they say it grows with the rest of the tree but does not share its mind.

People who try to obstruct you while you follow right reason cannot turn you away from your proper action. Likewise, do not let them drive you away from your kind feelings toward them. Guard both equally: steadiness in judgment and action, and gentleness toward those who try to obstruct or otherwise trouble you. Being annoyed with them is also weakness, just as being diverted from your course and giving way through fear is weakness. Both are equally deserters from their posts: the person who deserts through fear, and the person estranged from someone who is by nature a relative and friend.

No nature is inferior to art, because the arts imitate the natures of things. If this is so, the nature most perfect and most comprehensive of all cannot fall short of art's skill. Every art does the lesser things for the sake of the greater. Universal nature therefore does so too. This is indeed the origin of justice, and the other virtues rest on justice. We will not observe justice if we either care about indifferent things, or are easily deceived, careless, and changeable.

Even if the things whose pursuit and avoidance disturb you do not come to you, you still go to them in a way. Let your judgment about them rest. They will then remain quiet, and you will be seen neither pursuing nor avoiding them.

The soul's spherical form retains its shape when it neither stretches toward any object, contracts inward, disperses, nor sinks down. Instead, it is illuminated by light through which it sees truth: the truth of everything, and the truth within itself.

Suppose someone despises me. Let him attend to that himself. I will attend to this: that I am not found doing or saying anything deserving contempt. Will someone hate me? Let him attend to it. I will be gentle and kind toward everyone, ready to show even him his mistake, nobly and honestly, without reproach or a display of my endurance. I will be like the great Phocion, unless he merely put on that appearance. Our inward parts should be like this. The gods should see a person neither dissatisfied with anything nor complaining. What evil is there for you if you are now doing what agrees with your own nature and are satisfied with what at this moment suits the nature of the universe? You are a human being stationed at your post so that what benefits everyone may in some way be done.

People despise one another and flatter one another. They wish to rise above one another, and they crouch before one another.

How unsound and insincere is someone who says, 'I have decided to deal fairly with you!' What are you doing, man? There is no reason for this announcement. It will soon reveal itself in your actions. The voice should be plainly written on the forehead. A person's character immediately shows in his eyes, just as the beloved immediately reads everything in a lover's eyes. An honest, good person should be exactly like someone with a strong smell: as soon as a bystander comes near him, he must smell it, whether he wishes to or not. But a show of simplicity is like a crooked stick. Nothing is more shameful than wolfish, false friendship. Avoid this above all. Good, simple, kind people show all these things in their eyes. There is no mistaking them.

The soul has the power to live in the best way if it is indifferent to indifferent things. It will be indifferent if it considers each of these things separately and all together, and remembers that none of them produces a judgment about itself in us or comes to us. These things remain still. We ourselves make judgments about them and, so to speak, write them within ourselves. We have the power not to write them, and if such judgments have slipped into our minds unnoticed, we have the power to wipe them away. Remember also that this attention will be needed for only a short time, and then life will end. Besides, what trouble is there in doing this? If these things accord with nature, rejoice in them and they will be easy for you. If they are contrary to nature, seek what agrees with your own nature and strive toward it, even if it brings no reputation. Everyone is allowed to seek his own good.

Consider where each thing came from, what it consists of, what it changes into, what kind of thing it will be after changing, and that it will suffer no harm.

If anyone has offended you, consider first: What is my relation to people? We are made for one another. In another respect, I was made to be set over them, as a ram over the flock or a bull over the herd. Examine this from first principles. If everything is not merely atoms, then nature orders everything. If this is so, lesser things exist for greater ones, and these exist for one another.

Second, consider what these people are like at the table, in bed, and so on; especially how their judgments compel them. As for their actions, consider the pride with which they do what they do.

Third, if people act rightly, we should not be displeased. If they act wrongly, they plainly do so unwillingly and in ignorance. Just as every soul is unwillingly deprived of truth, it is also unwillingly deprived of the power to treat each person according to what he deserves. Accordingly, people are distressed when called unjust, ungrateful, greedy, or, in a word, wrongdoers toward their neighbors.

Fourth, consider that you too do many things wrong and are human like everyone else. Even if you refrain from certain faults, you still have the inclination to commit them. You refrain through cowardice, concern for reputation, or some similarly low motive.

Fifth, consider that you do not even understand whether people are acting wrongly or not. Many things are done with particular circumstances in view. A person must learn a great deal to judge another person's actions correctly.

Sixth, when you are deeply annoyed or grieved, consider that a human life is only a moment, and after a short time we are all laid out dead.

Seventh, people's actions do not disturb us. Those actions originate in their own ruling principles. Our own judgments disturb us. Remove these judgments, resolve to dismiss your judgment that an act is distressing, and your anger disappears. How will I remove these judgments? By reflecting that another person's wrongful act brings no shame on you. Unless what is shameful alone is bad, you too must necessarily do many things wrong and become a robber and everything else.

Eighth, consider how much more pain comes from our anger and irritation over such actions than from the actions themselves that make us angry and irritated.

Ninth, consider that kindness is invincible if it is sincere, rather than an affected smile or a performance. What will the most violent person do to you if you remain kind toward him, and, when the opportunity arises, gently advise him and calmly correct his errors at the very moment he tries to harm you? Say, 'No, my child. Nature formed us for something else. I certainly will not be harmed, but you are harming yourself, my child.' Show him tactfully and gently, through general principles, that this is so, and that even bees and other animals naturally formed to live together do not act as he does. Do this affectionately, without hidden meaning, reproach, or bitterness in your soul. Do not do it as though lecturing him, or so that a bystander may admire you.

Remember these nine rules as though the Muses had given them to you, and begin at last to be a man while you live. You must equally avoid flattering people and being irritated with them, because both are unsocial and lead to harm. In the excitement of anger, keep this truth in mind: being moved by passion is not manly. Mildness and gentleness are both more consistent with human nature and more manly. Someone with these qualities possesses strength, vigor, and courage, unlike someone given to fits of passion and discontent. In proportion as a person's mind approaches freedom from every passion, it also approaches strength. Just as feeling pain marks weakness, so does anger. Those who yield to pain and those who yield to anger are both wounded and both submit.

If you wish, receive a tenth gift from Apollo, the leader of the Muses: expecting bad people not to do wrong is madness, because whoever expects this desires the impossible. But allowing people to behave this way toward others while expecting them not to wrong you is irrational and tyrannical.

There are four main deviations of the higher faculty that you should constantly guard against. When you detect them, wipe them away and say, in each case: 'This thought is unnecessary.' 'This tends to destroy social union.' 'What you are about to say does not come from your real thoughts.' You should regard a person's failure to speak his real thoughts as among the most absurd things. The fourth is when you reproach yourself for anything. This shows the more divine part within you being overpowered and yielding to the less honorable, perishable part: the body and its coarse pleasures.

Your airy part and all the fiery parts mixed within you naturally tend upward, yet, in obedience to the universe's arrangement, they are held down here in the compound mass of the body. Your entire earthy and watery parts naturally tend downward, yet they are raised up and occupy a position that is not their natural one. This is how the elemental parts obey the universal whole. Once fixed in a place, they necessarily remain there until the universal whole again sounds the signal for dissolution. Is it not strange, then, that your intelligent part alone should be disobedient and discontented with its own place? No force is imposed on it, only things agreeing with its nature. Yet it does not submit and is carried in the opposite direction. Moving toward injustice, excess, anger, grief, or fear is simply the act of someone departing from nature. When the ruling faculty is dissatisfied with anything that happens, it also deserts its post. It is formed for piety and reverence toward the gods no less than for justice. These qualities too fall under the general heading of contentment with the constitution of things, and indeed they come before acts of justice.

Someone without one constant goal in life cannot remain one and the same throughout life. But what I have said is insufficient unless I add what that goal should be. People do not share one judgment about everything the majority considers good in one way or another. They agree only about certain things: those concerning the common interest. We should therefore also set ourselves a goal that is social and political. Whoever directs all his efforts toward this goal will make all his actions alike, and thus always remain the same.

Think of the country mouse and the town mouse, and of the town mouse's alarm and trembling.

Socrates used to call the judgments of the many 'Lamiae': bogey creatures used to frighten children.

At public spectacles, the Spartans used to reserve seats in the shade for strangers, while they themselves sat anywhere.

Socrates explained to Perdiccas why he would not visit him: 'Because I would not perish by the worst of all endings. That is, I would not receive a favor and then be unable to return it.'

The writings of the Ephesians contained this precept: constantly think of one of the people of earlier times who practiced virtue.

The Pythagoreans tell us to look at the heavens in the morning, to remember those bodies that continually do the same things and perform their work in the same way, and to remember their purity and nakedness. There is no veil over a star.

Consider what kind of person Socrates was when he dressed in a skin after Xanthippe took his cloak and went out. Consider too what he said to his friends who were ashamed of him and drew back when they saw him dressed that way.

In neither writing nor reading will you be able to set rules for others before first learning to obey rules yourself. This is much more true in life.

You are a slave. Free speech is not for you.

And my heart laughed within.

And they will curse virtue, speaking harsh words.

Looking for a fig in winter is a madman's act. So is looking for your child when that is no longer allowed.

When someone kisses his child, Epictetus said, he should whisper to himself, 'Perhaps you will die tomorrow.' 'But those words are a bad omen.' 'No word is a bad omen,' said Epictetus, 'if it expresses a work of nature. Otherwise it would also be a bad omen to speak of ears of grain being reaped.'

The unripe grape, the ripe bunch, the dried grape: all are changes into something that does not yet exist, rather than into nothing.

No one can rob us of our free will.

Epictetus also said that a person must discover an art, or rules, for giving assent. In his movements, he must take care to consider circumstances, remain consistent with social interests, and consider the value of the goal. As for sensual desire, he should stay away from it altogether. As for aversion, he should not direct it toward anything outside our power.

The dispute, then, he said, concerns being mad or not, rather than any ordinary matter.

Socrates used to say, 'What do you want: the souls of rational people or irrational people?' 'The souls of rational people.' 'Of what kind of rational people: sound or unsound?' 'Sound.' 'Why, then, do you not seek them?' 'Because we have them.' 'Why, then, do you fight and quarrel?'

Book Twelve

Everything you wish to reach by a roundabout road can be yours now, if you do not deny it to yourself. This means disregarding the whole past, trusting the future to providence, and directing the present only according to piety and justice. According to piety, be content with the lot assigned to you, because nature designed it for you and you for it. According to justice, always speak the truth freely and openly, and do what agrees with law and with each thing's worth. Let neither another person's wickedness, nor judgment, nor voice, nor the sensations of the poor flesh that has grown around you obstruct you. The passive part will attend to that. Whenever the time comes for your departure, disregard everything else and respect only your ruling faculty and the divinity within you. Fear never having begun to live according to nature, instead of fearing that you must someday stop living. Then you will be a person worthy of the universe that produced you. You will cease being a stranger in your native land, wondering at everyday events as though they were unexpected, and depending on this or that.

God sees everyone's minds, their ruling principles, stripped of their material clothing, rind, and impurities. With his intellectual part alone, he touches only the intelligence that flowed and was derived from himself into these bodies. If you also accustom yourself to doing this, you will rid yourself of much trouble. Someone who disregards the poor flesh covering him will surely not trouble himself about clothing, housing, fame, or similar outward things and display.

You are composed of three things: a little body, a little breath of life, and intelligence. The first two are yours insofar as you have a duty to care for them. The third alone is properly yours. Separate from yourself, that is, from your understanding, whatever others do or say, whatever you have done or said yourself, and whatever future events trouble you because they might happen. Separate also whatever belongs to you independently of your will in the body covering you or in the breath of life naturally associated with it, and whatever the surrounding external whirl sweeps around. Let the intellectual power, freed from the things of fate, live pure and free by itself, doing what is just, accepting what happens, and speaking truth. Separate, I say, from this ruling faculty the things attached to it through sensory impressions, and the things of the future and the past. Make yourself like Empedocles' sphere:

'All round, resting in its joyous repose.'

And if you strive to live only what is really your life, the present, then you can pass the portion of life remaining until your death nobly, free from disturbance, and obedient to your own divine spirit, the god within you.

I have often wondered how everyone loves himself more than everyone else, yet values his own judgment of himself less than other people's judgments. If a god or wise teacher appeared to someone and told him to think nothing and plan nothing he would not express as soon as it occurred to him, he could not endure this even for a single day. We respect what our neighbors will think of us so much more than what we will think of ourselves.

How can the gods, after arranging everything well and kindly for humankind, have overlooked this one thing? Some people, very good people, who have had, we might say, the most communion with the divinity, and through pious acts and religious observances have been most intimate with it, should never exist again after dying, but be completely extinguished?

But if this is so, be assured that if it should have been otherwise, the gods would have made it so. If it were just, it would also be possible. If it accorded with nature, nature would have arranged it that way. Because it is not so, if indeed it is not so, be convinced that it should not have been so. You can see for yourself that in this inquiry you are arguing with the Deity. We would not argue with the gods this way unless they were supremely excellent and just. If they are, they would not allow anything in the ordering of the universe to be neglected unjustly and irrationally.

Practice even the things you despair of accomplishing. The left hand, ineffective at everything else for lack of practice, holds the bridle more vigorously than the right, because it has practiced this.

Consider what condition, in both body and soul, a person should be in when death overtakes him. Consider life's shortness, the boundless abyss of past and future time, and the frailty of all matter.

Contemplate the formative principles, the forms of things, stripped of their coverings; and the purposes of actions. Consider what pain, pleasure, death, and fame are; who causes his own uneasiness; how no one is obstructed by another; and that everything is judgment.

In applying your principles, be like a pankration fighter, rather than a gladiator. A gladiator drops the sword he uses and is killed. The other always has his hand and need do nothing but use it.

See what things are in themselves, dividing them into matter, form, and purpose.

What power a human being has to do only what God approves and accept everything God gives him!

For what happens according to nature, we should blame neither the gods, who do nothing wrong willingly or unwillingly, nor people, who do wrong only unwillingly. Therefore we should blame no one.

How ridiculous, and what a stranger, is someone surprised by anything that happens in life!

Either there is the necessity of fate and an invincible order, or a kind providence, or confusion without purpose or direction. If there is an invincible necessity, why resist? If there is a providence that can be won over, make yourself worthy of the divinity's help. If there is confusion without a ruler, be content that in such a storm you have a certain ruling intelligence within you. Even if the storm carries you away, let it carry away the poor flesh, the poor breath, and everything else. At least it will not carry away your intelligence.

Does a lamp's light shine without losing its brilliance until it is extinguished? Will the truth within you, and justice and self-restraint, be extinguished before your death?

When someone appears to have done wrong, say, 'How do I know this is a wrongful act? Even if he has done wrong, how do I know he has not condemned himself?' This is like tearing his own face. Consider that someone who wants a bad person not to do wrong is like someone who wants a fig tree not to have juice in its figs, infants not to cry, horses not to neigh, or anything else necessary not to happen. What must a person with such a character do? If you are irritated, then, cure this person's disposition.

If it is not right, do not do it. If it is not true, do not say it.

In everything, always observe what produces an appearance for you. Analyze it by dividing it into form, matter, purpose, and the time within which it must end.

Recognize at last that within you is something better and more divine than what causes the various emotions and, as it were, pulls your strings. What is in my mind now? Fear, suspicion, desire, or something of that kind?

First, do nothing thoughtlessly or without purpose. Second, direct your actions toward a social goal alone.

Consider that before long you will be nobody and nowhere. Nothing you now see will exist, nor will any of those now living. Nature forms everything to change, be transformed, and perish, so that other things may exist in continuous succession.

Consider that everything is judgment, and judgment is within your power. Remove your judgment whenever you choose, and like a sailor who has rounded the headland, you will find calm, everything steady, and a bay without waves.

Any individual activity, whatever it is, suffers no evil from ending when it ends at its proper time. The person who performed it likewise suffers no evil because the act has ended. In the same way, the whole made up of all our actions, our life, suffers no evil from ending if it ends at its proper time. Nor has the person who ended this sequence at the proper time been treated badly. Nature sets the proper time and boundary: sometimes, as in old age, a person's particular nature, but always universal nature. Through changes in its parts, the whole universe remains forever young and perfect. Everything useful to the universal whole is always good and timely. The ending of life is therefore no evil for anyone. It is not shameful, because it is both independent of the will and consistent with the common interest. Instead, it is good, because it is timely, beneficial to the universal whole, and in harmony with it. In this way too, someone who moves in the same manner as the Deity and toward the same thing in his mind is moved by the Deity.

Keep these three principles ready. First, in your actions, do nothing thoughtlessly or otherwise than justice herself would act. Concerning what happens to you from outside, consider that it comes either by chance or according to providence, and you must neither blame chance nor accuse providence. Second, consider what each being is from the seed until it receives a soul, and from receiving a soul until giving it back. Consider what each being is composed of and what it dissolves into. Third, suppose you were suddenly raised above the earth and looked down on human things, seeing their enormous variety, while also seeing at a glance the great number of beings dwelling everywhere in the air and the ether. Consider that however often you were raised up, you would see the same things: sameness of form and shortness of duration. Are these things to be proud of?

Cast away judgment: you are saved. Who prevents you from casting it away?

When anything troubles you, you have forgotten that everything happens according to universal nature. You have forgotten that another person's wrongful act is nothing to you. You have forgotten that whatever happens always happened this way, will happen this way, and now happens this way everywhere. You have forgotten how close the kinship is between a person and the whole human race: a community of intelligence, rather than of a little blood or seed. You have also forgotten that everyone's intelligence is a god and a flowing forth from the Deity. You have forgotten that nothing is a person's own: his child, his body, and his very soul came from the Deity. You have forgotten that everything is judgment. Finally, you have forgotten that everyone lives only the present time, and loses only this.

Constantly recall people who complained bitterly about anything, and those most conspicuous for the greatest fame, misfortunes, hostilities, or fortunes of any kind. Then ask where they all are now. Smoke, ash, and a tale, or not even a tale. Keep in mind everything of this kind too: how Fabius Catellinus lived in the country, Lucius Lupus in his gardens, Stertinius at Briae, Tiberius at Capreae, and Velius Rufus, or Rufus at Velia. Think of the eager pursuit of anything joined with pride, and how worthless is everything people strain violently to obtain. Consider how much more philosophical it is to show yourself just, self-controlled, and obedient to the gods in the opportunities offered to you, doing this with complete simplicity. Pride that is proud of its lack of pride is the most intolerable pride of all.

To those who ask, 'Where have you seen the gods, or how do you understand that they exist, so that you worship them?' I answer: first, they can be seen even with the eyes. Second, I have never even seen my own soul, yet I honor it. In the same way, with the gods, my continual experience of their power makes me understand that they exist, and I revere them.

Life's security lies in examining everything thoroughly: what it is in itself, its material, and its form; and in doing justice and speaking truth with your whole soul. What remains except to enjoy life by joining one good thing to another, leaving not even the smallest gaps between them?

The sun has one light, though walls, mountains, and countless other things interrupt it. There is one common substance, though it is distributed among countless bodies, each with its own qualities. There is one soul, though it is distributed among countless natures and individuals. There is one intelligent soul, though it seems divided. Of the things mentioned, all the other parts, such as air and matter, lack sensation and fellowship. Yet even these parts are held together by the intelligent principle and their attraction toward what is alike. But intellect is especially drawn toward what is related to it, joins with it, and has an uninterrupted feeling for communion.

What do you wish: to keep existing? Do you wish to have sensation, movement, and growth, then to stop growing, to use speech, and to think? Which of all these things seems worth desiring? If it is easy to place little value on all these things, turn toward what remains: following reason and God. But honoring reason and God is inconsistent with being troubled because death will deprive someone of the other things.

How small a portion of boundless, unfathomable time is assigned to each person! It is very soon swallowed by eternity. How small a portion of the whole substance, how small a portion of the universal soul, and on what a tiny clod of the whole earth you crawl! Reflecting on all this, regard nothing as great except acting as your nature leads you and enduring what common nature brings.

How does the ruling faculty use itself? Everything lies in this. Everything else, whether within your will's power or not, is only lifeless ash and smoke.

This thought is especially suited to making us hold death in contempt: even people who think pleasure is good and pain evil have still despised it.

For a person who regards only what comes in due season as good, who considers it the same whether he has done more or fewer actions according to right reason, and who sees no difference between contemplating the world for a longer or shorter time, death too is nothing terrible.

Man, you have been a citizen of this great state, the world. What difference does it make whether for five years or three? What accords with the laws is just for everyone. Where is the hardship if nature, who brought you into the state, sends you away, rather than a tyrant or unjust judge? It is like a praetor who employed an actor dismissing him from the stage. 'But I have finished only three acts, instead of five.' You say rightly, but in life those three acts are the whole drama. What counts as a complete drama is determined by the one who once caused its composition and now causes its dissolution. You cause neither. Depart contentedly, then, because the one who releases you is content too.