Marcus Aurelius - Meditations (Haines)

Epicurean Focus

Marcus Aurelius (AD 121–180), Roman emperor from 161, wrote these notes to himself in Greek, mostly during his wars on the Danube frontier. They are the most personal Stoic text to survive. Marcus did not write a treatise against Epicurus, and he quotes Epicurus with respect more than once. But the whole book is built on a choice Marcus states again and again: either the world is governed by Providence, or it is a random scattering of atoms. He chooses Providence, and his ethics follow from that choice.

”Either Providence or Atoms”

Marcus states the alternative in many forms. In Book IV: “Recall the alternative: Either Providence or Atoms! and the abundant proofs there are that the Universe is as it were a state” (IV.3). In Book VI: “Either a medley and a tangled web and a dispersion abroad, or a unity and a plan and a Providence.” If the first, “why should I even wish to abide in such a random welter and chaos?” In Book IX: “Either there is one intelligent source, from which as in one body all after things proceed … or there are atoms, and nothing but a medley and a dispersion.”

The “atoms” side of the choice is the Epicurean world. Marcus never seriously considers living in it. In Book II he writes: “if indeed there are no Gods, or if they do not concern themselves with the affairs of men, what boots it for me to live in a Universe where there are no Gods, where Providence is not?” For Epicurus the answer is plain. A universe without providence is the only kind in which a man can be free of the fear of divine punishment, and it is a world in which life can be very sweet.

Sometimes Marcus leaves the question open and argues that the same conduct follows either way: “Whether there be atoms or a Nature, let it be postulated first, that I am a part of the whole Universe controlled by Nature.” In XII.14 he lists three possibilities, Necessity, Providence or “a chaos without design or director,” and finds a lesson in each.

Pleasure Is Not a Good

Marcus states the Stoic verdict on pleasure in a short syllogism: “the true good man would never regret having passed a pleasure by. Pleasure therefore is neither a useful thing nor a good.” Epicurus would answer that the wise man often does pass a pleasure by, but only because it would bring greater pain, not because pleasure is not good. The very fact that we regret lost pleasures, as Marcus admits, shows that we feel them as goods.

Citizens of the Universe

Marcus draws his social ethics from the same view of the world: “If the intellectual capacity is common to us all, common too is the reason … If so, we are citizens. If so, we are fellow-members of an organised community. If so, the Universe is as it were a state.” Epicurus based friendship and justice on mutual advantage and agreement among particular people, not on membership in a cosmic city (Principal Doctrines 27–28, 31–33).

Death

Marcus often reflects that death is either a scattering of atoms or a return to the Reason of the universe: “Death reduced to the same condition Alexander the Macedonian and his muleteer, for either they were taken back into the same Seminal Reason of the Universe or scattered alike into the atoms.” The tone is resignation. Epicurus also taught that death is nothing to us, but as the basis for enjoying life, not for accepting one’s place in a divine order.

Marcus Quotes Epicurus

Marcus twice uses Epicurus as an example of how to bear pain. In VII.64 he advises: “call to thy rescue even Epicurus when he says that a pain is never unbearable or interminable.” In IX.41 he quotes Epicurus’s account of how he went on discussing natural philosophy during his last illness. These passages show that Epicurus’s teaching on pain was respected even by his opponents. But Marcus takes the advice and leaves the doctrine. For Epicurus, the limit of pain is part of the case that the pleasant life is within reach. For Marcus, it is simply one more aid to endurance.

Outline Of The Argument

Editor’s note: The Meditations are notes, not a continuous argument. This outline gives the subject of each book and links to some of the sections that matter most for Epicureans. References such as IV.3 mean Book IV, section 3, and each section number in the text below is a link target. Entries marked Epicurean note are our own commentary.

Book I

• I.1–17 What Marcus learned from his family, his teachers and the gods. I.16 is a portrait of his adoptive father, the emperor Antoninus Pius.

Book II

• II.1 “Say to thyself at daybreak”: we are made to work together, like hands and feet.
• II.3 “Full of Providence are the works of the Gods.”
• II.11 Death is nothing dreadful if there are gods, and there is no reason to live in a universe without them.
  • Epicurean note: Epicurus held both that the gods exist and that they do not govern the world. Marcus does not consider that possibility.
• II.17 Human life is short and its parts are fleeting; philosophy alone can guard us.

Book III

• III.1–16 Life is short; act now. Live by reason, as a citizen of the universe and a servant of the god within.

Book IV

• IV.3 The inner retreat, and “Either Providence or Atoms!”
• IV.4 Common reason makes all men citizens of one world-state.
• IV.21 What becomes of souls after death.
• IV.40 The universe is one living being, with one substance and one soul.

Book V

• V.1 On rising in the morning to do the work of a man.
• V.8 As the physician prescribes, so the nature of the universe prescribes sickness or loss; accept it.
• V.16 The soul is dyed by its thoughts. “Where life is possible, there it is possible also to live well.”

Book VI

• VI.10 Either chaos or Providence.
• VI.24 Death scattered Alexander and his muleteer alike into the Seminal Reason or into the atoms.
• VI.44 If the gods have taken counsel about me, they have done well; if not, I may still take counsel for myself.

Book VII

• VII.9 All things are woven together, and there is one universe, one God, one law.
• VII.64 On pain, with Epicurus’s saying that pain is never both unbearable and lasting.
  • Epicurean note: compare Principal Doctrine 4.

Book VIII

• VIII.10 Pleasure is neither useful nor good.
• VIII.34 A severed hand; the man who cuts himself off from the whole.

Book IX

• IX.1 Injustice, lying and the pursuit of pleasure are impiety against the universal nature.
• IX.39 Either one intelligent source or atoms.
• IX.41 Epicurus’s conduct in his last illness.

Book X

• X.6 “Whether there be atoms or a Nature,” I am a part of the whole.
• X.11 The study of how all things change into one another.

Book XI

• XI.1–39 On the rational soul, anger, and the conduct of a good man towards others.

Book XII

• XII.14 Necessity, Providence or chaos.
• XII.28 How do we know the gods exist? “From the continual proofs of their power.”
• XII.36 The end: depart from life with a good grace, “for he that dismisses thee is gracious.”

The Translation (Haines)

Translated by C. R. Haines, The Communings with Himself of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Emperor of Rome, Loeb Classical Library (London: William Heinemann; New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1916). The scanned volume is at the Internet Archive: thecommuningswit00marcuoft.

How to read the references. The bold numbers are Marcus’s section numbers, and each is a link target: #4-3 goes to Book IV, section 3, the standard way of citing the work (IV.3). The small “p.” links mark the start of each page of the English translation and open the scanned page. The Greek text and the speeches, sayings and letters Haines printed after Book XII are omitted. Haines’s notes are kept as numbered footnotes; many of them give cross-references to other passages of the Meditations.

About the text. The text follows the proofread transcription of Haines’s volume made by the volunteers of Wikisource.

Book I

^p. BOOK I

1. From my Grandfather Verus,¹ a kindly disposition and sweetness of temper.

2. From what I heard of my Father² and my memory of him, modesty and manliness.

3. From my Mother, the fear of God, and generosity; and abstention not only from doing ill but even from the very thought of doing it; and furthermore to live the simple life,³ far removed from the habits of the rich.

4. From my Grandfather’s Father,⁴ to dispense with attendance at public schools, and to enjoy good teachers at home,⁵ and to recognize that on such things money should be eagerly spent.

^p. 5. From my Tutor,⁶ not to side with the Green Jacket or the Blue⁷ at the races, or to back the Light-Shield Champion or the Heavy-Shield in the lists; not to shirk toil,⁸ and to have few wants, and to do my own work, and mind my own concerns; and to turn a deaf ear to slander.

6. From Diognetus,⁹ not to be taken up with trifles; and not to give credence to the statements of miracle-mongers and wizards¹⁰ about incantations and the exorcizing of demons,¹¹ and such-like marvels; and not to keep quails, nor to be excited about such things: not to resent plain speaking; and to become familiar with philosophy and be a heaver first of Baccheius, then of Tandasis and Marcianus; and to write dialogues as a boy; and to set my heart on a pallet-bed and a pelt¹² and whatever else tallied with the Greek regimen.

7. From Rusticus,¹³ to become aware of the fact that I needed amendment and training for my character; and not to be led aside into an argumentative sophistry; nor compose treatises on speculative subjects, or deliver little homilies,¹⁴ or pose ostentatiously as the moral athlete or unselfish man; and to eschew rhetoric,¹⁵ poetry, and fine language; and not to go ^p. about the house in my robes, nor commit any such breach of good taste; and to write letters without affectation, like his own letter written to my mother from Sinuessa; to shew oneself ready to be reconciled to those who have lost their temper and trespassed against one, and ready to meet them halfway as soon as ever they seem to be willing to retrace their steps¹⁶; to read with minute care and not to be content with a superficial bird’s-eye view; nor to be too quick in agreeing with every voluble talker; and to make the acquaintance of the Memoirs of Epictetus, which he supplied me with out of his own library.

8. From Apollonius,¹⁷ self-reliance and an unequivocal determination not to leave anything to chance; and to look to nothing else even for a moment save Reason alone; and to remain ever the same, in the throes of pain, on the loss of a child,¹⁸ during a lingering illness; and to see plainly from a living example that one and the same man can be very vehement and yet gentle: not to be impatient in instructing others; and to see in him a man who obviously counted as the least among his gifts his practical experience and facility in imparting philosophic truths; and to learn in accepting seeming favours from friends¹⁹ not to give up our independence for such things nor take them callously as a matter of course.

9. From Sextus,²⁰ kindliness, and the example of a ^p. household patriarchally governed; and the conception of life in accordance with Nature; and dignity without affectation; and an intuitive consideration for friends; and a toleration of the unlearned and the unreasoning.

And his tactful treatment of all his friends, so that simply to be with him was more delightful than any flattery, while at the same time those who enjoyed this privilege looked up to him with the utmost reverence; and the grasp and method which he shewed in discovering and marshalling the essential axioms of life.

And never to exhibit any symptom of anger or any other passion, but to be at the same time utterly impervious to all passions and full of natural affection; and to praise without noisy obtrusiveness, and to possess great learning but make no parade of it.

10. From Alexander the Grammarian,²¹ not to be captious; nor in a carping spirit find fault with those who import into their conversation any expression which is barbarous or ungrammatical or mispronounced, but tactfully to bring in the very expression, that ought to have been used, by way of answer, or as it were in joint support of the assertion, or as a joint consideration of the thing itself and not of the language, or by some such graceful reminder.

11. From Fronto, to note the envy, the subtlety, and the dissimulation which are habitual to a tyrant; and that, as a general rule, those amongst us who rank as patricians are somewhat wanting in natural affection.²²

^p. 12. From Alexander the Platonist,²³ not to say to anyone often or without necessity, nor write in a letter, I am too busy, nor in this fashion constantly plead urgent affairs as an excuse for evading the obligations entailed upon us by our relations towards those around us.

13. From Catulus,²⁴ not to disregard a friend’s expostulation even when it is unreasonable, but to try to bring him back to his usual friendliness; and to speak with whole-hearted good-will of one’s teachers, as it is recorded that Domitius²⁵ did of Athenodotus; and to be genuinely fond of one’s children.

14. From my ‘brother’ Severus,²⁶ love of family, love of truth, love of justice, and (thanks to him!) to know Thrasea, Helvidius, Cato, Dion, Brutus; and the conception of a state with one law for all, based upon individual equality and freedom of speech, and of a sovranty which prizes above all things the liberty of the subject; and furthermore from him also to set a well-balanced and unvarying value on philosophy; and readiness to do others a kindness, and eager generosity, and optimism, and confidence in the love of friends; and perfect openness in the case of those that came in for his censure; and the absence of any need for his friends to surmise what he did or did not wish, so plain was it.

^p. 15. From Maximus,²⁷ self-mastery and stability of purpose; and cheeriness in sickness as well as in all other circumstances; and a character justly proportioned of sweetness and gravity; and to perform without grumbling the task that lies to one’s hand.

And the confidence of every one in him that what he said was also what he thought, and that what he did was done with no ill intent. And not to shew surprise, and not to be daunted; never to be hurried, or hold back, or be at a loss, or downcast, or smile a forced smile, or, again, be ill-tempered or suspicious.

And beneficence²⁸ and placability and veracity; and to give the impression of a man who cannot deviate from the right way rather than of one who is kept in it²⁹; and that no one could have thought himself looked down upon by him, or could go so far as to imagine himself a better man than he; and to keep pleasantry within due bounds.

16. From my Father,³⁰ mildness, and an unshakable adherence to decisions deliberately come to; and no empty vanity in respect to so-called honours; and a love of work and thoroughness; and a readiness to hear any suggestions for the common good; and an inflexible determination to give every man his due; and to know by experience when is the time to insist and when to desist; and to suppress all passion for boys.³¹

^p. And his public spirit, and his not requiring his friends at all to sup with him or necessarily attend him abroad,³² and their always finding him the same when any urgent affairs had kept them away; and the spirit of thorough investigation which he shewed in the meetings of his Council, and his perseverance; nay his never desisting prematurely from an enquiry on the strength of off-hand impressions; and his faculty for keeping his friends and never being bored with them or infatuated about them; and his self-reliance in every emergency, and his good humour; and his and his habit of looking ahead and making provision for the smallest details without any heroics.

And his restricting in his reign public acclamations and every sort of adulation; and his unsleeping attention to the needs of the empire, and his wise stewardship of its resources, and his patient tolerance of the censure that all this entailed; and his freedom from superstition with respect to the Gods and from hunting for popularity with respect to men by pandering to their desires or by courting the mob: yea his soberness in all things³³ and stedfastness; and the absence in him of all vulgar tastes and any craze for novelty.

And the example that he gave of utilizing without pride, and at the same without any apology, all the lavish gifts of Fortune that contribute towards the comfort of life, so as to enjoy them when present as a matter of course, and, when absent, not to miss them and no one could charge him with sophistry, flippancy,³⁴ or pedantry; but he was a man mature, ^p. complete,³⁵ deaf to flattery, able to preside over his own affairs and those of others.

Besides this also was his high appreciation of all true philosophers without any upbraiding of the others, and at the same time without any undue subservience to them; then again his easiness of access and his graciousness that yet had nothing fulsome about it; and his reasonable attention to his bodily requirements, not as one too fond of life, or vain of his outward appearance,³⁶ nor yet as one who neglected it, but so as by his own carefulness to need but very seldom the skill of the leech or medicines and outward applications.

But most of all a readiness to acknowledge without jealousy the claims of those who were endowed with any especial gift, such as eloquence or knowledge of law or ethics or any other subject, and to give them active support, that each might gain the honour to which his individual eminence entitled him and his loyalty to constitutional precedent without any parade of the fact that it was according to precedent.

Furthermore he was not prone to change or vacillation, but attached to the same places and the same things; and after his spasms of violent headache he would come back at once to his usual employments with renewed vigour; and his secrets were not many but very few and at very rare intervals, and then only political secrets; and he shewed good sense and moderation in his management of public spectacles, and in the construction of public works, and in congiaria³⁷ and the like, as a man who ^p. had an eye to what had to be done and not to the credit to be gained thereby.

He did not bathe at all hours; he did not build for the love of building; he gave no thought to his food, or to the texture and colour of his clothes, or the comeliness of his slaves. His robe came up from Lorium, his country-seat in the plains, and Lanuvium supplied his wants for the most part. Think of how he dealt with the customs’ officer at Tusculum when the latter apologized, and it was a type of his usual conduct.

There was nothing rude in him, nor yet overbearing or violent nor carried, as the phrase goes, “to the sweating state”; but everything was considered separately, as by a man of ample leisure, calmly, methodically, manfully, consistently. One might apply to him what is told of Socrates,³⁸ that he was able to abstain from or enjoy those things that many are not strong enough to refrain from and too much inclined to enjoy. But to have the strength to persist in the one case and be abstemious in the other³⁹ is characteristic of a man who has a perfect and indomitable soul, as was seen in the illness of Maximus.

17. From the Gods, to have good grandfathers,⁴⁰ good parents, a good sister, good teachers, good companions, kinsmen, friends—nearly all of them; and that I fell into no trespass against any of them, and yet I had a disposition that way inclined, such as might have led me into something of the sort,⁴¹ had ^p. it so chanced; but by the grace of God there was no such coincidence of circumstances as was likely to put me to the test.

And that I was not brought up any longer with my grandfather’s⁴² concubine, and that I kept unstained the flower of my youth; and that I did not make trial of my manhood before the due time, but even postponed it.

That I was subordinated to a ruler and a father capable of ridding me of all conceit, and of bringing me to recognize that it is possible to live in a Court and yet do without body-guards and gorgeous garments and linkmen and statues and the like pomp; and that it is in such a man’s power to reduce himself very nearly to the condition of a private individual and yet not on this account to be more paltry or more remiss in dealing with what the interests of the state require to be done in imperial fashion.

That it was my lot to have such a brother,⁴³ capable by his character of stimulating me to watchful care over myself, and at the same time delighting me by his deference⁴⁴ and affection: that my children have not been devoid of intelligence nor physically deformed. That I did not make more progress in rhetoric⁴⁵ and poetry⁴⁶ and my other studies, in which I should perhaps have been engrossed, had I felt myself making good way in them. That I lost no time in promoting my tutors to such posts of ^p. honour⁴⁷ as they seemed to desire, and that I did not put them off with the hope that I would do this later on since they were still young. That I got to know Apollonius, Rusticus, Maximus.

That I had clear and frequent conceptions as to the true meaning of a life according to Nature,⁴⁸ so that as far as the Gods were concerned and their blessings and assistance and intention, there was nothing to prevent me from beginning at once to live in accordance with Nature, though I still come short of this ideal by my own fault, and by not attending to the reminders, nay, almost the instructions, of the Gods.

That my body holds out so long in such a life as mine⁴⁹; that I did not touch Benedicta or Theodotus, but that even afterwards, when I did give way to amatory passions, I was cured of them; that, though often offended with Rusticus, I never went so far as to do anything for which I should have been sorry; that my mother,⁵⁰ though she was to die young, yet spent her last years with me.

That as often as I had the inclination to help anyone, who was in pecuniary distress or needing any other assistance, I was never told that there was no money available for the purpose; and that I was never under any similar need of accepting help from another. That I have been blessed with a wife so docile,⁵¹ so affectionate, so unaffected;⁵² that I had no lack of suitable tutors for my children.

^p. That by the agency of dreams⁵³ I was given antidotes both of other kinds and against the spitting of blood and vertigo; and there is that response also at Caieta, “as thou shalt use it.” And that, when I had set my heart on philosophy, I did not fall into the hands of a sophist, nor sat down at the author’s desk, or became a solver of syllogisms, nor busied myself with physical phenomena. For all the above the Gods as helpers and good fortune need.

Written among the Quadi on the Gran.⁵⁴

Book II

^p. BOOK II

1. Say to thyself at daybreak:⁵⁵ I shall come across the busy-body, the thankless, the bully, the treacherous, the envious, the unneighbourly.⁵⁶ All this has befallen them because they know not good from evil. But I, in that I have comprehended the nature of the Good that it is beautiful, and the nature of Evil that it is ugly, and the nature of the wrong-doer himself that it is akin to me, not as partaker of the same blood and seed but of intelligence and a morsel of the Divine, can neither be injured by any of them—for no one can involve me in what is debasing—nor can I be wroth with my kinsman and hate him. For we have come into being for co-operation, as have the feet, the hands, the eyelids, the rows of upper and lower teeth. Therefore to thwart one another is against Nature; and we do thwart one another by shewing resentment and aversion.

2. This that I am, whatever it be, is mere flesh and a little breath and the ruling Reason. Away with thy books⁵⁷! Be no longer drawn aside by them: it is not allowed. But as one already dying disdain the flesh: it is naught but gore and bones and a network compact of nerves and veins and arteries. Look at the breath too, what sort of thing it is; air: ^p. and not even that always the same, but every minute belched forth and again gulped down. Then, thirdly, there is the ruling Reason. Put thy thought thus: thou art an old man⁵⁸; let this be a thrall no longer, no more a puppet⁵⁹ pulled aside by every selfish impulse; nor let it grumble any longer at what is allotted to it in the present or dread it in the future.

3. Full of Providence are the works of the Gods, nor are Fortune’s works independent of Nature or of the woven texture and interlacement of all that is under the control of Providence. Thence⁶⁰ are all things derived⁶¹; but Necessity too plays its part and the Welfare of the whole Universe of which thou art a portion. But good for every part of Nature is that which the Nature of the Whole brings about, and which goes to preserve it. Now it is the changes not only of the elements but of the things compounded of them that preserve the Universe. Let these reflections suffice thee, if thou hold them as principles. But away with thy thirst for books,⁶² that thou mayest die not murmuring but with a good grace, truly and from thy heart grateful to the Gods.

4. Call to mind how long thou deferrest these things, and how many times thou hast received from the Gods grace⁶³ of the appointed day and thou usest it not. Yet now, if never before, shouldest thou realize of what Universe thou art a part, and as an emanation from what Controller of that Universe thou dost subsist; and that a limit has been set to thy time, which if thou use not to let daylight ^p. into thy soul, it will be gone—and thou!—and never again shall the chance be thine.

5. Every hour make up thy mind sturdily as a Roman and a man to do what thou hast in hand with scrupulous and unaffected dignity and love of thy kind and independence and justice; and to give thyself rest from all other impressions. And thou wilt give thyself this, if thou dost execute every act of thy life as though it were thy last,⁶⁴ divesting thyself of all aimlessness⁶⁵ and all passionate antipathy to the convictions of reason, and all hypocrisy and self-love and dissatisfaction with thy allotted share. Thou seest how few are the things, by mastering which a man may lead a life of tranquillity and godlikeness; for the Gods also will ask no more from him who keeps these precepts.

6. Wrong thyself,⁶⁶ wrong thyself, O my Soul! But the time for honouring thyself will have gone by; for a man has but one life, and this for thee is well-nigh closed,⁶⁷ and yet thou dost not hold thyself in reverence, but settest thy well-being in the souls of others.

7. Do those things draw thee at all away, which befall thee from without? Make then leisure for thyself for the learning of some good thing more, and cease being carried aside hither and thither. But therewith must thou take heed of the other error. For they too are triflers, who by their activities have worn themselves out in life without even having an aim whereto they can direct every impulse, aye and even every thought.

^p. 8. Not easily is a man found to be unhappy by reason of his not regarding what is going on in another man’s soul; but those who do not attend closely to the motions of their own souls must inevitably be unhappy.

9. This must always be borne in mind, what is the Nature of the whole Universe, and what mine, and how this stands in relation to that, being too what sort of a part of what sort of a whole; and that no one can prevent thee from doing and saying always what is in keeping with the Nature of which thou art a part.

10. Theophrastus in his comparison of wrong-doings—for, speaking in a somewhat popular way, such comparison may be made—says in the true philosophical spirit that the offences which are due to lust are more heinous than those which are due to anger.⁶⁸ For the man who is moved with anger seems to turn his back upon reason with some pain and unconscious compunction⁶⁹; but he that does wrong from lust, being mastered by pleasure, seems in some sort to be more incontinent and more unmanly in his wrong-doing. Rightly then, and not unworthily of a philosopher, he said that the wrongdoing which is allied with pleasure calls for a severer condemnation than that which is allied with pain; and, speaking generally, that the one wrong-doer is more like a man, who, being sinned against first, has been driven by pain to be angry, while the other, being led by lust to do some act, has of his own motion been impelled to do evil.

11. Let thine every deed and word and thought be those of a man who can depart from life this moment.⁷⁰ But to go away from among men, if ^p. there are Gods, is nothing dreadful; for they would not involve thee in evil. But if indeed there are no Gods, or if they do not concern themselves with the affairs of men, what boots it for me to live in a Universe where there are no Gods, where Providence is not? Nay, but there are Gods, and they do concern themselves with human things;⁷¹ and they have put it wholly in man’s power not to fall into evils that are truly such. And had there been any evil in what lies beyond, for this too would they have made provision, that it should be in every man’s power not to fall into it. But how can that make a man’s life worse which does not make the man worse?⁷² Yet the Nature of the Whole could not have been guilty of an oversight from ignorance or, while cognizant of these things, through lack of power to guard against or amend them; nor could it have gone so far amiss either from inability or unskilfulness, as to allow good and evil to fall without any discrimination alike upon the evil and the good. Still it is a fact that death and life, honour and dishonour, pain and pleasure, riches and penury, do among men one and all betide the Good and the Evil alike, being in themselves neither honourable nor shameful. Consequently they are neither good nor evil.

12. How quickly all things vanish away, in the Universe their actual bodies, and the remembrance of them in Eternity, and of what character are all objects of sense, and particularly those that entice us with pleasure or terrify us with pain or are acclaimed by vanity—how worthless and despicable and unclean and ephemeral and dead!—this is for our faculty of intelligence to apprehend; as also what they really are whose conceptions and whose voices award ^p. renown; what it is to die, and that if a man look at death in itself, and with the analysis of reason strip it of its phantom terrors, no longer will he conceive it to be aught but a function of Nature,—but if a man be frightened by a function of Nature, he is childish; and this is not only Nature’s function but her welfare;—and how man is in touch with God and with what part of himself, and in what disposition of this portion of the man.

13. Nothing can be more miserable than the man who goes through the whole round of things, and, as the poet⁷³ says, pries into the secrets of the earth, and would fain guess the thoughts in his neighbour’s heart, while having no conception that he needs but to associate himself with the divine ‘genius’ in his bosom,⁷⁴ and to serve it truly. And service of it is to keep it pure from passion and aimlessness and discontent with anything that proceeds from Gods or men. For that which proceeds from the Gods is worthy of reverence in that it is excellent; and that which proceeds from men, of love, in that they are akin, and, at times and in a manner,⁷⁵ of compassion, in that they are ignorant of good and evil—a defect this no less than the loss of power to distinguish between white and black.

14. Even if thy life is to last three thousand years or for the matter of that thirty thousand, yet bear in mind that no one ever parts with any other life than ^p. the one he is now living,⁷⁶ nor lives any other than that which he now parts with. The longest life, then, and the shortest amount but to the same. For the present time is of equal duration for all, while that which we lose is not ours;⁷⁷ and consequently what is parted with is obviously a mere moment. No man can part with either the past or the future. For how can a man be deprived of what he does not possess? These two things, then, must needs be remembered: the one, that all things from time everlasting have been cast in the same mould and repeated cycle after cycle, and so it makes no difference whether a man see the same things recur through a hundred years or two hundred,⁷⁸ or through eternity: the other, that the longest liver and he whose time to die comes soonest part with no more the one than the other. For it is but the present that a man can be deprived of, if, as is the fact, it is this alone that he has, and what he has not a man cannot part with.

15. Remember that everything is but what we think it. For obvious indeed is the saying fathered on Monimus the Cynic, obvious too the utility of what was said,⁷⁹ if one accept the gist of it as far as it is true.

16. The soul of man does wrong to itself then most of all, when it makes itself, as far as it can do so, an imposthume and as it were a malignant growth in the Universe. For to grumble at anything that happens is a rebellion against Nature, in some part of which are bound up the natures of all other things. And the soul wrongs itself then again, when it turns away from any man or even opposes him with ^p. intent to do him harm, as is the case with those who are angry. It does wrong to itself, thirdly, when it is overcome by pleasure⁸⁰ or pain. Fourthly, when it assumes a mask, and in act or word is insincere or untruthful. Fifthly, when it directs some act or desire of its own towards no mark, and expends its energy on any thing whatever aimlessly and unadvisedly, whereas even the most trifling things should be done with reference to the end in view. Now the end for rational beings is to submit themselves to the reason and law of that archetypal city and polity⁸¹—the Universe.

17. Of the life of man the duration is but a point, its substance streaming away, its perception dim, the fabric of the entire body prone to decay, and the soul a vortex, and fortune incalculable, and fame uncertain. In a word all the things of the body are as a river, and the things of the soul as a dream and a vapour; and life is a warfare and a pilgrim’s sojourn, and fame after death is only forgetfulness. What then is it that can help us on our way? One thing and one alone—Philosophy; and this consists in keeping the divine ‘genius’ within pure⁸² and unwronged, lord of all pleasures and pains, doing nothing aimlessly⁸³ or with deliberate falsehood and hypocrisy, independent of another’s action or inaction; and furthermore welcoming what happens and is allotted, as issuing from the same source, whatever it be, from which the man himself has issued; and above all waiting for death with a good grace as being but a setting free of the elements of which every thing living is made up. But if there ^p. be nothing terrible in each thing being continuously changed into another thing, why should a man look askance at the change and dissolution of all things? For it is in the way of Nature, and in the way of Nature there can be no evil.

Written at Carnuntum.⁸⁴⁸⁵

Book III

^p. BOOK III

1. We ought not to think only upon the fact that our life each day is waning away, what is left of it being ever less, but this also should be a subject for thought, that even if life be prolonged, yet is it uncertain whether the mind will remain equally fitted in the future for the understanding of facts and for that contemplation which strains after the knowledge of things divine and human. For if a man has entered upon his dotage, there will still be his the power of breathing,⁸⁶ and digestion, and thought, and desire, and all such-like faculties; but the full use of himself,⁸⁷ the accurate appreciation of the items⁸⁸ of duty, the nice discrimination of what presents itself to the senses, and a clear judgment on the question whether it is time for him to end his own life,⁸⁹ and all such decisions, as above all require well-trained powers of reasoning—these are already flickering out in him. It needs, then, that we should press onwards, not only because ^p. we come each moment nearer to death, but also because our insight into facts and our close touch of them is gradually ceasing even before we die.

2. Such things as this also we ought to note with care, that the accessories too of natural operations have a charm and attractiveness of their own. For instance, when bread is in the baking, some of the parts split open, and these very fissures, though in a sense thwarting the bread-maker’s design, have an appropriateness of their own and in a peculiar way stimulate the desire for food. Again when figs are at their ripest, they gape open; and in olives that are ready to fall their very approach to over-ripeness gives a peculiar beauty to the fruit. And the full ears of corn bending downwards, and the lion’s beetling brows, and the foam dripping from the jaws of the wild-boar,⁹⁰ and many other things, though, if looked at apart from their setting, they are far from being comely, yet, as resultants from the operations of Nature, lend them an added charm and excite our admiration.

And so, if a man has sensibility and a deeper insight into the workings of the Universe, scarcely anything, though it exist only as a secondary consequence to something else, but will seem to him to form in its own peculiar way a pleasing adjunct to the whole. And he will look on the actual gaping jaws⁹¹ of wild beasts⁹² with no less pleasure than the representations of them by limners and modellers; and he will be able to see in the aged of either sex a mature prime and comely ripeness, and gaze with chaste eyes ^p. upon the alluring loveliness of the young. And many such things there are which do not appeal to everyone, but will come home to him alone who is genuinely intimate with Nature and her works.

3. Hippocrates, after healing many a sick man, fell sick himself and died. Many a death have Chaldaeans foretold, and then their own fate has overtaken them also.⁹³ Alexander, Pompeius and Gaius Caesar times without number utterly destroyed whole cities, and cut to pieces many myriads of horse and foot on the field of battle, yet the day came when they too departed this life. Heraclitus, after endless speculations on the destruction of the world by fire, came to be filled internally with water, and died beplastered with cowdung. And lice caused the death of Democritus,⁹⁴ and other vermin of Socrates.

What of this? Thou hast gone aboard, thou hast set sail, thou hast touched land; go ashore; if indeed for another life, there is nothing even there void of Gods; but if to a state of non-sensation,⁹⁵ thou shalt cease being at the mercy of pleasure and pain and lackeying the bodily vessel⁹⁶ which is so much baser than that which ministers to it. For the one is intelligence and a divine ‘genius,’ the other dust and putrescence.

4. Fritter not away what is left of thy life in thoughts about others, unless thou canst bring these thoughts into relation with some common interest. For verily thou dost hereby cut thyself off from other work, that is, by thinking what so and so is ^p. doing and why, what he is saying, having what in mind, contriving what, and all the many like things such as whirl thee aside from keeping close watch over thine own ruling Reason.

We ought therefore to eschew the aimless⁹⁷ and the unprofitable in the chain of our thoughts, still more all that is over-curious and ill-natured, and a man should accustom himself to think only of those things about which, if one were to ask on a sudden, What now in thy thoughts? thou couldest quite frankly answer at once, This or that; so that thine answer should immediately make manifest that all that is in thee is simple and kindly and worthy of a living being that is social and has no thought for pleasures or for the entire range of sensual images, or for any rivalry, envy, suspicion, or anything else, whereat thou wouldest blush to admit that thou hadst it in thy mind.⁹⁸

For in truth such a man, one who no longer puts off being reckoned now, if never before, among the best, is in some sort a priest and minister of the Gods, putting to use also that which, enthroned within him,⁹⁹ keeps the man unstained by pleasures, invulnerable to all pain, beyond the reach of any wrong, proof against all evil, a champion in the highest of championships—that of never being overthrown by any passion—dyed in grain with justice, welcoming with all his soul everything that befalls and is allotted him, and seldom, nor yet without a great and a general necessity, concerning himself with the words or deeds or thoughts of another. ^p. For it is only the things which relate to himself that he brings within the scope of his activities, and he never ceases to ponder over what is being spun for him as his share in the fabric of the Universe, and he sees to it that the former are worthy, and is assured that the latter is good. For the fate which is allotted to each man is swept along with him in the Universe as well as sweeps him along with it.¹⁰⁰

And he bears in mind that all that is rational is akin, and that it is in man’s nature to care for all men, and that we should not embrace the opinion of all, but of those alone who live in conscious agreement with Nature. But what sort of men they, whose life is not after this pattern, are at home and abroad, by night and in the day, in what vices they wallow and with whom—of this he is ever mindful. Consequently he takes no account of praise from such men, who in fact cannot even win their own approval.

5. Do that thou doest neither unwillingly nor selfishly nor without examination nor against the grain. Dress not thy thought in too fine a garb. Be not a man of superfluous words or superfluous deeds. Moreover let the god that is in thee¹⁰¹ be lord of a living creature, that is manly, and of full age, and concerned with statecraft, and a Roman, and a ruler, who hath taken his post as one who awaits the signal of recall from life in all readiness, needing no oath nor any man as his voucher. Be thine the cheery face and independence of help¹⁰² from without and independence of such ease as others can give. It needs then to stand, and not be set, upright.¹⁰³

^p. 6. If indeed thou findest in the life of man a better thing than justice, than truth, than temperance, than manliness, and, in a word, than thy mind’s satisfaction with itself in things wherein it shews thee acting according to the true dictates of reason, and with destiny in what is allotted thee apart from thy choice—if, I say, thou seest anything better than this, turn to it with all thy soul and take thy fill of the best, as thou findest it.

But if there appears nothing better than the very deity¹⁰⁴ enthroned in thee, which has brought into subjection to itself all individual desires, which scrutinizes the thoughts, and, in the words of Socrates, has withdrawn itself from all the enticements of the senses, and brought itself into subjection to the Gods, and cherishes a fellow-feeling for men—if thou findest everything else pettier and of less account than this, give place to nought else, to which if thou art but once plucked aside, and incline thereto, never more shalt thou be able without distraction to give paramount honour to that good which is thine own peculiar heritage. For it is not right that any extraneous thing at all, such as the praise of the many, or office, or wealth, or indulgence in pleasure, should avail against that good which is identical with reason and a civic spirit. All these things, even if they seem for a little to fit smoothly into our lives, on a sudden overpower us and sweep us away.

But do thou, I say, simply and freely choose the better and hold fast to it. But that is the better which is to my interest. If it is to thy interest as a rational creature, hold that fast; but if as a mere animal, declare it boldly and maintain thy judgment without ^p. arrogance. Only see to it that thou hast made thy enquiry without error.

7. Prize not anything as being to thine interest that shall ever force thee to break thy troth, to surrender thine honour, to hate, suspect, or curse anyone, to play the hypocrite, to lust after anything that needs walls and curtains.¹⁰⁵ For he that has chosen before all else his own intelligence and good genius, and to be a devotee of its supreme worth, does not strike a tragic attitude or whine, nor will he ask for either a wilderness or a concourse of men; above all he will live neither chasing anything nor shunning it. And he recks not at all whether he is to have his soul imprisoned in his body for a longer or a shorter span of time,¹⁰⁶ for even if he must take his departure at once, he will go as willingly as if he were to discharge any other function that can be discharged with decency and orderliness, making sure through life of this one thing, that his thoughts should not in any case assume a character out of keeping with a rational and civic creature.

8. In the mind of the man that has been chastened and thoroughly cleansed thou wilt find no foul abscess or gangrene or hidden sore. Nor is his life cut short, when the day of destiny overtakes him, as we might say of a tragedian’s part, who leaves the stage before finishing his speech and playing out the piece.¹⁰⁷ Furthermore there is nothing there slavish or affected, no dependence on others or severance from them,¹⁰⁸ no sense of accountability or skulking to avoid it.

9. Hold sacred thy capacity for forming opinions. ^p. With that it rests wholly that thy ruling Reason should never admit any opinion out of harmony with Nature, and with the constitution of a rational creature. This ensures due deliberation and fellowship with mankind and fealty to the Gods.

10. Jettison everything else, then, and lay hold of these things only, few as they are; and remember withal that it is only this present,¹⁰⁹ a moment of time, that a man lives: all the rest either has been lived or may never be. Little indeed, then, is a man’s life, and little the nook of earth¹¹⁰ whereon he lives, and little even the longest after-fame, and that too handed on through a succession of manikins, each one of them very soon to be dead, with no knowledge even of themselves, let alone of a man who has died long since.

11. To the stand-bys mentioned add one more, that a definition or delineation should be made of every object that presents itself, so that we may see what sort of thing it is in its essence¹¹¹ stripped of its adjuncts, a separate whole taken as such, and tell over with ourselves both its particular designation and the names of the elements that compose it and into which it will be disintegrated.

For nothing is so conducive to greatness of mind as the ability to examine systematically and honestly everything that meets us in life, and to regard these things always in such a way as to form a conception of the kind of Universe they belong to, and of the use which the thing in question subserves in it; what value it has for the whole Universe and what for man, citizen as he is of the highest state, of which all other states are but as households; what it actually is, and ^p. compounded of what elements, and likely to last how long—namely this that now gives me the impression in question; and what virtue it calls for from me, such as gentleness, manly courage, truth, fidelity, guilelessness, frugality, and the rest.

In each case therefore must thou say: This has come from God; and this is due to the conjunction of fate and the contexture of the world’s web and some such coincidence and chance;¹¹² while that comes from a clansman and a kinsman and a fellow, albeit one who is ignorant of what is really in accordance with his nature. But I am not ignorant, therefore I treat him kindly and justly, in accordance with the natural law of neighbourliness; at the same time, of things that are neither good nor bad, my aim is to hit their true worth.

12. If in obedience to right reason thou doest the thing that thy hand findeth to do earnestly, manfully, graciously, and in no sense as a by-work,¹¹³ and keepest that divine ‘genius’¹¹⁴ of thine in its virgin state, just as if even now thou wert called upon to restore it to the Giver—if thou grapple this to thee, looking for nothing, shrinking from nothing, but content with a present sphere of activity such as Nature allows, and with old-world truth in every word and utterance of thy tongue, thou shalt be happy in thy life. And there is no one that is able to prevent this.

13. Just as physicians always keep their lancets and instruments ready to their hands for emergency operations, so also do thou keep thine axioms ready for the diagnosis of things human and divine, and ^p. for the performing of every act, even the pettiest, with the fullest consciousness of the mutual ties between these two.¹¹⁵ For thou shalt never carry out well any human duty unless thou correlate it to the divine, nor the reverse.

14. Go astray no more; for thou art not likely to read thy little Memoranda,¹¹⁶ or the Acts of the Romans and the Greeks of Old Time,¹¹⁷ and the extracts¹¹⁸ from their writings which thou wast laying up against thine old age. Haste then to the consummation and, casting away all empty hopes, if thou carest aught for thy welfare, come to thine own rescue, while it is allowed thee.

15. They know not how full of meaning are—to thieve,¹¹⁹ to sow, to buy, to be at peace, to see what needs doing, and this is not a matter for the eye but for another sort of sight.

16. Body, Soul, Intelligence: for the body sensations, for the soul desires, for the intelligence axioms. To receive impressions by way of the senses is not denied even to cattle; to be as puppets¹²⁰ pulled by the strings of desire is common to wild beasts and to pathics and to a Phalaris and a Nero. Yet to have the intelligence a guide to what they deem their duty is an attribute of those also who do not believe in Gods and those who fail their country in its need and those who do their deeds behind closed doors.¹²¹

If then all else is the common property of the ^p. classes mentioned, there is left as the characteristic of the good man to delight in and to welcome what befalls and what is spun for him by destiny; and not to sully the divine ‘genius’ that is enthroned in his bosom,¹²² nor yet to perplex it with a multitude of impressions, but to maintain it to the end in a gracious serenity, in orderly obedience to God, uttering no word that is not true and doing no deed that is not just. But if all men disbelieve in his living a simple and modest and cheerful life, he is not wroth with any of them, nor swerves from the path which leads to his life’s goal, whither he must go pure, peaceful, ready for release, needing no force to bring him into accord with his lot.

Book IV

^p. BOOK IV

1. That which holds the mastery¹²³ within us, when it is in accordance with Nature, is so disposed towards what befalls, that it can always adapt itself with ease to what is possible and granted us. For it is wedded to no definite material, but, though in the pursuit of its high aims it works under reservations,¹²⁴ yet it converts into material for itself any obstacle that it meets with, just as fire¹²⁵ when it gets the mastery of what is thrown in upon it. A little flame would have been stifled by it, but the blazing fire instantly assimilates what is cast upon it and, consuming it, leaps the higher in consequence.

2. Take no act in hand aimlessly¹²⁶ or otherwise than in accordance with the true principles perfective of the art.

3. Men seek out retreats for themselves in the country, by the seaside, on the mountains, and thou too art wont to long intensely for such things.¹²⁷ But all this is unphilosophical to the last degree, when thou canst at a moment’s notice retire into thyself.¹²⁸ For nowhere can a man find a retreat more full of ^p. peace or more free from care than his own soul—above all if he have that within him, a steadfast look¹²⁹ at which and he is at once in all good ease, and by good ease I mean nothing other than good order. Make use then of this retirement continually and regenerate thyself. Let thy axioms be short and elemental, such as, when set before thee, will at once rid thee of all trouble, and send thee away with no discontent at those things to which thou art returning.

For with what art thou discontented? The wickedness of men? Take this conclusion to heart, that rational creatures have been made for one another; that forbearance is part of justice; that wrong-doing is involuntary;¹³⁰ and think how many ere now, after passing their lives in implacable enmity, suspicion, hatred, and at daggers drawn with one another, have been laid out and burnt to ashes—think of this, I say, and at last stay thy fretting. But art thou discontented with thy share in the whole? Recall the alternative: Either Providence or Atoms!¹³¹ and the abundant proofs there are that the Universe is as it were a state.¹³² But is it the affections of the body that shall still lay hold on thee? Bethink thee that the Intelligence, when it has once abstracted itself and learnt its own power,¹³³ has nothing to do with the motions smooth or rough of the vital breath. Bethink thee too of all that thou hast heard and subscribed to about pleasure and pain.

But will that paltry thing, Fame, pluck thee aside? Look at the swift approach of complete forgetfulness, ^p. and the void of infinite time on this side of us and on that, and the empty echo of acclamation, and the fickleness and uncritical judgment of those who claim to speak well of us, and the narrowness of the arena to which all this is confined. For the whole earth is but a point, and how tiny a corner¹³⁴ of it is this the place of our sojourning! and how many therein and of what sort are the men who shall praise thee!

From now therefore bethink thee of the retreat into this little plot that is thyself. Above all distract not thyself, be not too eager, but be thine own master, and look upon life as a man, as a human being, as a citizen, as a mortal creature. But among the principles readiest to thine hand, upon which thou shalt pore, let there be these two. One, that objective things do not lay hold of the soul, but stand quiescent without; while disturbances are but the outcome of that opinion which is within us. A second, that all this visible world changes in a moment, and will be no more; and continually bethink thee to the changes of how many things thou hast already been a witness. ‘The Universe—mutation: Life—opinion.’¹³⁵

4. If the intellectual capacity is common to us all, common too is the reason, which makes us rational creatures. If so, that reason also is common which tells us to do or not to do. If so, law¹³⁶ also is common. If so, we are citizens. If so, we are fellow-members of an organised community. If so, the Universe is as it were a state¹³⁷—for of what ^p. other single polity can the whole race of mankind be said to be fellow-members?—and from it, this common State, we get the intellectual, the rational, and the legal instinct, or whençe do we get them? For just as the earthy part has been portioned off for me from some earth, and the watery from another element, and the aerial¹³⁸ from some source, and the hot and fiery from some source of its own—for nothing comes from the non-existent, any more than it disappears into nothingness—so also the intellect has undoubtedly come from somewhere.

5. Death like birth is a secret of Nature—a combination of the same elements, a breaking up into the same—and not at all a thing in fact for any to be ashamed of,¹³⁹ for it is not out of keeping with an intellectual creature or the reason of his constitution.

6. Given such men, it was in the nature of the case inevitable that their conduct should be of this kind.¹⁴⁰ To wish it otherwise, is to wish that the fig-tree had no acrid juice.¹⁴¹ As a general conclusion call this to mind, that within a very short time both thou and he will be dead, and a little later not even your names will be left behind you.

7. Efface the opinion, I am harmed, and at once the feeling of being harmed disappears; efface the feeling, and the harm disappears at once.¹⁴²

8. That which does not make a man himself worse than before cannot make his life worse¹⁴³ either, nor injure it whether from without or within.

9. The nature of the general good could not but have acted so.

^p. 10. Note that all that befalls befalleth justly. Keep close watch and thou wilt find this true, I do not say, as a matter of sequence merely but as a matter of justice also, and as would be expected from One whose dispensation is based on desert.¹⁴⁴ Keep close watch, then, as thou hast begun, and whatsoever thou doest, do it as only a good man should in the strictest sense of that word. In every sphere of activity safeguard this.

11. Harbour no such opinions as he holds who does thee violence, or as he would have thee hold. See things in all their naked reality.

12. Thou shouldest have these two readinesses always at hand; the one which prompts thee to do only what thy reason in its royal and law-making capacity shall suggest for the good of mankind; the other to change thy mind,¹⁴⁵ if one be near to set thee right, and convert thee from some vain conceit. But this conversion should be the outcome of a persuasion in every case that the thing is just or to the common interest—and some such cause should be the only one—not because it is seemingly pleasant or popular.

13. Hast thou reason? I have. Why then not use it? For if this performs its part, what else¹⁴⁶ wouldest thou have?

14. Thou hast subsisted as part of the Whole.¹⁴⁷ Thou shalt vanish into that which begat thee, or rather thou shalt be taken again into its Seminal Reason¹⁴⁸ by a process of change.

15. Many little pellets of frankincense fall upon the same altar, some are cast on it sooner, some later: but it makes no difference.

^p. 16. Ere ten days are past, thou shalt rank as a god with them that hold thee now a wild-beast or an ape,¹⁴⁹ if thou but turn back to thy axioms and thy reverence of reason.

17. Behave not as though thou hadst ten thousand years to live. Thy doom hangs over thee. While thou livest, while thou mayest, become good.

18. What richness of leisure doth he gain who has no eye for his neighbour’s words or deeds or thoughts,¹⁵⁰ but only for his own doings, that they be just and righteous! Verily it is not for the good man to peer about into the blackness of another’s heart,¹⁵¹ but to ‘run straight for the goal with never a glance aside.’

19. He whose heart flutters for after-fame¹⁵² does not reflect that very soon every one of those who remember him, and he himself, will be dead, and their successors again after them, until at last the entire recollection of the man will be extinct, handed on as it is by links that flare up and are quenched. But put the case that those who are to remember are even immortal,¹⁵³ and the remembrance immortal, what then is that to thee? To the dead man, I need scarcely say, the praise is nothing, but what is it to the living, except, indeed, in a subsidiary way?¹⁵⁴ For thou dost reject the bounty of nature unseasonably in the present, and clingest to what others shall say of thee hereafter.¹⁵⁵

^p. 20. Everything, which has any sort of beauty of its own, is beautiful of itself, and looks no further than itself, not counting praise as part of itself. For indeed that which is praised is made neither better nor worse thereby. This is true also of the things that in common parlance are called beautiful, such as material things and works of art. Does, then, the truly beautiful need anything beyond? Nay, no more than law, than truth, than kindness, than modesty. Which of these owes its beauty to being praised, or loses it by being blamed? What! Does an emerald¹⁵⁶ forfeit its excellence by not being praised? Does gold, ivory, purple, a lyre, a poniard, a floweret, a shrub?

21. If souls outlive their bodies, how does the air contain them¹⁵⁷ from times everlasting? How does the earth contain the bodies of those who have been buried in it for such endless ages? For just as on earth the change of these bodies, after continuance for a certain indefinite time, followed by dissolution, makes room for other dead bodies, so souls, when transferred into the air, after lasting for a certain time,¹⁵⁸ suffer change and are diffused and become fire, being taken again into the Seminal Reason of the Whole, and so allow room for those that subsequently take up their abode there. This would be the answer one would give on the assumption that souls outlive their bodies.

But not only must the multitude of bodies thus constantly being buried be taken into account, but also that of the creatures devoured daily by ourselves ^p. and the other animals. How great is the number consumed and thus in a way buried¹⁵⁹ in the bodies of those who feed upon them! And yet room is made for them all by their conversion into blood, by their transmutation into air or fire.

Where in this case lies the way of search for the truth? In a separation of the Material from the Causal.¹⁶⁰

22. Be not whirled aside; but in every impulse fulfil the claims of justice, and in every impression safeguard certainty.

23. All that is in tune with thee, O Universe,¹⁶¹ is in tune with me! Nothing that is in due time for thee is too early or too late for me! All that thy seasons bring, O Nature, is fruit for me! All things come from thee, subsist in thee, go back to thee.¹⁶² There is one who says Dear City of Cecrops¹⁶³! Wilt thou not say O dear City of Zeus?

24. If thou wouldest be tranquil in heart, says the Sage,¹⁶⁴ do not many things. Is not this a better maxim: do but what is needful, and what the reason of a living creature born for a civic life demands, and as it demands. For this brings the tranquillity which comes of doing few things no less than of doing them well. For nine tenths of our words and deeds being unnecessary, if a man retrench there, he will have more abundant leisure and fret the less. Wherefore forget not on every occasion to ask thyself, Is this one of the unnecessary things? But we must retrench not only actions but thoughts which are ^p. unnecessary, for then neither will distracting actions follow.

25. Try living the life of the good man who is more than content with what is allotted to him out of the whole, and is satisfied with his own acts as just and his own disposition as kindly: see how that answers.

26. Hast thou looked on that side of the picture? Look now on this! Fret not thyself; study to be simple.¹⁶⁵ Does a man do wrong? The wrong rests with him.¹⁶⁶ Has something befallen thee? It is well. Everything that befalls was from the beginning destined and spun¹⁶⁷ for thee as thy share out of the Whole. In a word, life is short.¹⁶⁸ Make profit of the present by right reasoning and justice. In thy relaxation be sober.

27. Either there is a well-arranged Order of things or a medley that is confused,¹⁶⁹ yet still an order. Or can a sort of order subsist in thee, while in the Universe there is no order, and that too when all things, though separated and dispersed, are still in sympathetic connexion?

28. A black character,¹⁷⁰ an unmanly character, an obstinate character, inhuman, animal, childish, stupid, counterfeit, shameless, mercenary, tyrannical.¹⁷¹

29. If he is an alien in the Universe who has no cognizance of the things that are in it, no less is he an alien¹⁷² who has no cognizance of what is happening in it. He is an exile, who exiles himself from civic ^p. reason; blind, he who will not see with the eyes of his understanding¹⁷³; a beggar, he who is dependent on another, and cannot draw from his own resources all that his life requires; an imposthume¹⁷⁴ on the Universe, he who renounces, and severs himself from, the reason of our common Nature, because he is ill pleased at what happens—for the same Nature brings this into being, that also brought thee; a limb cut off from the community,¹⁷⁵ he who cuts off his own soul from the soul of all rational things, which is but one.

30. One philosopher goes without a shirt, a second without a book, a third yonder half-naked: says he,* I am starving for bread, yet cleave I fast to Reason; and I get no living out of my learning, yet cleave I to her*.

31. Cherish the art, though humble, that thou hast learned, and take thy rest therein; and pass through the remainder of thy days as one that with his whole soul has given all that is his in trust to the Gods, and has made of himself neither a tyrant nor a slave to any man.

32. Think by way of illustratiou upon the times of Vespasian, and thou shalt see all these things: mankind marrying, rearing children, sickening, dying, warring, making holiday, trafficking, tilling, flattering others, vaunting themselves, suspecting, scheming, praying for the death of others,¹⁷⁶ murmuring at their own lot, loving, hoarding, coveting a consulate, coveting a kingdom. Not a vestige of that life of theirs is left anywhere any longer.

Change the scene again to the times of Trajan. Again it is all the same; that life too is dead. In like ^p. manner contemplate all the other records of past time and of entire nations, and see how many after all their high-strung efforts sank down so soon in death and were resolved into the elements. But above all must thou dwell in thought upon those whom thou hast thyself known, who, following after vanity, neglected to do the things that accorded with their own constitution and, cleaving steadfastly thereto, to be content with them. And here it is essential to remember that a due sense of value¹⁷⁷ and proportion should regulate the care bestowed on every action. For thus wilt thou never give over in disgust, if thou busy not thyself beyond what is right with the lesser things.

33. Expressions once in use are now obsolete. So also the names of those much be-sung¹⁷⁸ heroes of old are in some sense obsolete, Camillus, Caeso, Volesus,¹⁷⁹ Dentatus, and a little later Scipio and Cato, then also Augustus, and then Hadrianus and Antoninus. For all things quickly fade away and become legendary, and soon absolute oblivion encairns them. And here I speak of those who made an extraordinary blaze in the world. For the rest, as soon as the breath is out of their bodies, it is, Out of sight, out of mind.¹⁸⁰ But what, when all is said, is even ever-lasting remembrance¹⁸¹? Wholly vanity. What then is it that calls for our devotion? This one thing: justice in thought, in act unselfishness and a tongue that cannot lie and a disposition ready to welcome all that befalls as unavoidable, as familiar,¹⁸² as issuing from a like origin and fountain-head.

^p. 34. Offer thyself whole-heartedly to Clotho, letting her spin thy thread to serve what purpose soever she will.

35. Ephemeral all of them, the rememberer as well as the remembered!

36. Unceasingly contemplate the generation of all things through change, and accustom thyself to the thought that the Nature of the Universe delights above all in changing the things that exist and making new ones of the same pattern. For in a manner everything that exists is the seed of that which shall come out of it. But thou imaginest that only to be seed that is deposited in the earth or the womb, a view beyond measure unphilosophical.

37. A moment and thou wilt be dead; and not even yet art thou simple, nor unperturbed, nor free from all suspicion that thou canst be injured by externals, nor gracious¹⁸³ to all, nor convinced that wisdom and just dealing are but one.

38. Consider narrowly their ruling Reason, and see what wise men avoid and what they seek after.¹⁸⁴

39. Harm to thee cannot depend on another’s ruling Reason, nor yet on any vagary or phase of thy environment. On what then? On the power that is thine of judging what is evil. Let this, then, pass no judgment, and all is well. Even if its closest associate, the poor body, be cut, be burnt, fester, gangrene, yet let the part which forms a judgment¹⁸⁵ about these things hold its peace, that is, let it assume nothing to be either good or bad, which can befall a good man or a bad indifferently.¹⁸⁶ For that which befalls alike the man who lives by the ^p. rule, and the man who lives contrary to the rule, of Nature, is neither in accordance with Nature nor contrary to it.

40. Cease not to think of the Universe as one living Being,¹⁸⁷ possessed of a single Substance and a single Soul; and how all things trace back to its single sentience;¹⁸⁸ and how it does all things by a single impulse; and how all existing things are joint causes of all things that come into existence; and how intertwined in the fabric is the thread and how closely woven the web.¹⁸⁹

41. Thou art a little soul bearing up a corpse, as Epictetus said.¹⁹⁰

42. Nothing is evil to that which is subject to change, even as there is no good for that which exists as the result of change.

43. As a river¹⁹¹ consisting of all things that come into being, aye, a rushing torrent, is Time. No sooner is a thing sighted than it is carried past, and lo, another is passing, and it too will be carried away.

44. Everything that happens is as usual and familiar,¹⁹² as the rose in spring and the fruit in autumn. The same applies to disease and death and slander and treachery and all that gladdens the foolish or saddens them.

45. That which comes after always has a close relationship to what has gone before. For it is not like some enumeration of items separately taken and following a mere inevitable sequence, but there is a rational connection; and just as existing things have been combined in a harmonious order, so also ^p. all that comes into being bears the stamp not of a mere succession but of a wonderful relationship.¹⁹³

46. Always bear in mind what Heraclitus¹⁹⁴ said: The death of earth is to pass into water, and the death of water to pass into air, and of air to pass into fire, and so back again. Bear in mind too: the wayfarer who forgets the trend of his way, and that men are at variance with the one thing with which they are in the most unbroken communion, the Reason that administers the whole Universe; and that what they encounter every day, this they deem strange; and that we must not act and speak like men asleep,¹⁹⁵—for in fact even in sleep we seem to act and speak;—and that there should be nothing of the children from parents style, that is, no mere perfunctory what our Fathers have told us.

47. Just as, if a God had told thee,¹⁹⁶ Thou shalt die to-morrow or in any case the day after, thou wouldest no longer count it of any consequence whether it were the day after to-morrow or to-morrow, unless thou art in the last degree mean-spirited,¹⁹⁷ for how little is the difference!¹⁹⁸—so also deem it but a trifling thing that thou shouldest die after ever so many years rather than to-morrow.

48. Cease not to bear in mind how many physicians are dead after puckering up their brows so often over their patients; and how many astrologers after making a great parade of predicting the death of others;¹⁹⁹ and how many philosophers after endless disquisitions on death and immortality; how many great captains after butchering thousands²⁰⁰; how many tyrants after exercising with revolting insolence ^p. their power of life and death, as though themselves immortal; and how many entire cities are, if I may use the expression, dead,²⁰¹ Helice and Pompeii and Herculaneum, and others without number.

Turn also to all, one after another, that come within thine own knowledge. One closed a friend’s eyes and was then himself laid out, and the friend who closed his,²⁰² he too was laid out—and all this in a few short years. In a word, fail not to note how short-lived are all mortal things, and how paltry―yesterday a little mucus, ²⁰³ to-morrow a mummy or burnt ash. Pass then through this tiny span of time in accordance with Nature, and come to thy journey’s end with a good grace, just as an olive falls when it is fully ripe, praising the earth that bare it and grateful to the tree that gave it growth.

49. Be like a headland of rock on which the waves break incessantly; but it stands fast and around it the seething of the waters sinks to rest.

Ah, unlucky am I, that this has befallen me! Nay, but rather, lucky am I, that though this has befallen me, yet am I still unhurt, neither crushed by the present nor dreading the future. For something of the kind could have befallen everyone, but everyone would not have remained unhurt in spite of it. Why then count that rather a misfortune than this a good fortune? And in any case dost thou reckon that a misfortune for a man which is not an aberration from his nature? And wouldst thou have that to be an aberration from a man’s nature, which does not contravene the will of his nature! What then? This will thou hast learnt to know. Does what has befallen thee hinder thee one whit from being just, ^p. high-minded, chaste, sensible, deliberate, straight-forward, modest, free, and from possessing all the other qualities, the presence of which enables a man’s nature to come fully into its own? Forget not in future, when anything would lead thee to feel hurt, to take thy stand upon this axiom: This is no misfortune, but to bear it nobly is good fortune.

50. An unphilosophical, but none the less an effective, help to the contemning of death is to tell over the names of those who have clung long and tenaciously to life. How are they better off than those who were cut off before their time? After all, they lie buried somewhere at last, Cadicianus, Fabius, Julianus, Lepidus, and any others like them, who after carrying many to their graves were at last carried to their own.²⁰⁴ Small, in any point of view, is the difference²⁰⁵ in length, and that too lived out to the dregs amid what great cares and with what sort of companions and in what kind of a body! Count it then of no consequence. For look at the yawning gulf of Time behind thee, and before thee at another Infinity to come. In this Eternity the life of a baby of three days and the life of a Nestor of three centuries²⁰⁶ are as one.²⁰⁷

51. Run ever the short way; and the short way is the way of Nature, that leads to all that is most sound in speech and act. For a resolve such as this is a release from troubles and strife, from all mental reservation ²⁰⁸ and affectation.

Book V

^p. BOOK V

1. At daybreak,²⁰⁹ when loth to rise,²¹⁰ have this thought ready in thy mind: I am rising for a man’s work. Am I then still peevish that I am going to do that for which I was born and for the sake of which I came into the world? Or was I made for this, that I should nuzzle under the bed-clothes and keep myself warm? But this is pleasanter. Hast thou been made then for pleasure, in a word, I ask thee, to be acted upon or to act? Consider each little plant, each tiny bird, the ant, the spider, the bee, how they go about their own work and do each his part for the building up of an orderly Universe. Dost thou then refuse to do the work of a man? Dost thou not hasten to do what Nature bids thee. But some rest, too, is necessary. I do not deny it. Howbeit Nature has set limits to this, and no less so to eating and drinking. Yet thou exceedest these limits and exceedest sufficiency. But in acts it is no longer so; there thou comest short of the possibility.

^p. For thou lovest not thyself, else surely hadst thou loved thy nature also and to do her will. But others who love their own art wear themselves to a shadow with their labours over it, forgetting to wash or take food.²¹¹ But thou holdest thine own nature in less honour than the chaser of metal his art of chasing, than the dancer his dancing, than the miser his money-bags, than the popularity-hunter his little applause. And these, when they are exceptionally in earnest, are ready to forgo food and sleep, so that they forward the things in which they are interested. But dost thou deem the acts of a social being of less worth and less deserving of attention?

2. How easy a thing it is to put away and blot out every impression²¹² that is disturbing or alien, and to be at once in perfect peace.

3. Deem no word or deed that is in accord with Nature to be unworthy of thee, and be not plucked aside by the consequent censure of others or what they say,²¹³ but if a thing is good to do or say, judge not thyself unworthy of it. For those others have their own ruling Reason and follow their own bent. Do not thou turn thine eyes aside, but keep to the straight path, following thy own and the universal Nature; and the path of these twain is one.²¹⁴

4. I fare forth through all that Nature wills until the day when I shall sink down and rest from my labours, breathing forth my last breath into the air whence I daily draw it in, and falling upon that earth, whence also my father gathered the seed, and my mother the blood, and my nurse the milk; whence ^p. daily for so many years I am fed and watered; which bears me as I tread it under foot and make full use of it in a thousand ways.

5. Sharpness of wit men cannot praise thee for.²¹⁵ Granted! Yet there are many other qualities of which thou canst not say: I had not that by nature.²¹⁶ Well then, display those which are wholly in thy power, sterling sincerity, dignity, endurance of toil,²¹⁷ abstinence from pleasure.²¹⁸ Grumble not at thy lot, be content with little,²¹⁹ be kindly, independent, frugal, serious, high-minded.²²⁰ Seest thou not how many virtues it is in thy power to display now, in respect of which thou canst plead no natural incapacity or incompatibility, and yet thou art. content still with a lower standard? Or art thou forced to be discontented, to be grasping, to flatter, to inveigh against the body, to play the toady and the braggart, and to be so unstable in thy soul, because forsooth thou hast no natural gifts? By the Gods, No! but long ere now couldest thou have shaken thyself free from all this and have lain under the imputation only, if it must be so, of being somewhat slow and dull of apprehension. And this too thou must amend with training and not ignore thy dulness or be in love with it.

6. One man, when he has done another a kindness, is ready also to reckon on a return.²²¹ A second is not ready to do this, but yet in his heart of hearts ranks the other as a debtor, and he is conscious of what he has done.²²² But a third is in a manner not ^p. conscious of it, but is like the vine that has borne a cluster of grapes, and when it has once borne its due fruit looks for no reward beyond,²²³ as it is with a steed when it has run its course, a hound when it has singled out the trail, a bee when she hath made her comb. And so a man when he hath done one thing well, does not cry it abroad, but betakes himself to a second,²²⁴ as a vine to bear afresh her clusters in due season.

A man then must be of those who act thus as it were unconsciously? Aye. But surely he must be conscious of what he is doing, for it is, we are told, the peculiar attribute of the man of true social instincts to be aware that he puts such instincts into practice,²²⁵ and by heaven to wish that his fellow should be aware of it too. True; but thou misconceivest the present argument, and wilt consequently be of the number of those whom I mentioned before; for in fact they are led astray by reasoning which has a plausible look. But if thou thinkest it worth while to understand what has been said, fear not that thou wilt be led thereby to neglect any social act.

7. A prayer of the Athenians: Rain, Rain, O dear Zeus, upon the corn-land of the Athenians²²⁶ and their meads. Either pray not at all, or in this simple and frank fashion.

8. We have all heard, Aesculapius has prescribed for so and so riding exercise, or cold baths,²²⁷ or walking barefoot. Precisely so it may be said that the Universal Nature has prescribed for so and so sickness or ^p. maim or loss or what not of the same kind. For, in the former case, prescribed has some such meaning as this: He ordained this for so and so as conducive to his health; while in the latter what befalls each man has been ordained in some way as conducive to his destiny. For we say that things fall to us, as the masons too say that the huge squared stones in walls and pyramids fall into their places, adjusting themselves harmoniously to one another in a sort of structural unity. For, in fine, there is one harmony of all things, and just as from all bodies the Universe is made up into such a body as it is, so from all causes is Destiny made up into such a Cause. This is recognized by the most unthinking, for they say: Fate brought this on him. So then this was brought on this man, and this prescribed for this man. Let us then accept our fate, as we accept the prescriptions of Aesculapius. And in fact in these, too, there are many “bitter pills,” but we welcome them in hope of health.

Take much the same view of the accomplishment and consummation of what Nature approves as of thy health, and so welcome whatever happens, should it even be somewhat distasteful, because it contributes to the health of the Universe and the well-faring and well-doing of Zeus himself. For he had not brought this on a man, unless it had brought welfare to the Whole. For take any nature thou wilt, it never brings upon that which is under its control anything that does not conduce to its interests.

For two reasons then it behoves thee to acquiesce in what befalls one, that it was for thee it took ^p. place, and was prescribed for thee, and had reference in some sort to thee, being a thread of destiny spun from the first²²⁸ for thee from the most ancient causes; the other, that even what befalls each individual is the cause of the well-faring, of the consummation²²⁹ and by heaven of the very permanence of that which controls the Universe. For the perfection of the Whole is impaired, if thou cuttest off ever so little of the coherence and continuance of the Causes no less than of the parts. And thou dost cut them off, as far as lies with thee, and bring them to an end, when thou murmurest.

9. Do not feel qualms²³⁰ or despondency or discomfiture if thou dost not invariably succeed in acting from right principles; but when thou art foiled,²³¹ come back again to them, and rejoice if on the whole thy conduct is worthy of a man, and love the course to which thou returnest. Come not back to Philosophy as to a schoolmaster, but as the sore-eyed to their sponges and their white of egg, as this patient to his plaster and that to his fomentations. Thus wilt thou rest satisfied with Reason, yet make no parade of obeying her. And forget not that Philosophy wishes but what thy nature wishes, whereas thy wish was for something else that accords not with Nature. Yes, for it would have been the acme of delight. Ah, is not that the very reason why pleasure trips us up? Nay, see if these be not more delightful still: high-mindedness, independence, simplicity, tenderness of heart,²³² sanctity of life. Why what is more delightful than wisdom herself, ^p. when thou thinkest how sure and smooth in all its workings is the faculty of understanding and knowledge?

10. Things are in a sense so wrapped up in mystery that not a few philosophers, and they no ordinary ones, have concluded that they are wholly beyond our comprehension: nay, even the Stoics themselves find them hard to comprehend. Indeed every assent we give to the impressions of our senses is liable to error, for where is the man who never errs? Pass on then to the objective things themselves, how transitory they are, how worthless, the property, quite possibly, of a boy-minion, a harlot, or a brigand.²³³ After that turn to the characters of thine associates, even the most refined of whom it is difficult to put up with, let alone the fact that a man has enough to do to endure himself.²³⁴

What then there can be amid such murk and nastiness, and in so ceaseless an ebbing of substance and of time, of movement and things moved, that deserves to be greatly valued or to excite our ambition in the least, I cannot even conceive. On the contrary, a man should take heart of grace to await his natural dissolution, and without any chafing at delay comfort²³⁵ himself with these twin thoughts alone: the one, that nothing will befall me that is not in accord with the Nature of the Universe; the other, that it is in my power to do nothing contrary to the God and the ‘genius’²³⁶ within me. For no one can force me to disobey that.

11. To what use then am I putting my soul? Never fail to ask thyself this question and to cross-examine ^p. thyself thus: What relation have I to this part of me which they call the ruling Reason? And whose Soul have I got now? The Soul of a child? Of a youth? Of a woman? Of a tyrant? Of a domestic animal? Of a wild beast?

12. What are counted as good things in the estimation of the many thou canst gather even from this. For if a man fix his mind upon certain things as really and unquestionably good, such as wisdom, temperance, justice, manliness, with this preconception in his mind he could no longer bear to listen to the poet’s, By reason of his wealth of goods; for it would not apply. But, if a man first fix his mind upon the things which appear good to the multitude, he will listen and readily accept as aptly added the quotation from the Comic Poet. In this way even the multitude have a perception of the difference. For otherwise this jest would not²³⁷ offend and be repudiated, while we accept it as appropriately and wittily said of wealth and of the advantages which wait upon luxury and popularity. Go on, then, and ask whether we should prize and count as good those things, with which first fixed in our mind we might germanely quote of their possessor, that for his very wealth of goods he has no place to ease himself in.²³⁸

13. I am made up of the Causal²³⁹ and the Material, and neither of these disappears into nothing, just ^p. as neither did it come into existence out of nothing. So shall my every part by change be told off²⁴⁰ to form some part of the Universe, and that again be changed into another part of it, and so on to infinity. It was by such process of change that I too came into being and my parents, and so backwards into a second infinity. And the statement is quite legitimate, even if the Universe be arranged according to completed cycles.²⁴¹

14. Reason and the art of reasoning are in themselves and in their own proper acts self-sufficing faculties. Starting from a principle peculiar to them, they journey on to the end set before them. Wherefore such actions are termed right acts, as signifying that they follow the right way.

15. Call none of those things a man’s that do not fall to him as man. They cannot be claimed of a man; the man’s nature does not guarantee them; they are no consummations of that nature. Consequently neither is the end for which man lives placed in these things, nor yet that which is perfective of the end, namely The Good. Moreover, if any of these things did fall to a man, it would not fall to him to contemn them and set his face against them, nor would a man be commendable who shewed himself independent of these things, nor yet would he be a good man who came short of his own standard in any of them, if so be these things were good. But as it is, the more a man can cut himself free, or even be set free, from these and other such things with equanimity, by so much the more is he good.

16. The character of thy mind will be such as is ^p. the character of thy frequent thoughts,²⁴² for the soul takes its dye from the thoughts. Dye her then with a continuous succession of such thoughts as these: Where life is possible, there it is possible also to live well.—But the life is life in a Court.²⁴³ Well, in a Court too it is possible to live well. And again: A thing is drawn towards that for the sake of which it has been made, and its end lies in that towards which it is drawn and, where its end lies, there lie also its interest and its good. The Good, then, for a rational creature is fellowship with others.²⁴⁴ For it has been made clear long ago²⁴⁵ that we were constituted for fellowship. Or was it not obvious that the lower were for the sake of the higher²⁴⁶ and the higher for the sake of one another? And living things are higher than lifeless,²⁴⁷ and those that have reason than those that have life only.

17. To crave impossibilities is lunacy; but it is impossible for the wicked to act otherwise.²⁴⁸

18. Nothing befalls anyone that he is not fitted by nature to bear.²⁴⁹ Others experience the same things as thou, but either from ignorance that anything has befallen them, or to manifest their greatness of mind, they stand firm and get no hurt. A strange thing indeed that ignorance and vanity should prove stronger than wisdom!²⁵⁰

19. Things of themselves cannot take the least hold of the Soul, nor have any access to her, nor deflect or move her; but the Soul alone deflects ^p. and moves herself,²⁵¹ and whatever judgments she deems it right to form, in conformity with them she fashions for herself the things that submit themselves to her from without.²⁵²

20. In one respect a man is of very close concern to us, in so far as we must do him good and forbear; but in so far as any stand in the way of those acts which concern us closely, then man becomes for me as much one of things indifferent as the sun, as the wind, as a wild-beast. Though a man may in some sort fetter my activity, yet on my own initiative and mental attitude no fetters can be put because of the power they possess of conditional action²⁵³ and of adaptation to circumstances. For everything that stands in the way of its activity is adapted and transmuted by the mind into a furtherance of it,²⁵⁴ and that which is a check on this action is converted into a help to it, and that which is a hindrance in our path goes but to make it easier.

21. Prize the most excellent thing in the Universe; and this is that which utilizes all things and controls all things. Prize in like manner the most excellent thing in thyself;²⁵⁵ and this is that which is akin to the other. For this, which utilizes all else is in thee too, and by it thy life is governed.

22. That which is not hurtful to the community cannot hurt the individual.²⁵⁶ Test every case of apparent hurt by this rule: if the community be not hurt by this, neither am I hurt; but if the community be hurt, there is no need to be angry with him that hath done the hurt,²⁵⁷ but to enquire, What hath he seen amiss?²⁵⁸

^p. 23. Think often on the swiftness with which the things that exist and that are coming into existence are swept past us and carried out of sight. For all substance²⁵⁹ is as a river in ceaseless flow,²⁶⁰ its activities ever changing and its causes subject to countless variations, and scarcely anything stable; and ever beside us is this infinity of the past and yawning abyss of the future, wherein all things are disappearing.²⁶¹ Is he not senseless who in such an environment puffs himself up, or is distracted, or frets as over a trouble lasting and far-reaching?

24. Keep in memory the universal Substance, of which thou art a tiny part; and universal Time, of which a brief, nay an almost momentary span has been allotted thee; and Destiny, in which how fractional thy share?²⁶²

25. Another does me some wrong? He shall see to it.²⁶³ His disposition is his own, his activities are his own. What the universal Nature wills me to have now, that I now have, and what my nature wills me now to do, that I do.

26. Let the ruling and master Reason of thy soul be proof against any motions in the flesh smooth or rough. Let it not mingle itself with them, but isolate and restrict those tendencies to their true spheres. But when in virtue of that other sympathetic connection these tendencies grow up into the mind as is to be expected in a single organism, then must thou not go about to resist the sensation, natural as it is, but see that thy ruling Reason adds no opinion of its own as to whether such is good or bad.

^p. 27. Walk with the Gods! And he does walk with the Gods, who lets them see his soul invariably satisfied with its lot and carrying out the will of that ‘genius,’ a particle²⁶⁴ of himself, which Zeus has given to every man as his captain and guide²⁶⁵—and this is none other than each man’s intelligence and reason.

28. If a man’s armpits are unpleasant, art thou angry with him? If he has foul breath? What would be the use? The man has such a mouth, he has such armpits. Some such effluvium was bound to come from such a source. But the man has sense, quotha! With a little attention he could see wherein he offends. I congratulate thee! Well, thou too hast sense. By a rational attitude, then, in thyself evoke a rational attitude in him,²⁶⁶ enlighten him, admonish him. If he listen, thou shalt cure him,²⁶⁷ and have no need of anger.

Neither tragedian nor harlot.

29. Thou canst live on earth as thou dost purpose to live when departed. But if men will not have it so, then is it time for thee even to go out of life,²⁶⁸ yet not as one who is treated ill. ‘Tis smoky and I go away.²⁶⁹ Why think it a great matter? But while no such cause drives me forth, I remain a free man, and none shall prevent me from doing what I will, and I will what is in accordance with the nature of a rational and social creature.

30. The intelligence of the Universe is social. It hath at any rate made the lower things for the sake of the higher, and it adapted the higher²⁷⁰ to one another. Thou seest how it hath subordinated, coordinated, and given each its due lot ^p. and brought the more excellent things into mutual accord.

31. How hast thou borne thyself heretofore towards Gods, parents, brothers, wife, children, teachers, tutors, friends, relations, household? Canst thou say truly of them all to this day,

Doing to no man wrong, nor speaking aught that is evil?²⁷¹

And call to mind all that thou hast passed through, all thou hast found strength to bear; that the story of thy life is now full-told and thy service is ending; and how many beautiful sights thou hast seen, how many pleasures and pains thou hast disregarded, forgone what ambitions, and repaid with kindness how much unkindness.²⁷²

32. Why do unskilled and ignorant souls confound²⁷³ him who has skill and has knowledge? What soul, then, has skill and knowledge? Even that which knoweth beginning and end, and the reason that informs all Substance, and governs the Whole from ordered cyele to cycle²⁷⁴ through all eternity.

33. But a little while and thou shalt be burnt ashes or a few dry bones, and possibly a name, possibly not a name even.²⁷⁵ And a name is but sound and a far off echo. And all that we prize so highly in our lives is empty and rotten and paltry, and we but as puppies snapping at each other, as quarrelsome children now laughing and anon in tears. But faith and modesty and justice and truth Up from the wide-wayed Earth have winged their flight to Olympus.²⁷⁶

^p. What then keeps thee here?—if indeed sensible objects are ever changing and unstable, and our faculties are so feeble and so easily misled; and the poor soul itself is an exhalation from blood²⁷⁷; and to be well-thought of in such a world mere vanity. What then remains? To wait with a good grace for the end, whether it be extinction or translation.²⁷⁸ But till our time for that be come, what sufficeth? What but to reverence the Gods and to praise them, to do good unto men and to bear with them and forbear,²⁷⁹ but, for all else that comes within the compass of this poor flesh and breath, to remember that it is not thine nor under thy control?

34. Thou hast it in thy power that the current of thy life be ever fair, if also ‘tis thine to make fair way, if also in ordered way to think and act. The Soul of God and the souls of men and of every rational creature have these two characteristics in common: to suffer no let or hindrance from another, and to find their good in a condition and practice of justice, and to confine their propension to this.

35. If this be no vice of mine nor the outcome of any vice of mine, and if the common interest does not suffer, why concern myself about it? And how can the common interest suffer?²⁸⁰

36. Be not carried incontinently away by sense-impressions, but rally to the fight as thou canst and as is due. If there be failure²⁸¹ in things indifferent, think not there is any great harm done; for that is an evil habit. But as the greybeard (in the play) ^p. taking his leave reclaimed his foster-child’s top, not forgetting that it was but a top, so do thou here also.²⁸² Since indeed thou art found haranguing on the hustings, O Man, hast thou forgotten what this really means? Aye, but people will have it. Must thou too be a fool in consequence?

Time was that wheresoever forsaken²⁸³ I was a man well-portioned; but that man well-portioned is he that hath given himself a good portion; and good portions are good phases of the soul, good impulses, good actions.

Book VI

^p. BOOK VI

1. The Universal Substance is docile²⁸⁴ and ductile; and the Reason that controls it has no motive in itself to do wrong. For it hath no wrongness and doeth no wrong, nor is anything harmed by it. But all things come into being and fulfil their purpose as it directs.

2. Make no difference in doing thy duty²⁸⁵ whether thou art shivering or warm, drowsy²⁸⁶ or sleep-satisfied, defamed or extolled, dying or anything else. For the act of dying too is one of the acts of life.²⁸⁷ So it is enough in this also to get the work in hand done well.²⁸⁸

3. Look within. Let not the special quality²⁸⁹ or worth of anything escape thee.

4. All objective things will anon be changed and either etherialized into the Universal Substance, if that indeed be one, or dispersed abroad.²⁹⁰

5. The controlling Reason knows its own bent and its work and the medium it works in.

^p. 6. The best way of avenging thyself is not to do likewise.²⁹¹

7. Delight in this one thing and take thy rest therein—from social act to go on to social act, keeping all thy thoughts on God.

8. The ruling Reason it is that can arouse and deflect itself, make itself whatever it will,²⁹² and invest everything that befalls with such a semblance as it wills.

9. In accordance with the Nature of the Universe is accomplished each several thing. For surely this cannot be in accordance with any other nature, that either envelops it from without, or is enveloped by it within, or exists in external detachment outside it.

10. Either a medley and a tangled web²⁹³ and a dispersion abroad, or a unity and a plan and a Providence. If the former, why should I even wish to abide in such a random welter and chaos? Why care for anything else than to turn again to the dust at last.²⁹⁴ Why be disquieted? For, do what I will, the dispersion must overtake me. But if the latter, I bow in reverence, my feet are on the rock, and I put my trust in the Power that rules.

11. When forced, as it seems, by thine environment to be utterly disquieted, return with all speed into thy self, staying in discord no longer than thou must. By constant recurrence to the harmony,²⁹⁵ thou wilt gain more command over it.

12. Hadst thou at once a stepmother and a mother ^p. thou wouldst pay due service to the former, and yet thy constant recourse would be to thy mother. So hast thou now the court and philosophy for stepmother and mother. Cease not then to come to the latter and take thy rest in her,²⁹⁶ whereby shall both thy court life seem more tolerable²⁹⁷ to thee, and thou to thy court life.

13. As in the case of meat and similar eatables the thought strikes us, this is the dead body of a fish, this of a fowl or pig; and again that this Falernian is merely the juice of a grape-cluster, and this purple-edged robe is nought but sheep’s wool²⁹⁸ steeped in the blood of a shell-fish; or, of sexual intercourse, that it is merely internal attrition and the spasmodic excretion of mucus²⁹⁹—such, I say, as are these impressions that get to grips with the actual things and enter into the heart of them, so as to see them as they really are, thus should it be thy life through, and where things look to be above measure convincing, laying them quite bare, behold their paltriness and strip off their conventional prestige. For conceit is a past master in fallacies and, when thou flatterest thyself most that thou art engaged in worthy tasks, then art thou most of all deluded by it. At any rate, see what Crates has to say about none other than Xenocrates.³⁰⁰

14. Objects admired by the common sort come chiefly under things of the most general kind, which are held together by physical coherence,³⁰¹ such as stones and wood, or by a natural unity, such as figs, ^p. vines, olives; and those which are admired by persons of a somewhat higher capacity may be classed as things which are held together by a conscious life, such as flocks and herds; and those which are admired by persons still more refined, as things held together by a rational soul; I do not mean rational as part of the Universal Reason, but in the sense of master of an art or expert in some other way, or merely in so far as to own a host of slaves. But he that prizes a soul which is rational, universal, and civic, no longer turns after anything else, but rather than everything besides keeps his own soul, in itself and in its activity, rational and social, and to this end works conjointly with all that is akin to him.

15. Some things are hastening to be, others to be no more, while of those that haste into being some part is already extinct. Fluxes and changes perpetually renew the world, just as the unbroken march of time makes ever new the infinity of ages. In this river of change,³⁰² which of the things which swirl past him, whereon no firm foothold is possible, should a man prize so highly? As well fall in love with a sparrow³⁰³ that flits past and in a moment is gone from our eyes. In fact a man’s life itself is but as an exhalation from blood³⁰⁴ and an inhalation from the air. For just as it is to draw in the air once into our lungs and give it back again, as we do every moment, so is it to give back thither, whence thou didst draw it first, thy faculty of breathing which thou didst receive at thy birth yesterday or the day before.

^p. 16. Neither is it an inner respiration,³⁰⁵ such as that of plants, that we should prize, nor the breathing which we have in common with cattle and wild animals, nor the impressions we receive through our senses, nor that we are pulled by our impulses like marionettes,³⁰⁶ nor our gregarious instincts, nor our need of nutriment; for that is on a par with the rejection of the waste products of our food.

What then is to be prized? The clapping of hands? No. Then not the clapping of tongues either. For the acclamations of the multitude are but a clapping of tongues. So overboard goes that poor thing Fame also. What is left to be prized? This methinks: to limit our action or inaction to the needs of our own constitution, an end that all occupations and arts set before themselves. For the aim of every art is that the thing constituted should be adapted to the work for which it has been constituted. It is so with the vine-dresser who looks after the vines, the colt-trainer, and the keeper of the kennels. And this is the end which the care of children and the methods of teaching have in view. There then is the thing to be prized!

This once fairly made thine own, thou wilt not seek to gain for thyself any of the other things as well. Wilt thou not cease prizing many other things also? Then thou wilt neither be free nor sufficient unto thyself nor unmoved by passion. For thou must needs be full of envy and jealousy, be suspicious of those that can rob thee of such things, and scheme against those who possess what thou prizest. In fine, a man who needs any of those things cannot but be in complete turmoil, and in many cases find ^p. fault even with the Gods.³⁰⁷ But by reverencing and prizing thine own mind, thou shalt make thyself pleasing in thine own sight, in accord with mankind, and in harmony with the Gods, that is, grateful to them for all that they dispense and have ordained.

17. Up, down,³⁰⁸ round-wise sweep the elements along. But the motion of virtue is in none of these ways. It is something more divine, and going forward on a mysterious path fares well upon its way.³⁰⁹

18. What a way to act! Men are chary of commending their contemporaries and associates, while they themselves set great store by the commendation of posterity, whom they have never seen or shall see. But this is next door to taking it amiss that thy predecessors also did not commend thee.

19. Because thou findest a thing difficult for thyself to accomplish do not conceive it to be impracticable for others; but whatever is possible for a man and in keeping with his nature consider also attainable by thyself.

20. Suppose that a competitor in the ring has gashed us with his nails and butted us violently with his head, we do not protest or take it amiss or suspect our opponent in future of foul play. Still we do keep an eye on him, not indeed as an enemy, or from suspicion of him, but with good-humoured avoidance. Act much in the same way in all the other parts of life. Let us make many allowances for our fellow-athletes as it were. Avoidance is always possible, as I have said, without suspicion or hatred.

21. If any one can prove and bring home to me ^p. that a conception or act of mine is wrong, I will amend³¹⁰ it, and be thankful. For I seek the truth, whereby no one was ever harmed. But he is harmed who persists in his own self-deception and ignorance.

22. I do my own duty; other things do not distract me. For they are either inanimate or irrational, or such as have gone astray and know not the road.³¹¹

23. Conduct thyself with magnanimity and freedom towards irrational creatures and, generally, towards circumstances and objective things, for thou hast reason and they have none. But men have reason, therefore treat them as fellow creatures. And in all cases call upon the Gods, and do not concern thyself with the question, How long shall I do this? Three hours are enough so spent.

24. Death reduced to the same condition Alexander the Macedonian and his muleteer, for either they were taken back into the same Seminal Reason³¹² of the Universe or scattered alike into the atoms.³¹³

25. Bear in mind how many things happen to each one of us with respect to our bodies as well as our souls in the same momentary space of time, so wilt thou cease to wonder that many more things—not to say all the things that come into existence in that One and Whole which in fact we call the Universe—subsist in it at one time.

26. If one enquire of thee, How is the name Antoninus written? wilt thou with vehemence enunciate each constituent letter? What then? If thy listeners lose their temper, wilt thou lose ^p. thine? Wouldst thou not go on gently to enumerate each letter? So recollect that in life too every duty is the sum of separate items.³¹⁴ Of these thou must take heed, and carry through methodically what is set before thee, in no wise troubled or shewing counter-irritation against those who are irritated with thee.

27. How intolerant it is not to permit men to cherish an impulse towards what is in their eyes congenial and advantageous! Yet in a sense thou withholdest from them the right to do this, when thou resentest their wrong-doing. For they are undoubtedly drawn to what they deem congenial and advantageous. But they are mistaken. Well, then, teach and enlighten them without any resentment.³¹⁵

28. Death is a release from the impressions of sense, and from impulses that make us their puppets, from the vagaries of the mind, and the hard service of the flesh.

29. It is a disgrace for the soul to be the first to succumb in that life in which the body does not succumb.³¹⁶

30. See thou be not Caesarified, nor take that dye,³¹⁷ for there is the possibility. So keep thyself a simple and good man, uncorrupt, dignified, plain, a friend of justice, god-fearing, gracious, affectionate, manful in doing thy duty. Strive to be always such as Philosophy minded to make thee. Revere the Gods, save mankind. Life is short. This only is the ^p. harvest of earthly existence, a righteous disposition and social acts.

Do all things as a disciple of Antoninus.³¹⁸ Think of his constancy in every act rationally undertaken, his invariable equability, his piety, his serenity of countenance, his sweetness of disposition, his contempt for the bubble of fame, and his zeal for getting a true grip of affairs. How he would never on any account dismiss a thing until he had first thoroughly serutinized and clearly conceived it; how he put up with those who found fault with him unfairly, finding no fault with them in return; how he was never in a hurry; how he gave no ear to slander,³¹⁹ and with what nicety he tested dispositions and acts; was no imputer of blame, and no craven, not a suspicious man, nor a sophist; what little sufficed him whether for lodging or bed, dress, food or attendance; how fond he was of work, and how long-suffering; how he would remain the whole day at the same occupation,³²⁰ owing to his spare diet³²¹ not even requiring to relieve nature except at the customary time; and how loyal he was to his friends and always the same; and his forbearance towards those who openly opposed his views, and his pleasure when anyone pointed out something better³²²; and how god-fearing he was and yet not given to superstition. Take heed to all this, that thy last hour come upon thee as much at peace with thy conscience as he was.

31. Be sober once more and call back thy senses, and being roused again from sleep and, realizing that they were but dreams that beset thee, now awake ^p. again, look at these realities as thou didst at those thy dreams.

32. I consist of body and soul.³²³ To the body indeed all things are indifferent, for it cannot concern itself with them. But to the mind³²⁴ only those things are indifferent which are not its own activities; and all those things that are its own activities are in its own power. Howbeit, of these it is only concerned with the present; for as to its activities in the past and the future, these two rank at once among things indifferent.

33. For hand or foot to feel pain is no violation of nature, so long as the foot does its own appointed work, and the hand its own. Similarly pain for a man, as man, is no unnatural thing so long as he does a man’s appointed work. But, if not unnatural, then is it not an evil either.

34. The pleasures of the brigand, the pathic, the parricide, the tyrant³²⁵—just think what they are!

35. Dost thou not see how the mechanic craftsman, though to some extent willing to humour the non-expert, yet holds fast none the less to the principles of his handicraft, and cannot endure to depart from them. Is it not strange that the architect and the physician should hold the rationale of their respective arts in higher reverence than a man his own reason, which he has in common with the Gods?

36. Asia, Europe, corners of the Universe: the whole Ocean a drop in the Universe: Athos but a little clod therein: all the present a point in Eternity:—everything on a tiny scale, so easily changed, so quickly vanished.

^p. All things come from that one source, from that ruling Reason of the Universe,³²⁶ either under a primary impulse from it or by way of consequence. And therefore the gape of the lion’s jaws³²⁷ and poison and all noxious things, such as thorns and mire, are but after-results of the grand and the beautiful. Look not then on these as alien to that which thou dost reverence, but turn thy thoughts to the one source of all things.

37. He, who sees what now is, hath seen all that ever hath been from times everlasting, and that shall be to eternity³²⁸; for all things are of one lineage and one likeness.

38. Meditate often on the intimate union and mutual interdependence of all things in the Universe. For in a manner all things are mutually intertwined, and thus all things have a liking for one another. For these things are consequent one on another by reason of their contracting and expanding³²⁹ motion, the sympathy³³⁰ that breathes through them, and the unity of all substance.

39. Fit thyself to the environment that is thy portion,³³¹ and love the men among whom thy lot is thrown, but whole-heartedly.³³²

40. Every implement, tool, or vessel is well if it do the work for which it is made, and yet in their case the maker is not at hand. But in the things which owe their organic unity to Nature, the Power that made is within them and abides there. Wherefore also must thou reverence it the more, and ^p. realize that if thou keep and conduct thyself ever according to its will, all is to thy mind. So also to its mind are the things of the Universe.

41. If thou regardest anything not in thine own choice as good or evil for thyself, it is inevitable that, on the incidence of such an evil or the miscarriage of such a good, thou shouldst upbraid the Gods,³³³ aye, and hate men as the actual or supposed cause of the one or the other; and in fact many are the wrongdoings we commit by setting a value on such things.³³⁴ But if we discriminate as good and evil only the things in our power, there is no occasion left for accusing the Gods³³⁵ or taking the stand of an enemy towards men.

42. We are all fellow-workers towards the fulfilment of one object, some of us knowingly and intelligently, others blindly; just as Heraclitus, I think, says that even when they sleep men are workers and fellow-agents in all that goes on in the world.³³⁶ One is a co-agent in this, another in that, and in abundant measure also he that murmurs and seeks to hinder or disannul what occurs. For the Universe had need of such men also. It remains then for thee to decide with whom thou art ranging thyself. For He that controls the Universe will in any case put thee to a good use and admit thee to a place among his fellow-workers and coadjutors. But see that thou fill no such place as the paltry ^p. and ridiculous line in the play which Chrysippus mentions.³³⁷

43. Does the sun take upon himself to discharge the functions of the rain? or Asclepius of the Fruit-bearer³³⁸? And what of each particular star? Do they not differ in glory yet co-operate to one end?

44. If the Gods have taken counsel about me and the things to befall me, doubtless they have taken good counsel. For it is not easy even to imagine a God without wisdom. And what motive could they have impelling them to do me evil? For what advantage could thereby accrue to them or to the Universe which is their special care? But if the Gods have taken no counsel for me individually, yet they have in any case done so for the interests of the Universe, and I am bound to welcome and make the best of³³⁹ those things also that befall as a necessary corollary to those interests. But if so be they take counsel about nothing at all—an impious belief—in good sooth let us have no more of sacrifices and prayers and oaths, nor do any other of these things every one of which is a recognition of the Gods as if they were at our side and dwelling amongst us—but if so be, I say, they do not take counsel about any of our concerns, it is still in my power to take counsel about myself, and it is for me to consider my own interest. And that is to every man’s interest which is agreeable to his own constitution and nature. But my nature is rational and civic; my city and country, ^p. as Antoninus, is Rome; as a man, the world. The things then that are of advantage to these communities, these, and no other, are good for me.

45. All that befalls the Individual is to the interest of the Whole also.³⁴⁰ So far, so good. But further careful observation will shew thee that, as a general rule, what is to the interest of one man is also to the interest of other men. But in this case the word interest must be taken in a more general sense as it applies to intermediate³⁴¹ things.

46. As the shows in the amphitheatre and such places grate upon thee³⁴² as being an everlasting repetition of the same sight, and the similarity makes the spectacle pall, such must be the effect of the whole of life. For everything above and below is ever the same and the result of the same things. How long then?

47. Never lose sight of the fact that men of all kinds, of all sorts of vocations and of every race under heaven, are dead; and so carry thy thought down even to Philistion and Phoebus and Origanion. Now turn to the other tribes of men. We must pass at last to the same bourne whither so many wonderful orators have gone, so many grave philosophers, Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Socrates: so many heroes of old time, and so many warriors, so many tyrants of later days: and besides them, Eudoxus, Hipparchus, Archimedes, and other acute natures, men of large minds, lovers of toil, men of versatile powers, men of strong will, mockers, like Menippus^{343 p.} and many another such, of man’s perishable and transitory life itself. About all these reflect that they have long since been in their graves. What terrible thing then is this for them? What pray for those whose very names are unknown? One thing on earth is worth much—to live out our lives in truth and justice, and in charity with liars and unjust men.

48. When thou wouldst cheer thine heart, think upon the good qualities of thy associates³⁴⁴; as for instance, this one’s energy, that one’s modesty, the generosity of a third, and some other trait of a fourth. For nothing is so cheering as the images of the virtues mirrored in the characters of those who live with us, and presenting themselves in as great a throng as possible. Have these images then ever before thine eyes.

49. Thou art not aggrieved, art thou, at being so many pounds in weight and not three hundred? Then why be aggrieved if thou hast only so many years to live and no more? For as thou art contented with the amount of matter allotted thee, so be content also with the time.

50. Try persuasion first, but even though men would say thee nay, act when the principles of justice so direct. Should any one however withstand thee by force, take refuge in being well-content and unhurt, and utilize the obstacle for the display of some other virtue. Recollect that the impulse thou hadst was conditioned³⁴⁵ by circumstances,³⁴⁶ and thine aim was not to do impossibilities. What then was it? ^p. To feel some such impulse as thou didst. In that thou art successful. That which alone was in the sphere of our choice³⁴⁷ is realized.

51. The lover of glory conceives his own good to consist in another’s action, the lover of pleasure in his own feelings, but the possessor of understanding in his own actions.

52. We need not form any opinion about the thing in question or be harassed in soul, for Nature gives the thing itself no power to compel our judgments.

53. Train thyself to pay careful attention to what is being said³⁴⁸ by another and as far as possible enter into his soul.

54. That which is not in the interests of the hive cannot be in the interests of the bee.³⁴⁹

55. If the sailors spoke ill of a steersman or the sick of a physician, what else would they have in mind but how the man should best effect the safety of the crew or the health of his patients?

56. How many have already left the world who came into it with me!

57. To the jaundiced honey tastes bitter; and the victim of hydrophobia has a horror of water; and to little children their ball is a treasure. Why then angry? Or dost thou think that error is a less potent factor than bile in the jaundiced and virus in the victim of rabies?

58. From living according to the reason of thy nature no one can prevent thee: contrary to the ^p. reason of the Universal Nature nothing shall befall thee.

59. The persons men wish to please,³⁵⁰ the objects they wish to gain, the means they employ—think of the character of all these! How soon will Time hide all things! How many a thing has it already hidden!

Book VII

^p. BOOK VII

1. What is vice? A familiar sight enough. So in everything that befalls have the thought ready: This is a familiar sight. Look up, look down, everywhere thou wilt find the same things, whereof histories ancient, medieval, and modern are full; and full of them at this day are cities and houses. There is no new thing under the sun.³⁵¹ Everything is stereotyped, everything fleeting.

2. How else can thy axioms be made dead than by the extinction of the ideas that answer to them? And these it lies with thee ever to kindle anew into flame. I am competent to form the true conception of a thing. If so, why am I harassed? What is outside the scope of my mind has absolutely no concern with my mind. Learn this lesson and thou standest erect.

Thou canst begin a new life! See but things afresh as thou usedst to see them; for in this consists the new life.

3. Empty love of pageantry, stage-plays, flocks and herds, sham-fights, a bone thrown to lap-dogs, crumbs cast in a fish-pond, painful travail of ants and their bearing of burdens, skurryings of scared little ^p. mice, puppets moved by strings.³⁵² Amid such environment therefore thou must take thy place graciously and not ‘snorting defiance,’³⁵³ nay thou must keep abreast of the fact that everyone is worth just so much as those things are worth in which he is interested.³⁵⁴

4. In conversation keep abreast of what is being said,³⁵⁵ and, in every effort, of what is being done. In the latter see from the first to what end it has reference, and in the former be careful to catch the meaning.

5. Is my mind competent for this or not? If competent, I apply it to the task as an instrument given me by the Universal Nature. If not competent, I either withdraw from the work in favour of someone who can accomplish it better, unless for other reasons duty forbids; or I do the best I can, taking to assist me any one that can utilize my ruling Reason to effect what is at the moment seasonable and useful for the common welfare. For in whatsoever I do either by myself or with another I must direct my energies to this alone, that it shall conduce to the common interest³⁵⁶ and be in harmony with it.

6. How many much-lauded heroes have already been given as a prey unto forgetfulness,³⁵⁷ and how many that lauded them have long ago disappeared!

7. Blush not to be helped³⁵⁸; for thou art bound to carry out the task that is laid upon thee as a soldier to storm the breach. What then, if for What then, if for very lameness thou canst not mount the ramparts unaided, but canst do this with another’s help?

^p. 8. Be not disquieted about the future. If thou must come thither, thou wilt come armed with the same reason which thou appliest now to the present.

9. All things are mutually intertwined,³⁵⁹ and the tie is sacred, and scarcely anything is alien the one to the other. For all things have been ranged side by side,³⁶⁰ and together help to order one ordered Universe. For there is both one Universe, made up of all things, and one God immanent in all things, and one Substance, and one Law, one Reason common to all intelligent creatures,³⁶¹ and one Truth, if indeed there is also one perfecting of living creatures that have the same origin and share the same reason.

10. A little while and all that is material is lost to sight in the Substance of the Universe,³⁶² a little while and all Cause is taken back into the Reason of the Universe, a little while and the remembrance of everything is encairned in Eternity.

11. To the rational creature the same act is at once according to nature and according to reason.³⁶³

12. Upright, or made upright.³⁶⁴

13. The principle which obtains where limbs and body unite to form one organism, holds good also for rational things with their separate individualities, constituted as they are to work in conjunction. But the perception of this shall come more home to thee, if thou sayest to thyself, I am a limb of the organized body of rational things. But if [using the letter R] thou sayest thou art but a part,³⁶⁵ not yet dost thou love mankind from the heart, nor yet does well-doing delight thee for its own sake.³⁶⁶ Thou ^p. dost practise it still as a bare duty, not yet as a boon to thyself.

14. Let any external thing, that will, be incident to whatever is able to feel this incidence. For that which feels can, if it please, complain.³⁶⁷ But I, if I do not consider what has befallen me to be an evil,³⁶⁸ am still unhurt. And I can refuse so to consider it.

15. Let any say or do what he will, I must for my part be good. So might the emerald—or gold or purple—never tire of repeating, Whatever any one shall do or say, I must be an emerald and keep my colour.

16. The ruling Reason is never the disturber of its own peace, never, for instance, hurries itself into lust. But if another can cause it fear or pain, let it do so. For it will not let its own assumptions lead it into such aberrations.

Let the body take thought for itself, if it may, that it suffer no hurt and, if it do so suffer, let it proclaim the fact.³⁶⁹ But the soul that has the faculty of fear, the faculty of pain, and alone can assume that these exist, can never suffer; for it is not given to making any such admission.³⁷⁰

In itself the ruling Reason wants for nothing unless it create its own needs, and in like manner nothing can disturb it, nothing impede it, unless the disturbance or impediment come from itself.

17. Well-being³⁷¹ is a good Being, or a ruling Reason that is good. What then doest thou here, ^p. O Imagination?³⁷² Avaunt, in God’s name, as thou camest, for I desire thee not! But thou art come according to thine ancient wont. I bear thee no malice; only depart from me!

18. Does a man shrink from change? Why, what can come into being save by change? What be nearer or dearer to the Nature of the Universe? Canst thou take a hot bath unless the wood for the furnace suffer a change? Couldst thou be fed, if thy food suffered no change, and can any of the needs of life be provided for apart from change? Seest thou not that a personal change is similar, and similarly necessary to the Nature of the Universe?

19. Through the universal Substance as through a rushing torrent³⁷³ all bodies pass on their way, united with the Whole in nature and activity, as our members are with one another.

How many a Chrysippus,³⁷⁴ how many a Socrates, how many an Epictetus³⁷⁵ hath Time already devoured! Whatsoever man thou hast to do with and whatsoever thing, let the same thought strike thee.

20. I am concerned about one thing only, that I of myself do not what man’s constitution does not will, or wills not now, or in a way that it wills not.

21. A little while and thou wilt have forgotten everything, a little while and everything will have forgotten thee.

22. It is a man’s especial privilege³⁷⁶ to love even those who stumble. And this love follows as soon as ^p. thou reflectest that they are of kin to thee and that they do wrong involuntarily and through ignorance,³⁷⁷ and that within a little while both they and thou will be dead³⁷⁸; and this, above all, that the man has done thee no hurt³⁷⁹; for he has not made thy ruling Reason worse than it was before.

23. The Nature of the Whole out of the Substance of the Whole,³⁸⁰ as out of wax, moulds at one time a horse, and breaking up the mould kneads the material up again into a tree, then into a man, and then into something else; and every one of these subsists but for a moment. It is no more a hardship for the coffer to be broken up than it was for it to be fitted together.

24. An angry scowl on the face is beyond measure unnatural, and when it is often seen there, all comeliness begins at once to die away, or in the end is so utterly extinguished that it can never be rekindled at all. From this very fact try to reach the conclusion that it is contrary to reason. The consciousness of wrong-doing once lost, what motive is left for living any more?

25. Everything that thou seest will the Nature that controls the Universe change, no one knows how soon, and out of its substance make other compounds,³⁸¹ and again others out of theirs, that the world may ever renew its youth.

26. Does a man do thee wrong? Go to and mark what notion of good and evil was his that did the wrong. Once perceive that and thou wilt feel ^p. compassion³⁸² not surprise or anger. For thou hast still thyself either the same notion of good and evil as he or another not unlike. Thou needs must forgive him then.³⁸³ But if thy notions of good and evil are no longer such, all the more easily shalt thou be gracious to him that sees awry.

27. Dream not of that which thou hast not as though already thine, but of what thou hast pick out the choicest blessings, and do not forget in respect of them how eagerly thou wouldst have coveted them, had they not been thine.³⁸⁴ Albeit beware that thou do not inure thyself, by reason of this thy delight in them, to prize them so highly as to be distressed if at any time they are lost to thee.³⁸⁵

28. Gather thyself into thyself.³⁸⁶ It is characteristic of the rational Ruling Faculty to be satisfied with its own righteous dealing and the peace which that brings.

29. Efface imagination!³⁸⁷ Cease to be pulled as a puppet by thy passions.³⁸⁸ Isolate the present. Recognize what befalls either thee or another. Dissect and analyze all that comes under thy ken into the Causal and the Material. Meditate on thy last hour.³⁸⁹ Let the wrong thy neighbour does thee rest with him that did the wrong.³⁹⁰

30. Do thy utmost to keep up with what is said.³⁹¹ Let thy mind enter into the things that are done and the things that are doing them.

31. Make thy face to shine with simplicity and modesty and disregard of all that lies between virtue and vice. Love human-kind. Follow God.³⁹² Says ^p. the Sage: All things by Law, but in very truth only elements. And it suffices to remember that all things are by law: there thou hast it briefly enough.³⁹³

32. Of Death: Either dispersion if atoms; or, if a single Whole, either extinction or a change of state.³⁹⁴

33. Of Pain: When unbearable it destroys us, when lasting, it is bearable,³⁹⁵ and the mind safeguards its own calm by withdrawing itself, and the ruling Reason takes no hurt. As to the parts that are impaired by the pain, let them say their say about it as they can.³⁹⁶

34. Of Glory: Look at the minds of its votaries, their characteristics, ambitions, antipathies.³⁹⁷ Remember too that, as the sands of the sea drifting one upon the other bury the earlier deposits, so in life the earlier things are very soon hidden under what comes after.

35. [From Plato.]³⁹⁸ Dost thou think that the life of man can seem any great matter to him who has true grandeur of soul and a comprehensive outlook on all Time and all Substance? “It cannot seem so,” said he. Will such a man then deem death a terrible thing? “Not in the least.”

^p. 36. [From Antisthenes.] ‘Tis royal to do well and be ill spoken of.³⁹⁹

37. It is a shame that while the countenance⁴⁰⁰ is subject to the mind, taking its cast and livery from it, the mind cannot take its cast and its livery from itself.

38. It nought availeth to be wroth with things,
For they reck not of it.⁴⁰¹

39. Unto the deathless Gods and to us give cause for rejoicing.⁴⁰²

40. Our lives are reaped like the ripe ears of corn,
And as one falls, another still is born.⁴⁰³

41. Though me and both my sons the Gods have spurned,
For this too there is reason.⁴⁰⁴

42. For justice and good luck shall bide with me.⁴⁰⁵

43. No chorus of loud dirges, no hysteria.⁴⁰⁶

44. [Citations from Plato]:
I might fairly answer such a questioner: Thou art mistaken if thou thinkest that a man, who is worth anything at all, ought to let considerations of life and death weigh with him rather than in all that he does consider but this, whether it is just or unjust and the work of a good man or a bad.⁴⁰⁷

45. This, O men of Athens, is the true state of the case: Wherever a man has stationed himself, deeming ^p. it the best for him, or has been stationed by his commander, there methinks he ought to stay and run every risk, taking into account neither death nor any thing else save dishonour.⁴⁰⁸

46. But, my good sir, see whether nobility and goodness do not mean something other than to save and be saved; for surely a man worthy of the name must waive aside the question of the duration of life however extended, and must not cling basely to life, but leaving these things in the hands of God pin his faith to the women’s adage, his destiny no man can flee,’ and thereafter consider in what way he may best live for such time as he has to live.⁴⁰⁹

47. Watch the stars in their courses as one that runneth about with them therein; and think constantly upon the reciprocal changes of the elements, for thoughts on these things cleanse away the mire of our earthly life.

48. Noble is this saying of Plato’s.⁴¹⁰ Moreover he who discourses of men should, as if from some vantage-point⁴¹¹ above, take a bird’s-eye view of the things of earth, in its gatherings,⁴¹² armies, husbandry, its inarriages and separations,⁴¹³ its births and deaths, the din of the law-court and the silence of the desert, barbarous races manifold, its feasts and mournings and markets, the medley of it all and its orderly conjunction of contraries.

49. Pass in review the far-off things of the past ^p. and its succession of sovranties without number. Thou canst look forward and see the future also. For it will most surely be of the same character,⁴¹⁴ and it cannot but carry on the rhythm of existing things. Consequently it is all one, whether we witness human life for forty years or ten thousand. For what more shalt thou see?

50. All that is earth-born gravitates earthwards,
Dust unto dust; and all that from ether
Grows, speeds swiftly back again heavenward;⁴¹⁵

that is, either there is a breaking up of the closely-linked atoms or, what is much the same, a scattering of the impassive elements.

51. Again:
With meats and drinks and curious sorceries
Side-track the stream, so be they may not die.⁴¹⁶

When a storm from the Gods beats down on our bark,
At our oars then we needs must toil and complain not.⁴¹⁷

52. Better at the cross-buttock,⁴¹⁸ may be, but not at shewing public spirit or modesty, or being readier for every contingency or more gracious to our neighbour if he sees awry.

53. A work that can be accomplished in obedience to that reason which we share with the Gods is attended with no fear. For no harm need be anticipated, where by an activity that follows the ^p. right road, and satisfies the demands of our constitution, we can ensure our own weal.

54. At all times and in all places it rests with thee both to be content with thy present lot as a worshipper of the Gods, and to deal righteously with thy present neighbours, and to labour lovingly at thy present thoughts, that nothing unverified should steal into them.

55. Look not about thee at the ruling Reason of others, but look with straight eyes at this, To what is Nature guiding thee?—both the Nature of the Universe, by means of what befalls thee and thy nature by means of the acts thou hast to do. But everyone must do what follows from his own constitution; and all other things have been constituted for the sake of rational beings—just as in every other case the lower are for the sake of the higher⁴¹⁹—but the rational for their own sake.

Social obligation then is the leading feature in the constitution of man and, coming second to it, an uncompromising resistance to bodily inclinations. For it is the privilege of a rational and intelligent motion to isolate itself, and never to be overcome by the motions of sense or desire; for either kind is animal-like. But the motion of the Intelligence claims ever to have the pre-eminence and never to be mastered by them. And rightly so, for it is its nature to put all those to its own use. Thirdly, the rational constitution is free from precipitancy and cannot be misled. Let the ruling Reason then, clinging to these characteristics, accomplish a straight course and then it comes into its own.

56. As one that is dead, and his life till now lived ^p. and gone, must thou count the rest of thy days as so much to the good,⁴²⁰ and live according to Nature.

57. Love only what befalls thee and is spun for thee by fate. For what can be more befitting for thee?

58. In every contingency keep before thine eyes those who, when these same things befell them, were straightway aggrieved, estranged,⁴²¹ rebellious. Where are they now? Nowhere! What then? Wouldst thou be like them? Why not leave those alien deflections to what deflects and is deflected by them, and devote thyself wholly to the question how to turn these contingencies to the best advantage? For then wilt thou make a noble use of them, and they shall be thy raw material. Only in thought and will take heed to be beautiful to thyself in all that thou doest. And remember, in rejecting the one and using the other, that the thing which matters is the aim of the action.

59. Look within. Within is the fountain of Good,⁴²² ready always to well forth if thou wilt alway delve.

60. The body too should be firmly set and suffer no distortion in movement or bearing. For what the mind effects in the face,⁴²³ by keeping it composed and well-favoured, should be looked for similarly in the whole body. But all this must be secured without conscious effort.

61. The business of life is more akin to wrestling⁴²⁴ than dancing, for it requires of us to stand ready and unshakable against every assault however unforeseen.

^p. 62. Continually reflect, who they are whose favourable testimony thou desirest,⁴²⁵ and what their ruling Reason; for thus wilt thou not find fault with those who unintentionally offend, nor wilt thou want their testimony, when thou lookest into the inner springs of their opinions and desires.

63. Every soul, says Plato, is reft of truth against its will.⁴²⁶ Therefore it is the same also with justice and temperance and lovingkindness and every like quality. It is essential to keep this ever in mind, for it will make thee gentler towards all.⁴²⁷

64. Whenever thou art in pain, have this reflection ready, that this is nothing to be ashamed of, nor can it make worse the mind that holds the helm. For it cannot impair it in so far as it is rational or in so far as it is social. In most pains, however, call to thy rescue even Epicurus when he says that a pain is never unbearable⁴²⁸ or interminable, so that thou remember its limitations and add nothing to it in imagination.⁴²⁹ Recollect this too that many of our every-day discomforts are really pain in disguise, such as drowsiness,⁴³⁰ a high temperature, want of appetite. When inclined to be vexed at any of these, say to thyself: I am giving in to pain.⁴³¹

65. See that thou never have for the inhuman the feeling which the inhuman have for human kind.

66. How do we know that Telauges⁴³² may not have excelled Socrates in character? For it is not enough ^p. that Socrates died a more glorious death, and disputed more deftly with the Sophists, and with more hardihood braved whole nights in the frost, and, when called upon to fetch the Salaminian,⁴³³ deemed it more spirited⁴³⁴ to disobey, and that he carried his head high as he walked⁴³⁵—and about the truth of this one can easily judge—; but the point to elucidate is this: what sort of soul had Socrates,⁴³⁶ and could he rest satisfied with being just in his dealings with men and religious in his attitude towards the Gods, neither resentful at the wickedness of others nor yet lackeying the ignorance of anyone, nor regarding as alien to himself anything allotted to him from the Whole, nor bearing it as a burden intolerable, nor letting his intelligence be swayed sympathetically by the affections of the flesh ?

67. Nature did not make so intimate a blend in the compound as not to allow a man to isolate himself and keep his own things in his own power. For it is very possible to be a godlike man and yet not to be recognized by any.⁴³⁷ Never forget this nor that the happy life depends on the fewest possible things⁴³⁸; nor because thou hast been baulked in the hope of becoming skilled in dialectics and physics,⁴³⁹ needest thou despair of being free and modest and unselfish and obedient to God.

68. Thou mayest live out thy life with none to constrain thee in the utmost peace of mind even though the whole world cry out against thee what ^p. they will, even though beasts tear limb from limb this plastic clay that has encased thee with its growth.⁴⁴⁰ For what in all this debars the mind from keeping itself in calmness, in a right judgment as to its environment, and in readiness to use all that is put at its disposal? so that the judgment can say to that which meets it: In essential substance thou art this, whatever else the common fame would have thee be. And the use can say to the object presented to it: Thee was I seeking. For the thing in hand is for me ever material for the exercise of rational and civic virtue,⁴⁴¹ and in a word for the art of a man or of God. For everything that befalls is intimately connected with God or man, and is not new or difficult to deal with, but familiar and feasible.

69. This is the mark of a perfect character, to pass through each day as if it were the last,⁴⁴² without agitation, without torpor, without pretence.

70. The Gods—and they are immortal—do not take it amiss that for a time so long they must inevitably and always put up with worthless men who are what they are and so many⁴⁴³; nay they even befriend them in all manner of ways. But thou, though destined to die so soon, criest off, and that too though thou art one of the worthless ones thyself.

71. It is absurd not to eschew our own wickedness, which is possible, but to eschew that of others, which is not possible.⁴⁴⁴

72. Whatever thy rational and civic faculty discovers to be neither intelligent nor social, it judges with good reason to fall short of its own standard.

^p. 73. When thou hast done well to another and another has fared well at thy hands, why go on like the foolish to look for a third thing besides, that is, the credit also of having done well or a return for the same⁴⁴⁵?

74. No one wearies of benefits received; and to act by the law of Nature is its own benefit. Weary not then of being benefited therein, wherein thou dost benefit others.⁴⁴⁶

75. The Nature of the Whole felt impelled to the creation of a Universe; but now either all that comes into being does so by a natural sequence,⁴⁴⁷ or even the most paramount things, towards which the ruling Reason of the Universe feels an impulse of its own, are devoid of intelligence. Recollect this⁴⁴⁸ and thou wilt face many an ill with more serenity.

Book VIII

^p. BOOK VIII

1. This too serves as a corrective to vain-gloriousness, that thou art no longer able to have lived thy life wholly, or even from thy youth up, as a philosopher. Thou canst clearly perceive, and many others can see it too, that thou art far from Philosophy. So then thy life is a chaos,⁴⁴⁹ and no longer is it easy for thee to win the credit of being a philosopher; and the facts of thy life too war against it. If then thine eyes have verily seen where the truth lies, care no more what men shall think of thee, but be content if the rest of thy life, whether long or short, be lived as thy nature wills. Make sure then what that will is, and let nothing else draw thee aside. For past experience tells thee in how much thou hast gone astray, nor anywhere lighted upon the true life; no, not in the subtleties of logic,⁴⁵⁰ or in wealth or fame or enjoyment, or anywhere. Where then is it to be found? In doing that which is the quest of man’s nature. How then shall a man do this? By having axioms as the source of his impulses and actions. What axioms? On the nature of Good and Evil, shewing that nothing is for a man’s good save what makes him just, temperate, manly, free; nor any ^p. thing for his ill that makes him not the reverse of these.

2. In every action ask thyself, How does it affect me? Shall I regret it? But a little and I am dead and all that lies between is past. What more do I ask for, as long as my present work is that of a living creature, intelligent, social, and under one law with God?

3. What are Alexander and Gaius and Pompeius to Diogenes and Heraclitus⁴⁵¹ and Socrates? For these latter had their eyes opened to things and to the causes and the material substance of things, and their ruling Reason was their very own. But those—what a host of cares, what a world of slavery!

4. Thou mayst burst thyself with rage, but they will go on doing the same things none the less.

5. Firstly, fret not thyself, for all things are as the Nature of the Universe would have them, and within a little thou shalt be non-existent, and nowhere, like Hadrianus and Augustus. Secondly, look steadfastly at the thing, and see it as it is and, remembering withal that thou must be a good man, and what the Nature of man calls for, do this without swerving, and speak as seemeth to thee most just, only be it graciously, modestly, and without feigning.⁴⁵²

6. The Nature of the Universe is charged with this task, to transfer yonder the things which are here, to interchange them, to take them hence and convey them thither. All things are but phases of ^p. change, but nothing new-fangled need be feared; all things are of the wonted type,⁴⁵³ nay, their distributions also are alike.

7. Every nature is content with itself when it speeds well on its way; and a rational nature speeds well on its way, when in its impressions it gives assent to nothing that is false or obscure, and directs its impulses towards none but social acts, and limits its inclinations and its aversions only to things that are in its power, and welcomes all that the Universal Nature allots it. For it is a part of that, as the nature of the leaf is of the plant-nature; with the difference however, that in the case of the plant the nature of the leaf is part of a nature void both of sentience and reason, and liable to be thwarted, while a man’s nature is part of a nature unthwartable and intelligent and just, if indeed it divides up equally and in due measure to every one his quotas of time, substance, cause, activity, circumstance. And consider, not whether thou shalt find one thing in every case equal to one thing, but whether, collectively, the whole of this equal to the aggregate of that.

8. Thou canst not be a student. But thou canst refrain from insolence; but thou canst rise superior to pleasures and pains; but thou canst tread under thy feet the love of glory; but thou canst forbear to be angry with the unfeeling and the thankless,⁴⁵⁴ aye and even care for them.

9. Let no one hear thee any more grumbling at life in a Court,⁴⁵⁵ nay let not thine own ears hear thee.

10. Repentance is a sort of self-reproach at some useful thing passed by; but the good must needs be a useful thing, and ever to be cultivated by the true ^p. good man; but the true good man would never regret having passed a pleasure by. Pleasure therefore is neither a useful thing nor a good.

11. What of itself is the thing in question as individually constituted? What is the substance and material of it? What the causal⁴⁵⁶ part? What doeth it in the Universe? How long doth it subsist?

12. When thou art loth to get up,⁴⁵⁷ call to mind that the due discharge of social duties is in accordance with thy constitution and in accordance with man’s nature, while even irrational animals share with us the faculty of sleep; but what is in accordance with the nature of the individual is more congenial, more closely akin to him, aye and more attractive.

13. Persistently and, if possible, in every case test thy impressions by the rules of physics, ethics, logic.

14. Whatever man thou meetest, put to thyself at once this question: What are this man’s convictions⁴⁵⁸ about good and evil? For if they are such and such about pleasure and pain and what is productive of them, about good report and ill report, about death and life, it will be in no way strange or surprising to me if he does such and such things. So I will remember that he is constrained to act as he does.⁴⁵⁹

15. Remember that, as it is monstrous to be surprised at a fig-tree bearing figs, so also is it to be surprised at the Universe bearing its own particular crop. Likewise it is monstrous for a physician or a steersman to be surprised⁴⁶⁰ that a patient has fever or that a contrary wind has sprung up.

^p. 16. Remember that neither a change of mind nor a willingness to be set right by others⁴⁶¹ is inconsistent with true freedom of will. For thine alone is the active effort that effects its purpose in accordance with thy impulse and judgment, aye and thy intelligence also.

17. If the choice rests with thee, why do the thing? if with another, whom dost thou blame? Atoms or Gods To do either would be crazy folly. No one is to blame. For if thou canst, set the offender right. Failing that, at least set the thing itself right. If that too be impracticable, what purpose is served by imputing blame? For without a purpose nothing should be done.

18. That which dies is not cast out of the Universe. As it remains here, it also suffers change here and is dissolved into its own constituents, which are the elements of the Universe and thy own. Yes, and they too suffer change and murmur not.

19. Every thing, be it a horse, be it a vine, has come into being for some end. Why wonder? Helios himself will say: I exist to do some work; and so of all the other Gods. For what then dost thou exist? For pleasure? Surely it is unthinkable.

20. Nature has included in its aim in every case the ceasing to be no less than the beginning and the duration, just as the man who tosses up his ball.⁴⁶² But what good does the ball gain while tossed upwards, or harm as it comes down, or finally when it reaches the ground? Or what good accrues to the bubble while it coheres, or harm in its bursting? And the same holds good with the lamp-flame.

^p. 21. Turn it⁴⁶³ inside out and see what it is like, what it comes to be when old, when sickly, when carrion. They endure but for a season, both praiser and praised, rememberer and remembered.⁴⁶⁴ All this too in a tiny corner of this continent, and not even there are all in accord, no nor a man with himself; and the whole earth is itself a point.⁴⁶⁵

22. Fix thy attention on the subject-matter or the act or the principle or the thing signified. Rightly served! Thou wouldst rather become a good man to-morrow than be one to-day.

23. Am I doing some thing? I do it with reference to the well-being of mankind. Does something befall me? I accept it with a reference to the Gods and to the Source of all things from which issue, linked together, the things that come into being.

24. What bathing is when thou thinkest of it—oil, sweat, filth, greasy water, everything revolting—such is every part of life and every object we meet with.

25. Lucilla⁴⁶⁶ buried Verus, then Lucilla was buried; Secunda Maximus,⁴⁶⁷ then Secunda; Epitynchanus Diotimus, then Epitynchanus; Antoņinus Faustina, then Antoninus. The same tale always: Celer⁴⁶⁸ buried Hadrianus and then Celer was buried. And those acute wits, men renowned for their prescience or their pride, where are they? Such acute wits, for instance, as Charax and Demetrius [the Platonist⁴⁶⁹] ^p. and Eudaemon, and others like them. All creatures of a day, dead long ago!—some not remembered even for a while, others transformed into legends,⁴⁷⁰ and yet others from legends faded into nothingness! Bear then in mind that either this thy composite self must be scattered abroad, or thy vital breath be quenched, or be transferred⁴⁷¹ and set elsewhere.

26. It brings gladness to a man to do a man s true work. And a man’s true work is to shew goodwill to his own kind, to disdain the motions of the senses, to diagnose specious impressions, to take a comprehensive view of the Nature of the Universe and all that is done at her bidding.

27. Thou hast three relationships—the first to the vessel thou art contained in; the second to the divine Cause wherefrom issue all things to all; and the third to those that dwell with thee.⁴⁷²

28. Pain is an evil either to the body—let the body then denounce it⁴⁷³—or to the Soul; but the Soul can ensure her own fair weather and her own calm sea,⁴⁷⁴ and refuse to account it an evil. For every conviction and impulse and desire and aversion is from within,⁴⁷⁵ and nothing climbs in thither.

29. Efface thy impressions,⁴⁷⁶ saying ever to thyself: Now lies it with me that this soul should harbour no wickedness nor lust nor any disturbing element at all; but that, seeing the true nature of all things,⁴⁷⁷ I should deal with each as is its due. Bethink thee of this power that Nature gives thee.

^p. 30. Say thy say in the Senate or to any person whatsoever becomingly and naturally.⁴⁷⁸ Use sound speech.

31. The court of Augustus—wife, daughter, descendants, ancestors, sister, Agrippa, kinsfolk, household, friends, Areius,⁴⁷⁹ Maecenas, physicians, haruspices—dead, the whole court of them! Pass on then to other records and the death not of individuals but of a clan, as of the Pompeii. And that well-known epitaph, Last of his race—think over it and the anxiety shewn by the man s ancestors that they might leave a successor. But after all some one must be the last of the line—here again the dearth of a whole race!

32. Act by act thou must build up thy life, and be content, if each act as far as may be fulfils its end.⁴⁸⁰ And there is never a man that can prevent it doing this. But there will be some impediment from without. There can be none to thy behaving justly, soberly, wisely. But what if some other exercise of activity be hindered? Well, a cheerful acceptance of the hindrance and a tactful transition to what is allowed will enable another action to be substituted that will be in keeping with the built-up life of which we are speaking.

33. Accept without arrogance, surrender without reluctance.

^p. 34. Thou hast seen a hand cut off or a foot, or a head severed from the trunk, and lying at some distance from the rest of the body. Just so does the man treat himself, as far as he may, who wills not what befalls and severs himself from mankind or acts unsocially. Say thou hast been torn away in some sort from the unity of Nature; for by the law of thy birth thou wast a part; but now thou hast cut thyself off. Yet here comes in that exquisite provision, that thou canst return again to thy unity.⁴⁸¹ To no other part has God granted this, to come together again, when once separated and cleft asunder. Aye, behold His goodness, wherewith He hath glorified man! For He hath let it rest with a man that he be never rent away from the Whole, and if he do rend himself away, to return again and grow on to the rest and take up his position again as part.

35. Just as the Nature of rational things has given each rational being almost all his other powers, so also have we received this one from it; that, as this Nature moulds to its purpose whatever interference or opposition it meets, and gives it a place in the destined order of things, and makes it a part of itself, so also can the rational creature convert every hindrance into material for itself⁴⁸² and utilize it for its own purposes.

36. Let not the mental picture of life as a whole confound thee. Fill not thy thoughts with what and how many ills may conceivably await thee, but in every present case ask thyself: What is there in this experience so crushing, so insupportable? Thou wilt blush ^p. to confess. Remind thyself further that it is not the future nor the past but the present always that brings thee its burden. But this is reduced to insignificance if thou isolate it, and take thy mind to task⁴⁸³ if it cannot hold out against this mere trifle.

37. Does Pantheia⁴⁸⁴ now watch by the urn of her lord, or Pergamus? What, does Chabrias or Diotimus by Hadrian’s? Absurd! And had they sat there till now, would the dead have been aware of it? and, if aware of it, would they have been pleased? and, if pleased, would that have made the mourners immortal? Was it not destined that these like others should become old women and old men and then die? What then, when they were dead, would be left for those whom they had mourned to do? It is all stench and foul corruption in a sack of skin.⁴⁸⁵

38. Hast thou keenness of sight? Use it with judgment ever so wisely, as the saying goes.

39. In the constitution of rational creatures I see no virtue incompatible with justice, but incompatible with pleasure I see—continence.

40. Take away thy opinion⁴⁸⁶ as to any imagined pain, and thou thyself art set in surest safety. What is ‘thyself’? Reason. But I am not reason. Be it so. At all events let the Reason not cause itself pain, but if any part in thee is amiss, let it form its own opinion about itself.⁴⁸⁷

^p. 41. To the animal nature a thwarting of sense-perception is an evil, as is also to the same nature the thwarting of impulse. There is similarly some other thing that can thwart the constitution of plants and is an evil to them. Thus then the thwarting of intelligence is an evil to the intelligent nature. Transfer the application of all this to thyself. Does pain, does pleasure take hold of thee? The senses shall look to it. Wast thou impelled to a thing and wast thwarted? If thy impulse counts on an unconditional fulfilment, failure at once becomes an evil to thee as a rational creature. But accept the universal limitation, and thou hast so far received no hurt nor even been thwarted.⁴⁸⁸ Indeed no one else is in a way to thwart the inner purposes of the mind. For it no fire can touch, nor steel, nor tyrant, nor obloquy,⁴⁸⁹ nor any thing soever: a sphere⁴⁹⁰ once formed continues round and true.

42. It were not right that I should pain myself for not even another have I ever knowingly pained.⁴⁹¹

43. One thing delights one, another thing another. To me it is a delight if I keep my ruling Reason sound, not looking askance at man or anything that befalls man, but regarding all things with kindly eyes, accepting and using everything for its intrinsic worth.

44. See thou dower thyself with this present time. Those that yearn rather for after-fame do not realize that their successors are sure to be very much the same as the contemporaries whom they find such a ^p. burden, and no less mortal. What is it anyway to thee if there be this or that far-off echo of their voices, or if they have this or that opinion about thee?

45. Take me up and cast me where thou wilt. For even there will I keep my ‘genius’ tranquil, that is, content if in itself and in its activity it follow the laws of its own constitution.

Is this worth while, that on its account my soul should be ill at ease and fall below itself, grovelling, grasping, floundering, affrighted? What could make it worth while?

46. Nothing can befall a man that is not a contingency natural to man; nor befall an ox, that is not natural to oxen, nor a vine that is not natural to a vine, nor a stone that is not proper to it. If therefore only what is natural and customary befalls each, why be aggrieved? For the common Nature brings thee nothing that thou canst not bear.⁴⁹²

47. When thou art vexed at some external cross, it is not the thing itself that troubles thee,⁴⁹³ but thy judgment on it. And this thou canst annul in a moment. But if thou art vexed at something in thine own character, who can prevent thee from rectifying the principle that is to blame?⁴⁹⁴ So also if thou art vexed⁴⁹⁵ at not undertaking that which seems to thee a sound act, why not rather undertake it than be vexed? But there is a lion in the path! Be not vexed then, for the blame of inaction rests not with thee. But life is not worth living, this left undone. Depart ^p. then from life,⁴⁹⁶ dying with the same kindly feelings as he who effects his purpose, and accepting with a good grace the obstacles that thwart thee.

48. Never forget that the ruling Reason shews itself unconquerable when, concentrated in itself,⁴⁹⁷ it is content with itself so it do nothing that it doth not will, even if it refuse from mere opposition⁴⁹⁸ and not from reason—much more, then, if it judge of a thing on reasonable grounds and advisedly. Therefore the Mind, unmastered by passions, is a very citadel, for a man has no fortress more impregnable⁴⁹⁹ wherein to find refuge and be untaken for ever. He indeed who hath not seen this is ignorant, but he that hath seen it and takes not refuge therein is luckless.

49. Say no more to thyself than what the initial impressions report.⁵⁰⁰ This has been told thee, that so and so speaks ill of thee. This has been told thee, but it has not been told thee that thou art harmed.⁵⁰¹ I see that my child is ailing. I see it, but I do not see that he is in danger. Keep then ever to first impressions and supplement them not on thy part from within, and nothing⁵⁰² happens to thee. And yet do supplement them with this, that thou art familiar with every possible contingency in the world.

50. The gherkin is bitter. Toss it away. There are briars in the path. Turn aside. That suffices, and thou needest not to add: Why are such things found in the world? For thou wouldst be a laughing stock to any student of nature; just as thou wouldst be laughed at by a carpenter and a cobbler if thou tookest them to task because in their shops are seen sawdust and parings from what they are ^p. making. And yet they have space for the disposal of their fragments; while the Universal Nature has nothing outside herself; but the marvel of her craftsmanship is that, though she is limited to herself, she transmutes into her own substance all that within her seems to be perishing and decrepit and useless, and again from these very things produces other new ones; whereby she shews that she neither wants any substance outside herself nor needs a corner where she may cast her decaying matter. Her own space, her own material, her own proper craftsmanship is all that she requires.⁵⁰³

51. Be not dilatory in doing, nor confused in conversation, nor vague in thought; let not thy soul be wholly concentred in itself nor uncontrollably agitated; leave thyself leisure in thy life.

They kill us, they cut us limit from limb, they hunt us with execrations!⁵⁰⁴ How does that prevent thy mind being still pure, sane, sober, just? Imagine a man to stand by a crystal-clear spring of sweet water, and to rail at it; yet it fails not to bubble up with wholesome water. Throw in mud or even filth and it will quickly winnow them away and purge itself of them and take never a stain. How then possess thyself of a living fountain and no mere well?⁵⁰⁵ By guiding thyself carefully every hour into freedom with kindliness, simplicity, and modesty.

52. He that knoweth not what the Universe is knoweth not where he is. He that knoweth not the end of its being knoweth not who he is or what the Universe is.⁵⁰⁶ But he that is wanting in the knowledge of any ^p. of these things could not tell what is the end of his own being. What then must we think of those that court or eschew the verdict of the clappers, who have no conception where or who they are?

53. Carest thou to be praised by a man who execrates himself thrice within the hour? to win the approval of a man who wins not his own? Can he be said to win his own approval who regrets almost every thing he does?

54. Be no longer content merely to breathe in unison with the all-embracing air, but from this moment think also in unison with the all-embracing Intelligence. For that intelligent faculty is every where diffused and offers itself on every side to him that can take it in no less than the aerial to him that can breathe.

55. Taken collectively wickedness does no harm to the Universe,⁵⁰⁷ and the particular wickedness does no harm to others. It is harmful to the one individual alone, and he has been given the option of being quit of it the first moment he pleases.

56. To my power of choice⁵⁰⁸ the power of choice of my neighbour is as much a matter of indifference as is his vital breath and his flesh. For however much we may have been made for one another, yet our ruling Reason is in each case master in its own house. Else might my neighbour’s wickedness become my bane; and this was not God s will, that another might not have my unhappiness in his keeping.⁵⁰⁹

57. The sun’s light is diffused down, as it seems, yes, and in every direction, yet it does not diffuse itself away. For this diffusion is an extension. At any ^p. rate the beams of the Sun are called Extension rays, because they have an extension in space⁵¹⁰. And what a ray is you may easily see, if you observe the sun’s light entering through a narrow chink into a darkened room, for it extends straight on, and is as it were brought up against⁵¹¹ any solid body it encounters that cuts off the air beyond. There the ray comes to a standstill, neither slipping off nor sinking down. Such then should be the diffusion and circumfusion of the mind, never a diffusing away but extension, and it should never make a violent or uncontrollable impact against any obstacle it meets with, no, nor collapse, but stand firm and illuminate what receives it. For that which conducts it not on its way will deprive itself wilfully of its beams.

58. Dread of death is a dread of non-sensation or new sensation.⁵¹² But either thou wilt feel no sensation, and so no sensation of any evil; or a different kind of sensation will be thine, and so the life of a different creature, but still a life.

59. Mankind have been created for the sake of one another.⁵¹³ Either instruct therefore or endure.⁵¹⁴

60. One is the way of an arrow, another of the mind. Howbeit the mind, both when it cautiously examines its ground and when it is engaged in its enquiry, is none the less moving straight forward and towards its goal.

61. Enter into every man’s ruling Reason, and give every one else an opportunity to enter into thine.⁵¹⁵

Book IX

^p. BOOK IX

1. Injustice is impiety. For in that the Nature of the Universe has fashioned rational creatures for the sake of one another⁵¹⁶ with a view to mutual benefit based upon worth, but by no means for harm, the transgressor of her will acts with obvious impiety against the most venerable of Deities.

And the liar too acts impiously with respect to the same Goddess. For the Nature of the Universe is the Nature of the things that are. And the things that are have an intimate connexion with all the things that have ever been. Moreover this Nature is named Truth, and is the primary cause of all that is true. The willing liar then is impious in so far as his deceit is a wrong-doing; and the unwilling liar too, for he is out of tune with the Nature of the Whole, and an element of disorder by being in conflict with the Nature of an orderly Universe; for he is in conflict who allows himself, as far as his conduct goes, to be carried into opposition to what is true. And whereas he had previously been endowed by nature with the means of distinguishing false from true, by neglecting to use them he has lost the power.⁵¹⁷

Again he acts impiously who seeks after pleasure as a good thing and eschews pain as an evil. For ^p. such a man must inevitably find frequent fault with the Universal Nature⁵¹⁸ as unfair in its apportionments to the worthless and the worthy, since the worthless are often lapped in pleasures and possess the things that make for pleasure, while the worthy meet with pain and the things that make for pain. Moreover he that dreads pain will some day be in dread of something that must be in the world. And there we have impiety at once. And he that hunts after pleasures will not hold his hand from injustice. And this is palpable impiety.

But those, who are of one mind with Nature and would walk in her ways, must hold a neutral attitude⁵¹⁹ towards those things towards which the Universal Nature is neutral—for she would not be the Maker of both were she not neutral towards both. So he clearly acts with impiety who is not himself neutral towards pain and pleasure, death and life, good report and ill report, things which the Nature of the Universe treats with neutrality. And by the Universal Nature treating these with neutrality I mean that all things happen neutrally in a chain of sequence⁵²⁰ to things that come into being and their after products⁵²¹ by some primeval impulse of Providence,⁵²² in accordance with which She was impelled by some primal impulse to this making of an ordered Universe, when She had conceived certain principles for all that was to be, and allocated the powers generative of substances and changes and successions such as we see.

2. It were more graceful doubtless for a man to depart from mankind untainted with falsehood and ^p. all dissimulation and luxury and arrogance; failing that, however, the ‘next best course’ is to breathe out his life when his gorge has risen at these things. Or is it thy choice to throw in thy lot with vice, and does not even thy taste of it yet persuade thee to fly from the pestilence? For the corruption of the mind is a pest far worse than any such miasma and vitiation of the air which we breathe around us. The latter is a pestilence for living creatures and affects their life, the former for human beings and affects their humanity.

3. Despise not death,⁵²³ but welcome it, for Nature wills it like all else. For dissolution is but one of the processes of Nature,⁵²⁴ associated with thy life’s various seasons, such as to be young, to be old, to wax to our prime and to reach it, to grow teeth and beard and gray hairs, to beget, conceive and bring forth. A man then that has reasoned the matter out should not take up towards death the attitude of indifference, reluctance, or scorn, but await it as one of the processes of Nature.⁵²⁵ Look for the hour when thy soul shall emerge from this its sheath, as now thou awaitest the moment when the child she carries shall come forth from thy wife’s womb.⁵²⁶

But if thou desirest a commonplace solace too that will appeal to the heart, nothing will enable thee to meet death with equanimity better than to observe the environment thou art leaving and the sort of characters with whom thy soul shall no longer be ^p. mixed up.⁵²⁷ For while it is very far from right to be disgusted with them,⁵²⁸ but rather even to befriend and deal gently with them,⁵²⁹.yet it is well to remember that not from men of like principles with thine will thy release be. For this alone, if anything, could draw us back and bind us to life, if it were but permitted us to live with those who have possessed themselves of the same principles as ours. But now thou seest how thou art driven by sheer weariness at the jarring discord of thy life with them to say: Tarry not, O Death, lest peradventure I too forget myself.⁵³⁰

4. He that does wrong, does wrong to himself.⁵³¹ The unjust man is unjust to himself, for he makes himself bad.⁵³²

5. There is often an injustice of omission as well as of commission.

6. The present assumption rightly apprehended, the present act socially enacted, the present disposition satisfied with all that befalls it from the Cause external to it—these will suffice.

7. Efface imagination.⁵³³ Restrain impulse. Quench desire. Keep the ruling Reason in thine own power.

8. Among irrational creatures one life is distributed, and among the rational one intellectual soul has been parcelled out. Just as also there is one earth for all the things that are of the earth; and ^p. one is the light whereby we see,⁵³⁴ and one the air we all breathe that have sight and life.

9. All that share in a common element have an affinity for their own kind. The trend of all that is earthy is to earth; fluids all run together; it is the same with the aerial; so that only interposing obstacles and force can keep them apart. Fire indeed has a tendency to rise by reason of the elemental fire, but is so quick to be kindled in sympathy with all fire here below that every sort of matter, a whit drier than usual, is easily kindled owing to its having fewer constituents calculated to offer resistance to its kindling. So then all that shares in the Universal Intelligent Nature has as strong an affinity towards what is akin, aye even a stronger. For the measure of its superiority to all other things is the measure of its readiness to blend and coalesce with that which is akin to it.

At any rate to begin with among irrational creatures we find swarms and herds and bird-colonies and, as it were, love-associations.⁵³⁵ For already at that stage there are souls, and the bond of affinity shews itself in the higher form to a degree of intensity not found in plants or stones or timber. But among rational creatures are found political communities and friendships and households and gatherings and in wars treaties and armistices. But in things still higher a sort of unity in separation even exists, as in the stars. Thus the ascent to the higher form is able to effect a sympathetic connexion⁵³⁶ even among things which are separate.

^p. See then what actually happens at the present time; for at the present time it is only the intelligent creatures that have forgotten their mutual affinity and attraction, and here alone there is no sign of like flowing to like. Yet flee as they will, they are nevertheless caught in the toils, for Nature will have her way. Watch closely and thou wilt see ‘tis so. Easier at any rate were it to find an earthy thing in touch with nothing earthy than a man wholly severed from mankind.

10. They all bear fruit—Man and God and the Universe: each in its due season bears. It matters nought that in customary parlance such a term is strictly applicable only to the vine and such things. Reason too hath its fruit both for all and for itself, and there issue from it other things such as is Reason itself.⁵³⁷

11. If thou art able, convert the wrong-doer.⁵³⁸ If not, bear in mind that kindliness was given thee to meet just such a case. The Gods too are kindly to such persons and even co-operate with them for certain ends—for health, to wit, and wealth and fame, so benignant are they.⁵³⁹ Thou too canst be the same; or say who is there that prevents thee.

12. Do thy work not as a drudge, nor as desirous of pity or praise. Desire one thing only, to act or not to act as civic reason directs.

13. This day have I got me out of all trouble, or rather have cast out all trouble, for it was not from without, but within, in my own imagination.⁵⁴⁰

^p. 14. All these are things of familiar experience⁵⁴¹; in their duration ephemeral,⁵⁴² in their material foul. Everything is now as it was in the days of those whom we have buried.⁵⁴³

15. Objective things stand outside the door, keeping themselves to themselves, without knowledge of or message about themselves. What then has for us a message about them? The ruling Reason.

16. Not in being acted upon but in activity lies the evil and the good of the rational and civic creature, just as his virtue too and his vice lie in activity and not in being acted upon.

17. The stone that is thrown into the air is none the worse for falling down, or the better for being carried upwards.⁵⁴⁴

18. Find the way within into their ruling Reason, and thou shalt see what these judges are whom thou fearest and what their judgment of themselves is worth.⁵⁴⁵

19. Change is the universal experience.⁵⁴⁶ Thou art thyself undergoing a perpetual transformation and, in some sort, decay⁵⁴⁷: aye and the whole Universe as well.

20. Another’s wrong-doing should be left with him.⁵⁴⁸

21. A cessation of activity, a quiescence from impulse and opinion and, as it were, their death, is no evil. Turn now to consider the stages of thy life—childhood, boyhood, manhood, old age—each step in the ladder of change a death. Is there anything terrible here? Pass on now to thy life under thy grandfather, then under thy mother, then under thy ^p. father,⁵⁴⁹ and finding there many other alterations, changes, and cessations, ask thyself: Is there anything terrible here? No, nor any in the ending and quiescence and change of the whole of life.⁵⁵⁰

22. Speed to the ruling Reason of thyself, and of the Universe, and of thy neighbour of thine own, that thou mayest make it just; of that of the Universe, that thou mayest therewithal remember of what thou art a part; of thy neighbour, that thou mayest learn whether it was ignorance with him or understanding, and reflect at the same time that it is akin to thee.

23. As thou thyself art a part perfective of a civic organism, let also thine every act be a part perfective of civic life. Every act of thine then that has no relation direct or indirect to this social end, tears thy life asunder and destroys its unity, and creates a schism, just as in a commonwealth does the man who, as far as in him lies, stands aloof from such a concord of his fellows.

24. Children’s squabbles and make-believe, and little souls bearing up corpses⁵⁵¹—the Invocation of the Dead⁵⁵² might strike one as a more vivid reality!

25. Go straight to that which makes a thing what it is, its formative cause,⁵⁵³ and, isolating it from the material, regard it so. Then mark off the utmost time for which the individual object so qualified is calculated to subsist.

^p. 26. By not being content with thy ruling Reason doing the work for which it was constituted, thou hast borne unnumbered ills. Nay, ‘tis enough!

27. When men blame or hate thee or give utterance to some such feelings against thee, turn to their souls, enter into them, and see what sort of men they are. Thou wilt perceive that thou needest not be concerned as to what they think of thee. Yet must thou feel kindly towards them, for Nature made them dear to thee. The Gods too lend them aid in divers ways by dreams⁵⁵⁴ and oracles, to win those very things on which their hearts are set.⁵⁵⁵

28. The same, upwards, downwards,⁵⁵⁶ from cycle to cycle are the revolutions of the Universe. And either the Universal Mind feels an impulse to act in each separate case—and if this be so, accept its impulsion—or it felt this impulse⁵⁵⁷ once for all, and all subsequent things follow by way of consequence; and what matters which it be, for if you like to put it so the world is all atoms [or indivisible].⁵⁵⁸ But as to the Whole, if God—all is well; if haphazard—be not thou also haphazard.⁵⁵⁹

Presently the earth will cover us all. It too will anon be changed, and the resulting product will go on from change to change, and so for ever and ever. When a man thinks of these successive waves of change and transformation, and their rapidity, he will hold every mortal thing in scorn.⁵⁶⁰

29. The World-Cause is as a torrent, it sweeps everything along. How negligible these manikins ^p. that busy themselves with civic matters and flatter themselves that they act therein as philosophers! Drivellers all! What then, O Man? Do what Nature asks of thee now. Make the effort if it be given thee to do so and look not about to see if any shall know it.⁵⁶¹ Dream not of Utopias but be content if the least thing go forward, and count the outcome of the matter in hand as a small thing.⁵⁶² For who can alter another’s conviction? Failing a change of conviction, we merely get men pretending to be persuaded and chafing like slaves under coercion. Go to now and tell me of Alexander and Philip and Demetrius of Phalerum. Whether they realized the will of Nature and schooled themselves thereto, is their concern. But if they played the tragedy-hero, no one has condemned me to copy them. Simple and modest is the work of Philosophy: lead me not astray into pomposity and pride.

30. Take a bird’s-eye view of the world, its endless gatherings⁵⁶³ and endless ceremonials,⁵⁶⁴ voyagings manifold in storm and calm, and the vicissitudes of things coming into being, participating in being, ceasing to be. Reflect too on the life lived long ago by other men, and the life that shall be lived after thee, and is now being lived in barbarous countries; and how many have never even heard thy name, and how many will very soon forget it, and how many who now perhaps acclaim, will very soon blame thee, and that neither memory nor fame nor anything thing else whatever is worth reckoning.

31. Freedom from perturbance in all that befalls ^p. from the external Cause, and justice in all that thine own inner Cause prompts thee to do; that is, impulse and action finding fulfilment in the actual performance of social duty as being in accordance with thy nature.

32. It is in thy power to rid thyself of many unnecessary troubles, for they exist wholly in thy imagination. Thou wilt at once set thy feet in a large room by embracing the whole Universe in thy mind and including in thy purview time everlasting, and by observing the rapid change in every part of everything, and the shortness of the span between birth and dissolution, and that the yawning immensity before birth is only matched by the infinity after our dissolution.

33. All that thine eyes behold will soon perish and they, who live to see it perish, will in their turn perish no less quickly; and he who outlives all his contemporaries and he who dies before his time will be as one in the grave.

34. What is the ruling Reason⁵⁶⁵ of these men, and about what sort of objects have they been in earnest, and from what motives do they lavish their love and their honour! View with the mind’s eye their poor little souls in their nakedness. What immense conceit this of theirs, when they fancy that there is bane in their blame and profit in their praises!

35. Loss and change,⁵⁶⁶ they are but one. Therein doth the Universal Nature take pleasure,⁵⁶⁷ through whom are all things done now as they have been in like fashion from time everlasting; and to eternity shall other like things be. Why then dost thou say that all things have been evil and will remain evil ^p. to the end, and that no help has after all been found in Gods, so many as they be, to right these things, but that the fiat hath gone forth that the Universe should be bound in an unbroken chain of ill?

36. Seeds of decay in the underlying material of everything—water, dust, bones, reek! Again, marble but nodules of earth, and gold and silver but dross, garments merely hair-tufts, and purple only blood. And so so with everything else. The soul too another like thing and liable to change from this to that.

37. Have done with this miserable way of life, this grumbling, this apism! Why fret? What is the novelty here? What amazes thee? The Cause? Look fairly at it. What then, the Material? Look fairly at that. Apart from these two, there is nothing. But in regard to the Gods also now even at the eleventh hour show thyself more simple,⁵⁶⁸ more worthy.

Whether thy experience of these things lasts three hundred years or three, it is all one.

38. If he did wrong, with him lies the evil. But maybe he did no wrong.⁵⁶⁹

39. Either there is one intelligent source, from which as in one body all after things proceed—and the part ought not to grumble at what is done in the interests of the whole—or there are atoms, and nothing but a medley and a dispersion.⁵⁷⁰ Why then be harassed? Say to thy ruling Reason: Thou art dead! Thou art corrupt! Thou hast become a wild beast! Thou art a hypocrite! Thou art one of the herd! Thou battenest with them!

40. Either the Gods have no power or they have ^p. power. If they have no power, why pray to them⁵⁷¹? But if they have power, why not rather pray that they should give thee freedom from fear of any of these things and from lust for any of these things and from grief at any of these things [rather] than that they should grant this or refuse that. For obviously if they can assist men at all, they can assist them in this. But perhaps thou wilt say: The Gods have put this in my power. Then is it not better to use what is in thy power like a free man than to concern thyself with what is not in thy power like a slave and an abject? And who told thee that the Gods do not co-operate with us⁵⁷² even in the things that are in our power? Begin at any rate with prayers for such things and thou wilt see. One prays: How may I lie with that woman!⁵⁷³ Thou: How may I not lust to lie with her! Another: How may I be quit of that man! Thou: How may I not wish to be quit of him! Another: How may I not lose my little child! Thou: How may I not dread to lose him.⁵⁷⁴ In a word, give thy prayers this turn, and see what comes of it.

41. Listen to Epicurus⁵⁷⁵ where he says: In my illness my talk was not of any bodily feelings, nor did I chatter about such things to those who came to see me, but I went on with my cardinal disquisitions on natural philosophy, dwelling especially on this point, hom the mind, having perforce its share in such affections of the flesh, yet remains unperturbed, safeguarding its own proper good. Nor did I—he goes on—let the physicians ride the high horse as if they were doing ^p. grand things, but my life went on well and happily. Imitate him then in sickness, if thou art sick, and in any other emergency; for it is a commonplace of every sect not to renounce Philosophy whatever difficulties we encounter, nor to consent to babble as he does that is unenlightened in philosophy and nature; … devote thyself to thy present work alone and thy instrument for performing it.

42. When thou art offended by shamelessness in any one, put this question at once to thyself: Can it be that shameless men should not exist in the world? It can not be. Then ask not for what can not be.⁵⁷⁶ For this man in question also is one of the shameless ones that must needs exist in the world. Have the same reflection ready for the rogue, the deceiver, or any other wrongdoer whatever. For the remembrance that this class of men cannot but exist will bring with it kindlier feelings towards individuals of the class. Right useful too is it to bethink thee at once of this: What virtue has Nature given man as a foil to the wrong-doing in question? For as an antidote against the unfeeling man she has given gentleness,⁵⁷⁷ and against another man some other resource.

In any case it is in thy power to teach the man that has gone astray the error of his ways. For every one that doth amiss misses his true mark and hath gone astray. But what harm hast thou suffered? Thou wilt find that not one of the persons against whom thou art exasperated has done anything capable of making thy mind worse; but it is in ^p. thy mind⁵⁷⁸ that the evil for thee and the harmful have their whole existence.

Where is the harm or the strangeness in the boor acting—like a boor? See whether thou art not thyself the more to blame in not expecting that he would act thus wrongly. For thy reason too could have given thee means for concluding that this would most likely be the case. Nevertheless all this is forgotten, and thou art surprised at his wrongdoing.

But above all, when thou findest fault with a man for faithlessness and ingratitude,⁵⁷⁹ turn thy thoughts to thyself. For evidently the fault is thine own, whether thou hadst faith that a man with such a character would keep faith with thee, or if in bestowing a kindness thou didst not bestow it absolutely and as from the very doing of it having at once received the full complete fruit.⁵⁸⁰

For when thou hast done a kindness, what more wouldst thou have? Is not this enough that thou hast done something in accordance with thy nature? Seekest thou a recompense for it? As though the eye should claim a guerdon for seeing, or the feet for walking! For just as these latter were made for their special work, and by carrying this out according to their individual constitution they come fully into their own, so also man, formed as he is by nature for benefiting others, when he has acted as benefactor or as co-factor in any other way for the general weal, has done what he was constituted for, and has what is his.⁵⁸¹

Book X

^p. BOOK X

1. Wilt thou then, O my Soul, ever at last be good and simple and single and naked, shewing thyself more visible than the body that overlies thee? Wilt thou ever taste the sweets of a loving and a tender heart? Ever be full-filled and self-sufficing, longing for nothing, lusting after nothing animate or inanimate, for the enjoyment of pleasures—not time wherein the longer to enjoy them, nor place or country or congenial climes or men nearer to thy liking—but contented with thy present state⁵⁸² and delighted with thy present everything, convincing thyself withal that all that is present for thee is present from the Gods,⁵⁸³ and that everything is and shall be well with thee that is pleasing to them and that they shall hereafter grant for the conservation of that Perfect Being⁵⁸⁴ that is good and just and beautiful, the Begetter and Upholder of all things, that embraces and gathers them in, when they are dissolved, to generate therefrom other like things?⁵⁸⁵ Wilt thou ever at last fit thyself so to be a fellow-citizen with the Gods and with men as never to find fault with them or incur their condemnation?

^p. 2. Observe what thy nature asks of thee, as one controlled by Nature alone, then do this and with a good grace, if thy nature as a living creature is not to be made worse thereby. Next must thou observe what thy nature as a living creature asks of thee. And this must thou wholly accept, if thy nature as a rational living creature be not made worse thereby. Now the rational is indisputably also the civic. Comply with these rules then and be not needlessly busy about anything.

3. All that befalls either so befalls as thou art fitted by nature to bear it or as thou art not fitted.⁵⁸⁶ If the former, take it not amiss, but bear it as thou art fitted to do. If the latter, take not that amiss either, for when it has destroyed thee, it will itself perish. Howbeit be assured that thou art fitted by nature to bear everything which it rests with thine own opinion about it to render bearable and tolerable, according as thou thinkest it thy interest or thy duty to do so.

4. If a man makes a slip, enlighten him with loving-kindness, and shew him wherein he hath seen amiss.⁵⁸⁷ Failing that, blame thyself or not even thyself.

5. Whatever befalls thee was set in train for thee from everlasting, and the iiiterplication of causes was from eternity weaving into one fabric thy existence and the coincidence of this event.⁵⁸⁸

6. Whether there be atoms or a Nature, let it be postulated first, that I am a part of the whole Universe controlled by Nature; secondly, that I stand in some intimate connexion with other kindred parts. ^p. For bearing this in mind, as I am a part, I shall not be displeased with anything allotted me from the Whole. For what is advantageous to the whole can in no wise be injurious to the part.⁵⁸⁹ For the Whole contains nothing that is not advantageous to itself; and all natures have this in common, but the Universal Nature is endowed with the additional attribute of never being forced by any external cause to engender anything hurtful to itself.

As long then as I remember that I am a part of such a whole, I shall be well pleased with all that happens; and in so far as I am in intimate connexion with the parts that are akin to myself, I shall be guilty of no unsocial act, but I shall devote my attention rather to the parts that are akin to myself,⁵⁹⁰ and direct every impulse of mine to the common interest and withhold it from the reverse of this. That being done, life must needs flow smoothly, as thou mayst see the life flow smoothly of a citizen who goes steadily on in a course of action beneficial to his fellow-citizens and cheerfully accepts whatever is assigned him by the State.

7. The parts of the Whole—all that Nature has comprised in the Universe—must inevitably perish, taking “perish” to mean “be changed.” But if this process is by nature for them both evil and inevitable, the Whole could never do its work satisfactorily, its parts ever going as they do from change to change and being constituted to perish in diverse ways. Did Nature herself set her hand to bringing evil upon parts of herself and rendering them not only liable to fall into evil but of necessity fallen into it,^{591 p.} or was she not aware that such was the case? Both alternatives are incredible.

But supposing that we even put Nature as an agent out of the question and explain that these things are “naturally” so, even then it would be absurd to assert that the parts of the whole are naturally subject to change, and at the same time to be astonished at a thing or take it amiss as though it befell contrary to nature, and that though things dissolve into the very constituents out of which they are composed. For either there is a scattering of the elements⁵⁹² out of which I have been built up, or a transmutation of the solid into the earthy and of the spiritual⁵⁹³ into the aerial; so that these too are taken back into the Reason of the Universe, whether cycle by cycle it be consumed with fire⁵⁹⁴ or renew itself by everlasting permutations.

Aye and so then do not be under the impression that the solid and the spiritual date from the moment of birth. For it was but yesterday or the day before that all this took in its increment from the food eaten and the air breathed. It is then this, that it took in, which changes, not the product of thy mother’s womb. But granted that thou art ever so closely bound up⁵⁹⁵ with that by thy individuality, this, I take it, has no bearing upon the present argument.

8. Assuming for thyself the appellations, a good man,⁵⁹⁶ a modest man,⁵⁹⁷ a truthteller,⁵⁹⁸ wise of heart, ^p. sympathetic of heart, great of heart, take heed thou be not new-named. And if thou shouldst forfeit these titles, e’en make haste to get back to them. And bear in mind that wise of heart was meant to signify for thee a discerning consideration of every object and a thoroughness of thought; sympathetic of heart, a willing acceptance of all that the Universal Nature allots thee; great of heart an uplifting of our mental part above the motions smooth or rough of the flesh, above the love of empty fame, the fear of death, and all other like things. Only keep thyself entitled to these appellations, not itching to receive them from others, and thou wilt be a new man and enter on a new life. For to be still such as thou hast been till now, and to submit to the rendings and defilements of such a life, is worthy of a man that shews beyond measure a dull senselessness and a clinging to life, and is on a level with the wild-beast fighters that are half-devoured in the arena, who, though a mass of wounds and gore, beg to be kept till the next day, only to be thrown again, torn as they are, to the same teeth and talons.

Take ship then on these few attributes, and if thou canst abide therein, so abide as one who has migrated to some Isles of the Blest. But if thou feelest thyself adrift, and canst not win thy way, betake thyself with a good heart to some nook where thou shalt prevail, or even depart altogether from life,⁵⁹⁹ not in wrath but in simplicity, independence, and modesty, having at least done this ^p. one thing well in life, that thou hast quitted it thus. Howbeit, to keep these attributes in mind it will assist thee greatly if thou bear the Gods in mind, and that it is not flattery they crave but for all rational things to be conformed to their likeness,⁶⁰⁰ and that man should do a man’s work, as the fig tree does the work of a fig-tree, the dog of a dog, and the bee of a bee.

9. Stage-apery, warfare, cowardice, torpor, servility—these will day by day obliterate all those holy principles of thine which, as a student of Nature,⁶⁰¹ thou dost conceive and accept. But thou must regard and do everything in such a way that at one and the same time the present task may be carried through, and full play given to the faculty of pure thought, and that the self-confidence engendered by a knowledge of each individual thing be kept intact, unobtruded yet unconcealed.

When wilt thou find thy delight in simplicity? When in dignity? When in the knowledge of each separate thing, what it is in its essence, what place it fills in the Universe, how long it is formed by Nature to subsist, what are its component parts, to whom it can pertain, and who can bestow and take it away?

10. A spider prides itself on capturing a fly; one man on catching a hare, another on netting a sprat, another on taking wild boars, another bears, another Sarmatians.⁶⁰² Are not these brigands, if thou test their principles?

^p. 11. Make thy own a scientific system of enquiry into the mutual change of all things, and pay diligent heed to this branch of study and exercise thyself in it. For nothing is so conducive to greatness of mind. Let a man do this and he divests himself of his body and, realizing that he must almost at once relinquish all these things and depart from among men, he gives himself up wholly to just dealing in all his actions, and to the Universal Nature in all that befalls him. What others may say or think about him or do against him he does not even let enter his mind, being well satisfied with these two things—justice in all present acts and contentment with his present lot.⁶⁰³ And he gives up all engrossing cares and ambitions, and has no other wish than to achieve the straight course through the Law and, by achieving it, to be a follower of God.

12. What need of surmise when it lies with thee to decide what should be done, and if thou canst see thy course, to take it with a good grace and not turn aside; but if thou canst not see it, to hold back and take counsel of the best counsellors and if any other obstacles arise therein, to go forward as thy present means shall allow with careful deliberation holding to what is clearly just? For to succeed in this is the best thing of all, since in fact to fail in this would be the only failure.

Leisurely without being lethargic and cheerful as well as composed shall he be who follows Reason in everything.

13. Ask thyself as soon as thou art roused from sleep: Will it make any difference to me if another does ^p. what is just and right? It will make none. Hast thou forgotten that those who play the wanton⁶⁰⁴ in their praise and blame of others, are such as they are⁶⁰⁵ in their beds, at their board; and what are the things that they do, the things that they avoid or pursue, and how they pilfer and plunder, not with hands and feet but with the most precious part of them, whereby a man calls into being at will faith, modesty, truth, law, and a good ‘genius’?⁶⁰⁶

14. Says the well-schooled and humble heart to Nature that gives and takes back all we have; Give what thou wilt, take back what thou wilt.⁶⁰⁷ But he says it without any bravado of fortitude, in simple obedience and good will to her.

15. Thou has but a short time left to live. Live as on a mountain⁶⁰⁸; for whether it be here or there, matters not provided that, wherever a man live, he live as a citizen of the World-City.⁶⁰⁹ Let men look upon thee, cite thee, as a man in very deed that lives according to Nature. If they cannot bear with thee, let them slay thee. For it were better so than to live their life.

16. Put an end once for all to this discussion of what a good man should be, and be one.⁶¹⁰

17. Continually picture to thyself Time as a whole, and Substance as a whole, and every individual ^p. thing, in respect of substance, as but a fig-seed and, in respect to time, as but a twist of the drill.

18. Regarding attentively every existing thing reflect that it is already disintegrating and changing, and as it were in a state of decomposition and dispersion, or that everything is by nature made but to die.

19. What are they like when eating, sleeping, coupling, evacuating, and the rest! What again when lording it over others, when puffed up with pride, when filled with resentment or rebuking others from a loftier plane! Yet but a moment ago they were lackeying how many and for what ends, and anon will be at their old trade.⁶¹¹

20. What the Universal Nature brings to every thing is for the benefit of that thing, and for its benefit then when she brings it.⁶¹²

21. The earth is in love with showers and the majestic sky is in love.⁶¹³ And the Universe is in love with making whatever has to be. To the Universe I say: Together with thee I will be in love. Is it not a way we have of speaking, to say, This or that loves to be so?

22. Either thy life is here and thou art inured to it; or thou goest elsewhere and this with thine own will; or thou diest and hast served out thy service. There is no other alternative. Take heart then.

23. Never lose sight of the fact that a man’s ‘freehold’⁶¹⁴ is such as I told thee, and how all the conditions are the same here as on the top of a ^p. mountain⁶¹⁵ or on the sea-shore or wherever thou pleasest. Quite apposite shalt thou find to be the words of Plato⁶¹⁶: Compassed about (by the city wall as) by a sheep-fold on the mountain, and milking flocks.

24. What is my ruling Reason and what am I making of it now? To what use do I now put it? Is it devoid of intelligence? Is it divorced and severed from neighbourliness? Does it so coalesce and blend with the flesh as to be swayed by it?

25. He that flies from his master is a runaway. But the Law is our master,⁶¹⁷ and he that transgresses the Law is a runaway. Now he also, that is moved by grief or wrath or fear, is fain that something should not have happened or be happening or happen in the future of what has been ordained by that which controls the whole Universe, that is by the Law laying down all that falls to a man’s lot. He then is a runaway who is moved by fear, grief, or wrath.

26. A man passes seed into a womb and goes his way, and anon another cause takes it in hand and works upon it and perfects a babe—what a consummation from what a beginning!⁶¹⁸ Again he⁶¹⁹ passes food down the throat, and anon another cause taking up the work creates sensation and impulse and in fine, life and strength and other things how many and how mysterious! Muse then on these ^p. things that are done in such secrecy, and detect the efficient force, just as we detect the descensive and the ascensive none the less clearly that it is not with our eyes.

27. Bear in mind continually how all such things as now exist existed also before our day⁶²⁰ and, be assured, will exist after us. Set before thine eyes whole dramas and their settings, one like another, all that thine own experience has shewn thee or thou hast learned from past history, for instance the entire court of Hadrianus,⁶²¹ the entire court of Antoninus, the entire court of Philip, of Alexander, of Croesus. For all those scenes were such as we see now, only the performers being different.

28. Picture to thyself every one that is grieved at any occurrence whatever or dissatisfied, as being like the pig which struggles and screams when sacrificed; like it too him who, alone upon his bed, bewails in silence the fetters of our fate; and that to the rational creature alone has it been granted to submit willingly to what happens, mere submission being imperative on all.⁶²²

29. In every act of thine pause at each step and ask thyself: Is death to be dreaded for the loss of this?

30. Does another’s wrong-doing shock thee? Turn incontinently to thyself and bethink thee what analogous wrong-doing there is of thine own,⁶²³ such as deeming money to be a good⁶²⁴ or pleasure⁶²⁵ or a little cheap fame⁶²⁶ and the like. For by marking ^p. this thou wilt quickly forget thy wrath, with this reflection too to aid thee, that a man is under constraint⁶²⁷; for what should he do? Or, if thou art able, remove the constraint.

31. Let a glance at Satyron call up the image of Socraticus or Eutyches or Hymen, and a glance at Euphrates the image of Eutychion or Silvanus, and a glance at Alciphron Tropaeophorus, and at Severus Xenophon or Crito.⁶²⁸ Let a glance at thyself bring to mind one of the Caesars, and so by analogy in every case. Then let the thought strike thee: Where are they now? Nowhere,⁶²⁹ or none can say where. For thus shalt thou habitually look upon human things as mere smoke⁶³⁰ and as naught; and more than ever so, if thou bethink thee that what has once changed will exist no more throughout eternity. Why strive then and strain⁶³¹? Why not be content to pass this thy short span of life in becoming fashion?

What material, what a field for thy work dost thou forgo! For what are all these things but objects for the exercise of a reason that hath surveyed with accuracy and due inquiry into its nature the whole sphere of life? Continue then until thou hast assimilated these truths also to thyself, as the vigorous digestion assimilates every food, or the blazing fire converts into warmth and radiance whatever is cast into it.⁶³²

32. Give no one the right to say of thee with truth that thou art not a sincere, that thou art not a ^p. good man, but let anyone that shall form any such an idea of thee be as one that maketh a lie. All this rests with thee. For who is there to hinder thee from being good and sincere⁶³³? Resolve then to live no longer if thou be not such.⁶³⁴ For neither doth Reason in that case insist that thou shouldest.

33. Taking our ‘material’ into account, what can be said or done in the soundest way? Be it what it may, it rests with thee to do or say it. And let us have no pretence that thou art being hindered.

Never shalt thou cease murmuring until it be so with thee that the utilizing, in a manner consistent with the constitution of man, of the material presented to thee and cast in thy way shall be to thee what indulgence is to the sensual. For everything must be accounted enjoyment that it is in a man’s power to put into practice in accordance with his own nature; and it is everywhere in his power.

A cylinder we know has no power given it of individual motion everywhere, nor has fire or water or any other thing controlled by Nature or by an irrational soul. For the interposing and impeding obstacles are many. But Intelligence and Reason make their way through every impediment just as their nature or their will prompts them. Setting before thine eyes this ease wherewith the Reason can force its way through every obstacle, as fire upwards, as a stone downwards, as a cylinder down a slope,⁶³⁵ look for nothing beyond. For other hindrances either concern that veritable corpse, the body,⁶³⁶ or, apart from imagination and the surrender of Reason herself, cannot crush us or work any harm at all.^{637 p.} Else indeed would their victim at once become bad.

In fact in the case of all other organisms, if any evil happen to any of them, the victim itself becomes the worse for it. But a man so circumstanced becomes, if I may so say, better and more praiseworthy by putting such contingencies to a right use.⁶³⁸ In fine, remember that nothing that harms not the city can harm him whom Nature has made a citizen⁶³⁹; nor yet does that harm a city which harms not law. But not one of the so-called mischances harms law. What does not harm law, then, does no harm to citizen or city.

34. Even an obvious and quite brief aphorism can serve to warn him that is bitten with the true doctrines against giving way to grief and fear; as for instance,

Such are the races of men as the leaves that the wind scatters earthwards.⁶⁴⁰

And thy children too are little leaves. Leaves also they who make an outcry as if they ought to be listened to, and scatter their praises or, contrariwise, their curses, or blame and scoff in secret. Leaves too they that are to hand down our after-fame. For all these things

Burgeon again with the season of spring;⁶⁴¹

anon the wind hath cast them down,⁶⁴² and the forest puts forth others in their stead. Transitoriness is the common lot of all things, yet there is none of these that thou huntest not after or shunnest, ^p. as though it were everlasting. A little while and thou shalt close thine eyes; aye, and for him that bore thee to the grave shall another presently raise the dirge.⁶⁴³

35. The sound eye should see all there is to be seen, but should not say: I want what is green only. For that is characteristic of a disordered eye. And the sound hearing and smell should be equipped for all that is to be heard or smelled. And the sound digestion should act towards all nutriment as a mill towards the grist which it was formed to grind. So should the sound mind be ready for all that befalls. But the mind that says: Let my children be safe!⁶⁴⁴ Let all applaud my every act! is but as an eye that looks for green things or as teeth that look for soft things.

36. There is no one so fortunate as not to have one or two standing by his death-bed who will welcome the evil which is befalling him. Say he was a worthy man and a wise; will there not be some one at the very end to say in his heart, We can breathe again at last, freed from this schoolmaster,⁶⁴⁵ not that he was hard on any of us, but I was all along conscious that he tacitly condemns us? So much for the worthy, but in our own case how many other reasons can be found for which hundreds would be only too glad to be quit of us! Think then upon this when dying, and thy passing from life will be easier if thou reason thus: I am leaving a life in which even my intimates for whom I have so greatly toiled, prayed, and thought,⁶⁴⁶ aye even they wish me gone, expecting belike to gain thereby ^p. some further ease.⁶⁴⁷ Why then should anyone cling to a longer sojourn here?

Howbeit go away with no less kindliness towards them on this account, but maintaining thy true characteristics be friendly and goodnatured and gracious; nor again as though wrenched apart, but rather should thy withdrawal from them be as that gentle slipping away of soul from body which we see when a man makes a peaceful end. For it was Nature that knit and kneaded thee with them, and now she parts the tie. I am parted from kinsfolk, not dragged forcibly away, but unresistingly. For this severance too is a process of Nature.⁶⁴⁸

37. In every act of another habituate thyself as far as may be to put to thyself the question: What end has the man in view?⁶⁴⁹ But begin with thyself, cross-examine thyself first.

38. Bear in mind that what pulls the strings is that Hidden Thing within us: that makes our speech, that our life, that, one may say, makes the man. Never in thy mental picture of it include the vessel that overlies it⁶⁵⁰ nor these organs that are appurtenances thereof. They are like the workman’s adze, only differing from it in being naturally attached to the body. Since indeed, severed from the Cause that bids them move and bids them stay, these parts are as useless as is the shuttle of the weaver, the pen of the writer, and the whip of the charioteer.

Book XI

^p. BOOK XI

1. The properties of the Rational Soul are these: it sees itself, dissects itself, moulds itself to its own will,⁶⁵¹ itself reaps its own fruits⁶⁵²—whereas the fruits of the vegetable kingdom and the corresponding produce of animals are reaped by others,—it wins to its own goal wherever the bounds of life be set. In dancing and acting and such-like arts, if any break oceurs, the whole action is rendered imperfect; but the rational soul in every part and wheresoever taken⁶⁵³ shews the work set before it fulfilled and all-sufficient for itself, so that it can say: I have to the full what is my own.

More than this, it goeth about the whole Universe and the void surrounding it and traces its plan, and stretches forth into the infinitude of Time, and comprehends the cyclical Regeneration⁶⁵⁴ of all things, and takes stock of it, and discerns that our children will see nothing fresh,⁶⁵⁵ just as our fathers too never saw anything more than we.⁶⁵⁶ So that in a manner the man of forty years, if he have a grain of sense, in view of this sameness has seen all that has been ^p. and shall be. Again a property of the Rational Soul is the love of our neighbour, and truthfulness, and modesty, and to prize nothing above itself⁶⁵⁷—a characteristic also of Law. In this way then the Reason that is right reason and the Reason that is justice are one.

2. Thou wilt think but meanly of charming songs and dances and the pancratium,⁶⁵⁸ if thou analyze the melodious utterance into its several notes and in the case of each ask thyself: Has this the mastery over me? For thou wilt recoil from such a confession.⁶⁵⁹ So too with the dance, if thou do the like for each movement and posture. The same holds good of the pancratium. In fine, virtue and its sphere of action excepted, remember to turn to the component parts,⁶⁶⁰ and by analyzing them come to despise them. Bring the same practice to bear on the whole of life also.

3. What a soul is that which is ready to be released from the body at any requisite moment, and be quenched⁶⁶¹ or dissipated or hold together! But the readiness must spring from a man’s inner judgment, and not be the result of mere opposition [as is the case with the Christians].⁶⁶² It must be associated with deliberation and dignity and, if others too are to be convinced, with nothing like stage-heroics.

4. Have I done some social act? Well, I am amply rewarded.⁶⁶³ Keep this truth ever ready to turn to, and in no wise slacken thine efforts.

5. What is thy vocation? To be a good man. ^p. But how be successful in this save by assured conceptions on the one hand of the Universal Nature and on the other of the special constitution of man?

6. Originally tragedies were brought on to remind us of real events, and that such things naturally occur, and that on life’s greater stage you must not be vexed at things, which on the stage you find so attractive. For it is seen that these things must be gone through, and they too have to endure them, who cry Ah, Kithaeron!⁶⁶⁴ Aye, and the dramatic writers contain some serviceable sayings. For example this more especially:

offset=2em

and again:

offset=2em

and this:

offset=2em

and how many more like them.

And after Tragedy the old Comedy was put on the stage, exercising an educative freedom of speech, and by its very directness of utterance giving us no unserviceable warning against unbridled arrogance. In somewhat similar vein Diogenes⁶⁶⁵ also took up this role. After this, consider for what purpose the Middle Comedy was introduced, and subsequently the New, which little by little degenerated into ingenious mimicry. For that some serviceable ^p. things are said even by the writers of these is recognized by all. But what end in view had this whole enterprize of such poetical and dramatic composition?⁶⁶⁶

7. How clearly is it borne in on thee that there is no other state of life so fitted to call for the exercise of Philosophy as this in which thou now findest thyself.⁶⁶⁷

8. A branch cut off from its neighbour branch⁶⁶⁸ cannot but be cut off from the whole plant. In the very same way a man severed from one man has fallen away from the fellowship of all men. Now a branch is cut off by others, but a man separates himself⁶⁶⁹ from his neighbour by his own agency in hating him or turning his back upon him; and is unaware that he has thereby sundered himself from the whole civic community.⁶⁷⁰ But mark the gift of Zeus who established the law of fellowship. For it is in our power to grow again to the neighbour branch, and again become perfective of the whole. But such a schism constantly repeated makes it difficult for the seceding part to unite again and resume its former condition. And in general the branch that from the first has shared in the growth of the tree and lived with its life is not like that which has been cut off and afterwards grafted on to it, as the gardeners are apt to tell you. Be of one bush, but not of one mind.

9. As those who withstand thy progress along the path of right reason will never be able to turn thee ^p. aside from sound action, so let them not wrest thee from a kindly attitude towards them⁶⁷¹; but keep a watch over thyself in both directions alike, not only in steadfastness⁶⁷² of judgment and action but also in gentleness towards those who endeavour to stand in thy path or be in some other way a thorn in thy side. For in fact it is a sign of weakness to be wroth with them, no less than to shrink from action and be terrified into surrender. For they that do the one or the other are alike deserters of their post,⁶⁷³ the one as a coward, the other as estranged from a natural kinsman and friend.

10. ‘Nature in no case cometh short of art.’ For indeed the arts are copiers of various natures. If this be so, the most consummate and comprehensive Nature of all cannot be outdone by the inventive skill of art. And in every art the lower things are done for the sake of the higher⁶⁷⁴; and this must hold good of the Universal Nature also. Aye and thence is the origin of Justice, and in justice all the other virtues have their root,⁶⁷⁵ since justice will not be maintained if we either put a value on things indifferent, or are easily duped and prone to slip and prone to change.

11. If therefore the things, the following after and eschewing of which disturb thee, come not to thee, but thou in a manner dost thyself seek them out, at all events keep thy judgment at rest about them and they will remain quiescent, and thou shalt not be seen following after or eschewing them.

^p. 12. The soul is ‘a sphere truly shaped,’⁶⁷⁶ when it neither projects itself towards anything outside nor shrinks together inwardly, neither expands nor contracts,⁶⁷⁷ but irradiates a light whereby it sees the reality of all things and the reality that is in itself.

13. What if a man think scorn of me? That will be his affair. But it will be mine not to be found doing or saying anything worthy of scorn. But what if he hate me? That will be his affair.⁶⁷⁸ But I will be kindly and goodnatured to everyone, and ready to shew even my enemy where he has seen amiss, not by way of rebuke⁶⁷⁹ nor with a parade of forbearance, but genuinely and chivalrously like the famous Phocion,⁶⁸⁰ unless indeed he was speaking ironically. For such should be the inner springs of a man’s heart⁶⁸¹ that the Gods see him not wrathfully disposed at any thing or counting it a hardship. What evil can happen to thee if thou thyself now doest what is congenial to thy nature, and welcomest what the Universal Nature now deems well-timed, thou who art a man intensely eager that what is for the common interest should by one means or another be brought about?

14. Thinking scorn of one another, they yet fawn on one another, and eager to outdo their rivals they grovel one to another.

15. How rotten at the core is he, how counterfeit, who proclaims aloud: I have elected to deal straightforwardly with thee! Man, what art thou at? There is no need to give this out. The fact will instantly declare itself. It ought to be written on the ^p. forehead. There is a ring in the voice that betrays it at once, it flashes out at once from the eyes, just as the loved one can read at a glance every secret in his lover’s looks. The simple and good man should in fact be like a man who has a strong smell about him, so that, as soon as ever he comes near, his neighbour is, will-he nill-he, aware of it. A calculated simplicity is a stiletto.⁶⁸² There is nothing more hateful than the friendship of the wolf for the lamb. Eschew that above all things. The good man, the kindly, the genuine, betrays these characteristics in his eyes and there is no hiding it.⁶⁸³

16. Vested in the soul is the power of living ever the noblest of lives, let a man but be indifferent towards things indifferent. And he will be indifferent, if he examine every one of these things both in its component parts⁶⁸⁴ and as a whole, and bear in mind that none of them is the cause in us of any opinion about itself, nor obtrudes itself on us. They remain quiescent,⁶⁸⁵ and it is we who father these judgments about them and as it were inscribe them on our minds, though it lies with us not to inscribe them and, if they chance to steal in undetected, to erase them at once.⁶⁸⁶ Bear in mind too that we shall have but a little while to attend to such things and presently life will be at an end. But why complain of the perversity of things? If they are as Nature wills, delight in them and let them be no hardship to thee. If they contravene Nature, seek then what is in accord with thy nature and speed towards that, even though it be unpopular.⁶⁸⁷ For it is pardonable for every man to seek his own good.

^p. 17. Think whence each thing has come, of what it is built up,⁶⁸⁸ into what it changes, what it will be when changed; and that it cannot take any harm.

18. Firstly: Consider thy relation⁶⁸⁹ to mankind and that we came into the world for the sake of one another⁶⁹⁰; and taking another point of view, that I have come into it to be set over men, as a ram over a flock or a bull over a herd.⁶⁹¹ Start at the beginning from this premiss: If not atoms,⁶⁹² then an all-controlling Nature. If the latter, then the lower are for the sake of the higher and the higher for one another.⁶⁹³

Secondly: What sort of men they are at board and in bed and elsewhere.⁶⁹⁴ Above all how they are the self-made slaves of their principles, and how they pride themselves on the very acts in question.

Thirdly: That if they are acting rightly in this, there is no call for us to be angry. If not rightly, it is obviously against their will and through ignorance.⁶⁹⁵ For it is against his will that every soul is deprived, as of truth, so too of the power of dealing with each man as is his due. At any rate, such men resent being called unjust, unfeeling, avaricious, and in a word doers of wrong to their neighbours.

Fourthly: That thou too doest many a wrong thing thyself and art much as others are,⁶⁹⁶ and if thou dost refrain from certain wrong-doings, yet hast thou a disposition inclinable thereto⁶⁹⁷ even supposing that through cowardice or a regard for thy good name or some such base consideration thou dost not actually commit them.

^p. Fifthly: That thou hast not even proved that they are doing wrong, for many things are done even ‘by way of policy.’⁶⁹⁸ Speaking generally a man must know many things before he can pronounce an adequate opinion on the acts of another.

Sixthly: When thou art above measure angry or even out of patience, bethink thee that man’s life is momentary, and in a little while we shall all have been laid out.⁶⁹⁹

Seventhly: That in reality it is not the acts men do that vex us—for they belong to the domain of their ruling Reason—but the opinions we form of those acts.⁷⁰⁰ Eradicate these, be ready to discard thy conclusion that the act in question is a calamity, and thine anger is at an end.⁷⁰¹ How then eradicate these opinions? By realizing that no act of another debases us. For unless that alone which debases is an evil, thou too must perforce do many a wrong thing and become a brigand⁷⁰² or any sort of man.

Eighthly: Bethink thee how much more grievous are the consequences of our anger and vexation at such actions than are the acts themselves which arouse that anger and vexation.

Ninthly: That kindness is irresistible,⁷⁰³ be it but sincere and no mock smile or a mask assumed. For what can the most unconscionable of men do to thee, if thou persist in being kindly to him, and when a chance is given exhort him mildly and, at the very time when he is trying to do thee harm, quietly teach him a better way⁷⁰⁴ thus: Nay, my child, we have been made for other things. I shall be in ^p. no wise harmed, but thou art harming thyself,⁷⁰⁵ my child. Shew him delicately and without any personal reference that this is so, and that even honey-bees do not act thus nor any creatures of gregarious instincts. But thou must do this not in irony⁷⁰⁶ or by way of rebuke, but with kindly affection and without any bitterness at heart, not as from a master’s chair, nor yet to impress the bystanders, but as if he were indeed alone even though others are present.

Bethink thee then of these nine heads, taking them as a gift from the Muses, and begin at last to be a man while life is thine. But beware of flattering⁷⁰⁷ men no less than being angry with them.⁷⁰⁸ For both these are non-social and conducive of harm. In temptations to anger a precept ready to thy hand is this to be wroth is not manly, but a mild and gentle disposition, as it is more human, so it is more inasculine. Such a man, and not he who gives way to anger and discontent, is endowed with strength and sinews and manly courage. For the nearer such a mind attains to a passive calm,⁷⁰⁹ the nearer is the man to strength. As grief is a weakness, so also is anger. In both it is a case of a wound and a surrender.

But take if thou wilt as a tenth gift from Apollo, the Leader of the Muses, this, that to expect the bad not to do wrong is worthy of a madman; for that is to wish for impossibilities.⁷¹⁰ But to acquiesce in their wronging others, while expecting them to refrain from wronging thee, is unfeeling and despotic.⁷¹¹

^p. 19. Against four perversions of the ruling Reason thou shouldest above all keep unceasing watch, and, once detected, wholly abjure them,⁷¹² saying in each case to thyself: This thought is not necessary;⁷¹³ this is destructive of human fellowship; this could be no genuine utterance from the heart.—And not to speak from the heart, what is it but a contradiction in terms?—The fourth case is that of self-reproach,⁷¹⁴ for that is an admission that the divine part of thee has been worsted by and acknowledges its inferiority to the body, the baser and mortal partner, and to its gross notions.

20. Thy soul and all the fiery part that is blended with thee, though by Nature ascensive, yet in submission to the system of the Universe are held fast here in thy compound personality. And the entire earthy part too in thee and the humid, although naturally descensive, are yet upraised and take up a station not their natural one. Thus indeed, we find the elements also in subjection to the Whole and, when set anywhere, remaining there under constraint until the signal sound for their release again therefrom.

Is it not then a paradox that the intelligent part alone of thee should be rebellious and quarrel with its station? Yet is no constraint laid upon it but only so much as is in accordance with its nature. Howbeit it does not comply and takes a contrary course. For every motion towards acts of injustice and licentiousness, towards anger and grief and fear, but betokens one who cuts himself adrift from Nature. Aye ^p. and when the ruling Reason in a man is vexed at anything that befalls, at that very moment it deserts its station.⁷¹⁵ For it was not made for justice alone, but also for piety⁷¹⁶ and the service of God. And in fact the latter are included under the idea of a true fellowship, and indeed are prior to the practice of justice.⁷¹⁷

21. He who has not ever in view one and the same goal of life cannot be throughout his life one and the same.⁷¹⁸ Nor does that which is stated suffice, there needs to be added what that goal should be. For just as opinion as to all the things that in one way or another are held by the mass of men to be good is not uniform, but only as to certain things, such, that is, as affect the common weal, so must we set before ourselves as our goal the common and civic weal. For he who directs all his individual impulses towards this goal will render his actions homogeneous and thereby be ever consistent with himself.⁷¹⁹

22. Do not forget the story of the town mouse and the country mouse, and the excitement and trepidation of the latter.⁷²⁰

23. Socrates used to nickname the opinions of the multitude Ghouls,⁷²¹ bogies to terrify children.

24. The Spartans at their spectacles assigned to strangers seats in the shade, but themselves took their chance of seats anywhere.

^p. 25. Socrates refused the invitation of Perdiccas⁷²² to his court, That I come not, said he, to a dishonoured grave, meaning, that I be not treated with generosity and have no power to return it.⁷²³

26. In the writings of the Ephesians⁷²⁴ was laid down the advice to have constantly in remembrance some one of the ancients who lived virtuously.

27. Look, said the Pythagoreans, at the sky in the morning, that we may have in remembrance those hosts of heaven that ever follow the same course and accomplish their work in the same way, and their orderly system, and their purity, and their nakedness; for there is no veil before a star.

28. Think of Socrates with the sheepskin wrapped round him, when Xanthippe had gone off with his coat, and what he said to his friends when they drew back in their embarrassment at seeing him thus accoutred.

29. In reading and writing thou must learn first to follow instruction before thou canst give it. Much more is this true of life.

30. ‘Tis not for thee, a slave, to reason why.⁷²⁵

31. … and within me my heart laughed.⁷²⁶

32. Virtue they will upbraid and speak harsh words in her hearing.⁷²⁷

33. Only a madman will look for figs in winter. ^p. No better is he who looks for a child when he may no longer have one.⁷²⁸

34. A man while fondly kissing his child, says Epictetus, should whisper in his heart⁷²⁹: ‘To-morrow peradventure thou wilt die.’ Ill-omened words these! Nay, said he, nothing is ill-omened that signifies a natural process. Or it is ill-omened also to talk of ears of corn being reaped.

35. The grape unripe, mellow, dried-in every stage we have a change, not into non-existence, but into the not now existent.⁷³⁰

36. Hear Epictetus: no one can rob us of our free choice.⁷³¹

37. We must, says he,⁷³² hit upon the true science of assent and in the sphere of our impulses pay good heed that they be subject to proper reservations,⁷³³ that they have in view our neighbour’s welfare; that they are proportionate to worth. And we must abstain wholly from inordinate desire and shew avoidance in none of the things that are not in our control.

38. It is no casual matter, then, said he, that is at stake, but whether we are to be sane or no.⁷³⁴

39. Socrates was wont to say:⁷³⁵ What would ye have? The souls of reasoning or unreasoning creatures? Of reasoning creatures. Of what kind of reasoning creatures? Sound or vicious? Sound. Why then not make a shift to get them? Because we have them already. Why then fight and wrangle?

Book XII

^p. BOOK XII

1. All those things, which thou prayest to attain by a roundabout way, thou canst have at once if thou deny them not to thyself⁷³⁶; that is to say, if thou leave all the Past to itself and entrust the Future to Providence,⁷³⁷ and but direct the Present in the way of piety and justice: piety, that thou mayest love thy lot, for Nature brought it to thee and thee to it; justice, that thou mayest speak the truth freely and without finesse, and have an eye to law and the due worth of things⁷³⁸ in all that thou doest; and let nothing stand in thy way, not the wickedness of others, nor thine own opinion, nor what men say, nor even the sensations of the flesh that has grown around thee⁷³⁹; for the part affected will see to that.

If then, when the time of thy departure is near, abandoning all else thou prize thy ruling Reason alone and that which in thee is divine,⁷⁴⁰ and dread the thought, not that thou must one day cease to live, but that thou shouldst never yet have begun to live according to Nature, then shalt thou be a man worthy of the Universe that begat thee, and no longer an alien⁷⁴¹ in thy fatherland, no longer shalt thou marvel at what happens every day as if it ^p. were unforeseen, and be dependent on this or that.

2. God sees the Ruling Parts of all men stripped of material vessels and husks and sloughs. For only with the Intellectual Part of Himself is He in touch with those emanations only which have welled forth and been drawn off from Himself into them. But if thou also wilt accustom thyself to do this, thou wilt free thyself from the most of thy distracting care. For he that hath no eye for the flesh that envelopes him will not, I trow, waste his time with taking thought for raiment and lodging and popularity and such accessories and frippery.⁷⁴²

3. Thou art formed of three things in combination—body, vital breath, intelligence.⁷⁴³ Of these the first two are indeed thine, in so far as thou must have them in thy keeping, but the third alone is in any true sense thine.⁷⁴⁴ Wherefore, if thou cut off from thyself, that is from thy mind, all that others do or say and all that thyself hast done or said, and all that harasses thee in the future, or whatever thou art involved in independently of thy will by the body which envelopes thee and the breath that is twinned with it, and whatever the circumambient rotation outside of thee sweeps along, so that thine intellectual faculty, delivered from the contingencies of destiny, may live pure and undetached by itself, doing what is just, desiring what befalls it, speaking the truth—if, I say, thou strip from this ruling Reason all that cleaves to it from the bodily influences and the things that lie beyond in time and ^p. the things that are past, and if thou fashion thyself like the Empedoclean

Sphere with its circle true in its poise well-rounded rejoicing,⁷⁴⁵

and school thyself to live that life only which is thine, namely the present, so shalt thou be able to pass through the remnant of thy days calmly, kindly, and at peace with thine own ‘genius.’⁷⁴⁶

4. Often have I marvelled how each one of us loves himself above all men, yet sets less store by his own opinion of himself than by that of everyone else. At any rate, if a God or some wise teacher should come to a man and charge him to admit no thought or design into his mind that he could not utter aloud as soon as conceived,⁷⁴⁷ he could not endure this ordinance for a single day. So it is clear that we pay more deference to the opinion our neighbours will have of us than to our own.

5. How can the Gods, after disposing all things well and with good will towards men, ever have overlooked this one thing, that some of mankind, and they especially good men, who have had as it were the closest commerce with the Divine, and by devout conduct and acts of worship have been in the most intimate fellowship with it, should when once dead have no second existence but be wholly extinguished?⁷⁴⁸ But if indeed this be haply so, doubt not that they would have ordained it otherwise, had it needed to be otherwise. For had it been just, it would also have been feasible, and had it been in conformity with Nature, Nature would have brought it about. ^p. Therefore from its not being so, if indeed it is not so, be assured that it ought not to have been so. For even thyself canst see that in this presumptuous enquiry of thine thou art reasoning with God.⁷⁴⁹ But we should not thus be arguing with the Gods were they not infinitely good and just. But in that case they could not have overlooked anything being wrongly and irrationally neglected in their thorough Ordering of the Universe.

6. Practise that also wherein thou hast no expectation of success. For even the left hand, which for every other function is inefficient by reason of a want of practice, has yet a firmer grip of the bridle than the right. For it has had practice in this.

7. Reflect on the condition of body and soul befitting a man when overtaken by death, on the shortness of life,⁷⁵⁰ on the yawning gulf⁷⁵¹ of the past and of the time to come, on the impotence of all matter.

8. Look at the principles of causation stripped of their husks; at the objective of actions; at what pain is, what pleasure, what death, what fame. See who is to blame for a man’s inner unrest; how no one can be thwarted by another⁷⁵²; that nothing is but what thinking makes it.⁷⁵³

9. In our use of principles of conduct we should imitate the pancratiast not the gladiator.⁷⁵⁴ For the latter lays aside the blade which he uses, and takes it up again, but the other always has his hand and needs only to clench it.

^p. 10. See things as they really are, analyzing them into Matter, Cause, Objective.⁷⁵⁵

11. What a capacity Man has to do only what God shall approve and to welcome all that God assigns him!

12. Find no fault with Gods for what is the course of Nature, for they do no wrong⁷⁵⁶ voluntarily or involuntarily; nor with men, for they do none save involuntarily.⁷⁵⁷ Find fault then with none.⁷⁵⁸

13. How ludicrous is he and out of place who marvels at anything that happens in life.⁷⁵⁹

14. There must be either a predestined Necessity and inviolable plan, or a gracious Providence, or a chaos without design or director. If then there be an inevitable Necessity, why kick against the pricks? If a Providence that is ready to be gracious, render thyself worthy of divine succour. But if a chaos without guide, congratulate thyself that amid such a surging sea thou hast in thyself a guiding Reason. And if the surge sweep thee away, let it sweep away the poor Flesh and Breath with their appurtenances: for the Intelligence it shall never sweep away. (15.) What shall the truth that is in thee and the justice and the temperance be extinguished ere thou art, whereas the light of a lamp shines forth and keeps its radiance until the flame be quenched?

16. Another has given thee cause to think that he has done wrong: But how do I know that it is a wrong?⁷⁶⁰ And even if he be guilty, suppose that his ^p. own heart has condemned him, and so he is as one who wounds his own face?

Note that he who would not have the wicked do wrong is as one who would not have the fig-tree secrete acrid juice⁷⁶¹ in its fruit, would not have babies cry, or the horse neigh, or have any other things be that must be. Why, what else can be expected from such a disposition? If then it chafes thee, cure the disposition.

17. If not meet, do it not: if not true, say it not. For let thine impulse be in thy own power.

18. Ever look to the whole of a thing, what exactly that is which produces the impression on thee, and unfold it, analyzing it into its causes, its matter, its objective,⁷⁶² and into its life-span within which it must needs cease to be.

19. Become conscious at last that thou hast in thyself something better and more god-like than that which causes the bodily passions and turns thee into a mere marionette.⁷⁶³ What is my mind now occupied with⁷⁶⁴? Fear? Suspicion? Concupiscence⁷⁶⁵? Some other like thing?

20. Firstly, eschew action that is aimless and has no objective. Secondly, take as the only goal of conduct what is to the common interest.⁷⁶⁶

21. Bethink thee that thou wilt very soon be no one and nowhere, and so with all that thou now seest and all who are now living. For by Nature’s law all things must change, be transformed, and perish, that other things may in their turn come into being.⁷⁶⁷

22. Remember that all is but as thy opinion ^p. of it,⁷⁶⁸ and that is in thy power. Efface thy opinion then, as thou mayest do at will, and lo, a great calm! Like a mariner that has turned the headland thou findest all at set-fair and a halcyon sea.⁷⁶⁹

23. Any single form of activity, be it what it may, ceasing in its own due season, suffers no ill because it hath ceased, nor does the agent suffer in that it hath ceased to act.⁷⁷⁰ Similarly then if life, that sum total of all our acts, cease in its own good time, it suffers no ill from this very fact, nor is he in an ill plight who has brought this chain of acts to an end in its own due time. The due season and the terminus are fixed by Nature, at times even by our individual nature, as when in old age, but in any case by the Universal Nature, the constant change of whose parts keeps the whole Universe ever youthful⁷⁷¹ and in its prime. All that is advantageous to the Whole is ever fair and in its bloom. The ending of life then is not only no evil to the individual—for it brings him no disgrace,⁷⁷² if in fact it be both outside our choice and not inimical to the general weal—but a good, since it is timely for the Universe, bears its share in it and is borne along with it.⁷⁷³ For then is he, who is borne along on the same path as God, and borne in his judgment towards the same things, indeed a man god-borne.⁷⁷⁴

24. Thou must have these three rules ready for use. Firstly, not to do anything, that thou doest, aimlessly,⁷⁷⁵ or otherwise than as Justice herself would have acted; and to realize that all that befalls thee from without is due either to Chance or to Providence, ^p. nor hast thou any call to blame Chance or to impeach Providence. Secondly this: to think what each creature is from conception till it receives a living soul, and from its reception of a living soul till its giving back of the same,⁷⁷⁶ and out of what it is built up and into what it is dissolved. Thirdly, that if carried suddenly into mid-heaven thou shouldest look down upon human affairs⁷⁷⁷ and their infinite diversity, thou wilt indeed despise them,⁷⁷⁸ seeing at the same time in one view how great is the host that peoples the air and the aether around thee; and that, however often thou wert lifted up on high, thou wouldst see the same sights, everything identical in kind, everything fleeting. Besides, the vanity of it all!

25. Overboard with opinion⁷⁷⁹ and thou art safe ashore. And who is there prevents thee from throwing it overboard?

26. In taking umbrage at anything, thou forgettest this, that everything happens in accordance with the Universal Nature⁷⁸⁰; and this, that the wrong-doing is another’s⁷⁸¹; and this furthermore that all that happens, always did happen,⁷⁸² and will happen so, and is at this moment happening everywhere. And thou forgettest how strong is the kinship between man and mankind, for it is a community not of corpuscles, of seed or blood, but of intelligence.⁷⁸³ And thou forgettest this too, that each man’s intelligence is God⁷⁸⁴ and has emanated from Him; and this, that nothing is a man’s very own, but that his babe, his ^p. body, his very soul came forth from Him⁷⁸⁵; and this, that everything is but opinion⁷⁸⁶; and this, that it is only the present moment that a man lives and the present moment only that he loses.⁷⁸⁷

27. Let thy mind dwell continually on those who have shewn unmeasured resentment at things, who have been conspicuous above others for honours or disasters or enmities or any sort of special lot. Then consider, Where is all that now?⁷⁸⁸ Smoke and dust and a legend or not a legend even.⁷⁸⁹ Take any instance of the kind—Fabius Catullinus in the country, Lusius Lupus in his gardens, Stertinius at Baiae, Tiberius in Capreae, and Velius Rufus—in fact a craze for any thing whatever arrogantly⁷⁹⁰ indulged. How worthless is everything so inordinately desired! How much more worthy of a philosopher is it for a man without any artifice to shew himself in the sphere assigned to him just, temperate, and a follower of the Gods. For the conceit that is conceited of its freedom from conceit is the most insufferable of all.⁷⁹¹

28. If any ask, Where hast thou seen the Gods or how hast thou satisfied thyself of their existence that thou art so devout a worshipper?⁷⁹² I answer: In the first place, they are even visible to the eyes.⁷⁹³ In the next, I have not seen my own soul either, yet I honour it.⁷⁹⁴ So then from the continual proofs of their power I am assured that Gods also exist and I reverence them.

^p. 29. Salvation in life depends on our seeing everything in its entirety and and its reality, in its Matter and its Cause⁷⁹⁵: on our doing what is just and speaking what is true with all our soul. What remains but to get delight of life by dovetailing one good act⁷⁹⁶ on to another so as not to leave the smallest gap between?

30. There is one Light of the Sun, even though its continuity be broken by walls, mountains,⁷⁹⁷ and countless other things. There is one common Substance, even though it be broken up into countless bodies individually characterized. There is one Soul, though it be broken up among countless natures and by individual limitations. There is one Intelligent Soul, though it seem to be divided. Of the things mentioned, however, all the other parts, such as Breath, are the material Substratum of things,⁷⁹⁸ devoid of sensation and the ties of mutual affinity—yet even they are knit together by the faculty of intelligence and the gravitation which draws them together. But the mind is peculiarly impelled towards what is akin to it, and coalesces with it, and there is no break in the feeling of social fellowship.

31. What dost thou ask for? Continued existence? But what of sensation? Of desire? Of growth? Of the use of speech? The exercise of thought? Which of these, thinkest thou, is a thing to long for? But if these things are each and all of no account, address thyself to a final endeavour to follow Reason and to follow God.⁷⁹⁹ But it militates against this to prize such things, and to grieve if death comes to deprive us of them.

^p. 32. How tiny a fragment of the boundless abyss of Time has been appointed to each man!⁸⁰⁰ For in a moment it is lost in eternity. And how tiny a part of the Universal Substance!⁸⁰¹ How tiny of the Universal Soul! And on how tiny a clod of the whole Earth dost thou crawl! Keeping all these things in mind, think nothing of moment save to do what thy nature leads thee to do, and to bear what the Universal Nature brings thee.⁸⁰²

33. How does the ruling Reason treat itself?⁸⁰³ That is the gist of the whole matter. All else, be it in thy choice or not, is but as dust and smoke.⁸⁰⁴

34. Most efficacious in instilling a contempt for death is the fact that those who count pleasure a good and pain an evil have nevertheless contemned it.⁸⁰⁵

35. Not even death can bring terror to him who regards that alone as good which comes in due season,⁸⁰⁶ and to whom it is all one whether his acts in obedience to right reason are few or many, and a matter of indifference whether he look upon the world for a longer or a shorter time.⁸⁰⁷

36. Man, thou hast been a citizen in this World-City,⁸⁰⁸ what matters it to thee if for five years or a hundred? For under its laws equal treatment is meted out to all. What hardship then is there in being banished from the city, not by a tyrant or an unjust judge but by Nature who settled thee in it? ^p. So might a praetor who commissions a comic actor, dismiss him from the stage. But I have not played my five acts, but only three. Very possibly, but in life three acts count as a full play.⁸⁰⁹ For he, that is responsible for thy composition originally and thy dissolution now, decides when it is complete. But thou art responsible for neither. Depart then with a good grace, for he that dismisses thee is gracious.

Footnotes

1. sc. “I had an example of,” “was in the way to learn.” But the construction varies and sometimes a direct statement of characteristics is given. It is obvious that Marcus does not claim to possess all the good qualities enumerated. ↩

2. Died before 136. The grandfather of M. (§ 1) died aged nearly 90 in 138 (Capit. Vit. Mar. vi. 1; Vit. Pii iv. 2). ↩

3. cp. Aristides, ad Reg. 115 (Jebb) διαίτης εὐτέλεια (of Marcus). ↩

4. Catilius Severus, praef. urbi, who hoped to succeed Hadrian (Spart. Vit. Hadr. v. 10; xxiv. 6). ↩

5. Capit. Vit. Mar. (ii. 3–iii. 4) gives a list of these. ↩

6. The name has perhaps dropped out. Capit. Vit. Pii x. 5 has an anecdote of the death of the educator of Marcus, but Aristides in his funeral oration on Alexander of Cotiaeum calls the latter not only διδάσκαλος but τροφεὺς to Marcus and Verus (Jebb’s Ed. § 149). But he is mentioned below § 10. ↩

7. Capit. Vit. Ver. vi. 2; Malalas xi. ad fin. ↩

8. Dio (71. 6, § 2) calls M. φιλόπονος. ↩

9. A Diognetus taught M. painting (Capit. iv. 9). ↩

10. cp. Capit. xiii. 6; Dio 71. 9, § 2 (Xiphilinus). ↩

11. Undoubtedly refers to the Christians, see Digest L. 13. 1, § 3, and cp. Justin, Apol. ii. 6 of Rome itself. The Christians constantly boasted of their power to exorcize: Tert. Apol. 23; Iren. ii. 6, § 2; Lact. v. 21. cp. also the legend of Abercius and his visit to Rome to cure Lucilla. ↩

12. Capit. Vit. Mar. ii. 6 ↩

13. i. 17, §§ 4, 6. cp. Digest. xlix. 1. 1, § 3 “Rusticus, our friend”; Capit. iii. 3; Them. Orat. xiii. 173 c; Fronto, ad Ant. 1. 2. ↩

14. λογάρια (ratiunculae). cp. Epict. i. 29. 55. ↩

15. i. 17, § 4. cp. Fronto, ad Ant. i. 2 (Nab. p. 96); de Eloqu. 3 (Nab. p. 150). Dio (71. 35, § 1) says M. was ἀσκηθεὶς ἐν τοῖς ῥητορικοῖς λόγοις. ↩

16. As Marcus in the case of Herodes, see Philost. Vit. Soph. ii. 12 (Kayser’s ed. p. 243). ↩

17. cp. Fronto, ad Caes. v. 36. Capit. (Vit. Pii x. 4) and Lucian (Demonax 31) shew him in a different light, as ill-mannered and avaricious. He is mentioned as Ἀντωνίνου ἑταῖρος by Epiphanius. ↩

18. See the behaviour of Marcus on the death of M. Annius Verus, aged 7, at Praeneste in 169 (Capit. xxi. 3), and on the death of his first-born son T. Aelius Antoninus soon after birth in 147. (Corp. Inscrip. Graec. Boeckh 3176.) cp. Dio 71.34, § 5. ↩

19. cp. Fronto, ad Appian. (Nab. p. 246). ↩

20. Capit. iii. 1. He was of Chaeronea and grandson of Plutarch, cp. Suidas sub voce: “He was held in such honour by the Emperor as to act as his assessor on the bench.” ↩

21. Of Cotiaeum, see Aristides, Orat. xii. 142 ff. (Jebb’s Ed.). He lived to a great age. He was in Rome in 145 (see ibid. §159) and resided at the palace (§§ 148, 154). See above on i. 5. ↩

22. See Fronto, ad Ver. ii. 7 (Naber, p. 135; cp. p. 231). Marcus acknowledges greater debts to Fronto elsewhere, e.g. ad Caes. iii. 12, Verum dicere ex te disco. Ea re prosum dis hominibusque ardua. ↩

23. See Phil. Vit. Soph. ii. 5, p. 247 Kays. He was summoned by Marcus to Pannonia about 174 and made his Greek secretary. ↩

24. A Stoic, see Capit. iii. 2. ↩

25. Domitii were among the maternal ancestors of Marcus, and an Athenodotus was Fronto’s teacher (ad Caes. iv. 12; Nab. p. 73). ↩

26. See Index II. He was father of the son-in-law of Marcus. ↩

27. i. 16, § 9; viii. 25. See Capit. iii. 2; Index II. ↩

28. Marcus raised a temple to Εὐεργεσία, a new deity. See Dio 71. 34, § 3. ↩

29. cp. iii. 5. ↩

30. Here Pius, his adoptive father, is meant, not as above (i. 2) his father Verus. For a first sketch of this eulogy of Pius see below vi. 30. ↩

31. It is not quite clear whether this means that Pius had put away this vice from himself or others, but the active verb seems rather to favour the latter view. Capit. Vit. Pii ii. 1, calls him clarus moribus (cp. also Aur. Vict. de Caes. xv.), but Julian says he was σώφρων οὐ τὰ ἐς Ἀφροδίτην. ↩

32. cp. Fronto, ad Caes. iii. 20; v. 44. ↩

33. cp. St. Paul, Tim. ii. 4. 5. ↩

34. lit. that he was a “home-bred slave,” i.e. impudent. ↩

35. Julian calls Marcus τετράγωνος—“a man foursquare.” ↩

36. Capit. (Vit Pii xiii. 1) says he wore stays to keep himself upright in old age. ↩

37. lit. “distributions.” cp. Capit. Vit. Pii iv. 9; viii. 11. ↩

38. Xen. Mem. I. 3, § 15. πολλοὶ would here seem = οἱ πολλοί. ↩

39. The Greek may also mean “To be strong and to persist without excess in each case is characteristic,” and ἑκατέρφ suits this better. ↩

40. i.e. M. Annius Verus, three times consul (Dio 69. 21, § 1) and praef. urbi (Capit. i. 2), who died 138, and P. Calvisius Tullus, cons. suff. 109. See Capit. i. 3; Fronto, ad Caes. iii. 2. ↩

41. cp. i. 17, § 6; xi. 18, § 4. ↩

42. cp. ix. 21. After his father’s death Marcus was brought up at his grandfather’s house (Capit. i. 7). Capit. (v. 3) says he migrated de maternis hortis much against his will to the imperial palace when adopted by Hadrian. It is possible but not likely that “grandfather” here means Hadrian. ↩

43. L. Verus, whose character was more of a warning than an example, as Lucian Nigr. 19 calls Rome for its wickedness γυμνάσιον ἀρετῆς, see Epict. iii. 20, § 11. Marcus seems to have been genuinely fond of him, see Fronto, ad Ver. ii. 1; ad Caes. ii. 17; and cp. Aristides, Paneg. in Cyz. § 425 (Jebb). ↩

44. Capit. Vit. Ver. viii. 5. ↩

45. i. 7. ↩

46. I. 7. cp. Fronto, ad Caes. i. 8; ad Ant. i. 2 (Nab. p. 96); de Eloq. 3 (Nab. p. 150). ↩

47. e.g. Rusticus, cons. ii. in 162, and praef. urbi; Proculus, see Capit. ii. 5. ↩

48. i. 9. ↩

49. Dio 71. 36, § 3. ↩

50. Domitia Lucilla, dau. of P. Calvisius Tullus. She died in 156, aged about 50. For her see above i. 3; viii. 25; Fronto, ad Caes. iv. 6; Capit. vi. 9. Her head appears on a coin of Nicaea in Bithynia. ↩

51. cp. Fronto, ad Caes. v. 11. ↩

52. cp. Fronto, ad Pium 2, ad fin. for Pius’ opinion of his daughter. The coiffure of the younger Faustina as seen on coins is much simpler than that of her mother. She was with Marcus in Pannonia for a time at least. ↩

53. cp. Fronto, ad Caes. iii. 9, and below, ix. 27. Marcus himself became a dream-giver after his death, see Capit. xviii. 7. Dreams were the recognised method by which the God of healing communicated his prescriptions. Belief in them was universal, and shared by the atheist Pliny, the sceptic Lucian, Aristides the devotee, Galen the scientist, Dio the historian and man of affairs. It is not unknown to Christians. Yet there have been found writers to gird at Marcus for his “superstitious” belief in dreams! ↩

54. These words may be intended either to conclude the first book or, more likely, head the second. In the former case, as Gataker points out, τάδε would have been usual, not τά. ↩

55. v. 1. ↩

56. cp. Sen. de Ira ii. 10. ↩

57. cp. ii. 3. ↩

58. cp. ii. 6; i. 17, § 6; Dio 71. 24, § 4. Marcus would be a little over 50. Contrast i. 17, § 6, and note. Cromwell when 51 writing from Dunbar says, “I grow an old man.” ↩

59. iii. 16; vi. 16, 28; vii. 3, 29; xii. 19. cp. Clem. Alex. Strom. ii. 3; iv. 11. ↩

60. vi. 36; xii. 26. ↩

61. Referred to by Arethas on Dio Chrys. Orat. 32. 15 as πάντα ἄνωθεν ῥεῖ. cp. St. James, Ep. i. 17. ↩

62. ii. 2. ↩

63. προθεσμία lit. “a time-limit for enforcement of claims after which they lapsed.” ↩

64. § 11; vii. 69; Sen. Ep. xii ↩

65. §§ 16, 17; iv. 2. ↩

66. Apparently a sarcastic apostrophe, which is not in Marcus’ usual manner. ↩

67. ii. 2. ↩

68. Here Marcus deviates from the strict Stoic doctrine, which allowed no degrees in faults. ↩

69. For συστολή cp. Diog. Laert. (Zeno) 63, ἔλεος εἶναι πάθος καὶ συστολὴν ἄλογον. ↩

70. above, § 5. ↩

71. cp. Fronto, de Nep. Nab. p. 233. ↩

72. iv. 8. ↩

73. Pindar, Frag. (see Plato, Theaet. 173 E). ↩

74. § 17; iii. 6, 16. cp. Shaks, Temp. ii. 1. 275: “Conscience, this deity in my bosom.” The δαιμόνιον of Socrates is well known. ↩

75. Marcus qualifies his departure from the strict Stoic view, for which see Seneca de Clem. ii. 4–6, where he calls pity pusillanimity, and says sapiens non miserebitur sed succurret. Marcus was far from a Stoic in this, see Herodian i. 4, § 2. See above, p. xiii. ↩

76. iii. 10 ↩

77. Sen. Nat. Q. vi. 32 ad fin. ↩

78. xii. 36. ↩

79. τύφον εἶναι τὰ πάντα, Menander, Frag. 249, Kock (Diog. Laert. vi. 3, § 2); Sext. Empir. (Adv. Log. ii. 1) attributes the saying to Monimus. ↩

80. cp. Eur. Frag. 107: ὅταν γλυκείας ἡδονῆς ἥσσων τις ᾖ. ↩

81. Aristides Paneg. ad Cyzic. § 427 (Jebb), ὁ γὰρ λογισμὸς αὐτῶν (Marcus and Lucius) θεῖος καὶ ὡς ἀληθῶς ἄνωθεν ἔχων τὸ παράδειγμα, καὶ πρὸς ἐκείνην ὁρῶν τὴν πολιτείαν. ↩

82. § 13. ↩

83. § 5, 16. ↩

84. These words may very possibly be intended as a heading for Book III. ↩

85. Now Haimburg in Hungary. ↩

86. vi. 16. Arist. Probl. i. 21 ὅπερ ἐν τῷ θώρακι αναπνοή, τοῦτο ἐν τῷ σώματι διαπνοὴ διὰ τῶν ἀρτηριών (arterial breathing). ↩

87. cp. Sen. Ep. 60 vivit is qui se utitur. ↩

88. vi. 26. ↩

89. x. 8, § 3. The right of suicide was part of the Stoic creed (Zeno and Cleanthes both took their own lives). Marcus allows it when circumstances make it impossible for a man to live his true life (v. 29; viii. 47; x. 8. cp. Epict i. 24, § 20; i. 25, § 18). Hadrian (Digest 28. 3. 6, § 7) enumerates as causes of suicide taedium vitae, valetudinis adversae impatientia, iactatio (in the case of certain philosophers). Marcus himself, if Dio (71. 30, § 2) is to be trusted, threatened, in a letter to the Senate, to commit suicide, and according to Capitolinus (xxviii. 3) actually hastened his own death by abstaining from food. ↩

90. A very fine early medallion shows Marcus in full chase after a wild boar (Grueber, Plate xviii.). cp. Dio 71. 36, § 2, σὺς ἀγρίους ἐν θήρᾳ κατέβαλλεν ἀπὸ ἵππου; Fronto, ad Cæs. iii. 20; iv. 5; Capit. iv. 9. ↩

91. iv. 36. ↩

92. Such are the things Marcus noticed in the amphitheatre, and not the bloodshed which his soul abhorred (Dio 71. 29, § 3). ↩

93. iv. 48. ↩

94. Told of Pherecydes (Diog. Laert. Pher. v, viii.), of Speusippus (Speus. ix.), and even of Plato (Plato xxix.), but not elsewhere of Democritus. Lucian (?), Μacrob. 15, says Democritus died of starvation aged 104. ↩

95. cp. Justin, Apol. i. §§ 18, 57. ↩

96. So ras animi Cic. Tusc. i. 22, § 52. cp. St. Paul, 1 Thess. iv. 4 (σκεῦος); Dio Chrys. Οr. xii. 404 R. ἀνθρώπινον σῶμα ὡς ἀγγεῖον φρονήσεως καὶ λόγου. ↩

97. ii. 5. ↩

98. cp. Fronto, ad Am. i. 12: nullum est factum meum dictumve quod clam ceteris esse velim: quia cuius rei mihimet ipse conscius sim, ceteros quoque omnes iuxta mecum scire velim. ↩

99. ii. 13. 17; iii. 6. 16. ↩

100. Or, more abstractly, is conditioned no less than conditions. ↩

101. ii. 13. 17; iii. 6. ↩

102. But see vii. 7. ↩

103. i. 15, § 3; vii. 12. ↩

104. iii. 4, § 3, 12, 16, or good ‘genius,’ but cp. iii. 5, θεός. ↩

105. iii. 16; Epict. iii. 22, § 16. cp. Plutarch, Sympos. vii. 5. ↩

106. Sen. N.Q. vi. 32, ad fin. ↩

107. xii. 36; Sen. Ep. 77. ↩

108. viii. 34. ↩

109. ii. 14. ↩

110. iv. 3, § 3; viii. 21. ↩

111. xii. 10. 18. ↩

112. Notice the fondness of Marcus for compounds of συν- and his use here of alliteration, cp. xii. 14. ↩

113. cp. Dio 71. 6, § 2 (of Marcus), οὐδὲν ἐν παρέργω οὔτε ἔλεγεν οὔτε ἔγραψεν οὔτε ἐποίει. ↩

114. iii. 6, § 2. ↩

115. i.e. the human and the divine. ↩

116. It is not clear whether Marcus refers to the present book. He uses a similar word for the discourses of Epictetus (i. 7). ↩

117. ii. 2. Some have seen here a reference to a history written by Marcus himself. ↩

118. See Fronto, ad Caes. ii. 10, excerpta ex libris sexaginta n quinque tomis. ↩

119. xi. 3. ↩

120. ii. 2. ↩

121. Must undoubtedly refer to the Christians, who were accused precisely of these three things—atheism, want of patriotism, and secret orgies. cp. also, i. 6; vii. 68; viii. 48, 51; and see note pp. 381 ff. ↩

122. iii. 6, § 2; St. Paul, 1 Cor. iii. 16. ↩

123. iii. 6, § 2, etc. cp. Lucian, Somn. 10, ἡ ψυχή, όπερ σου κυριώτατόν ἐστιν. ↩

124. i.e. conditionally or as far as circumstances will allow, vi. 50. cp. St. James, Ep. iv. 15. ↩

125. v. 20; vi. 50; Sen. de Prov. 2. ↩

126. ii. 5 etc. ↩

127. e.g. Lorium, Lanuvium, Alsium, Centumcellae, Praeneste, Baiae, Caieta, all holiday resorts of Marcus, see especially Fronto de Fer. Als. Nab. p. 223 ff. cp. x. 15, 23. ↩

128. cp. Arethas on Dio Chrys. xx. 8, μὴ οὖν βελτίστη καὶ λυσιτελεστάτη πασῶν ἡ εἰς αὑτὸν ἀναχώρησις. See below iv. 3, § 4; vii. 28. ↩

129. For ἐγκύψας cp. St. James, Ep. i. 25, παρακύψας. ↩

130. vii. 22, 63; xi. 18, § 3. ↩

131. viii. 17; ix. 28, 39. ↩

132. ii. 16 ad fin.; iv. 4; x. 15; xii. 36. St. Paul, Philippians iii. 20. ↩

133. v. 14. ↩

134. iii. 10; viii. 21. ↩

135. ii. 15; iv. 7; xii. 22. A maxim of Democrates, a Pythagorean; cp. Shak. Hamlet ii. 2. 256, “There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so”; Tennyson: “All things are, as they seem, to all.” Some have been found to say that even matter has no objective existence. ↩

136. vii. 9. cp. Aur. Vict. Epit. xvi. 4, Mundi lex seu Natura. ↩

137. iv. 3, § 2. ↩

138. Lit. the pneumatic, here = τὸ ἀερῶδες (x. 7, § 2). ↩

139. vii. 64. ↩

140. v. 17. ↩

141. xii. 16. cp. Bacon, On Revenge. ↩

142. iv. 3, § 4; vii. 14, 29; ix. 7; xii. 25. ↩

143. ii. 11; vii. 64. ↩

144. x. 25. ↩

145. cp. Capit. xxii. 4. ↩

146. vii. 73; ix. 42 ad fin. ↩

147. ii. 3. ↩

148. The primal Fire and the eternal Reason are one and the same, and held to contain the seed of all things. cp. Just. Apol. ii. 8, 13 for λόγος σπερματικός used of Christ. ↩

149. There was a Greek proverb: ἢ θεὸς ἢ θηρίον (Arist. Pol. i. 2, Eth. vii. 1). Plut. Stoic. Parad. speaks of conversion by philosophy from a θηρίον to a θεός. See Justin’s clever application of this proverb, Apol. i. 24. ↩

150. iii. 4 ad init. ↩

151. iv. 28. ↩

152. ii. 17; iii. 10; viii. 44; x. 34. ↩

153. iv. 33. ↩

154. iv. 19, 51; xi. 18, § 5. The Greek word covers the meanings expediency, management, or means to an end. We use it in a sort of double sense in the expression economy of truth. ↩

155. Marcus is perhaps finding real fault with himself for caring so much what people said of him; see Capit. xx. 5; xxix. 5. But the reading is doubtful. ↩

156. vii. 15. ↩

157. cp. Tzetz. Chil. vii. 806. ↩

158. iii. 3; vi. 24; vii. 32, 50; viii. 25, 58; xii. 5. The Stoic doctrine on this point was not very definite, but it was mostly held that souls might exist till the next cyclical conflagration, when they became merged into the λόγος σπερματικός. Marcus wavers in his belief. ↩

159. cp. Fronto, ad Caes. i. 6; Athenag. Apol. 36. Apuleius (Met. iv. ad init.) calls beasts the living tombs of condemned criminals. Longinus (de Subl. iii.) inveighs against the trope, as used by Gorgias of Leontini. ↩

160. vii. 29. ↩

161. Nature, God, and the Universe were identical in the Stoic creed; see Sen. N.Q. ii. 45. ↩

162. St. Paul, Rom. xi. 36, ἐξ αὐτοῦ δι’ αὐτοῦ εἰς αὐτὸν τὰ πάντα. ↩

163. Seemingly a Fragment from Aristophanes. ↩

164. Democritus (Stob. i. 100), τὸν εὐθυμεῖσθαι μέλλοντα χρὴ μὴ πολλὰ πρήσσειν; iii. 5; Sen. de Tran. 12, Hanc stabilem animi sedem Graeci εὐθυμίαν vocant, de qua Democriti volumen egregium est: ego Tranquillitatem voco. ↩

165. iv. 37; ix. 37. Dio (71. 34 §§ 4, 5) says of Marcus οὐδὲν προσποίητον είχε, and he is a far better authority than Capit. xxix. 6 and xx. 1–4. ↩

166. ix. 4, 38. ↩

167. iii. 11; iv. 34. ↩

168. iv. 17. ↩

169. vi. 10. ↩

170. iv. 18. ↩

171. Marcus here in his vehemence seems to violate his own gentle precepts. He must be thinking of some monster of iniquity, such as Nero. ↩

172. iv. 46. cp. 1 St. Peter, iv. 12. ↩

173. St. Matt xiii. 15. ↩

174. ii. 16. ↩

175. viii. 34. cp. St. Paul, Rom. xii. 5; 1 Cor. xii. 20 f. ↩

176. See a characteristic anecdote of Marcus’ mother, Capit. vi. 9. ↩

177. iii. 11 ad fin. ↩

178. vii. 6. ↩

179. Volesus, or Volusus, was the family name of the Valerii. Valerius Poplicola must be meant, the obsolete name adding to the point. ↩

180. Hom. Od. i. 242. ↩

181. iv. 19. ↩

182. iv. 44. ↩

183. cp. Herodian (i. 2, § 4) of Marcus, τοὺς προσίοντας δεξιούμενος, and Aristides, ad Reg. § 112 (Jebb). ↩

184. cp. iii. 4 ad init. This precept does not really contradict what is said in iii. 4 etc. ↩

185. xi. 16. ↩

186. ii. 11 ad med. ↩

187. A Stoic doctrine, Diog. Laert. Zeno. 36. ↩

188. For ἀναδίδοσθαι, cp. v. 26. ↩

189. iii. 11. ↩

190. Not now found in his works. Swinburne has “A little soul for a little bears up this corpse which is man” (Hymn to Proserpine). cp. Ignat. ad Smyrn. 5 νεκροφόρος. ↩

191. ii. 17; v. 23; vi. 15 (Heraclitus). ↩

192. iv. 33. ↩

193. vi. 38; vii. 9. ↩

194. A favourite with Marcus, see Index II. ↩

195. vi. 42. ↩

196. cp. the story of Mycerinus (Herod. ii. 129), and M. Arnold’s poem. ↩

197. Sen. N.Q. ii. 59 ad med. ↩

198. Or interval, cp. iv. 50. ↩

199. iii. 3. Epict. iii. 10, 15. ↩

200. ibid. ↩

201. Lucian uses it, Charon 23. ↩

202. x. 34. This is invariably referred to ὁ μέν, “another closed his eyes,” but it must surely answer to τοῦτον. ↩

203. vi. 13. ↩

204. iv. 48, § 2. ↩

205. iv. 47. ↩

206. τριγερήνιος, a clever conflation between τριγέρων and Γερήνιος, an epithet of Nestor from a town in Messenia. ↩

207. cp. Ecclesiasticus, xli. 4. ↩

208. iv. 19. ↩

209. ii. 1. ↩

210. Marcus in younger days was an early riser, getting up even at 3 o’clock (Fronto, ad Caes. iv. 5) or 5 o’clock (ibid. iv. 6). He admits sleepiness of habit (ibid. i. 4; v. 59), but says it is so cold in his bedroom that he can scarcely put his hands outside his bedclothes. Fronto constantly urges him to take more sleep (ibid. ii. 5; v. 1, 2; de Fer. Als. 2, Nab. p. 227): sleep as much as a free man should! At the last he suffered dreadfully from insomnia, see Galen xiv. 3 (Kühn); Dio 71. 24, § 4. ↩

211. cp. of Marcus himself καμάτοις καὶ φροντίσι τετρυχωμένος (Herodian i. 3, § 1) and Julian, Conviv. 407. See Plutarch’s story of Nikias the painter (de Sene Polit. 4; Non posse suar. rivere sec. Epicur. 11). ↩

212. vii. 29; viii. 47. ↩

213. x. 11. cp. 1 St. Peter, ii. 20. ↩

214. iv. 29. ↩

215. vii. 67; cp. Fronto, ad Ant. i. 2. ↩

216. cp. Hor. Ep. i. 1. 28–32. ↩

217. cp. i. 5. ↩

218. cp. Aristides, ad Reg. § 114 (Jebb) of Marcus, οὐδεμίας ἡδονῆς ἡττημένος; and Fronto, de Fer. Als. Nab. p. 225, volpem facilius quis tibi quam voluptatem conciliaverit. ↩

219. cp. i. 5; Julian, Conviv. 427. ↩

220. Or humble, if we read ἀμεγαλεῖον, but cp. v. 9. ↩

221. St. Luke vi. 34; xiv. 12. ↩

222. Sen. de Benef. ii. 6. But see the speech of Marcus to his soldiers (as reported by Dio, 71. 26, §2) on the revolt of Cassius. ↩

223. vii. 73; ix. 42, § 4. cp. Fronto, de Nep. 2 ad fin. ↩

224. xi. 4; xii. 29. ↩

225. e.g. a man who acts on the precept, “Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth,” must act so designedly. ↩

226. cp. Pausan. i. 24, § 3. ↩

227. See the amazing story of an icy bathe prescribed so to Aristides (Sacr. Serm. ii. 529, Jebb ff.). ↩

228. Or, from above. ↩

229. cp. Sen. Ep. 74. ↩

230. Lit. be nauseated (cp. viii. 24). ↩

231. v. 36. ↩

232. Galen xii. 17 (Kühn) calls Marcus εὐγνώμων, μέτριος, ἥμερος, πρᾶος. ↩

233. vi. 34. cp. Sen. Ep. 81. ↩

234. iv. 50; ix. 3. For a qualifying picture to this very pessimistic view see vi. 48. ↩

235. A favourite word. cp. iv. 31; v. 9 = “to take rest in.” ↩

236. ii. 13; iii. 5 etc. ↩

237. sc. as in the case of things really good. ↩

238. From Menander Frag. 530 (Kock). The substitution of πτύσῃ for χέσῃ would mitigate the coarseness of the phrase, and we might then cp. Diog. Laert. Diog. 6 and Arist. 4, passages in which we are told that the philosopher being taken to a magnificent house where spitting was forbidden spat in his host’s face, explaining that he could find no other place. ↩

239. The Efficient, or Formal, or Formative principle, here the Soul, but the Soul itself consists of a causal element (νοῦς) and a material (τὸ πνευμάτιον). ↩

240. viii. 25. ↩

241. v. 32; xi. 1. See Index III. (περίοδοι). ↩

242. vii. 3; Sen. Ep. 95. ↩

243. viii. 9. cp. Sen. Ep. 28. ↩

244. ii. 1; iii. 4, § 1. ↩

245. ii. 1. ↩

246. vii. 55; xi. 18, § 1; Sen. Ep. 65 ad fin. ↩

247. cp. Chrysippus: τὸ ζῷον τοῦ μὴ ζῴου κρεῖττον. ↩

248. iv. 6; vii. 71; xi. 18 ad fin.; Sen. de Ira ii. 31. ↩

249. viii. 46; x. 3; St. Paul, 1 Cor. x. 13. ↩

250. cp. Sen. Ep. 36 ad fin.: turpissimum si eam securitatem nobis ratio non praestat, ad quam stultitia perducit. ↩

251. vi. 8. ↩

252. xi. 16. ↩

253. iv. 1; vi. 50. ↩

254. iv. 1; x. 31 ad fin. ↩

255. vi. 16 ad fin. ↩

256. v. 35; vi. 54. ↩

257. v. 35. ↩

258. xi. 13. ↩

259. Or, Being. ↩

260. iv. 43; vii. 19. ↩

261. xii. 32. ↩

262. Epict. i. 12, 26. ↩

263. St. Matt. xii. 4, 24. ↩

264. ii. 1, 4; xii. 26, 30. ↩

265. Epict. i. 14, § 12 ἐπίτροπον ἑκάστῳ παρέστησε (sc. Zeus) τὸν ἑκάστου δαίμονα καὶ παρέδωκε φυλάσσειν αὐτὸν αὐτῷ. ↩

266. x. 4; Epict. ii. 8, § 11. ↩

267. ср. St. Matt. xviii. 15. ↩

268. See on iii. 1. cp. viii. 47. ↩

269. Epict. i. 25, § 18; iv. 10, § 27. ↩

270. v. 16. ↩

271. Hom. Od. iv. 690. ↩

272. x. 36. There is no Pharisaism here, as some have most unwarrantably asserted. ↩

273. cp. St. Paul, 1 Cor. i. 27 (Auth. Vers.). ↩

274. v. 13; x. 7. ↩

275. viii. 25; xii. 27. ↩

276. Hesiod, Op. 197. cp. Eur. Med. 439 and Lucian, Nigr. 16, who, speaking of Rome, says much the same of αἰδὼς and ἀρετὴ and δικαιοσύνη. See also Dio 71, 24, § 2. ↩

277. vi. 15. cp. Tzetz. Chil. vii. 803; viii. 223. ↩

278. Marcus never seems to have made up his mind which it was to be. See iv. 21; viii. 25; xi. 3. ↩

279. These two constituted for Epictetus the whole “Law and the Prophets”; see Aulus Gellius xvii. 19. ↩

280. v. 22; vi. 54. ↩

281. v. 36. ↩

282. It is not known what Marcus alludes to. The following words are unintelligible. ↩

283. Or overtaken (καταληφθείς). ↩

284. Not so all Stoics; cp. Sen. de Prov. 5: non potest artifex mutare materiem. ↩

285. vi. 22. ↩

286. Galen (xiv. 3, Kühn) says of Marcus that, owing to the theriac which he prescribed him, συνέβαινεν αὐτῷ νυστάζειν καρωδῶς ἐν ταῖς ὁσημέραις πράξεσιν. ↩

287. cp. Sen. Ep. 77 ad fin.: Unum ex vitae officiis, mori. ↩

288. A saying of the “Wise Men.” See Suidas. cp. Luc. Necy. 21. It was a trait of Marcus, Dio 71. 26, § 4. ↩

289. = that which makes a thing what it is. ↩

290. viii. 25 ad fin.; x. 7, § 2. ↩

291. cp. Epict. Frag. 130. So Diogenes, being asked “How shall I avenge myself of mine enemy?” said, “By behaving like a gentleman,” Plut. de Leg. Poet. 5. ↩

292. v. 19. ↩

293. iv. 27; vii. 50. ↩

294. Hom. Il. vii. 99; cp. below, vii. 50. ↩

295. cp. Dio Chrys. xxxii. 676 R. ἔξω τῆς ἁρμονίας τῆς κατὰ φύσιν. ↩

296. Sen. Ep. 103. ↩

297. For life in kings’ courts see Lucian, Calumn. 10, and Icaro-Men. 16. ↩

298. cp. Lucian, Dem. § 41. ↩

299. cp. Tzetz. Chil. vii. 801. He reads νευρίου for ἐντερίου. ↩

300. It is not known what Marcus here refers to. ↩

301. cp. Sext. Emp. adv. Math. viii. 2; ix. 81, τὰ μὲν ὑπὸ ψιλῆςἕξεως συνέχεται, τὰ δὲ ὑπὸ φύσεως, τὰ δὲ ὑπὸ ψυχῆς· καὶ ἕξεως μὲν ὡς λίθοι καὶ ξύλα, φύσεως δὲ καθάπερ τὰ φυτά, ψυχῆς δὲ τὰ ζῷα. ↩

302. iv. 43; vii. 19. ↩

303. cp. the parable of the sparrow in Bede ii. 13. ↩

304. v. 33. ↩

305. iii. 1. ↩

306. ii. 2 etc. ↩

307. vi. 41. ↩

308. vi. 17; iv. 46; ix. 28. ↩

309. vii. 53. ↩

310. iv. 12; vi. 30, § 2; viii. 16. ↩

311. iv. 46. ↩

312. Usually singular in the Greek. See iv. 14. 21; ix. 1. ↩

313. Marcus puts the two alternatives (Stoic and Epicurean), though he does not himself admit the second. ↩

314. iii. 1. ↩

315. v. 28. ↩

316. viii. 36. So Marcus himself in a letter to Fronto (ad Caes. iv. 8) Turpe fuerit diutius vitam corporis quam animi studium ad reciperandam sanitatem posse durare. ↩

317. There was also a “philosophic dye”; see Lucian, Bis Accus. 8. ↩

318. cp. i. 16 throughout. ↩

319. i. 5. ↩

320. Or, in the same place. ↩

321. cp. i. 3. ↩

322. vi. 21; viii. 16. ↩

323. v. 13. ↩

324. Here διάνοια = ψυχή. ↩

325. v. 10. ↩

326. ii. 3; v. 8, § 5; xii. 26. ↩

327. iii. 2. ↩

328. ii. 14; iv. 32; vii. 1, 49; xi. 1; xii. 24. ↩

329. τονικήν; see Index III. ↩

330. cp. Diog. Laert. Zeno 70: τὴν τῶν οὐρανίων πρὸς τὰ ἐπίγεια συμπνοίαν καὶ συντονίαν. ↩

331. vii. 57. ↩

332. vi. 48; viii. 22. cp. 1 St. Peter, i. 22. ↩

333. vi. 16 § 3; ix. 1 ad med. cp. Epict. i. 27 § 13. ↩

334. i.e. treating as important things which are ἀδιάφορα, or of no consequence either way. ↩

335. vi. 16 § 3. ↩

336. cp. iv. 46. But Plutarch in his treatise On Superstition cites a saying of Heraclitus to the effect that sleepers live in a world of their own. ↩

337. Plutarch (adv. Stoic. §§ 13, 14) vigorously denounces this sophism, as he counts it, of Chrysippus that what is evil in itself has a value as a foil to the good. He quotes Chrysippus (Frag. Phys. 1181 Arnim): / ὥσπερ γὰρ αἱ κωμωδίαι ἐπιγράμματα γελοία φέρουσιν ἃ καθ’ ἑαῦτα μέν ἐστι φαῦλα, τῷ δὲ ὅλῳ ποιήματι χάριν τινα προστίθησιν, οὕτως ψέξειας ἂν αὐτὴν ἐφ’ ἑαυτῆς τὴν κακίαν· τοῖς δὲ ἄλλοις οὐκ ἄχρηστός ἐστιν. ↩

338. That is, the Earth, or possibly Demeter. ↩

339. v. 8 § 3; x. 6, 11. ↩

340. v. 8; x. 6 etc. ↩

341. i.e. indifferent, neither good nor bad. ↩

342. A personal touch. See Fronto, ad Caes. iv. 12: theatro libros lectitabas; ii. 6, idem theatrum, idem odium (v.l. otium) cp. ii. 10; Naber, p. 34; cp. Capit. xv. § 1. ↩

343. A Cynic philosopher of Gadara. His Syrian compatriot, Lucian, the prince of mockers, was yet alive and mocking. cp. Luc. Pisc. 26, where the Scholiast (Arethas) refers to this passage. Diog. Laert. mentions a Meleager, the contemporary of Menippus, as a writer of similar character. ↩

344. But cp. v. 10. ↩

345. iv. 1; v. 20. ↩

346. Lit. was with a reservation, i.e. “should circumstances allow.” cp. iv. 1; viii. 41. ↩

347. Casaubon translates “that for which we were brought into the world,” but can προάγω mean this? ↩

348. Obviously no contradiction of iv. 18 etc. See also vii. 4. 30. ↩

349. v. 22 ↩

350. vii. 62. ↩

351. Eccles. i. 9. cp. also Justin’s Apol. i. 57, addressed to Pius and Marcus. ↩

352. ii. 2 etc. ↩

353. cp. ix. 41 (Epicurus). ↩

354. v. 16. cp. Dem. Olynth. iii. 32: ἅττα γὰρ ἂν τὰ ἐπιτηδεύματα τῶν ἀνθρώπων ᾖ, τοιοῦτον ἀναγκὴ καὶ τὸ φρόνημα ἔχειν. cp. Clem. Alex. Strom. iv. 23. ↩

355. vi. 53. ↩

356. iv. 12. ↩

357. iii. 10; iv. 33; viii. 21. ↩

358. x. 12. See saying of Marcus, Capit. xxii. 4, quoted below, p. 360. ↩

359. vi. 38. ↩

360. iv. 45. ↩

361. iv. 4. ↩

362. ii. 12. ↩

363. Sen. de Vit. Beat. 8. ↩

364. cp. vii. 7; but see iii. 5. ↩

365. The pun may be kept by limb—rim. ↩

366. cp. iv. 20. ↩

367. vii. 33; viii. 28 ↩

368. iv. 7, 39. ↩

369. vii. 14, 33. ↩

370. vi. 52; vii. 14, 33; viii. 40 etc. ↩

371. Defined by Chrysippus as “harmony of our δαίμων with God’s will.” ↩

372. vii. 29; cp. Ecclesiasticus, xxxvii. 3. ↩

373. iv. 43; v. 23; vi. 15. ↩

374. Referred by some (see Zeller, Stoics, p. 158, Engl. trans.) to the theory that at each cyclical regeneration of the world the same persons and events repeat themselves. But see x. 31. ↩

375. Aul. Gellius ii. 18 speaks of Epict. as recently dead; Them. Or. v. p. 63 D. implies that he was alive under the Antonines. Lucian, adv. Ind. 13 speaks of his earthenware lamp having been bought by an admirer for 3,000 drachmas. ↩

376. Fronto, ad Ver. ii. 2: Hominis maxime proprium ignoscere. cp. St. Matt. v. 44; Dio 71. 26, § 2. ↩

377. ср. St. Luke xxiii. 34. ↩

378. iv. 6. ↩

379. ii. 1; ix. 38. ↩

380. vii. 25. cp. St. Paul, Rom. ix. 20. ↩

381. vii. 23. ↩

382. cp. ii. 13; x. 30; Herodian i. 4, § 2; Dio 71. 10, § 4. ↩

383. xi. 18, § 4. ↩

384. Epict. Frag. 129. ↩

385. cp. Hor. Ep. i. 10, 31. ↩

386. iv. 3 ad init.; viii. 48. ↩

387. vii. 17; viii. 29; ix. 7. ↩

388. ii. 2 etc. ↩

389. ii. 5. ↩

390. ix. 20, 38. ↩

391. vii. 4. ↩

392. 1 St. Peter, ii. 17. cp. Sen. de Vit. Beat. 15: Deum sequere. Dio Chrys. ii. 98 R. ↩

393. The reading and meaning are uncertain. The Sage is Democritus, and we should expect atoms rather than elements to be mentioned. Leopold aptly quotes Sext. Emp. vii. 35: νόμῳ γλυκὺ καὶ νόμῳ πικρόν, νόμῳ θερμόν νόμῳ ψυχρόν … ἐτεῇ δὲ ἄτομα και κένον. Fournier cleverly makes a hexameter of the words πάντα νομίστ’, έτεῇ δὲ μόνα στοιχεία <κένον τε>. ↩

394. Sen. Ep. 65 ad fin.: Mors aut finis aut transitus. ↩

395. vii. 16, 64. cp. Aesch. Frag. 310: θάρσει πόνου γὰρ ἄκρον οὐκ ἔχει χρόνον; Diog. Laert. Epicurus xxxi. 4. ↩

396. vii. 14; viii. 40. ↩

397. vi. 59. ↩

398. Rep. 486 A. ↩

399. cp. Epict. iv. 6, § 20; 1 St. Peter, ii. 20. See Diog. Laert. Antisthenes § 4. Plutarch attributes the saying to Alexander. ↩

400. vii. 60. ↩

401. Eur. Bellerophon, Frag. 289; xi. 6. Twice quoted by Plutarch. ↩

402. Unknown. ↩

403. Eur. Hypsipyle, Frag. 757; xi. 6. Cic. Tusc. iii. 25, § 59. Vita omnibus metenda, ut fruges. Epict. ii. 6. 14. cp. Job v. 26. ↩

404. Eur. Antiope, Frag. 207; xi. 6. ↩

405. sc. σύμμαχον ἔσται Eur. Frag. 910. Twice quoted by Cicero (ad Att. vi. 1, §8; viii. 8, § 2). cp. Arist Ach. 661. ↩

406. Unknown. ↩

407. Plato, Apol. 28 B. Socrates is answering a question whether he is not ashamed of risking his life in a vocation such as his. ↩

408. Plato, Apol. 28 E. ↩

409. Plato, Gorgias, 512 DE. ↩

410. What follows is obviously not a saying of Plato. We must therefore refer back to what precedes, or suppose that Plato’s words have dropped out. ↩

411. ix. 30. cp. Lucian, Char. § 15; Icaro-Men. § 12. ↩

412. If κατὰ ἀγέλας be read, it will mean literally, drove by drove, i.e. in its aggregations; if κάτω, ἀγέλας, the latter word must refer to gatherings of men. ↩

413. This might mean treaties of peace, but there seems to be a system of contrasted pairs. ↩

414. vi. 37. ↩

415. Eur. Chrys. Frag. 836. Constantly quoted. cp. Lucr. ii. 991; Genesis iii. 19: γῆ εἷ καὶ ἐς γῆν ἀπελεύσῃ; Ecclesiasticus xl. 11. ↩

416. Eur. Suppl. 1110. ↩

417. Unknown. ↩

418. Plutarch, Apophth. 2. 206 E. ↩

419. v. 16, 30; xi. 10. ↩

420. cp. Sen. Ep. 12 ad fin. Quisquis dixit “Vixi,” quotidie ad lucrum surgit. ↩

421. Or, taken by surprise. cp. viii. 15. ↩

422. St. John iv. 14. ↩

423. vii. 37. cp. vii. 24. ↩

424. St. Paul, Eph. vi. 12. ↩

425. vi. 59; vii. 34. ↩

426. Quoted by Epictetus (i. 63, 28 § 4) as from Plato (see Plato, Soph. 238 C; Rep. iii. 412); viii. 14; x. 30; xi. 18, §3. ↩

427. The same word is used of Marcus by Galen (xii. 17 Kühn); Athenag. Apol. 1. 1; Lucian, Peregr. 17; and Aristides, ad Reg. §§ 105, 112. ↩

428. vii. 33. ↩

429. viii. 49. ↩

430. vi. 2. ↩

431. cp. vi. 29. ↩

432. Son of Pythagoras. See Diog. Laert. Pyth. 22. 26. ↩

433. Plato, Apol. 20 C; Epict. iv. 7 § 30. ↩

434. Or γενναιότερον, more honourable. ↩

435. Arist. Nub. 363; Plato, Symp. 221 B. The meaning of the parenthesis is not clear. ↩

436. cp. Dio Orat. iii. ad init. ↩

437. Sen. (Ep. 79) instances Democritus, Socrates, and Cato. ↩

438. Julian, Conviv. 427. 21, where Marcus, asked in what consists the imitation of the Gods, says δεῖσθαι τῶν ἐλαχίστων. cp. Lucian, Cynic. 12: οἱ δ᾽ ἔγγιστοι θεοῖς ἐλαχίστων δέονται. Diog. Laert. Socr. 11. ↩

439. i. 17, § 8; cp. v. 5; viii. 1. ↩

440. xi. 3. Applies accurately to the Christians. cp. i. 6; iii. 16; viii. 48, 51, § 2. ↩

441. iv. 1. ↩

442. ii. 5. ↩

443. St. Matt. v. 45. ↩

444. v. 17; ix. 42. ↩

445. v. 6; ix. 42. cp. Fronto, de Nep. ad fin. ↩

446. cp. St. Paul, Gal. vi. 9; 2 Thess. iii. 13. For the Stoic view see Stob. Ecl. ii. 188. ↩

447. iv. 45; ix. 28. ↩

448. Marcus means that we must consider the second alternative given above as incredible. ↩

449. Or, thou hast been besmirched, but cp. vi. 16, § 3. ↩

450. i. 17 ad fin.; vii. 67. ↩

451. Justin (Apol. i. 46) mentions Heraclitus and Socrates and others like them as “living with the divine Logos.” And in Apol. ii. 8 Heraclitus and Musonius are spoken of as hated and slain for their opinions. ↩

452. The word here used by Marcus occurs only in Christian writings. ↩

453. ii. 14; iv. 32; vii. 1 etc. ↩

454. St. Luke vi. 35. ↩

455. v. 16. ↩

456. Or, formative. ↩

457. v. 1. ↩

458. Or, axioms. ↩

459. v. 17; vii. 71; xi. 18, § 3. ↩

460. 1 St. Peter, iv. 12. ↩

461. cp. vi. 30; vii. 7. cp. Capit. xxii. 4: “Aequius est ut ego tot talium amicorum consilum sequar, quam ut tot tales amici meam unius voluntatem sequantur”; Digest. 37. 14. 17. ↩

462. Annius Verus, grandfather of Marcus, was the best ball-player of his day, see Wilmanns Inscr. 574. Marcus himself was an adept at the ball-game, Capit. iv. 9. ↩

463. i.e. the body. ↩

464. iii. 10; iv. 3, § 3. ↩

465. iv. 3, § 3; vi. 36. ↩

466. The mother of Marcus, not as Gataker, Long, etc. the daughter. ↩

467. i. 15. ↩

468. See Index II. ↩

469. Arethas on Lucian, de Salt. § 63, alludes to this passage, but Lucian’s Demetrius is the Cynic whom in Demon. § 3 he couples with Epictetus. (cp. also adv. Ind. § 19.) See Index II. ↩

470. xii. 27. ↩

471. Or, leave thee; but cp. v. 33. ↩

472. i. 12; v. 10, 48; ix. 3 ad fin. ↩

473. vii. 33. ↩

474. xii. 22. ↩

475. v. 19; St. Matt. xv. 18. ↩

476. vii. 17, 29; ix. 7. ↩

477. iii. 11. ↩

478. Dr. Bigg does not scruple to say that Marcus spoke in such a pedantic jargon as to be unintelligible to his hearers! This is pitiable nonsense. See Fronto, ad Ant. i. 1: quanto studio quantoque favore et voluptate dicentem te audit senatus populusque Romanus; cp. ad Caes. ii. 1. ↩

479. Domestic philosopher to Augustus, as Rusticus was to Marcus. See Them. Orat. v. 63d; xiii. 173c; Sen. ad Marciam, § 4. ↩

480. Or, receives its due reward (ἀπέχει). ↩

481. Sen. Ep. 98: licet in integrum restitui (a legal phrase for a restoration to all rights). ↩

482. iv. 1; v. 20; vi. 50. ↩

483. See on vi. 29. ↩

484. Lucian (?) (Imag. §§ 10, 22), mentions Pantheia as the matchless concubine of τῷ μεγάλῳ βασιλεῖ χρήστῳ καὶ ἡμέρῳ ὄντι (meaning apparently Lucius Verus). Lucian (Nigr. §31) speaks of οἱ κελεύοντες καὶ παραμένειν τινὰς οἰκέτας τοῖς τάφοις. ↩

485. Epict. Frag. 94. cp. Diog. Laert. Anaxarchus, § 2; Zeno Eleat. § 5. Howell, Familiar Letters, viii. 2, 50, speaks of “this small skinful or bagful of bones.” ↩

486. vii. 10; viii. 47. ↩

487. vii. 33. ↩

488. vi. 50. ↩

489. vii. 68; Epict. iii. 22. 43. ↩

490. xi. 12; xii. 3. ↩

491. cp. Them. Orat. xv. p. 191 B, quoted App. ii.; cp. Diog. Laert. Zeno 64. ↩

492. cp. St. Paul, 1 Cor. x. 13. ↩

493. cp. Epict. Man. 5. ↩

494. viii. 40. ↩

495. v. 9, 36; viii. 10; xi. 19. ↩

496. iii. 1; v. 29; Epict. i. 24, § 20. ↩

497. vii. 28. ↩

498. xi. 3. In both places Marcus seems to have the Christians in mind. ↩

499. cp. Fronto, ad Ver. ii. 1 (of Marcus): arcem munitam et invictam et inexpugnabitem quae in fratris tui pectore sita est. ↩

500. iv. 7 etc. ↩

501. Yet Capit. (xx. § 5) says that Marcus was suae curiosissinius famae, cp. ibid. xxii. § 6; xxiii. § 7, 9; xxix. 5. ↩

502. cp. viii. 28. ↩

503. Or, for space, material, craftsmanship she is content, with herself alone. ↩

504. Marcus must be thinking of the Christians, cp. vii. 68. See Appendix. ↩

505. St. John, iv. 14-16. ↩

506. cp. Epict. ii. 24, § 19. ↩

507. v. 35. ↩

508. Not distinguishable from the ruling Reason. ↩

509. Sen. Ep. 70 ad med.: nemo nisi vitio suo miser est. ↩

510. A false etymology. The derivation may be from ἀίσσω or ἄγνυμι. ↩

511. διαιρεῖται (mss.) would mean apparently cut or broken. ↩

512. cp Justin, Apol. i. § 57. addressed to Pius and Marcus. ↩

513. ix. 1 ad init. ↩

514. v. 28; ix. 11. ↩

515. iv. 38. cp. vii. 55; Epict. iii. 9, § 12. ↩

516. v. 30; viii. 59. ↩

517. vii. 2. ↩

518. vi. 16 ad fin. 41. cp. Epict. i. 6, § 39. ↩

519. Or, attitude of indifference. ↩

520. viii. 75. ↩

521. Or, that are consequent upon some primeval impulse. Providence here = κοινή φύσις. ↩

522. ix. 28. ↩

523. But cp. Capit. xxviii. 4 (of Marcus): mortem contemnens. ↩

524. x. 36, § 2. ↩

525. cp. Montaigne i. 19 (Florio’s version): “The same way you came from death to life, returne without passion or amazement from life to death. Your death is but a piece of the world’s order, and but a parcel of the world’s life.” ↩

526. Hardly a personal touch, as Vibia Aurelia, Faustina’s last child, was born in 166. Besides, ἔμβρυον has no article. ↩

527. x. 36; Plato, Phaed. 66 B. ↩

528. As Marcus himself often was. cp. v. 10; vi. 12; viii. 8. ↩

529. x. 4. ↩

530. cp. the despairing echo of these words by General Gordon, who was a reader of Marcus, from Khartum: “There is nothing left for me to prevent me speaking evil of everyone and distrusting my dear Lord but death.” ↩

531. iv. 26; ix. 38. Epict. ii. 10, § 26. ↩

532. Or, does himself harm. Plutarch (Stoic. Contrad. 12) shews that Chrysippus contradicts himself on this point. Justin (Apol. i. 3), speaking of persecution to Pius and Marcus, turns the tables on the latter, saying that in injuring innocent Christians they injured themselves. Epict. iv. 5. 10. ↩

533. vii. 29; viii. 29, 49; xii. 25. ↩

534. xii. 30. ↩

535. cp. Aesch. Prom. Vin. 492: στέργηθρα. ↩

536. cp. Epict. i. 14 ad init. ↩

537. St. Paul, Gal. v. 22. ↩

538. v. 28; viii. 59. ↩

539. ix. 27. ↩

540. v. 2; viii. 40; xii. 22. cp. Montaigne, i. 40 (Florio’s version): “Men, saith an ancient Greek sentence, are tormented by the opinions they have of things and not the things themselves… . If evil have no entrance into us but by our judgment, it seemeth that it lieth in our power either to contemne or turn them to our good… . If that which we call evil and torment be neither torment nor evil, but that our fancy only gives it that quality, it is in us to change it.” ↩

541. iv. 44. ↩

542. iv. 35. ↩

543. ii. 4; iv. 32. ↩

544. viii. 20. ↩

545. iv. 38; vii. 34. ↩

546. v. 23; vii. 18. ↩

547. iv. 3 ad fin.; vii. 25. ↩

548. vii. 29; ix. 38. ↩

549. Pius. See on i. 17. § 3. ↩

550. cp. Lucian, de Luct. 15. ↩

551. iv. 41 πνευμάτιον = ψυχάριον. ↩

552. Possibly refers to the Νέκυια of Homer (Od. xi.). Menippus (Diog. Laert. Men. 6) also wrote a Νέκυια (cp. above, vi.47). But it was a term for the invocation of the dead, see Just. Ap. i. 18. ↩

553. To the Formative, or Efficient Cause, of things is due not only that they exist, but that they are what they are. To translate the words here literally by the quality of the Cause conveys no meaning. cp. vi. 3. ↩

554. i. 17 ad fin. ↩

555. ix. 11, 40. ↩

556. The Heraclitan round of change between the elements; see iv. 46. ↩

557. ix. 1, § 4. ↩

558. Possibly ἀμερῆ is a gloss, or ὁμοιομερή should be read. (cp. Epict. Frag. 175.) ↩

559. ii. 5; iv. 2, etc. τὸ ὅλον may also be taken to mean in fine. ↩

560. ix. 19; xii. 21. cp. Capit. xxviii. 4 of Marcus on his death-bed, ridens res humanas. ↩

561. v. 6, § 1. Sen. Ep. 79: Haec nos oportet agere licet nemo videat. ↩

562. Or, reading οὐ μικρόν: deem the success of the matter in hand no small thing. ↩

563. vii. 3, 48. ↩

564. nearly = our colloquial “functions.” ↩

565. vii. 34, 62; ix. 18. ↩

566. The play on the words cannot be kept. ↩

567. vii. 18. ↩

568. iv. 26. ↩

569. vii. 29. ↩

570. iv. 27; vi. 10; vii. 32; xii. 14. ↩

571. vi. 44. ↩

572. ix. 27. St. Paul, Rom. viii. 26: τὸ πνεῦμα συναντιλαμβάνεται. Gataker very aptly quotes Augustine, de Grat. Christi i. 15: Cur petitur quod ad nostram pertinet potestatem, si Deus non adjuvat voluntatem? ↩

573. Sen. Ep. 10 ad fin.; Shak. Lucr. 50. ↩

574. Capit. xxi. § 3. ↩

575. See Diog. Laert. Epicur. § 10. ↩

576. v. 17. cp. Dio 71. 34, § 4. ↩

577. Epict. Man. 10; St. Paul, Tit. iii. 2: πρᾳότητα πρὸς πάντας. ↩

578. Lit. there, i.e. in thy mind. ↩

579. cp. the striking parallel in Dio 71. 24, § 2, τὸ μηδὲν πιστὸν ἐν ἀνθρώποις εἶναι: ibid. 71. 26, § 2, πίστιν καταλύσαντι πιστὸν διαγενέσθαι, where Marcus is speaking to his soldiers on the revolt of Cassius; and 27. § 1, where, writing to the Senate, he calls Cassius ἀχάριστος. I cannot help thinking that this section of the Thoughts was written at the time of the rebellion in 175, and that Marcus is here taking himself to task. ↩

580. v. 6; vii. 73. ↩

581. iv. 49; xi. 1. cp. St. Matt. vi. 2. Marcus was noted for εὐεργεσία, Dio 71. 34, §3; C.I.Gr. 2495, 4697^c. ↩

582. ix. 6. ↩

583. iii. 11, 3. ↩

584. i.e. Zeus = the Universe = the First Cause = Nature. ↩

585. vii. 28. ↩

586. viii. 46. ↩

587. viii. 59; xi. 9, 13, 18, § 9. ↩

588. iii. 11; iv. 26. ↩

589. vi. 54; x. 33, § 4. ↩

590. ix. 22. ↩

591. These words can also be translated: parts of herself that were both liable to full into such evil and by necessity fell into doing evil. ↩

592. vii. 32. ↩

593. iv. 4. Lit. the pneumatic or breath element. See Index iii. ↩

594. iii. 3. Justin, Apol. i. 20; ii. 7, contrasts the Christian theory of the destruction of the world by fire with the Stoic. ↩

595. προσπλέκει has no subject. ἐκείνῳ must be taken separately from τῷ ἰδίως ποιῷ and refer to τοῦτο ὃ ἔλαβεν. ↩

596. See on x. 16. ↩

597. Capitolinus and Ammianus call Marcus verecundus. ↩

598. Only two kings have had the honourable cognomen of Truthteller, Marcus and Alfred the Great. The former was given Verissimus as a pet name by Hadrian when a child, and the town of Tyras in Scythia stamped it on its coins and Justin and Syncellus use it to designate Marcus. ↩

599. For Marcus’ views on suicide see iii. 1; v. 29; viii. 47 ad fin.; ix. 2; x. 22, 32. He permits it when external conditions render the life of virtue impossible, or when a man finds in himself a failure to live the true life (cp. St. Augustine’s “Let me die lest I die”). ↩

600. cp. Diog. Laert. Plato, 42; Ignat. Eph. §§ 1, 10; Justin, Apol. i. 21; Diogn. Ep. § 10; Julian, Conviv. 427. 21, puts similar words in the mouth of Marcus. ↩

601. ἀφυσιολογήτως, would mean without due study of Nature. ↩

602. See Domaszewski, Marcus-Saüle Plates, 62. 102, for Marcus “taking Sarmatians”; and cp. the story of Alexander and the Scythian, Quintus Curtius vii. 8. ↩

603. ix. 6 etc. ↩

604. vii. 3; ix. 41. ↩

605. iii. 4 ad fin.; vi. 59; vii. 62; viii. 52, 53; ix. 34. ↩

606. vii. 17. ↩

607. cp. Job i. 21. ↩

608. x. 23. This striking phrase seems from a comparison of § 23 to mean: Count your life here in the city and Court, or, maybe, camp, as no whit worse than life in the free and health-giving air of a mountain-top with all its serenity and leisure for study and contemplation. It rests with you to make your “little plot within you” what you please. But, taken alone, “Live as on a mountain” might mean “Live in the open light of day under the eyes of God and men in a purer atmosphere above the pettinesses of the world.” ↩

609. iv. 3, § 2. ↩

610. Dio (71. 34, § 5) says of Marcus ὡς ἀληθῶς ἀγαθὸς ἀνὴρ ἦν. ↩

611. Or, taking Gataker’s emendation (ὁποίοις), in what plight will they be! ↩

612. iv. 23. ↩

613. Eur. Frag. 890. After σεμνός Eur. has οὐρανὸς πληρούμενος Ὄμβρου πεσεῖν εἰς γαῖαν Ἀφροδίτης ὕπο. cp. Aesch. Dan. Frag. 41, imitated by Shelley in his Love’s Philosophy. ↩

614. v. 3, § 4. ↩

615. iv. 3 ad init.; x. 15. ↩

616. Theaet. 174 D: Ἀγροικον καὶ ἀπαίδευτον ἀπὸ ἀσχολίας οὐδὲν ἧττον τῶν νομέων τὸν τοιοῦτον ἀναγκαῖον γενέσθαι σηκὸν ἐν ὄρει τὸ τεῖχος περιβεβλημένον. It is not easy to see the application of the words here. Marcus seems to mean that the king in the midst of his royal city is no better off, ipso facto, than the shepherd in his mountain fold. It is the little “plot within him,” his ruling Reason that makes the difference. The use of ἐν ὄρει twice in this section appears to have a reference to its use in § 15. ↩

617. ii. 16 ad fin. ↩

618. cp. the remarkable parallel in Justin, Apol. i. 19. ↩

619. There is no subject expressed. It is possible to take the child as the subject. ↩

620. vii. 49. ↩

621. viii. 25, 31. ↩

622. cp. Sen. Ep. 107: ducunt volentem fata nolentem trahunt; de Vit. Beat. 15; Cleanthes, Hymn to Zeus: ὡς ἕψομαί γ’ ἄοκνος· ἦν δὲ μὴ θέλω κακὸς γενόμενος, οὐδεν ἧττον ἕψομαι. ↩

623. vii. 26; xi. 18, § 4. ↩

624. Marcus had a horror of avarice; cp. Vulc. Gallic. Vit. Avid. Cass. viii. 5: in imperatore avaritiam acerbissimum esse malum. Yet he was accused of it and repudiated the charge (Capit. xxix. 5); and he is also exculpated by Dio (71. 32, § 3), and in the Oxyrr. Papyri (i. p. 62) we find an Egyptian official expressly calling him ἀφιλάργυρος. ↩

625. See on v. 5. ↩

626. See on iv. 19. ↩

627. vii. 63. ↩

628. Xenophon and Crito are well known. Severus was probably the father of Marcus son-in-law (i. 14). Euphrates was the philosopher friend of Pliny and Hadrian. Nothing certain is known of the others. ↩

629. vii. 58. ↩

630. xii. 33 and verses at end of ms. A. See Introd. p. 1. ↩

631. The ms. reading what then (or, thou then) in what? is unintelligible. ↩

632. iv. 1. ↩

633. viii. 32. ↩

634. v. 29; x. 8, § 2. ↩

635. Aul. Gell. vi. 2, § 11 (from Chrysippus). ↩

636. iv. 41. ↩

637. iv. 7. ↩

638. vii. 58. ↩

639. x. 6. ↩

640. Hom. Il. vi. 147. ↩

641. Ibid. ↩

642. cp. Psalm 103. 16. ↩

643. iv. 48. ↩

644. i. 8; vii 41; viii. 49; ix. 40; xi. 34. Marcus was intensely fond of his children. Galen describes (xiv. 3, Kühn) his anxiety about Commodus; cp. also Fronto, ad Caes. iv. 12. ↩

645. cp. Vopiscus, Vit. Aureliani, 37, §3; Sen. Ep. 11. ↩

646. Herodian, i. 4, § 3. ↩

647. Is he thinking of Commodus? ↩

648. ix. 3. ↩

649. ii. 16. ↩

650. iii. 3 ad fin.; xii. 1. ↩

651. i. 8; viii. 35. cp. Epict. i. 17, § 1. ↩

652. cp. Epict. i. 19, § 11: γέγονε τὸ ζῷον ὥστε αὑτοῦ ἕνεκα πάντα ποιεῖν. ↩

653. xii. 36. ↩

654. v. 13, 32; x. 7, § 2. ↩

655. vi. 37; vii. 1 etc. ↩

656. cp. Lucr. ii. 978: eadem sunt omnia semper; Florio’s Montaigne, i. 19: “If you have lived one day you have seene all.” ↩

657. St. Mark viii. 36. ↩

658. A rather brutal combination of boxing and wrestling. ↩

659. viii. 36. ↩

660. iii. 11. ↩

661. v. 33; vii. 32. ↩

662. See p. 382. ↩

663. vii. 13, 73; ix. 42, § 5; cp. Prov. xi. 17: τῇ ψυχῇ αὐτοῦ ἀγαθὸν ποιεῖ ἀνὴρ ἐλεήμων. ↩

664. Soph. Oed. Rex 1391; Epict. i. 24, § 16. Perhaps Marcus had in mind the lines of Timocles (Athen. vi. 2) πρὸς ἀλλοτρίφ τε ψυχαγωγηθείς πάθει Μεθ᾽ ἡδονῆς ἀπῆλθε παιδευθείς ἅμα. ↩

665. Diog. Laert. Diog. 7. ↩

666. Lucian, de Salt. 35, says of the Art of Dancing (Pantomime) that it requires the acme of culture and even of philosophy! ↩

667. cp. Lucan i. 493: “exeat aula qui vult esse pius”; Montaigne iii. 9 (Florio’s version): “Plato saith that who escapes untainted and clean-handed from the managing of the world escapeth by some wonder.” See also above viii. 1. ↩

668. St. Paul, Rom. xi. 19. ↩

669. iv. 29; viii. 34. ↩

670. ix. 23. ↩

671. x. 36, § 2 etc. ↩

672. v. 18. ↩

673. x. 25. ↩

674. v. 16, 30; vii. 55. ↩

675. iv. 37; ν. 34. cp. Theognis, 147: ἐν δὲ δικαιοσύνῃ συλλήβδην πᾶσ᾽ ἀρετή ‘στιν. ↩

676. viii. 41; xii. 3. ↩

677. viii. 51. ↩

678. v. 25; Epict. iii. 18, §9; x. 32. ↩

679. xi. 18, § 9. ↩

680. Marcus is probably thinking of Phocion’s last words, see Aelian xii. 49 μηδὲν ‘Αθηναίοις μνησικακήσειν ὑπὲρ τῆς παρ’ αὐτῶν φιλοτησίας ἧς νῦν πίνω (sc. the cup of hemlock); but Heylbut (Rhein. Mus. 39. p. 310) refers to a story in Musonius Rufus, p. 55, Hense. ↩

681. cp. St. Luke xi. 39: τὸ ἔσωθεν ὑμῶν—“the inward parts.” ↩

682. The word is Thracian for a native sword (Pollux x. 38), as we might say a kukri. Here any concealed weapon to stab the unsuspecting. ↩

683. cp. Ecclesiasticus xix. 29: “A man shall be known by his look.” ↩

684. iii. 11; xii. 18. ↩

685. xi. 11. ↩

686. viii. 47. ↩

687. v. 3; vi. 2. ↩

688. iii. 11. ↩

689. v. 16, 30; viii. 27. ↩

690. viii. 56, 59. ↩

691. Dio Chrys. Orat. ii. de Regno, 97 R, ὁ δὲ ταῦρος σαφῶς πρὸς βασιλέως εἰκόνα πεποίηται. Εpict. i. 2, § 30. ↩

692. iv. 3, § 2; viii. 17; ix. 39; x. 6. ↩

693. ii. 1; v. 16. ↩

694. viii. 14; x. 19. ↩

695. ii. 1; iv. 3; vii. 22, 63. ↩

696. vii. 70; x. 30. ↩

697. i. 17 ad init. ↩

698. Or, “with an eye to circumstances,” “with some further end in view,” knowledge of which would justify the action or shew its necessity. ↩

699. ix. 38. ↩

700. vii. 16; viii. 40; ix. 13; xi. 11, 16. ↩

701. vii. 16. ↩

702. x. 10. ↩

703. Sen. de Ben. vii. 31: vincit malos pertinax bonitas. ↩

704. v. 28; vi. 27; viii. 59; x. 4; xi. 13. ↩

705. ix. 4. ↩

706. xi. 13. ↩

707. cp. Dio 71. 3, § 4. ↩

708. iv. 31. ↩

709. The Stoic ἀπάθεια. ↩

710. v. 17; vii. 71; ix. 42. ↩

711. vi. 27; Sen. de Ira ii. 31. ἄγνωμον might also be translated senseless. ↩

712. xi. 16. ↩

713. iv. 24. ↩

714. v. 36; viii. 10. cp. Fronto, ad Caes. iv. 13, where Marcus reproaches himself when 19 years old for backwardness in philosophy. ↩

715. xi. 9. ↩

716. xii. 2. ὁσιότης = δικαιοσύνη προς θεούς, see Stob. Ecl. ii. 104. ↩

717. But cp. xi. 10. ↩

718. cp. Dio 71. 34, § 5: ὅμοιος διὰ πάντων ἐγένετο καὶ ἐν οὐδένι ἠλλοιώθη: Aristides ad Reg. § 113 (Jebb), says he was ὁ αὐτὸς διὰ τέλους. ↩

719. i. 8. ↩

720. Aesop, Fab. 297; Hor. Sat. ii. 6 ff. ↩

721. Lamiae, or “vampires,” “fabulous monsters said to feed on human flesh,” Hor. A. P. 540; Apul. Met. i. 57. cp. Epict. ii. 1, § 14: ταῦτα Σωκράτης μορμολυκεῖα ἐκάλει: Philostr. Vit. Apoll. iv. 25, whence Keats took his Lamia. ↩

722. According to Diog. Laert. Socr. 9; Sen. de Ben. v. 6, § 2; Arist. Rhet. Α. 23, this was Archelaus, son of Perdiccas. ↩

723. cp. Fronto, ad Appianum, Nab. p. 251. ↩

724. Sen. Ep. 11, attributes the precept to the Epicureans: aliquis vir bonus nobis eligendus est ac semper ante oculos habendus ut sic tanquam illo spectante ricamus et omnia illo vidente fariamus. Hoc Epicurus praecepit. See, however, Plut. Symp. vii. 5 ad fin. ↩

725. It is not clear whether λόγος here means speech or reason or both. The citation, of which the author is not known, has no obvious application; still less has the following quotation from Homer. ↩

726. Hom. Od. ix. 413. ↩

727. Hes. Op. 185, where the reading is ἄρα τοῖς for ἀρετήν. ↩

728. Epict. iii. 24, § 87 quoted, not verbatim. ↩

729. ibid. iii. 24, § 88. ↩

730. Epict. iii. 24, § 91. ↩

731. ibid. iii. 22, § 105. ↩

732. i.e. Epictetus. cp. iii. 22, § 105, and Manual, ii. 2. ↩

733. iv. 1; v. 20; vi. 50; i.e. not unconditionally, but subject to modification by circumstances. ↩

734. Epict. i. 22, §§ 17–21; Hor. Sat. ii. 3. 43. ↩

735. Only found here. ↩

736. x. 33; Hor. Ep. i. 11 ad fin. ↩

737. vii. 8; St. Matt. vi. 34. ↩

738. xi. 37 (Epictetus). ↩

739. vii. 68. ↩

740. xii. 26. ↩

741. iv. 29; xii. 13. ↩

742. Lit. stage-scenery; cp. Sen. ad Marc. 10. ↩

743. ii. 2; iii. 16. Herе πνευμάτιον = ψυχὴ (soul) in its lower sense, see Index III. ↩

744. x. 38. ↩

745. viii. 41; xi. 12. cp. Hor. Sat. ii. 7, 95: in seipso totus teres atque rotundus. ↩

746. ii. 13; iii. 5 etc. ↩

747. iii. 4. ↩

748. For Marcus’ views on Immortality, see Introd. ↩

749. cp. Job (xiii. 3), I desire to reason with God, where a similar point is argued. ↩

750. iv. 26. ↩

751. iv. 50; v. 23; xii. 32. ↩

752. v. 34; vii. 16. ↩

753. v. 2; viii. 40; xii. 22. Shak. Ham. ii. 2. 256. ↩

754. Or, the prize-fighter not the duellist. Some take ἀναιρεῖται to mean ‘is slain.’ ↩

755. viii. 11; xii. 18, 29. ↩

756. ii. 11. ↩

757. vii. 22 etc. ↩

758. Epict. Man. 5. ↩

759. xii. 1. ↩

760. vii. 29; ix. 38. ↩

761. iv. 6. ↩

762. xii. 10. Or, application. ↩

763. ii. 2 etc. ↩

764. v. 11. ↩

765. ii. 16: ix. 40. ↩

766. v. 16; xi. 21. ↩

767. ix. 28, 32. ↩

768. ii. 15 etc. ↩

769. cp. Lucian, Scyth. ad fin. ↩

770. ix. 21. ↩

771. vii. 25. ↩

772. ii. 11; iv. 3; viii. 1. ↩

773. ii. 3; iii. 4. ↩

774. Epict. ii. 16, § 42: πρὸς τὸν θεὸν ἀναβλέψας εἰπεῖν, ὁμο γνωμονῶ σοι. ↩

775. iv. 2; viii. 17; ix. 28. ↩

776. The living soul was supposed by the Stoics to be received at birth, see Plut. de Placit. Phil. v. 15, and Stoic. Contr. 38; and for a reputed conversation on this subject between Marcus and the rabbi Jehuda, see Talmud, Sanh. 91 b (Jewish Encycl. Funk & Wagnalls, 1902). ↩

777. vii. 48; ix. 30. ↩

778. cp. Lucian, Charon (throughout). What Marcus means by ἐναέριοι and ἐναιθέριοι (or the neuters of these) is not clear. But cp. Apul. de deo Socr., circa med., and his disquisition on δαίμονες; and the interesting parallel 2 Kings vi. 17. ↩

779. iv. 7; vii. 17, 29; viii. 29; ix. 7; xii. 22. ↩

780. v. 8, 10. ↩

781. ix. 38. ↩

782. vii. 1. ↩

783. ii. 1. ↩

784. ср. Eur. Frag. 1007, ὁ νοῦς γὰρ ἡμῶν ἐστιν ἐν ἑκάστῳ θεός: Cic. Tusc. i. 26, § 65. ↩

785. ii. 3. ↩

786. xii. 8, 22 etc. ↩

787. ii. 14; xii. 3. ↩

788. vi. 47; viii. 25; x. 31. ↩

789. cp. Pers. v. 132: cinis et manes et fabula fies. ↩

790. For οἴησις see Epict. i. 8, § 6. ↩

791. See the story of Plato and Diogenes, Diog. Laert. vi. 2, § 4. ↩

792. cp. Dio 71. 34 § 2. ↩

793. The stars were Gods in the Stoic view. cp. above viii. 19, and Sen. de Benef. iv. 8. ↩

794. Theoph. Ad Autol. i. 2 and 5. ↩

795. xii. 10, 18 etc. ↩

796. v. 6; ix. 23. ↩

797. viii. 57. ↩

798. With an alteration of stops these words may mean such as Breath and Matter, are devoid of sensation. ↩

799. vii. 31; xii. 27. ↩

800. iv. 50; v. 24. ↩

801. Epict. i. 12 § 26: οὐκ οἶσθα ἡλίκον μέρος εἶ πρὸς τὰ ὄντα; ↩

802. iii. 4. ↩

803. v. 11; x. 24. ↩

804. x. 31. ↩

805. e.g. Otho, Petronius, and Epicurus, for whose famous syllogism on death see Aul. Gell. ii. 8; Diog. Laert. Epic. xxxi. § 2, and cp. Bacon’s Essay “On Death.” ↩

806. x. 20; xii. 23. ↩

807. iii. 7; xii. 36. ↩

808. ii. 16; iii. 11; iv. 4. ↩

809. iii. 8; xi. 1; Epict. Man 17. ↩