1. What is badness?
It is that which you have often seen.
And on the occasion of everything which happens keep this in mind, that it is that which you have often seen.
Everywhere up and down you will find the same things, with which the old histories are filled, those of the middle ages and those of our own day; with which cities and houses are filled now.
There is nothing new: all things are both familiar and short-lived.
2. How can our principles become dead, unless the impressions (thoughts) which correspond to them are extinguished?
But it is in your power continuously to fan these thoughts into a flame.
I can have that opinion about anything, which I ought to have.
If I can, why am I disturbed?
The things which are external to my mind have no relation at all to my mind.
- Let this be the state of your affects, and you stand erect.
To recover your life is in your power.
Look at things again as you did use to look at them; for in this consists the recovery of your life.
3. The idle business of show, plays on the stage, flocks of sheep, herds, exercises with spears, a bone cast to little dogs, a bit of bread into fish-ponds, labourings of ants and burden-carrying, runnings about of frightened little mice, puppets pulled by strings- all alike.
It is your duty then in the midst of such things to show good humour and not a proud air; to understand however that every man is worth just so much as the things are worth about which he busies himself.
4. In discourse you must attend to what is said, and in every movement you must observe what is doing.
And in the one you should see immediately to what end it refers, but in the other watch carefully what is the thing signified.
5. Is my understanding sufficient for this or not?
If it is sufficient, I use it for the work as an instrument given by the universal nature.
But if it is not sufficient, then either I retire from the work and give way to him who is able to do it better, unless there be some reason why I ought not to do so; or I do it as well as I can, taking to help me the man who with the aid of my ruling principle can do what is now fit and useful for the general good.
For whatsoever either by myself or with another I can do, ought to be directed to this only, to that which is useful and well suited to society.
6. How many after being celebrated by fame have been given up to oblivion; and how many who have celebrated the fame of others have long been dead.
7. Be not ashamed to be helped; for it is your business to do your duty like a soldier in the assault on a town.
How then, if being lame you can not mount up on the battlements alone, but with the help of another it is possible?
8. Let not future things disturb you for you will come to them, if it shall be necessary, having with you the same reason which now you use for present things.
9. All things are implicated with one another, and the bond is holy; and there is hardly anything unconnected with any other thing.
For things have been co-ordinated, and they combine to form the same universe (order).
For there is one universe made up of all things, and one God who pervades all things, and one substance, and one law, one common reason in all intelligent animals, and one truth; if indeed there is also one perfection for all animals which are of the same stock and participate in the same reason.
10. Everything material soon disappears in the substance of the whole; and everything formal (causal) is very soon taken back into the universal reason; and the memory of everything is very soon overwhelmed in time.
11. To the rational animal the same act is according to nature and according to reason.
13. Just as it is with the members in those bodies which are united in one, so it is with rational beings which exist separate, for they have been constituted for one co-operation.
And the perception of this will be more apparent to you if you often say to yourself that I am a member (melos) of the system of rational beings.
But if (using the letter r) you say that you are a part (meros) you do not yet love men from your heart; beneficence does not yet delight you for its own sake; you still do it barely as a thing of propriety, and not yet as doing good to yourself
14. Let there fall externally what will on the parts which can feel the effects of this fall.
For those parts which have felt will complain, if they choose.
But I, unless I think that what has happened is an evil, am not injured.
And it is in my power not to think so.
15. Whatever any one does or says, I must be good, just as if the gold, or the emerald, or the purple were always saying this, Whatever any one does or says, I must be emerald and keep my colour.
16. The ruling faculty does not disturb itself; I mean, does not frighten itself or cause itself pain.
But if any one else can frighten or pain it, let him do so.
For the faculty itself will not by its own opinion turn itself into such ways.
Let the body itself take care, if it can, that is suffer nothing, and let it speak, if it suffers.
But the soul itself, that which is subject to fear, to pain, which has completely the power of forming an opinion about these things, will suffer nothing, for it will never deviate into such a judgement.
The leading principle in itself wants nothing, unless it makes a want for itself; and therefore it is both free from perturbation and unimpeded, if it does not disturb and impede itself.
17. Eudaemonia (happiness) is a good daemon, or a good thing.
What then are you doing here, O imagination?
Go away, I entreat you by the gods, as you did come, for I want you not.
But you are come according to your old fashion.
I am not angry with you: only go away.
18. Is any man afraid of change?
Why what can take place without change?
What then is more pleasing or more suitable to the universal nature?
And can you take a bath unless the wood undergoes a change?
And can you be nourished, unless the food undergoes a change?
And can anything else that is useful be accomplished without change?
Do you not see then that for yourself also to change is just the same, and equally necessary for the universal nature?
19. Through the universal substance as through a furious torrent all bodies are carried, being by their nature united with and cooperating with the whole, as the parts of our body with one another.
How many a Chrysippus, how many a Socrates, how many an Epictetus has time already swallowed up?
And let the same thought occur to you with reference to every man and thing.
20. One thing only troubles me, in case I should do something which the constitution of man does not allow, or in the way which it does not allow, or what it does not allow now.
21. Near is your forgetfulness of all things; and near the forgetfulness of you by all.
22. It is peculiar to man to love even those who do wrong.
And this happens, if when they do wrong it occurs to you that they are kinsmen, and that they do wrong through ignorance and unintentionally, and that soon both of you will die; and above all, that the wrong-doer has done you no harm, for he has not made your ruling faculty worse than it was before.
23. The universal nature out of the universal substance, as if it were wax, now moulds a horse, and when it has broken this up, it uses the material for a tree, then for a man, then for something else; and each of these things subsists for a very short time.
But it is no hardship for the vessel to be broken up, just as there was none in its being fastened together.
24. A scowling look is altogether unnatural; when it is often assumed, the result is that all comeliness dies away, and at last is so completely extinguished that it cannot be again lighted up at all.
Try to conclude from this very fact that it is contrary to reason.
For if even the perception of doing wrong shall depart, what reason is there for living any longer?
25. Nature which governs the whole will soon change all things which you see and out of their substance will make other things, and again other things from the substance of them, in order that the world may be ever new.
26. When a man has done you any wrong, immediately consider with what opinion about good or evil he has done wrong.
For when you have seen this, you will pity him, and will neither wonder nor be angry.
For either you yourself think the same thing to be good that he does or another thing of the same kind.
It is your duty then to pardon him.
But if you do not think such things to be good or evil, you will more readily be well disposed to him who is in error.
27. Think not so much of what you have not as of what you have: but of the things which you have select the best, and then reflect how eagerly they would have been sought, if you had them not.
At the same time however take care that you do not through being so pleased with them accustom yourself to overvalue them, so as to be disturbed if ever you should not have them.
28. Retire into yourself The rational principle which rules has this nature, that it is content with itself when it does what is just, and so secures tranquility.
29. Wipe out the imagination.
Stop the pulling of the strings.
Confine yourself to the present.
Understand well what happens either to you or to another.
Divide and distribute every object into the causal (formal) and the material.
Think of your last hour.
Let the wrong which is done by a man stay there where the wrong was done.
30. Direct your attention to what is said.
Let your understanding enter into the things that are doing and the things which do them.
31. Adorn yourself with simplicity and modesty and with indifference towards the things which lie between virtue and vice.
Love mankind.
Follow God.
The poet says that Law rules all.
- And it is enough to remember that Law rules all.
32. About death: Whether it is a dispersion, or a resolution into atoms, or annihilation, it is either extinction or change.
33. About pain: The pain which is intolerable carries us off; but that which lasts a long time is tolerable; and the mind maintains its own tranquility by retiring into itself, and the ruling faculty is not made worse.
But the parts which are harmed by pain, let them, if they can, give their opinion about it.
34. About fame: Look at the minds of those who seek fame, observe what they are, and what kind of things they avoid, and what kind of things they pursue.
And consider that as the heaps of sand piled on one another hide the former sands, so in life the events which go before are soon covered by those which come after.
35. From Plato: The man who has an elevated mind and takes a view of all time and of all substance, do you suppose it possible for him to think that human life is anything great?
It is not possible, he said.
- Such a man then will think that death also is no evil.
- Certainly not.
37. It is a base thing for the countenance to be obedient and to regulate and compose itself as the mind commands, and for the mind not to be regulated and composed by itself.
44. From Plato: But I would make this man a sufficient answer, which is this: You say not well, if you think that a man who is good for anything at all ought to compute the hazard of life or death, and should not rather look to this only in all that he does, whether he is doing what is just or unjust, and the works of a good or a bad man.
45. For thus it is, men of Athens, in truth: wherever a man has placed himself thinking it the best place for him, or has been placed by a commander, there in my opinion he ought to stay and to abide the hazard, taking nothing into the reckoning, either death or anything else, before the baseness of deserting his post.
46. But, my good friend, reflect whether that which is noble and good is not something different from saving and being saved; for as to a man living such or such a time, at least one who is really a man, consider if this is not a thing to be dismissed from the thoughts: and there must be no love of life: but as to these matters a man must intrust them to the deity and believe what the women say, that no man can escape his destiny, the next inquiry being how he may best live the time that he has to live.
47. Look round at the courses of the stars, as if you were going along with them; and constantly consider the changes of the elements into one another; for such thoughts purge away the filth of the terrene life.
48. This is a fine saying of Plato: That he who is discoursing about men should look also at earthly things as if he viewed them from some higher place; should look at them in their assemblies, armies, agricultural labours, marriages, treaties, births, deaths, noise of the courts of justice, desert places, various nations of barbarians, feasts, lamentations, markets, a mixture of all things and an orderly combination of contraries.
49. Consider the past; such great changes of political supremacies.
You may foresee also the things which will be.
For they will certainly be of like form, and it is not possible that they should deviate from the order of the things which take place now: accordingly to have contemplated human life for forty years is the same as to have contemplated it for ten thousand years.
For what more will you see?
50. That which has grown from the earth to the earth, But that which has sprung from heavenly seed, Back to the heavenly realms returns.
This is either a dissolution of the mutual involution of the atoms, or a similar dispersion of the unsentient elements.
51. With food and drinks and cunning magic arts Turning the channel's course to 'scape from death.
The breeze which heaven has sent We must endure, and toil without complaining.
52. Another may be more expert in casting his opponent; but he is not more social, nor more modest, nor better disciplined to meet all that happens, nor more considerate with respect to the faults of his neighbours.
53. Where any work can be done conformably to the reason which is common to gods and men, there we have nothing to fear: for where we are able to get profit by means of the activity which is successful and proceeds according to our constitution, there no harm is to be suspected.
54. Everywhere and at all times it is in your power piously to acquiesce in your present condition, and to behave justly to those who are about you and to exert your skill upon your present thoughts, that nothing shall steal into them without being well examined.
55. Do not look around you to discover other men's ruling principles, but look straight to this, to what nature leads you both the universal nature through the things which happen to you and your own nature through the acts which must be done by you But every being ought to do that which is according to its constitution; and all other things have been constituted for the sake of rational beings, just as among irrational things the inferior for the sake of the superior, but the rational for the sake of one another.
The prime principle then in man's constitution is the social.
And the second is not to yield to the persuasions of the body, for it is the peculiar office of the rational and intelligent motion to circumscribe itself, and never to be overpowered either by the motion of the senses or of the appetites, for both are animal; but the intelligent motion claims superiority and does not permit itself to be overpowered by the others.
And with good reason, for it is formed by nature to use all of them.
The third thing in the rational constitution is freedom from error and from deception.
Let then the ruling principle holding fast to these things go straight on, and it has what is its own.
56. Consider yourself to be dead, and to have completed your life up to the present time; and live according to nature the remainder which is allowed you
57. Love that only which happens to you and is spun with the thread of your destiny.
For what is more suitable?
58. In everything which happens keep before your eyes those to whom the same things happened, and how they were vexed, and treated them as strange things, and found fault with them: and now where are they?
Nowhere.
Why then do you too choose to act in the same way?
And why do you not leave these agitations which are foreign to nature, to those who cause them and those who are moved by them?
And why are you not altogether intent upon the right way of making use of the things which happen to you?
For then you will use them well, and they will be a material for you to work on.
Only attend to yourself and resolve to be a good man in every act which you doest: and remember...
59. Look within.
Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble up, if you will ever dig.
60. The body ought to be compact, and to show no irregularity either in motion or attitude.
For what the mind shows in the face by maintaining in it the expression of intelligence and propriety, that ought to be required also in the whole body.
But all of these things should be observed without affectation.
61. The art of life is more like the wrestler's art than the dancer's, in respect of this, that it should stand ready and firm to meet onsets which are sudden and unexpected.
62. Constantly observe who those are whose approbation you wish to have, and what ruling principles they possess.
For then you will neither blame those who offend involuntarily, nor will you want their approbation, if you look to the sources of their opinions and appetites.
63. Every soul, the philosopher says, is involuntarily deprived of truth; consequently in the same way it is deprived of justice and temperance and benevolence and everything of the kind.
It is most necessary to bear this constantly in mind, for thus you will be more gentle towards all.
64. In every pain let this thought be present, that there is no dishonour in it, nor does it make the governing intelligence worse, for it does not damage the intelligence either so far as the intelligence is rational or so far as it is social.
Indeed in the case of most pains let this remark of Epicurus aid you that pain is neither intolerable nor everlasting, if you bear in mind that it has its limits, and if you add nothing to it in imagination: and remember this too, that we do not perceive that many things which are disagreeable to us are the same as pain, such as excessive drowsiness, and the being scorched by heat, and the having no appetite.
When then you are discontented about any of these things, say to yourself that you are yielding to pain.
66. How do we know if Telauges was not superior in character to Socrates?
For it is not enough that Socrates died a more noble death, and disputed more skilfully with the sophists, and passed the night in the cold with more endurance, and that when he was bid to arrest Leon of Salamis, he considered it more noble to refuse, and that he walked in a swaggering way in the streets- though as to this fact one may have great doubts if it was true.
But we ought to inquire, what kind of a soul it was that Socrates possessed, and if he was able to be content with being just towards men and pious towards the gods, neither idly vexed on account of men's villainy, nor yet making himself a slave to any man's ignorance, nor receiving as strange anything that fell to his share out of the universal, nor enduring it as intolerable, nor allowing his understanding to sympathize with the affects of the miserable flesh.
67. Nature has not so mingled the intelligence with the composition of the body, as not to have allowed you the power of circumscribing yourself and of bringing under subjection to yourself all that is your own; for it is very possible to be a divine man and to be recognised as such by no one.
Always bear this in mind; and another thing too, that very little indeed is necessary for living a happy life.
And because you have despaired of becoming a dialectician and skilled in the knowledge of nature, do not for this reason renounce the hope of being both free and modest and social and obedient to God.
68. It is in your power to live free from all compulsion in the greatest tranquility of mind, even if all the world cry out against you as much as they choose, and even if wild beasts tear in pieces the members of this kneaded matter which has grown around you For what hinders the mind in the midst of all this from maintaining itself in tranquility and in a just judgement of all surrounding things and in a ready use of the objects which are presented to it, so that the judgement may say to the thing which falls under its observation: This you are in substance (reality), though in men's opinion you may appear to be of a different kind; and the use shall say to that which falls under the hand: You are the thing that I was seeking; for to me that which presents itself is always a material for virtue both rational and political, and in a word, for the exercise of art, which belongs to man or God.
For everything which happens has a relationship either to God or man, and is neither new nor difficult to handle, but usual and apt matter to work on.
69. The perfection of moral character consists in this, in passing every day as the last, and in being neither violently excited nor torpid nor playing the hypocrite.
70. The gods who are immortal are not vexed because during so long a time they must tolerate continually men such as they are and so many of them bad; and besides this, they also take care of them in all ways.
But you who are destined to end so soon, are you wearied of enduring the bad, and this too when you are one of them?
71. It is a ridiculous thing for a man not to fly from his own badness, which is indeed possible, but to fly from other men's badness, which is impossible.
72. Whatever the rational and political (social) faculty finds to be neither intelligent nor social, it properly judges to be inferior to itself.
73. When you have done a good act and another has received it, why do you look for a third thing besides these, as fools do, either to have the reputation of having done a good act or to obtain a return?
74. No man is tired of receiving what is useful.
But it is useful to act according to nature.
Do not then be tired of receiving what is useful by doing it to others.
75. The nature of the universe moved to make the world.
But now either everything that takes place comes by way of consequence or continuity; or even the chief things towards which the ruling power of the universe directs its own movement are governed by no rational principle.
If this is remembered it will make you more tranquil in many things.