Meditations

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

2. From what I heard of my Father 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, far removed from the habits of the rich.

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

5. From my Tutor, not to side with the Green Jacket or the Blue at the races, or to back the Light-Shield Champion or the Heavy-Shield in the lists; not to shirk toil, 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, not to be taken up with trifles; and not to give credence to the statements of miracle-mongers and wizards about incantations and the exorcizing of demons, 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 pelt and whatever else tallied with the Greek regimen.

7. From Rusticus, 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, or pose ostentatiously as the moral athlete or unselfish man; and to eschew rhetoric, poetry, and fine language; and not to go 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 steps; 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, 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, 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 friends not to give up our independence for such things nor take them callously as a matter of course.

9. From Sextus, kindliness, and the example of a 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.

10. From Alexander the Grammarian, 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.

12. From Alexander the Platonist, 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, 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 Domitius did of Athenodotus; and to be genuinely fond of one's children.

14. From my 'brother' Severus, 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.

15. From Maximus, 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.

16. From my Father, 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.

17. From the Gods, to have good grandfathers, 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, had 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.

1. Say to thyself at daybreak: I shall come across the busy-body, the thankless, the bully, the treacherous, the envious, the unneighbourly. 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 books! 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: 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 man; let this be a thrall no longer, no more a puppet 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. Thence are all things derived; 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, 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 grace 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 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, divesting thyself of all aimlessness 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, 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, 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.

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. For the man who is moved with anger seems to turn his back upon reason with some pain and unconscious compunction; 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. But to go away from among men, if 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; 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? 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 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 poet 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, 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, 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 the one he is now living, 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; 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, 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, 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 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 pleasure 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 polity —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 pure and unwronged, lord of all pleasures and pains, doing nothing aimlessly 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 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.

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, and digestion, and thought, and desire, and all such-like faculties; but the full use of himself, the accurate appreciation of the items 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, 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 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, 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.

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. 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, and other vermin of Socrates.

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 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.

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 thee 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 help from without and independence of such ease as others can give. It needs then to stand, and not be set, upright.

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.

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. 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, 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. Furthermore there is nothing there slavish or affected, no dependence on others or severance from them, no sense of accountability or skulking to avoid it.

9. Hold sacred thy capacity for forming opinions. 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, 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 earth 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 essence 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.

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, and keepest that divine 'genius' 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 for the performing of every act, even the pettiest, with the fullest consciousness of the mutual ties between these two. 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, or the Acts of the Romans and the Greeks of Old Time, and the extracts 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, 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 puppets 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.

1. That which holds the mastery 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, yet it converts into material for itself any obstacle that it meets with, just as fire 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 aimlessly 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. But all this is unphilosophical to the last degree, when thou canst at a moment's notice retire into thyself. For nowhere can a man find a retreat more full of peace or more free from care than his own soul—above all if he have that within him, a steadfast look 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.

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, law 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 state —for of what 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 aerial 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, 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. To wish it otherwise, is to wish that the fig-tree had no acrid juice. 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.

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

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

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. 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, 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 else wouldest thou have?

14. Thou hast subsisted as part of the Whole. Thou shalt vanish into that which begat thee, or rather thou shalt be taken again into its Seminal Reason 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.

16. Ere ten days are past, thou shalt rank as a god with them that hold thee now a wild-beast or an ape, 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, 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, but to 'run straight for the goal with never a glance aside.'

19. He whose heart flutters for after-fame 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, 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? For thou dost reject the bounty of nature unseasonably in the present, and clingest to what others shall say of thee hereafter.

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 emerald 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 them 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, 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.

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, 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. There is one who says Dear City of Cecrops! Wilt thou not say O dear City of Zeus?

24. If thou wouldest be tranquil in heart, says the Sage, 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 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. Does a man do wrong? The wrong rests with him. Has something befallen thee? It is well. Everything that befalls was from the beginning destined and spun for thee as thy share out of the Whole. In a word, life is short. 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, 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, an unmanly character, an obstinate character, inhuman, animal, childish, stupid, counterfeit, shameless, mercenary, tyrannical.

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 alien who has no cognizance of what is happening in it. He is an exile, who exiles himself from civic reason; blind, he who will not see with the eyes of his understanding; a beggar, he who is dependent on another, and cannot draw from his own resources all that his life requires; an imposthume 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, 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, 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.

33. Expressions once in use are now obsolete. So also the names of those much be-sung heroes of old are in some sense obsolete, Camillus, Caeso, Volesus, 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. But what, when all is said, is even ever-lasting remembrance? 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, as issuing from a like origin and fountain-head.

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 gracious 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.

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 judgment 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. For that which befalls alike the man who lives by the 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, possessed of a single Substance and a single Soul; and how all things trace back to its single sentience; 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.

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

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 river 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, 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 all that comes into being bears the stamp not of a mere succession but of a wonderful relationship.

46. Always bear in mind what Heraclitus 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, —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, 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, for how little is the difference! —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; and how many philosophers after endless disquisitions on death and immortality; how many great captains after butchering thousands; how many tyrants after exercising with revolting insolence their power of life and death, as though themselves immortal; and how many entire cities are, if I may use the expression, dead, Helice and Pompeii and Herculaneum, and others without number.

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.

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. Small, in any point of view, is the difference 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 centuries are as one.

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 and affectation.

1. At daybreak, when loth to rise, 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.

2. How easy a thing it is to put away and blot out every impression 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, 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.

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 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. Granted! Yet there are many other qualities of which thou canst not say: I had not that by nature. Well then, display those which are wholly in thy power, sterling sincerity, dignity, endurance of toil, abstinence from pleasure. Grumble not at thy lot, be content with little, be kindly, independent, frugal, serious, high-minded. 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. 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. But a third is in a manner not 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, 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, as a vine to bear afresh her clusters in due season.

7. A prayer of the Athenians: Rain, Rain, O dear Zeus, upon the corn-land of the Athenians 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, or walking barefoot. Precisely so it may be said that the Universal Nature has prescribed for so and so sickness or 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.

9. Do not feel qualms or despondency or discomfiture if thou dost not invariably succeed in acting from right principles; but when thou art foiled, 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, sanctity of life. Why what is more delightful than wisdom herself, 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. 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.

11. To what use then am I putting my soul? Never fail to ask thyself this question and to cross-examine 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 not 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.

13. I am made up of the Causal and the Material, and neither of these disappears into nothing, just as neither did it come into existence out of nothing. So shall my every part by change be told off 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.

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 the character of thy frequent thoughts, 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. 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. For it has been made clear long ago that we were constituted for fellowship. Or was it not obvious that the lower were for the sake of the higher and the higher for the sake of one another? And living things are higher than lifeless, 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.

18. Nothing befalls anyone that he is not fitted by nature to bear. 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!

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 and moves herself, 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.

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 action 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, 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; 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. 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, but to enquire, What hath he seen amiss?

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 substance is as a river in ceaseless flow, 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. 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?

25. Another does me some wrong? He shall see to it. 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.

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 particle of himself, which Zeus has given to every man as his captain and guide —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, enlighten him, admonish him. If he listen, thou shalt cure him, and have no need of anger.

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, yet not as one who is treated ill. ' Tis smoky and I go away. 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 higher to one another. Thou seest how it hath subordinated, coordinated, and given each its due lot 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,

32. Why do unskilled and ignorant souls confound 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 cycle 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. 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

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?

36. Be not carried incontinently away by sense-impressions, but rally to the fight as thou canst and as is due. If there be failure in things indifferent, think not there is any great harm done; for that is an evil habit. But as the greybeard (in the play) taking his leave reclaimed his foster-child's top, not forgetting that it was but a top, so do thou here also. 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?

1. The Universal Substance is docile 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 duty whether thou art shivering or warm, drowsy or sleep-satisfied, defamed or extolled, dying or anything else. For the act of dying too is one of the acts of life. So it is enough in this also to get the work in hand done well.

3. Look within. Let not the special quality 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.

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

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

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, 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 web 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. 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, thou wilt gain more command over it.

12. Hadst thou at once a stepmother and a mother 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, whereby shall both thy court life seem more tolerable 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 wool steeped in the blood of a shell-fish; or, of sexual intercourse, that it is merely internal attrition and the spasmodic excretion of mucus —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.

14. Objects admired by the common sort come chiefly under things of the most general kind, which are held together by physical coherence, such as stones and wood, or by a natural unity, such as figs, 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, 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 sparrow 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 blood 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.

16. Neither is it an inner respiration, 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, 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.

17. Up, down, 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.

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 that a conception or act of mine is wrong, I will amend 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.

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 Reason of the Universe or scattered alike into the atoms.

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 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. 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.

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.

30. See thou be not Caesarified, nor take that dye, 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 harvest of earthly existence, a righteous disposition and social acts.

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 again, look at these realities as thou didst at those thy dreams.

32. I consist of body and soul. To the body indeed all things are indifferent, for it cannot concern itself with them. But to the mind 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 tyrant —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.

37. He, who sees what now is, hath seen all that ever hath been from times everlasting, and that shall be to eternity; 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 expanding motion, the sympathy that breathes through them, and the unity of all substance.

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

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 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, 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. But if we discriminate as good and evil only the things in our power, there is no occasion left for accusing the Gods 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. 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 and ridiculous line in the play which Chrysippus mentions.

43. Does the sun take upon himself to discharge the functions of the rain? or Asclepius of the Fruit-bearer? 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 of 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, 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. 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 intermediate things.

46. As the shows in the amphitheatre and such places grate upon thee 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 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 associates; 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 conditioned by circumstances, and thine aim was not to do impossibilities. What then was it? To feel some such impulse as thou didst. In that thou art successful. That which alone was in the sphere of our choice 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 said 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.

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 reason of the Universal Nature nothing shall befall thee.

59. The persons men wish to please, 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!

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. 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.

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 mice, puppets moved by strings. Amid such environment therefore thou must take thy place graciously and not 'snorting defiance,' 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.

4. In conversation keep abreast of what is being said, 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 interest and be in harmony with it.

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

7. Blush not to be helped; 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?

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, and the tie is sacred, and scarcely anything is alien the one to the other. For all things have been ranged side by side, 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, 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, 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.

12. Upright, or made upright.

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, not yet dost thou love mankind from the heart, nor yet does well-doing delight thee for its own sake. Thou 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. But I, if I do not consider what has befallen me to be an evil, 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.

17. Well-being is a good Being, or a ruling Reason that is good. What then doest thou here, O Imagination? 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 torrent all bodies pass on their way, united with the Whole in nature and activity, as our members are with one another.

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 privilege to love even those who stumble. And this love follows as soon as thou reflectest that they are of kin to thee and that they do wrong involuntarily and through ignorance, and that within a little while both they and thou will be dead; and this, above all, that the man has done thee no hurt; 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, 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, 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 compassion 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. 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. 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.

28. Gather thyself into thyself. 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! Cease to be pulled as a puppet by thy passions. 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. Let the wrong thy neighbour does thee rest with him that did the wrong.

30. Do thy utmost to keep up with what is said. 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. Says 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.

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

33. Of Pain: When unbearable it destroys us, when lasting, it is bearable, 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.

34. Of Glory: Look at the minds of its votaries, their characteristics, ambitions, antipathies. 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.] 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. "

36. [From Antisthenes.] ' Tis royal to do well and be ill spoken of.

37. It is a shame that while the countenance 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.

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

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

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

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

43. No chorus of loud dirges, no hysteria.

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.

45. This, O men of Athens, is the true state of the case: Wherever a man has stationed himself, deeming 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.

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.

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. Moreover he who discourses of men should, as if from some vantage-point above, take a bird's-eye view of the things of earth, in its gatherings, armies, husbandry, its inarriages and separations, 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 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, 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,

51. Again:

52. Better at the cross-buttock, 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 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 higher —but the rational for their own sake.

56. As one that is dead, and his life till now lived and gone, must thou count the rest of thy days as so much to the good, 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, 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, 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, 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 wrestling than dancing, for it requires of us to stand ready and unshakable against every assault however unforeseen.

62. Continually reflect, who they are whose favourable testimony thou desirest, 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. 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.

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 unbearable or interminable, so that thou remember its limitations and add nothing to it in imagination. Recollect this too that many of our every-day discomforts are really pain in disguise, such as drowsiness, a high temperature, want of appetite. When inclined to be vexed at any of these, say to thyself: I am giving in to pain.

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

66. How do we know that Telauges may not have excelled Socrates in character? For it is not enough 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, deemed it more spirited to disobey, and that he carried his head high as he walked —and about the truth of this one can easily judge—; but the point to elucidate is this: what sort of soul had Socrates, 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. Never forget this nor that the happy life depends on the fewest possible things; nor because thou hast been baulked in the hope of becoming skilled in dialectics and physics, 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 they will, even though beasts tear limb from limb this plastic clay that has encased thee with its growth. 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, 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, 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 many; 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.

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.

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 same?

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.

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, 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 this and thou wilt face many an ill with more serenity.

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, 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, 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 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 Heraclitus 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.

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 change, but nothing new-fangled need be feared; all things are of the wonted type, 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, aye and even care for them.

9. Let no one hear thee any more grumbling at life in a Court, 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 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 causal part? What doeth it in the Universe? How long doth it subsist?

12. When thou art loth to get up, 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 convictions 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.

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 surprised that a patient has fever or that a contrary wind has sprung up.

16. Remember that neither a change of mind nor a willingness to be set right by others 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. 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.

21. Turn it 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. 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.

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. Lucilla buried Verus, then Lucilla was buried; Secunda Maximus, then Secunda; Epitynchanus Diotimus, then Epitynchanus; Antoņinus Faustina, then Antoninus. The same tale always: Celer 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 Platonist ] 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, 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 transferred 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.

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

29. Efface thy impressions, 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, I should deal with each as is its due. Bethink thee of this power that Nature gives thee.

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

31. The court of Augustus—wife, daughter, descendants, ancestors, sister, Agrippa, kinsfolk, household, friends, Areius, 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. 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.

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. 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 itself 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 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 task if it cannot hold out against this mere trifle.

37. Does Pantheia 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.

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 opinion 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.

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. 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, nor any thing soever: a sphere 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.

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 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.

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.

47. When thou art vexed at some external cross, it is not the thing itself that troubles thee, 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? So also if thou art vexed 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 then from life, 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, it is content with itself so it do nothing that it doth not will, even if it refuse from mere opposition 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 impregnable 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. 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. 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 nothing 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 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.

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.

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. But he that is wanting in the knowledge of any 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, 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 choice 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.

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 rate the beams of the Sun are called Extension rays, because they have an extension in space. 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 against 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. 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. Either instruct therefore or endure.

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.

1. Injustice is impiety. For in that the Nature of the Universe has fashioned rational creatures for the sake of one another 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.

2. It were more graceful doubtless for a man to depart from mankind untainted with falsehood and 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, but welcome it, for Nature wills it like all else. For dissolution is but one of the processes of Nature, 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. 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.

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

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. 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 one is the light whereby we see, 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.

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.

11. If thou art able, convert the wrong-doer. 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. 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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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 father, 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.

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 corpses —the Invocation of the Dead might strike one as a more vivid reality!

25. Go straight to that which makes a thing what it is, its formative cause, 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.

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 dreams and oracles, to win those very things on which their hearts are set.

28. The same, upwards, downwards, 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 impulse 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]. But as to the Whole, if God—all is well; if haphazard—be not thou also haphazard.

29. The World-Cause is as a torrent, it sweeps everything along. How negligible these manikins 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. 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. 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 gatherings and endless ceremonials, 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 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 Reason 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, they are but one. Therein doth the Universal Nature take pleasure, 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 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, more worthy.

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

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. 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 power. If they have no power, why pray to them? 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 us 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! 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. In a word, give thy prayers this turn, and see what comes of it.

41. Listen to Epicurus 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 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. 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, and against another man some other resource.

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 state and delighted with thy present everything, convincing thyself withal that all that is present for thee is present from the Gods, 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 Being 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? 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?

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. 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. 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.

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. 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. 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.

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, or was she not aware that such was the case? Both alternatives are incredible.

8. Assuming for thyself the appellations, a good man, a modest man, a truthteller, wise of heart, 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.

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, 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.

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. Are not these brigands, if thou test their principles?

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. 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.

13. Ask thyself as soon as thou art roused from sleep: Will it make any difference to me if another does what is just and right? It will make none. Hast thou forgotten that those who play the wanton in their praise and blame of others, are such as they are 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'?

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. 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 mountain; for whether it be here or there, matters not provided that, wherever a man live, he live as a citizen of the World-City. 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.

17. Continually picture to thyself Time as a whole, and Substance as a whole, and every individual 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.

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.

21. The earth is in love with showers and the majestic sky is in love. 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' is such as I told thee, and how all the conditions are the same here as on the top of a mountain or on the sea-shore or wherever thou pleasest. Quite apposite shalt thou find to be the words of Plato: 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, 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! Again he 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 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 day 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, 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.

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, such as deeming money to be a good or pleasure or a little cheap fame and the like. For by marking this thou wilt quickly forget thy wrath, with this reflection too to aid thee, that a man is under constraint; 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. 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, or none can say where. For thus shalt thou habitually look upon human things as mere smoke 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 strain? Why not be content to pass this thy short span of life in becoming fashion?

32. Give no one the right to say of thee with truth that thou art not a sincere, that thou art not a 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 sincere? Resolve then to live no longer if thou be not such. 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.

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,

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! 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, 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, aye even they wish me gone, expecting belike to gain thereby some further ease. Why then should anyone cling to a longer sojourn here?

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? 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 it 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.

1. The properties of the Rational Soul are these: it sees itself, dissects itself, moulds itself to its own will, itself reaps its own fruits —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 taken 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.

2. Thou wilt think but meanly of charming songs and dances and the pancratium, 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. 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, 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 quenched 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]. 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. 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. 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! Aye, and the dramatic writers contain some serviceable sayings. For example this more especially:

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.

8. A branch cut off from its neighbour branch 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 himself 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. 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 aside from sound action, so let them not wrest thee from a kindly attitude towards them; but keep a watch over thyself in both directions alike, not only in steadfastness 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, 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 higher; 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, 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.

12. The soul is 'a sphere truly shaped,' when it neither projects itself towards anything outside nor shrinks together inwardly, neither expands nor contracts, 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. 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 rebuke nor with a parade of forbearance, but genuinely and chivalrously like the famous Phocion, unless indeed he was speaking ironically. For such should be the inner springs of a man's heart 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 fore head. 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. 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.

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 parts 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, 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. 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. For it is pardonable for every man to seek his own good.

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

18. Firstly: Consider thy relation to mankind and that we came into the world for the sake of one another; 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. Start at the beginning from this premiss: If not atoms, then an all-controlling Nature. If the latter, then the lower are for the sake of the higher and the higher for one another.

19. Against four perversions of the ruling Reason thou shouldest above all keep unceasing watch, and, once detected, wholly abjure them, saying in each case to thyself: This thought is not necessary; 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, 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.

21. He who has not ever in view one and the same goal of life cannot be throughout his life one and the same. 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.

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

23. Socrates used to nickname the opinions of the multitude Ghouls, 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.

25. Socrates refused the invitation of Perdiccas 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.

26. In the writings of the Ephesians 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.

31..... and within me my heart laughed.

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

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

34. A man while fondly kissing his child, says Epictetus, should whisper in his heart: ' 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.

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

37. We must, says he, hit upon the true science of assent and in the sphere of our impulses pay good heed that they be subject to proper reservations, 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.

39. Socrates was wont to say: 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?

1. All those things, which thou prayest to attain by a roundabout way, thou canst have at once if thou deny them not to thyself; that is to say, if thou leave all the Past to itself and entrust the Future to Providence, 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 things 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 thee; for the part affected will see to 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.

3. Thou art formed of three things in combination—body, vital breath, intelligence. 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. 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 the things that are past, and if thou fashion thyself like the Empedoclean

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, 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? 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. 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. 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, on the yawning gulf 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 another; that nothing is but what thinking makes it.

9. In our use of principles of conduct we should imitate the pancratiast not the gladiator. 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.

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

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 wrong voluntarily or involuntarily; nor with men, for they do none save involuntarily. Find fault then with none.

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

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?

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

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

17. 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, and into its life-span within which it must needs cease to be.

18. 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. What is my mind now occupied with? Fear? Suspicion? Concupiscence? Some other like thing?

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

20. 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.

21. Remember that all is but as thy opinion of it, 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.

22. 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. 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 youthful 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, 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. 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.

23. Thou must have these three rules ready for use. Firstly, not to do anything, that thou doest, aimlessly, 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, 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, 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 affairs and their infinite diversity, thou wilt indeed despise them, 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!

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

25. In taking umbrage at anything, thou forgettest this, that everything happens in accordance with the Universal Nature; and this, that the wrong-doing is another's; and this furthermore that all that happens, always did happen, 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. And thou forgettest this too, that each man's intelligence is God and has emanated from Him; and this, that nothing is a man's very own, but that his babe, his body, his very soul came forth from Him; and this, that everything is but opinion; and this, that it is only the present moment that a man lives and the present moment only that he loses.

26. 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? Smoke and dust and a legend or not a legend even. 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 arrogantly 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.

27. 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? I answer: In the first place, they are even visible to the eyes. In the next, I have not seen my own soul either, yet I honour it. So then from the continual proofs of their power I am assured that Gods also exist and I reverence them.

28. Salvation in life depends on our seeing everything in its entirety and and its reality, in its Matter and its Cause: 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 act on to another so as not to leave the smallest gap between?

29. There is one Light of the Sun, even though its continuity be broken by walls, mountains, 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, 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.

30. 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. But it militates against this to prize such things, and to grieve if death comes to deprive us of them.

31. How tiny a fragment of the boundless abyss of Time has been appointed to each man! For in a moment it is lost in eternity. And how tiny a part of the Universal Substance! 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.

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

33. 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.

34. Not even death can bring terror to him who regards that alone as good which comes in due season, 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.

35. Man, thou hast been a citizen in this World-City, 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? 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. 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.