Book X

1. Will you ever, O soul, be good and simple and one and naked, more plainly seen than the body wrapped around you? Will you ever taste the disposition that loves and cherishes? Will you ever be full and without need, longing for nothing, desiring nothing—neither living nor lifeless—for the enjoyment of pleasures? Neither time in which to enjoy them longer; nor place or country or temperate air; nor harmony among human beings? Instead, will you be content with your present condition and rejoice in everything now present, and fully persuade yourself that all things are present for you from the gods, that all is well with you and will be well—all that is dear to them and all that they intend to give for the preservation of the perfect living being: good and just and beautiful, begetting all things, holding them together, encompassing them, and gathering back into itself what is dissolved, for the birth of other things like them? Will you ever be such as to share one commonwealth with gods and human beings, neither finding fault with them in anything nor being condemned by them?

2. Observe what your nature requires of you insofar as you are governed by nature alone; then do it and accept it, unless your nature as a living creature is to be made worse. Next, you must observe what your nature as a living creature requires of you, and accept all of that, unless your nature as a rational living creature is to be made worse. And the rational is, by that very fact, also civic. Use these as your measures, and busy yourself with nothing beyond them.

3. Everything that happens either happens in such a way that you are naturally able to bear it, or in such a way that you are not naturally able to bear it. If, then, it happens in a way you are naturally able to bear, do not chafe at it, but bear it as you were born able to bear it. If it happens in a way you are not naturally able to bear, do not chafe at that either; once it has consumed you, it will itself be spent. Remember, however, that you are naturally able to bear everything which it lies within your own judgment to make bearable and endurable, by conceiving that to do so is advantageous to you or is your proper work.

4. If he is mistaken, teach him kindly and show him what he has failed to see. But if you cannot, blame yourself—or not even yourself.

5. Whatever happens to you was being prepared for you from eternity, and the interweaving of causes was spinning together from all eternity both your existence and the conjunction of this event with it.

6. Whether there are atoms or Nature, let this first be established: I am a part of the whole governed by Nature; and next, I stand in a relation of kinship to the parts of the same kind as myself. For when I remember these things, then, insofar as I am a part, I shall not be discontented with anything allotted from the whole: nothing that benefits the whole is harmful to the part. For the whole contains nothing that does not benefit itself. All natures have this in common, but the nature of the cosmos has this further power: no cause outside it can compel it to generate anything harmful to itself.

By remembering, then, that I am a part of such a whole, I shall be well pleased with everything that comes about. And insofar as I stand in a relation of kinship to the parts of my own kind, I shall do nothing unsocial; rather, I shall aim at my kindred, direct my every impulse toward the common benefit, and turn it away from the contrary. When these things are carried through in this way, life must flow well—just as you would conceive the life of a citizen to flow well when he proceeds through actions beneficial to his fellow citizens and welcomes whatever the city allots him.

7. The parts of the whole—all that are by nature contained within the cosmos—must perish; but let “perish” here signify “undergo alteration.” Now if this is by nature both evil and necessary for them, the whole could not be conducted well while its parts pass into alteration and are variously constituted for destruction. For did Nature herself undertake to harm her own parts, making them liable to evil and bound by necessity to fall into it, or did it escape her notice that such things were happening? Both are incredible.

And even if someone were to leave Nature aside and explain these things simply as their natural condition, it would still be ridiculous to say at once that the parts of the whole naturally change, and yet to be astonished or vexed as though at something happening contrary to nature—especially when each thing is dissolved into the very things from which it was composed. For there is either a scattering of the elements from which it was compounded, or a turning of what is solid into the earthy and of what is breathlike into the airy, so that these too are taken back into the reason of the whole, whether the whole is consumed by fire in recurring cycles or renewed through everlasting exchanges.

And do not imagine that the solid and the breathlike in you are what you received at your first birth. All this took in its influx only yesterday or the day before, from the food you ate and the air you drew. What changes, then, is what your body has received, not what your mother bore. But suppose that original matter binds you very closely to your individual character: in truth, I think, that has no bearing on what is now being said.

8. Give yourself these names: good, reverent, truthful, discerning, consenting, transcendent. Take care never to be renamed; and if you lose these names, return to them quickly. Remember that “discerning” was meant to signify for you a knowledge that distinguishes each thing and admits no intrusive thought; “consenting,” your willing acceptance of what is allotted by the common Nature; and “transcendent,” the elevation of the thinking part above every smooth or rough stirring of the flesh, above the little thing called reputation, above death, and above all such things.

If, then, you preserve yourself in these names without craving to be called by them by others, you will become another person and enter another life. For to remain such as you have been until now, and to be torn and stained in such a life, belongs to one utterly without feeling, one clinging slavishly to life, like those half-devoured fighters with beasts who, covered in wounds and gore, nevertheless plead to be kept for the next day, only to be thrown, in that same condition, before the same claws and bites.

Set yourself aboard, then, these few names. If you can remain upon them, remain as though you had migrated to islands of the blessed. But if you perceive that you are falling away and cannot hold mastery, go boldly into some corner where you will master yourself—or else depart from life altogether, not in anger, but simply, freely, and reverently, having achieved at least this one thing in life: to leave it in this way.

Yet to remember these names, it will greatly help you to remember the gods, and that they do not wish to be flattered, but wish all rational beings to become like themselves: the fig tree to do the work of a fig tree, the dog of a dog, the bee of a bee, and the human being of a human being.

9. Mime, war, panic, stupor, slavery. Day by day those sacred doctrines of yours will be erased, all that you imagine without attending to nature and then let pass. You must look at and do everything in such a way that the task imposed by circumstance is fulfilled, the work of contemplation is active at the same time, and the self-assurance born of knowledge concerning each thing is preserved—unnoticed, not concealed. For when will you enjoy simplicity? When dignity? When the knowledge of each thing: what it is in its essence, what place it holds in the cosmos, how long it is naturally fitted to endure, what it is compounded from, to whom it can belong, and who can give it and take it away?

10. A spider exults in catching a fly; a man, in catching a little hare; another, a sprat in his net; another, little boars; another, bears; another, Sarmatians. Are not these all robbers, if you examine their doctrines?

11. Acquire a contemplative method for seeing how all things change into one another; attend to it continuously, and train yourself together with it in this field—for nothing is so productive of greatness of soul. The body has been stripped away: reflecting that in no time at all he must leave all these things behind and depart from humankind, he has surrendered his whole self—to justice in the actions that are his own, and, in all that happens otherwise, to the nature of the Whole. What anyone will say or suppose about him, or do against him, he does not even admit into his mind. These two things suffice him: that his present action be just, and that he love what is now allotted to him. He has let go of every occupation and fevered pursuit, and wants nothing but to complete a straight course through the law and, as he completes that straight course, to follow God.

12. What need is there of suspicion, when you can examine what must be done? If you see it clearly, proceed toward it graciously, without turning aside. If you do not see clearly, pause and use the best advisers. And if other things obstruct you in this, advance with measured judgment by the resources now at hand, holding to what appears just. To attain that is best, since falling away from it is indeed failure. At leisure yet agile, radiant yet composed, is the one who follows reason in everything.

13. On waking from sleep, ask yourself at once: Will it make any difference to you if what is just and good is condemned by another? It will make no difference. Have you forgotten what those who bluster in praise and blame of others are like in bed, what they are like at table; what things they do, what they shun, what they pursue; what they steal, what they seize—not with hands and feet, but with the most precious part of themselves, the part from which, whenever it wills, arise faithfulness, reverence, truth, law, and a good guardian-spirit?

14. To nature, who gives all and takes all back, the educated and reverent person says: “Give what you will; take back what you will.” He says this not in rash defiance, but only in obedience and goodwill toward her.

15. This remnant of time is little. Live as on a mountain. For it makes no difference whether there or here, if one lives everywhere as a citizen in the cosmos. Let people see, let them behold and learn of a true human being, living according to nature. If they cannot bear him, let them kill him; for that is better than living as they do.

16. No longer discuss at all what sort of person the good man ought to be. Be such a person.

17. Keep before your imagination the whole of eternity and the whole of substance, and know that every particular thing is, beside substance, a millet-seed; beside time, a single turn of the drill.

18. As you attend to each thing before you, conceive it already dissolving, already in change, passing as it were into decay or dispersal—or undergoing whatever form of death belongs to the nature of each.

19. What they are like eating, sleeping, copulating, defecating, and all the rest; and then what they are like when lording it over men and strutting, or growing angry and rebuking others from their height. Yet a little while ago, to how many were they slaves, and for what things! And in a little while they will be among such things again.

20. What the nature of the Whole brings to each is to each one’s benefit—and it benefits each at the very time she brings it.

21. Earth is in love with rain,and the majestic aether is in love;the cosmos, too, is in love with makingwhatever is to come to be.

So I say to the cosmos: “I share your love.” Is this not also the sense in which people say, “This loves to happen”?

22. Either you live here, and by now are accustomed to it; or you go elsewhere, and this was what you wished; or you die, and your service is complete. Beyond these, there is nothing. So be of good heart.

23. Let it always be evident to you that the country is like this too, and that everything here is the same as everything on a mountaintop, by the shore, or wherever you please. For you will find Plato’s words exactly fulfilled: “Fencing himself within a fold on a mountain,” he says, “and milking bleatings.”

24. What is this governing faculty of mine? What am I now making of it, and to what use am I now putting it? Is it empty of understanding? Is it severed and torn away from fellowship? Is it glued and blended into this scrap of flesh, so that it sways as the flesh sways?

25. One who flees his master is a fugitive. But the law is master; therefore the lawbreaker is a fugitive. And so too one who grieves or rages or fears does not wish that something should have happened, be happening, or happen hereafter among the things ordained by the governor of all—the governor who is law, allotting to each what falls to each. Therefore one who fears or grieves or rages is a fugitive.

26. He released seed into a womb and withdrew; then another cause took it up, labored upon it, and completed a child. From what a thing, what a thing! Again: he sent food down the throat; then another cause took it up and made sensation and impulse, made life entire and strength—and how many other things, and of what kinds! Contemplate, then, what is coming to be under such a veil; and behold the power just as we behold the power that weighs downward and the power that bears upward—not with our eyes, yet no less vividly.

27. Continually conceive how everything now coming to be came to be in the same way before, and conceive that it will come to be again. Set before your eyes whole dramas and scenes of one pattern, all that you have known from your own experience or from the history of earlier times: the entire court of Hadrian, the entire court of Antoninus, the entire court of Philip, Alexander, Croesus. For all those things were of the same kind; only the actors were different.

28. Picture everyone who grieves or is displeased at anything as like the piglet under sacrifice, kicking and squealing. Like it, too, is the man who, alone upon his little bed, silently laments. Picture our bondage, and remember that to the rational creature alone it has been granted to follow what comes to pass willingly; merely to follow is necessary for all.

29. Pause over each part of everything you do, and ask yourself whether death is terrible because it deprives you of this.

30. Whenever you stumble against someone’s fault, turn at once and reckon what fault like it you commit yourself—for instance, judging money to be a good, or pleasure, or a little fame, and so on by kind. For when you bring this to bear, you will quickly forget your anger, once it also strikes you that he is under compulsion. What else can he do? Or, if you can, take away what compels him.

31. When you see Satyrion, picture the Socraticus who bore the name before him—or Eutyches or Hymen; when you see Euphrates, picture Eutychion or Silvanus; for Alciphron, picture Tropaeophorus; when you see Severus, picture Crito or Xenophon; and when you look upon yourself, picture one of the Caesars—and so, in each case, the corresponding figure. Then let this thought strike you too: Where, then, are those men? Nowhere—or somewhere or other. In this way you will continually see human things as smoke and nothingness, above all if you also remember that what has once changed will never again exist throughout infinite time. Why, then, strain yourself? Why is it not enough for you to pass this brief span with grace and good order?

32. What material, what subject for action you flee! For what are all these things but exercises for reason, once it has looked upon the things of life with precision and in accordance with nature? Stay, then, until you have made even these your own, as the strong stomach makes all food its own, as a bright fire makes flame and radiance from whatever you cast into it.

33. Let no one be able to say truthfully of you that you are not sincere or that you are not good; rather, let whoever forms such an opinion of you be false. All this rests with you—for who prevents you from being good and sincere? Only decide that you will live no longer if you are not to be such a person; for reason itself does not choose life for one who is not.

34. What is the soundest thing that can be done or said with the material now before you? Whatever it may be, you are free to do or say it; do not make the excuse that you are hindered.

You will not cease groaning until you come to feel that, as luxury is to those who live for pleasure, so to you is the doing—upon whatever material is offered and befalls—of what belongs to the human constitution. For you must regard as enjoyment every act you are free to perform in accordance with your own nature; and everywhere you are free.

A cylinder, indeed, is not everywhere allowed to move with its own motion; neither is water, nor fire, nor anything else governed by nature or by an irrational soul, for many things obstruct and withstand them. But mind and reason can travel through everything that opposes them, as their nature and their will direct. Set before your eyes this ease with which reason will be borne through all things—as fire upward, a stone downward, a cylinder down a slope—and seek nothing further. For the remaining hindrances either belong to the little corpse of a body, or else, without judgment and the surrender of reason itself, neither crush nor injure nor do any harm at all. Otherwise the sufferer would at once be made bad. In every other constituted thing, whenever something bad happens to it, the thing affected becomes worse because of it; but here—if one may say so—the human being becomes even better and more praiseworthy by making right use of what befalls.

Remember, in sum, that nothing harms the citizen by nature which does not harm the city, nor does anything harm the city which does not harm the law; and none of these so-called strokes of misfortune harms the law. What does not harm the law, then, harms neither city nor citizen.

35. For one bitten by true doctrines, even the briefest familiar saying is enough to recall him to freedom from grief and fear, such as:

“Leaves—the wind scatters some to the ground;so too the generation of men.”

Little leaves, too, are your children; little leaves are those who cry out with convincing voices and acclaim you, or, on the other side, curse you, or quietly blame and mock you; little leaves, likewise, are those to whom your fame hereafter will pass. For all these “come forth in the season of spring”; then the wind casts them down; and afterward the woodland grows others in their place. Brief duration is common to all, yet you flee and pursue everything as though it were to last forever. In a little while you too will close your eyes, and soon another will mourn the one who carried you to burial.

36. A healthy eye must see everything visible and not say, “I want green things”; for that is the mark of an ailing eye. Healthy hearing and smell must be ready for everything audible and odorous; a healthy stomach must meet every food as a mill meets everything it was made to grind. So too a healthy understanding must be ready for everything that happens. But the understanding that says, “May my children be kept safe,” and, “May everyone praise whatever I do,” is an eye seeking green things, or teeth seeking what is tender.

37. No one is so favored by fortune that, as he dies, some will not stand beside him welcoming the evil that has occurred. He was earnest and wise: yet at the very end will there not be someone saying to himself, “At last we shall breathe freely after this schoolmaster. He was harsh to none of us, but I sensed that he silently condemned us”? So much for the earnest man. But in our own case, how many other reasons there are for which many long to be rid of us.

You will consider this, then, as you die, and depart more easily, reasoning: “I am leaving a life in which my very companions—those for whom I struggled so much, prayed, and took thought—these very people wish me gone, perhaps hoping thereby for some different ease.” Why, then, should anyone cling to a longer stay here?

Yet do not on this account leave them with less goodwill. Preserve your own character: remain friendly, benevolent, gracious. Nor leave as though being torn away. Rather, just as in one who dies a gentle death the little soul is easily drawn from the body, so should your departure from these people be. Nature bound and blended you with them; but now she is dissolving the bond. I am dissolved from them as from my own kin, yet without pulling against it, without compulsion. For this too is one of the things in accordance with nature.

38. With everything anyone does, train yourself, so far as possible, to seek within yourself: To what end does this person refer his action? But begin with yourself, and examine yourself first.

39. Remember: the puppeteer is that hidden presence within. That is the active power, that is life, that—if it must be said—is the human being. Never let your image of it include the vessel-like casing wrapped around it, or these organs moulded about it. For they are like an adze, differing only in being naturally joined to us. Without the cause that moves and controls them, these parts are no more useful than the shuttle to the weaver, the reed-pen to the writer, and the whip to the charioteer.

1. Will you ever, soul, be good, sincere, whole, and bare—more clearly visible than the body surrounding you? Will you ever experience a loving and affectionate state of mind? Will you ever be full and need nothing, with no longing or desire for anything, living or lifeless, to give you pleasure? Will you need no extra time in which to enjoy it, no particular place or country or favorable climate, and no harmonious company? Instead, will you be satisfied with your present situation and pleased with everything you now have? Will you convince yourself that everything you have comes from the gods, that all is well with you and will remain well—whatever pleases them and whatever they choose to give for the preservation of the perfect living creature, which is good, just, and beautiful, which produces everything, holds everything together, surrounds everything, and takes dissolved things back into itself so that other things like them may come into being? Will you ever become fit to live as a fellow citizen with gods and human beings, neither blaming them for anything nor giving them cause to condemn you?

2. Pay attention to what your physical nature asks of you, and then do and accept it, provided that this will not harm your nature as a living being. Next, pay attention to what your nature as a living being asks of you, and accept all of it, provided that this will not harm your nature as a rational living being. Whatever is rational is also social. Follow these rules and do not concern yourself with anything else.

3. Anything that happens is either something you are naturally able to endure or something you are not. If you are naturally able to endure it, do not resent it; endure it as your nature enables you to do. If you are not able to endure it, do not resent it then either, because after it has used you up, it too will end. But remember that you are naturally able to endure anything that your own judgment can make bearable and tolerable by deciding that enduring it benefits you or is the right thing for you to do.

4. If someone is wrong, correct him kindly and point out what he has overlooked. If you cannot do that, blame yourself—or do not blame even yourself.

5. Whatever happens to you was prepared for you from eternity. From all eternity, the chain of causes wove together both your existence and the occurrence of this event.

6. Whether reality consists of atoms or is governed by Nature, begin with these facts: I am part of a whole governed by Nature, and I am closely related to the other parts of the same kind as me. If I remember this, then because I am a part of the whole, I will not be dissatisfied with anything the whole assigns me. Nothing that benefits the whole can harm a part. Every natural system contains nothing that is against its own good; and the cosmos has the further advantage that no external cause can force it to produce anything harmful to itself.

So, by remembering that I am part of a whole like this, I will be content with everything that happens. And because I am related to the other parts of my kind, I will do nothing that works against the community. Instead, I will care for those akin to me, direct every impulse toward the common good, and turn it away from the opposite. If I carry this out, my life must go smoothly, just as the life of a citizen would go smoothly if he moved from one action beneficial to his fellow citizens to another and gladly accepted whatever his city assigned him.

7. The parts of the whole—everything naturally contained in the cosmos—must decay. Here, however, “decay” means “change.” If this process is naturally both bad and unavoidable for the parts, then the whole could not be well governed, since its parts are made in various ways to change and be destroyed. Did Nature deliberately set out to harm her own parts, making them vulnerable to evil and certain to fall into it? Or did Nature fail to notice that this was happening? Neither possibility is believable.

Even if someone ignored Nature and explained these events by saying that things are simply made this way, it would be absurd to say both that the parts of the whole naturally change and that we should be surprised or upset when something supposedly contrary to nature happens. This is especially so because each thing dissolves back into the materials from which it was formed. Either the elements from which it was combined are scattered, or its solid matter changes into earth and its breathlike matter into air. In this way they too are taken back into the ordering reason of the whole, whether the cosmos is periodically consumed by fire or continually renewed through endless exchanges.

Do not imagine that the solid and breathlike matter in you is the same matter you had when you were first born. All of it came flowing into you yesterday or the day before from food and from the air you breathed. So what changes is what your body has taken in, not what your mother gave birth to. But even if you suppose that the original matter is what closely binds you to your individual identity, I do not think that this is actually relevant to the present point.

8. Choose these names for yourself: good, honorable, truthful, clear-minded, accepting, above-minded. Be careful not to acquire different names; and if you lose these, return to them quickly. Remember what they mean. “Clear-minded” means having the knowledge to distinguish each individual thing and allowing no irrelevant thought to enter. “Accepting” means willingly receiving what universal Nature assigns. “Above-minded” means raising the thinking part of yourself above pleasant or painful movements of the body, petty reputation, death, and everything else of that kind.

If you keep yourself worthy of these names without wanting other people to call you by them, you will become a different person and enter a different life. To go on being the person you have been until now, torn apart and stained in a life like this, is the conduct of someone extremely insensitive and desperately attached to life. Such a person resembles a half-eaten fighter of wild beasts who, covered with wounds and blood, still begs to be kept alive until tomorrow, though he will be thrown in that condition to the same claws and teeth.

Commit yourself, then, to these few names. If you can remain true to them, stay there as if you had moved to the islands of the blessed. But if you realize that you are falling away and cannot remain in control, go confidently to some quiet corner where you can regain control. Or leave life altogether—not angrily, but simply, freely, and honorably—having at least done this one thing in life: leaving it in this manner.

To help yourself remember these names, remember the gods. They do not want flattery; they want every rational being to become like them. They want the fig tree to do what belongs to a fig tree, the dog what belongs to a dog, the bee what belongs to a bee, and the human being what belongs to a human being.

9. Playacting, war, alarm, numbness, slavery. Every day your sacred principles will be wiped away, to the extent that you form impressions without studying nature and then neglect them. You must view and do everything so that you deal with the situation at hand, keep your understanding active at the same time, and quietly maintain the confidence that comes from knowing each thing—not hiding it, but not displaying it either. When, then, will you have simplicity? When will you have dignity? When will you know each thing—what it essentially is, what place it has in the universe, how long it is naturally able to last, what it is made of, who can possess it, and who can give or remove it?

10. A spider is proud when it catches a fly; a person when he catches a young hare; someone else when he nets a small fish; another when he catches piglets; another, bears; another, Sarmatians. If you examine their beliefs, are they not all bandits?

11. Develop a way of observing how everything changes into everything else. Keep paying attention to this and train yourself in it, because nothing does more to make the mind great. Such a person has shed his body. He understands that very soon he will have to leave all these things behind and depart from humanity, so he gives himself entirely to justice in what he himself does, and to the nature of the whole in everything else that happens. He does not even think about what anyone may say or believe about him, or do to him. He is satisfied with two things: doing his present action justly and loving what is presently assigned to him. He has abandoned every distraction and anxious effort. He wants only to follow a straight path through the law and, by following it, to follow God.

12. Why be suspicious when you can consider what needs to be done? If you understand it, move toward it calmly and without changing course. If you do not understand it, stop and consult the best advisers. If other things get in the way, proceed thoughtfully with the means you have, holding to what seems just. Achieving justice is best, since missing it is the real failure. A person who follows reason in everything is unhurried but ready to act, cheerful but self-controlled.

13. As soon as you wake, ask yourself: Will it matter to you if someone else criticizes what is just and right? It will not. Have you forgotten what the people who make such a commotion praising and blaming others are like in bed and at meals? What they do, avoid, and chase after? What they steal and grab—not with their hands and feet, but with the most valuable part of themselves, the part that can produce trustworthiness, decency, truth, law, and a good inner spirit whenever it chooses?

14. A well-taught and respectful person says to nature, which gives everything and takes everything back: “Give whatever you want; take back whatever you want.” He says this not arrogantly, but simply because he obeys nature and wishes her well.

15. The time left is short. Live as if you were on a mountain. It makes no difference whether you are there or here, if you live everywhere as a citizen of the universe. Let people see and study a genuine human being who lives according to nature. If they cannot tolerate him, let them kill him. That is better than living the way they do.

16. Stop talking about what a good person should be like. Be one.

17. Continually picture all of time and all of matter, and remember that each individual thing is no more than a grain of millet compared with all matter, and one turn of a drill compared with all time.

18. Whenever you focus on something, imagine it already breaking apart and changing, beginning to rot or scatter, or dying in whatever way is natural to that kind of thing.

19. Think what they are like when they eat, sleep, have sex, defecate, and do everything else. Then think what they are like when they give orders, act proudly, lose their tempers, and scold people from a position of superiority. Not long ago they were slaves to so many people and things—and soon they will be in that condition again.

20. Whatever the nature of the universe brings to each person is good for that person, and it is good at the time nature brings it.

21. The earth longs for rain,and the solemn sky longs too;the universe longs to bring aboutwhatever is going to happen.

So I tell the universe, “I long for it with you.” Is that not also why people say, “This tends to happen”?

22. Either you stay here, and you are used to it by now; or you leave, which is what you wanted; or you die, and your duty is finished. There is no other possibility. So be cheerful.

23. Always keep it clear that the countryside is like this too, and that everything here is the same as it is on top of a mountain, on the seashore, or anywhere you choose. You will find exactly what Plato describes: “enclosing himself in a pen on a mountain,” he says, “and milking the bleating sheep.”

24. What is my ruling mind? What am I making it into now, and what am I using it for? Is it empty of reason? Is it cut off and separated from community? Is it stuck and mixed into this bit of flesh so that it changes whenever the body does?

25. Someone who runs away from his master is a fugitive. The law is our master, so anyone who breaks the law is a fugitive. In the same way, a person who is distressed, angry, or afraid does not want some past, present, or future event that has been ordered by the ruler of everything. That ruler is the law, which assigns to each person what is due to him. So anyone who is afraid, distressed, or angry is a fugitive.

26. A man releases seed into a womb and goes away. Then another cause takes over, works on it, and produces a baby. What a thing is made from such a thing! Again, he sends food down his throat. Then another cause takes over and produces perception, desire, life as a whole, strength, and many other remarkable things. So observe what happens under this covering, and see the power at work just as we see the forces that pull things down and carry them up—not with our eyes, but just as clearly.

27. Keep thinking how everything happening now also happened before, and how it will happen again. Picture entire dramas and similar scenes that you know from your own experience or from older history: the whole court of Hadrian, the whole court of Antoninus, and the whole courts of Philip, Alexander, and Croesus. All of them were the same kind of thing; only the people were different.

28. Think of anyone who is upset or unhappy about anything as a piglet being sacrificed, kicking and squealing. The person who lies alone on his bed and groans in silence is the same. Think of how we are bound, and of how only a rational living being is able to go willingly along with what happens, though everyone must go along with it in any case.

29. With each thing you do, stop and ask yourself: Is death frightening because I will no longer have this?

30. Whenever someone’s wrongdoing offends you, immediately turn to the similar ways in which you go wrong—for example, by thinking that money, pleasure, a little reputation, or something else of that kind is good. Focusing on this will quickly end your anger, especially when you also realize that the person is driven by something. What else can he do? Or, if you can, remove what is driving him.

31. When you see Satyrion, think of the earlier Socraticus, or of Eutyches or Hymen. When you see Euphrates, think of Eutychion or Silvanus; when you see Alciphron, think of Tropaeophorus; when you see Severus, think of Crito or Xenophon. When you look at yourself, think of one of the Caesars. Do the same with everyone by finding a comparable person from the past. Then ask yourself: Where are those people now? Nowhere—or wherever they may be. This will help you keep seeing human affairs as smoke and nothing, especially if you remember that once something has changed, it will never exist again in all of infinite time. So why strain yourself? Why is it not enough to pass through this short life decently?

32. What material and opportunity you are running away from! All these things are simply training for a mind that has examined life accurately and naturally. So remain until you can absorb even these things, just as a healthy stomach absorbs every kind of food and a bright fire turns whatever you throw into it into flame and light.

33. Do not let anyone truthfully say that you are dishonest or not good. Anyone who thinks this about you should be wrong. This is entirely up to you. Who is stopping you from being good and honest? Decide simply that you will not go on living unless you are that kind of person, since reason does not choose life without goodness and honesty.

34. What is the most reasonable thing you can do or say with the situation in front of you? Whatever it is, you are free to do or say it, so do not claim that something prevents you.

You will not stop complaining until acting as a human being should in every situation that comes your way feels as pleasant to you as luxury feels to people devoted to pleasure. You should consider every action you can perform in keeping with your own nature an enjoyment. You can do that everywhere.

A cylinder cannot follow its natural motion everywhere. Neither can water, fire, or anything else controlled by physical nature or an unreasoning soul, because many things block and resist them. But mind and reason can pass through everything that opposes them in the way their nature and will require. Keep before your eyes how easily reason can move through everything—like fire moving upward, a stone downward, or a cylinder down a slope—and ask for nothing more. Every other obstacle either affects the body, which is a little corpse, or else cannot crush, injure, or harm you at all unless you judge it harmful and reason itself gives way. Otherwise, anyone who suffered something would immediately become a bad person. With every other kind of thing, if something bad happens to it, the thing affected becomes worse because of it. But in this case, we might even say that a person becomes better and more worthy of praise by using well whatever happens.

In short, remember that nothing can harm a natural citizen unless it harms the city, and nothing can harm the city unless it harms the law. None of the events called misfortunes harms the law. Therefore, what does not harm the law harms neither the city nor its citizen.

35. For someone deeply affected by true principles, even a very short and familiar saying is enough to remind him not to grieve or be afraid. For example:

“The wind scatters some leaves on the ground;the generations of men are the same.”

Your children are little leaves too. So are the people who loudly and convincingly praise and celebrate you, and those who instead curse you or quietly criticize and ridicule you. The people who inherit your reputation after death are also little leaves. They all “appear in the season of spring”; then the wind knocks them down, and the forest grows others in their place. Everything lasts only a short time, but you avoid and chase things as if they would last forever. Soon you will close your eyes, and before long someone else will mourn the person who carried your body out.

36. A healthy eye should see everything that can be seen and not say, “I only want green things.” That is what a diseased eye does. Healthy hearing and smell should be ready for every sound and scent, and a healthy stomach should accept every kind of food, just as a mill accepts everything it was built to grind. In the same way, a healthy mind should be ready for everything that happens. A mind that says, “My children must stay safe,” or “Everyone must praise whatever I do,” is like an eye that wants only green things or teeth that want only soft food.

37. No one is so fortunate that, when he dies, some people standing nearby will not be glad about the bad thing that has happened to him. Even if he was a good and wise man, will there not be someone who finally says to himself, “At last we can breathe freely without this teacher. He was not hard on any of us, but I could tell that he silently disapproved of us”? That is true even of a good person. As for us, there are many more reasons why plenty of people will be eager to get rid of us.

Remember this when you are dying, and you will leave more easily if you think: “I am leaving a life in which my own companions—the people for whom I struggled, prayed, and cared so much—want me to go, perhaps hoping they will gain some other kind of relief from it.” So why would anyone cling to a longer stay here?

But do not leave them with any less goodwill because of this. Keep your own character and remain friendly, kind, and gracious to them. Do not leave as if you were being torn away. When someone dies peacefully, the small soul slips easily from the body; your departure from these people should be like that. Nature joined and united you with them, but now it is separating you. I am parting from people who are my own, but without resisting and without being forced. This too is natural.

38. Whenever someone does something, make a habit of asking yourself, as far as you can, “What is this person trying to achieve by doing this?” But start with yourself: examine yourself first.

39. Remember that what pulls the strings is what lies hidden inside. It is the active force, it is life, it is—if we must say so—the person. Never confuse it in your mind with the container-like body around it or with the organs formed around it. They are like an adze, except that they are naturally attached to us. Without the cause that moves and controls them, these parts are no more useful than a shuttle is to a weaver, a pen to a writer, or a whip to a charioteer.

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.