Book XII

1. All those things you pray to reach by some roundabout course you can have already, if you do not begrudge them to yourself. And this means: leave the whole past behind, entrust the future to providence, and direct the present alone toward holiness and justice. Toward holiness, so that you may love what is allotted—for nature was bringing it to you, and you to it. Toward justice, so that freely and without entanglement you may speak the truth and do what accords with law and with worth. Let neither another’s vice obstruct you, nor supposition, nor voice, nor even any sensation of the little parcel of flesh grown around you; what suffers will see to itself. If, then, whenever you come to the point of departure, you leave all else behind and honor only your governing faculty and the divine within you; if you fear not that you must someday cease to live, but that you may never have begun to live according to nature—you will be a human being worthy of the cosmos that gave you birth. You will cease to be a stranger in your homeland, marveling as though unexpected at what happens every day, hanging upon this thing and that.

2. God sees every governing faculty stripped bare of its material vessels and husks and refuse. For with his own intelligence alone he touches only what has streamed and been channeled from himself into them. If you too accustom yourself to doing this, you will strip away much of your distraction. For surely one who does not look at the scraps of flesh wrapped around a person will hardly busy himself gazing at clothing and house and reputation, and at all such costume and stage scenery.

3. There are three things of which you are composed: a little body, a little breath, and mind. Of these, the first two are yours only insofar as you must care for them; the third alone is yours in the sovereign sense. So if you separate from yourself—that is, from your thought—whatever others do or say; whatever you yourself have done or said; whatever troubles you as still to come; whatever belongs involuntarily to the body enclosing you or the breath born with it; and whatever the encircling whirl outside sweeps spinning round—so that your power of intelligence, released from all that fate has woven with it, may live by itself, pure and unbound, doing what is just, willing what comes to pass, and speaking the truth—if, I say, you separate from this governing faculty all that attachment has fastened to it, and all that lies beyond the present in time or has passed away; if you make yourself like the sphere of Empedocles,

round, rejoicing in the solitude surrounding it,

and train yourself to live only what you are living—that is, the present—then you will be able to live out what remains until death undisturbed, graciously, and at peace with your own indwelling divinity.

4. I have often wondered how each person loves himself more than anyone else, yet sets less value on his own judgment of himself than on the judgment of others. At any rate, if a god appearing beside him, or a wise teacher, were to command him to conceive and think nothing inwardly that he would not at the same time utter aloud, he would not endure it for even one day. So much more do we stand in awe of what our neighbors will think of us than of ourselves.

5. How could the gods, after ordering all things well and with love for humankind, have overlooked this alone: that some human beings, exceptionally good, who had as it were made the greatest number of covenants with the divine, and through holy works and sacred observances had long grown intimate with it, should, once dead, never come into being again, but be utterly extinguished? Yet if this is indeed how things are, know well that, had they needed to be otherwise, the gods would have made them so. For if it were just, it would also be possible; and if it accorded with nature, nature would have brought it about. From its not being so—if indeed it is not so—let yourself be assured that it ought not to have been so. You see yourself that, in pressing this inquiry beyond bounds, you are pleading a case against the god; but we would not argue so with the gods unless they were supremely good and just. And if they are, they would not have allowed anything in the ordering of the world to remain unjustly and irrationally neglected.

6. Train yourself even in the things you despair of mastering. For the left hand, though unskilled in other tasks through lack of practice, holds the reins more firmly than the right: in this it has been trained.

7. In what condition death should find you, in body and in soul;the brevity of life;the measureless abyss of eternity behind and before;the frailty of all matter.

8. To behold causal principles stripped of their husks;the ends to which actions are referred;what pain is;what pleasure is;what death is;what reputation is;who is not himself the cause of his own busyness;how no one is obstructed by another;that all is supposition.

9. In the use of your principles, you must be like a pankratiast, not a gladiator. For the gladiator lays aside the sword he uses, and it is taken from him; the other always has his hand, and needs only to close it into a fist.

10. See the things themselves, dividing each into matter, cause, and end.

11. How great the power a human being possesses: to do nothing but what God is about to praise, and to welcome whatever God may allot him, as the next consequence of nature.

12. Blame neither the gods, for they do no wrong either willingly or unwillingly; nor human beings, for they do no wrong except unwillingly. Therefore blame no one.

13. How ridiculous, and how foreign to the world, is the person who marvels at anything that happens in life.

14. Either the necessity of fate and an order not to be transgressed; or providence that may be won to mercy; or an unguided welter of chance. If, then, necessity cannot be transgressed, why resist? If it is providence admitting of supplication, make yourself worthy of help from the divine. But if it is a welter without a guide, be glad that in such a storm you have within yourself a mind that can guide. And even if the storm carries you away, let it carry away the little flesh, the little breath,

15. the rest; it will not carry away the mind. What? The light of a lamp shines until it is quenched and does not lose its radiance beforehand—yet will the truth, justice, and self-command within you be quenched before your own end?

16. When someone gives you the impression that he has gone wrong: But how do I know that this is a wrong? And even if he has gone wrong, how do I know he has not condemned himself? If so, it is like tearing at his own face.

To wish that a bad person should not go wrong is like wishing that a fig tree should bear no milky sap in its figs, that infants should not whimper, that a horse should not neigh, and that all other necessary things should not occur. What else can someone with such a disposition do? If you have the vigor, then cure the disposition.

17. If it is not fitting, do not do it; if it is not true, do not say it. Let your impulse be always to see, in every case, what precisely the thing is that produces the impression in you, and to unfold it by dividing it into its cause, its matter, its reference, and the span of time within which it must come to an end.

18. Perceive at last that you have within yourself something stronger and more divine than the things that stir your passions and, in a word, jerk you about like a puppet. What is my mind now? Fear? Suspicion? Desire? Something else of that kind?

19. First: nothing at random, nothing without a reference. Second: refer what you do to no end but the common good.

20. Before long you will be no one, nowhere; and so will everything you now behold, and everyone now alive. For all things are born to change, to turn, and to perish, so that others may arise in succession.

21. All is judgment—and the judgment is in your power. Then cast it away whenever you choose, and, as for one who has rounded the headland, there is calm: all is steady, and the bay has no waves.

22. Any single activity, when it ceases at the proper time, suffers no evil in the very fact of ceasing; nor has the one who performed that action suffered any evil in the very fact that it ceased. In the same way, the system composed of all our actions—which is life—suffers no evil if it ceases at the proper time, in the very fact of ceasing; nor is the one who brings this sequence to a timely close thereby placed in an evil condition.

Nature gives the proper time and the boundary: sometimes one’s own nature, as in old age, but in every case the nature of the whole. Through the change of its parts, the entire cosmos remains forever young and in its prime. Whatever benefits the whole is always beautiful and seasonable. Thus the ending of life is no evil for anyone, because it is no disgrace, being both beyond our choice and not contrary to fellowship; and it is a good if it is timely for the whole, benefits it, and is borne along with it. For in this way a person too is borne by God: one who is borne along the same course as God and whose purpose carries him toward the same ends.

23. Keep these three things ready at hand. First, regarding what you do: do nothing at random or otherwise than Justice herself would have acted. Regarding what happens from without: it comes either by chance or by providence; and chance must not be blamed, nor providence accused.

Second: consider what each thing is from seed until it receives a soul, and from receiving a soul until it gives that soul back; from what elements it is compounded, and into what it is dissolved.

Third: if you were suddenly lifted high above the earth and looked down upon human affairs and all their teeming variety, you would disdain them, seeing at the same moment how vast is the host surrounding them, of beings dwelling in air and ether. And however often you were lifted up, you would see the same things: sameness of kind, brevity of life. And over these things—our pride.

24. Cast out the judgment: you are saved. Who, then, prevents you from casting it out?

25. Whenever you are distressed at something, you have forgotten that all things come to pass according to the nature of the whole; that the wrongdoing belongs to another; and, besides, that everything now happening has always happened so, will happen so, and is happening everywhere at this moment. You have forgotten how close the kinship is between one human being and the whole human race: no fellowship of a little blood or seed, but a fellowship of mind.

You have forgotten, too, that each person’s mind is a god and has flowed from there; that nothing belongs to anyone, but your little child, your little body, and even your little soul have come from there; that all is judgment; and that each person lives only the present—and this alone is what he loses.

26. Continually call to mind those who were excessively indignant over something; those who reached their height amid the greatest fame, calamities, enmities, or fortunes of whatever kind. Then pause and ask: Where is all that now? Smoke and ash and a tale—or not even a tale.

Let every such example occur to you as well: Fabius Catullinus on his estate, Lusius Lupus in his gardens, Stertinius at Baiae, Tiberius on Capri, Velius Rufus—and, in general, all the fuss of preferring one place of residence to another. Think how paltry everything is for which our efforts are strained, and how much more philosophical it is, with the material given you, to present yourself plainly as just, self-controlled, and a follower of the gods. For pride that prides itself on freedom from pride is the most unbearable pride of all.

27. To those who ask, “Where have you seen the gods, or from what evidence have you grasped that they exist, that you revere them so?” First, they are visible even to the eyes. And further, I have not seen my own soul either, yet I honor it. So too with the gods: from the effects of their power, which I experience at every moment, I grasp that they exist, and I stand in awe of them.

28. The salvation of life is to see each thing through and through: what its matter is, and what its cause; to do what is just with your whole soul, and to speak what is true. What remains but to delight in living, joining one good thing to another, and leaving not even the smallest interval between?

29. One light of the sun, though divided by walls, mountains, and ten thousand other things. One common substance, though divided among ten thousand bodies, each with its own qualities. One soul, though divided among ten thousand natures and their individual bounds. One rational soul, though it seems to have been separated.

Now the other parts of what has been named—breaths and insensible substrates, for example—are alien and unrelated to one another; yet even these are held together by the power that unites them and by their gravitation in the same directions. But mind reaches in a special way toward what shares its nature and joins with it, and its feeling for fellowship cannot be shut out.

30. What is it you seek? To go on existing? But is it to keep sensing? To keep impelling yourself? Growing? Then ceasing once again? Using your voice? Thinking? Which of these seems to you worth longing for? But if each is easy to disdain, advance to the last thing: to follow reason and God. Yet at war with this is the honoring of those things, and the grief that death will deprive one of them.

31. How tiny a portion of boundless, fathomless eternity is allotted to each of us—for in an instant it vanishes into the everlasting. How tiny a portion of the whole substance; how tiny a portion of the whole soul; on how tiny a clod of the whole earth you creep. Bearing all this in mind, imagine nothing great but this: to act as your own nature leads, and to undergo whatever the common nature brings.

32. How does the ruling faculty use itself? In this lies everything. The rest, whether within choice or beyond choice, is dead matter and smoke.

33. The most powerful spur to disdain death is that even those who judged pleasure to be good and pain evil nevertheless disdained it.

34. For one to whom only the timely is good; to whom the accomplishment of more actions in accord with right reason stands equal with fewer; and to whom it makes no difference whether he beholds the cosmos for a longer or a shorter time—for him, not even death is fearful.

35. Human being, you have lived as a citizen in this great city. What difference does it make to you whether for five years or fifty? For what accords with the laws is equal for everyone. What, then, is terrible if no tyrant or unjust judge sends you away from the city, but the very nature that brought you into it—as though the magistrate who engaged a comic actor were to release him from the stage?

“But I did not perform the five acts, only three.”

“Well performed. Yet in life, the three are the whole drama.”

For the one who once caused your composition and now causes your dissolution determines where the completion lies; you are responsible for neither. Depart, then, in good grace, for the one who releases you is gracious too.

1. You can already possess everything you pray to reach by a long route, if you do not deny it to yourself. To do that, leave the whole past behind, entrust the future to providence, and guide the present alone toward reverence and justice. Be reverent by loving what is assigned to you, because nature brought it to you and brought you to it. Be just by speaking the truth freely and plainly, and by acting according to law and according to what each person deserves. Do not let another person’s wrongdoing, an opinion, a spoken word, or even a sensation in the small body surrounding you get in your way; the part that suffers will take care of that. So whenever you are about to leave life, abandon everything else and honor only your governing mind and the divine element within you. Do not fear that you will someday stop living; fear instead that you may never have begun to live according to nature. Then you will be a person worthy of the world that gave you birth. You will stop being a foreigner in your own country, being amazed at daily events as if they were unexpected, and depending on one thing after another.

2. God sees every governing mind naked, without its material containers, coverings, and waste. With his intelligence alone, he makes contact only with what has flowed from himself and been directed into those minds. If you train yourself to do this too, you will remove much of your distraction. Anyone who does not look at the pieces of flesh around a person will certainly not waste time looking at clothes, a house, reputation, and all the other outward display and stage setting.

3. You are made of three things: a small body, a small breath of life, and a mind. The first two are yours only in the sense that you must take care of them. Only the third is fully your own. So separate from yourself—that is, from your thinking—everything other people do or say; everything you have done or said; everything in the future that disturbs you; everything involuntary that belongs to the body around you or to the breath joined with it from birth; and everything swept about by the whirl of events outside you. Let your power of thought be detached from all that fate has bound to it, so that it can live on its own, pure and free, doing what is right, wanting what happens, and telling the truth. Separate, I mean, from your governing mind everything attached to it by emotional dependence, as well as everything in time that is still to come or has already passed. Make yourself like Empedocles’ sphere,

perfectly round, delighting in the solitude around it,

and practice living only the life you are living now—the present. Then you will be able to live the time left before death without disturbance, with goodwill, and at peace with your own inner divinity.

4. I have often wondered why every person loves himself more than anyone else, yet values his own opinion of himself less than other people’s opinion. If a god appeared beside him, or a wise teacher told him not to think anything privately that he would not immediately say out loud, he could not bear it for even one day. This is how much more we care about what those around us will think of us than about what we think of ourselves.

5. How could the gods have arranged everything well and kindly toward humanity, yet overlooked this one thing: that some people who were thoroughly good, who had formed more bonds with the divine than most, and who had long become close to it through holy deeds and sacred rites, should die once and never exist again, but be completely extinguished? But if that really is what happens, be sure that if things needed to be different, the gods would have made them different. If it were just, it would also be possible; and if it were natural, nature would have produced it. Since it is not so, if in fact it is not, take that as proof that it did not need to be so. You can see that by pushing this question further, you are arguing a case against God. But we would not argue this way with the gods unless they were perfectly good and just. And if they are, they would not have let anything in the order of the world be unfairly and unreasonably neglected.

6. Practice even the things you have given up hope of doing. The left hand is clumsy at other tasks because it lacks practice, but it holds the reins more firmly than the right hand, because it is used to doing that.

7. What your body and soul should be like when death overtakes you;how short life is;how endless the eternity is behind you and ahead of you;how weak all matter is.

8. See causes without their coverings;see what actions are aiming at;what pain is;what pleasure is;what death is;what reputation is;how each person causes his own lack of peace;how no one is blocked by someone else;how everything depends on judgment.

9. When using your principles, be like an unarmed all-in fighter, not a swordsman. A swordsman puts down the sword he uses, and it can be taken away. The fighter always has his hand with him and only needs to make a fist.

10. Look at the things themselves, separating each into its material, its cause, and its purpose.

11. A human being has great power: to do only what God will approve, and to accept whatever God assigns him as the next event in nature.

12. Do not blame the gods, because they never do wrong, either deliberately or accidentally. Do not blame people, because they do wrong only without understanding. So blame no one.

13. Anyone who is surprised at anything that happens in life is absurd and out of place in the world.

14. There is either the necessity of fate and an unbreakable order, or a providence that can answer prayer, or an uncontrolled mixture of chance. If necessity is unbreakable, why fight it? If there is providence that can be appealed to, make yourself worthy of divine help. If there is only a mixture with nothing in command, be glad that in such a storm you have a governing mind within you. And if the storm sweeps you away, let it sweep away the small body, the small breath,

15. and everything else; it will not sweep away your mind. A lamp keeps shining until it goes out and does not lose its light beforehand. So will the truth, justice, and self-control within you go out before you do?

16. When someone makes you think he has done wrong, ask: How do I know that this is wrong? And even if he did wrong, how do I know that he has not condemned himself? In that case, he is like someone scratching his own face.

Wanting a bad person not to do wrong is like wanting a fig tree not to produce sap in its figs, babies not to cry, a horse not to neigh, and other unavoidable things not to happen. What else can a person with that kind of character do? So if you are capable, cure that character.

17. If an action is not right, do not take it. If a statement is not true, do not make it. Always aim to see exactly what is causing your impression, and analyze it by separating its cause, its material, what it relates to, and the time by which it will have ceased.

18. Realize that there is something in you stronger and more divine than the things that produce your emotions and pull your strings. What occupies my mind now? Is it fear? Suspicion? Desire? Something else like these?

19. First, do nothing aimlessly or without a purpose. Second, direct your actions only toward the social end.

20. Soon you will exist nowhere, and neither will anything you now see or anyone now living. Everything naturally changes, is transformed, and passes away, so that other things can come after it.

21. Everything depends on judgment, and that judgment is under your control. Remove it whenever you wish. Then it is like sailing around a headland into calm water: everything is stable, and the bay is free of waves.

22. A particular activity that stops at the right time is not harmed simply because it has stopped. The person who performed it is likewise not harmed simply because it ended. In the same way, the whole series of actions that makes up a life is not harmed if it ends at the right time, just because it ends. Nor is a person put in a bad condition by bringing that sequence to an end at the proper time.

Nature determines the proper time and limit. Sometimes a person’s own nature does so, as in old age, but the nature of the universe always does. As its parts change, the whole cosmos remains forever young and vigorous. Whatever serves the whole is always beautiful and timely. So the ending of life is not bad for anyone, since it is not shameful: it is not a matter of choice, and it is not against our common bond. It is good if it comes at the right time for the whole, serves the whole, and moves in harmony with it. In this way, the person who follows the same course as God and deliberately moves toward the same ends is also carried by God.

23. Keep three points ready in your mind. First, in what you do, act neither aimlessly nor in any way other than Justice herself would act. As for events that come from outside, they happen either by chance or by providence. You should neither blame chance nor accuse providence.

Second, consider what each thing is like from its seed until it is given life, and from the time it is given life until it gives its soul back. Consider what it is made from and what it breaks down into.

Third, if you were suddenly raised high above the earth and looked down at human life in all its variety, you would look on it with contempt when you also saw the vast numbers of beings inhabiting the air and the heavens around it. Every time you rose, you would see the same things: all of one kind and all short-lived. And these are what inspire pride.

24. Get rid of the judgment, and you are safe. What is stopping you from getting rid of it?

25. When something upsets you, you have forgotten that everything happens in accordance with the nature of the universe; that the mistake is someone else’s; and that everything which happens has always happened this way, will happen this way, and is now happening everywhere. You have forgotten how closely every human being is related to the entire human race—not through a small amount of blood or semen, but through a shared mind.

You have also forgotten that every person’s mind is divine and has flowed from that source; that nothing is anyone’s private possession, since your child, your body, and your soul itself have come from there; that everything is judgment; and that each person lives only in the present and loses only the present.

26. Keep remembering people who became extremely angry about something, and people who rose to prominence through great fame, disasters, feuds, or any kind of fortune. Then stop and ask: Where is all of that now? It is smoke and ash and a story—or not even a story.

Think also of examples like Fabius Catullinus at his country estate, Lusius Lupus in his gardens, Stertinius at Baiae, Tiberius on Capri, and Velius Rufus—in short, all the importance attached to moving to one place rather than another. See how cheap everything is that people struggle so hard to obtain, and how much more philosophical it is simply to use the material you have been given to make yourself just, self-controlled, and obedient to the gods. The pride that boasts of having no pride is the hardest pride of all to bear.

27. For those who ask, “Where have you seen the gods? How did you learn that they exist, so that you worship them?” First, they can in fact be seen. Besides, I have never seen my own soul, yet I respect it. It is the same with the gods: I continually experience what their power does, and from this I understand that they exist and revere them.

28. To preserve your life, see every thing fully for what it is: what its material is and what causes it. Do what is right with all your soul, and say what is true. What remains except to enjoy living by adding one good action to the next, without leaving even the shortest gap?

29. The sun’s light is one, although walls, mountains, and countless other things divide it. The substance shared by all things is one, although it is divided among countless bodies with their own particular qualities. Soul is one, although it is divided among countless living natures, each with its own boundaries. Rational soul is one, even though it seems to be separated.

The other components just mentioned—such as vital breaths and material foundations without sensation—are unrelated and foreign to one another. Even so, the force that unifies them and their tendency to move in the same directions hold them together. But a mind naturally reaches toward and joins with minds of its own kind, and its social feeling is not blocked by separation.

30. What are you trying to keep? Your continued existence? Does that mean sensation, impulse, growth, then stopping again, using your voice, and thinking? Which of these seems worth desiring? If each one is easy to disregard, move on to the final task: following reason and God. But you cannot do that consistently while valuing those other things and resenting the thought that death will take them away.

31. Think how small a part of infinite and immeasurable time is assigned to each person; it quickly disappears into eternity. Think how small a part of all substance and of the universal soul is yours, and on what a small clump of the whole earth you crawl. With all this in mind, consider nothing important except acting as your own nature directs and accepting what universal nature brings.

32. What use does your governing mind make of itself? Everything depends on that. Everything else, whether chosen or not chosen, is lifeless and smoke.

33. The strongest reason not to fear death is that even people who regarded pleasure as good and pain as bad still treated death with contempt.

34. If a person sees only what is fitting for the occasion as good, regards doing more actions in line with right reason as no better than doing fewer, and sees no difference between observing the world for a longer or a shorter time, then death is not frightening to that person either.

35. You are human, and you have been a citizen in this great city. What difference does it make to you whether it was for five years or fifty? What follows the laws is equal for everyone. So what is so terrible if the one sending you away from the city is not a tyrant or an unjust judge, but the nature that brought you into it? It is like a magistrate releasing from the stage the comic actor he had engaged.

“But I performed only three acts, not five.”

“That is fine. In life, three acts can be the whole play.”

The one who caused you to be put together then, and causes you to be dissolved now, decides what counts as complete. You are responsible for neither. So leave peacefully, since the one releasing you is peaceful too.

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.