Book II

1. At dawn, say beforehand to yourself: I shall meet a meddler, an ingrate, an insolent man, a deceiver, an envier, one who shuns fellowship. All these traits have befallen them through ignorance of good and evil. But I have beheld the nature of the good—that it is beautiful—and of evil—that it is shameful—and the nature of the wrongdoer himself: that he is akin to me, not by the same blood or seed, but by sharing in mind and in a portion of the divine. Therefore none of them can harm me, for no one can clothe me in shame; nor can I be angry with my kinsman or hate him. For we were born to work together, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of upper and lower teeth. To work against one another, then, is contrary to nature; and resentment and aversion are forms of working against one another.

2. Whatever this thing is that I am, it is a little flesh, a little breath, and the ruling faculty. As for the flesh, hold it in contempt: gore and little bones, a woven skein, a mesh of sinews, tiny veins, and arteries. Consider the breath too, what sort of thing it is: wind—not even always the same, but at every moment vomited out and sucked in again. The third, then, is the ruling faculty. Let the books go; be pulled no longer—this has not been granted you. Instead, think in this way, as one already dying: you are old; no longer let this faculty be enslaved, no longer let it be twitched like a puppet by an impulse hostile to fellowship, no longer resent what fate has brought in the present or look suspiciously upon what is to come.

3. The works of the gods are full of providence. The works of chance are not without nature, nor without a co-spinning and entanglement with all that providence orders. Everything flows from there; and joined to it are necessity and what benefits the whole cosmos, of which you are a part. For every part of nature, what the nature of the whole brings is good, as is whatever preserves that nature. And the cosmos is preserved by transformations: those of the elements, and likewise those of the things compounded from them. Let these things suffice you; let them always be your principles. Cast away your thirst for books, so that you may die not murmuring, but truly gracious and grateful to the gods from your heart.

4. Remember how long you have been postponing these things, and how often the gods have granted you extensions that you have not used. At last you must perceive of what cosmos you are a part, from what governor of the cosmos you came forth as an outflow, and that a boundary has been drawn around your allotted time. If you do not use it to emerge into the clear, it will pass away—and you will pass away—and no further chance will come.

5. At every hour, take steadfast care—as a Roman and a man—to carry out the task in hand with exact... and unaffected dignity, with loving care, freedom, and justice, and to secure for yourself release from every other impression. You will secure it if you perform each action as though it were the last of your life, freed from all aimlessness, from every passionate recoil away from the reason that chooses, from pretence, self-love, and discontent with what has fallen to your share. You see how few are the things which, once mastered, enable a person to live a smoothly flowing and god-revering life; for the gods themselves will ask nothing more of one who guards these things.

6. You do yourself violence, do yourself violence, O soul; and you will have no further season in which to honor yourself. Each person’s life is a moment, and yours is almost spent—yet you do not revere yourself, but place your good fortune in the souls of others.

7. Are things that strike you from outside scattering your attention? Then grant yourself the leisure to learn some further good thing, and cease drifting. But now you must guard against another kind of circling too: for those who are wearied by life and have no goal toward which they direct every impulse and, without exception, every impression, babble even in their deeds.

8. A person is seldom seen in misery for failing to attend to what is happening in another’s soul; but those who do not follow closely the movements of their own soul must necessarily be miserable.

9. Always remember these things: what the nature of the whole is, and what my own nature is; how this stands toward that; what kind of part it is, and of what kind of whole; and that no one can hinder you from always doing and saying what follows the nature of which you are a part.

10. Theophrastus, philosophically comparing wrongdoings—as such things might be compared in more ordinary terms—says that offences committed from desire are graver than those committed from anger. For one who is angry appears to turn away from reason with a certain pain and an inward contraction of which he is unaware; but one who goes wrong from desire, conquered by pleasure, appears somehow more undisciplined and more effeminate in his wrongdoing. Rightly, then, and worthily of philosophy, he said that an offence attended by pleasure merits a greater charge than one attended by pain. In general, the first is more like someone who has suffered a prior wrong and has been forced by pain into anger; the other has launched himself into wrongdoing from the outset, carried toward some act by desire.

11. Do and say and think each thing as one who may even now depart from life. But to go away from humankind, if gods exist, is nothing terrible; for they would not clothe you in evil. If, however, they do not exist, or if human affairs do not concern them, why should I live in a cosmos empty of gods or empty of providence? Yet they do exist, and human affairs do concern them; and so that a human being may not fall into what is truly evil, they placed the whole power in his own hands. And if anything among the remaining things were evil, they would have provided for that as well, so that it would lie within everyone’s power not to fall into it. (But how could what does not make a human being worse make a human life worse?) The nature of the whole would not have overlooked these things through ignorance; nor would she have known of them yet lacked the power to guard against or correct them. Nor would she have erred so greatly, through either incapacity or want of skill, that good and evil should befall good people and bad alike, confusedly and without distinction. Yet death and life, fame and obscurity, pain and pleasure, wealth and poverty—all these befall good people and bad alike, being neither beautiful nor shameful. Therefore they are neither good nor evil.

12. How swiftly everything vanishes back into what it came from: the bodies themselves into the cosmos, and their memories into eternity. What all things perceived by the senses are like—especially those that entice by pleasure, terrify by pain, or are loudly acclaimed by vanity; how cheap they are, how contemptible, soiled, perishable, and dead—these are matters for the mind’s power to dwell upon. And what are those people whose judgments and voices bestow good repute and ill repute? What is it to die? If one looks at death alone and, by dividing the conception, dissolves the phantoms associated with it, one will no longer suppose it to be anything but a work of nature. Whoever fears a work of nature is a child; and death is not only nature’s work, but also serves her good. How the human being touches god, through what part of himself, and how that human part must be disposed when he does.

13. Nothing is more wretched than one who makes the circuit of everything, “searching out,” as the poet says, “the depths beneath the earth,” and seeking by conjecture what lies in the souls of those around him, yet fails to perceive that it is enough to remain with the divinity within himself and serve it faithfully. Its service is to keep it pure of passion, aimlessness, and discontent with what comes from gods and human beings. What comes from the gods deserves reverence for its excellence; what comes from human beings deserves affection for our kinship—and sometimes, in a certain way, pity as well, because of their ignorance of good and evil. This impairment is no less severe than the one that takes away the power to distinguish white from black.

14. Even if you were to live three thousand years, and ten thousand times as many, still remember that no one loses any life but the one he is living, nor lives any life but the one he loses. Thus the longest life comes to the same as the shortest. For the present is equal for all; therefore what passes away is equal, and what is lost proves to be no more than an instant. No one could lose either the past or the future: how could anyone be deprived of what he does not possess?

Always remember, then, these two things. First: all things from eternity are of one kind and return in cycles, and it makes no difference whether one sees the same things in a hundred years, in two hundred, or through infinite time. Second: the longest-lived and the soonest dead lose an equal amount. For the present is the only thing of which a person is to be deprived, if indeed this alone is what he has—and no one loses what he does not have.

15. That everything is judgment. The objections raised against Monimus the Cynic are plain enough; plain, too, is the value of the saying, if one accepts what is wholesome in it only so far as it is true.

16. The human soul violates itself most of all when, so far as it can, it becomes an abscess and, as it were, a tumor upon the cosmos. For to resent anything that comes to pass is to revolt from Nature, within whom the individual natures of all other things are severally contained.

Next, when it turns away from another human being, or even moves against him with intent to harm—as do the souls of those in anger.

Third, it violates itself when it is overcome by pleasure or pain.

Fourth, when it plays a part, and does or says anything under a mask and without truth.

Fifth, when it lets any act or impulse of its own go forth toward no aim, but does whatever it does at random and without due attention—though even the smallest actions ought to be governed by reference to the end. And the end for rational creatures is to follow the reason and ordinance of the most ancient city and commonwealth.

17. The span of human life is a point; its substance, a flow; its perception, dim; the whole body’s composition, quick to rot; the soul, a wanderer; fortune, hard to fathom; fame, undiscerning. In sum: all that belongs to the body is a river; all that belongs to the soul, dream and delusion; life is warfare and a stranger’s sojourn; and fame hereafter is oblivion.

What, then, can escort us on our way? One thing, and one alone: philosophy. And this consists in keeping the divinity within inviolate and unharmed, master of pleasures and pains; doing nothing at random, nothing falsely or with pretence; needing no other person to do something or leave it undone; and further, receiving whatever befalls and is allotted as coming from that same source from which it came itself. Above all, it awaits death with a gracious mind, as nothing but the release of the elements from which every living creature is composed. If there is nothing terrible for the elements themselves in each one’s ceaseless change into another, why should anyone look askance at the change and dissolution of them all? It accords with nature; and nothing that accords with nature is evil.

1. In the morning, tell yourself in advance: I will meet people who are meddlesome, ungrateful, abusive, deceitful, envious, and unwilling to cooperate. All this has happened to them because they do not know what is good and what is evil. But I have understood that good is morally beautiful and evil is shameful, and that the person who does wrong is related to me—not by the same blood or ancestry, but because we share reason and a portion of the divine. So none of them can harm me, because no one can involve me in anything shameful. Nor can I be angry with or hate someone related to me. We came into being to work together, like feet, hands, eyelids, and the upper and lower rows of teeth. Working against one another is therefore against nature; and being resentful or turning away from someone is working against them.

2. Whatever I am, I am a bit of flesh, a bit of breath, and the mind that governs me. Think little of the flesh: it is blood and small bones, a woven network of sinews, veins, and arteries. Look also at what the breath is: air, never remaining the same, but breathed out and drawn in again every moment. What remains, then, is the governing mind. Let go of books. Stop being pulled in different directions; you have not been given time for that. Instead, think of yourself as already dying: you are old. Do not let your mind remain a slave. Do not let it be jerked around like a puppet by selfish impulses. Do not be dissatisfied with what fate brings now or view the future with fear.

3. What comes from the gods is full of providence. What comes from chance is not separate from nature, or from the interweaving and entanglement of everything governed by providence. Everything flows from that source, together with necessity and what benefits the whole universe, of which you are a part. What the nature of the whole produces is good for every part of nature, and so is whatever preserves the whole. The universe is preserved through changes both in the elements and in the things made from them. Let this be enough for you, and keep it always as your basic conviction. Give up your thirst for books, so that you may die without complaining, truly at peace and sincerely grateful to the gods.

4. Remember how long you have been putting this off, and how many times the gods have given you more time and you have failed to use it. You must now understand what universe you belong to, from what power governing the universe you have flowed, and that your time has a fixed limit. If you do not use it to bring yourself into the light, it will be gone, and so will you, and you will have no further opportunity.

5. At every moment, make a firm effort—as a Roman and a man—to do the work in front of you with exact... and natural dignity, affection, freedom, and justice, and to free yourself from all other impressions. You will do this if you carry out each action as if it were the last action of your life, without aimlessness, without an emotional resistance to the reason that guides your choices, without hypocrisy or selfishness, and without dissatisfaction with what fate has assigned you. You can see how few rules a person needs to master in order to live an untroubled life that respects the gods. The gods will ask nothing more from someone who observes them.

6. You are mistreating yourself, my soul, mistreating yourself, and soon you will have no time left to respect yourself. Everyone’s life lasts only a moment, and yours is nearly over, yet you do not respect yourself: you make your well-being depend on what other people think.

7. Are outside events distracting you? Give yourself time to learn something more that is good, and stop wandering. But you must also guard against another kind of wandering. People who are tired of life and have no goal toward which they direct every impulse and every impression without exception talk nonsense even through their actions.

8. People rarely become miserable because they do not know what is happening in someone else’s mind. But those who do not pay attention to the movements of their own mind are bound to be miserable.

9. Always keep these points in mind: what the nature of the whole universe is; what your own nature is; how your nature is related to the whole; what kind of part you are and what kind of whole you belong to; and that no one can prevent you from always acting and speaking in accordance with the nature of which you are a part.

10. When Theophrastus compares kinds of wrongdoing in philosophical terms, as someone might compare such things in the usual way, he says that wrongs committed from desire are more serious than those committed from anger. An angry person seems to turn away from reason because of pain and an involuntary inner tightening. But someone who does wrong from desire, overcome by pleasure, seems less self-controlled and more effeminate in wrongdoing. So Theophrastus was right, and spoke as a philosopher should, when he said that wrongdoing accompanied by pleasure deserves more blame than wrongdoing accompanied by pain. In general, the angry person is more like someone who was wronged first and was driven by pain to become angry. The other person begins the move toward wrongdoing himself, carried by desire to do something.

11. Do, say, and think everything as if you might leave this life right now. If there are gods, there is nothing frightening about leaving human beings, because the gods would not involve you in evil. But if there are no gods, or if they do not care about human affairs, why should I live in a universe without gods or providence? Yet the gods do exist and do care about human affairs. They have put it entirely within a person’s own power to avoid falling into things that are truly evil. If any of the other things were evil, they would also have arranged for everyone to have the power to avoid them. (How could something that does not make a person worse make that person’s life worse?) The nature of the whole would not have overlooked these matters from ignorance. Nor would it have known about them but been unable to prevent or correct them. Nor would it have made so great a mistake through lack of power or skill that good and evil happen indiscriminately to good and bad people alike. But death and life, fame and lack of fame, pain and pleasure, wealth and poverty all happen equally to good and bad people, and they are neither morally beautiful nor shameful. Therefore they are neither good nor evil.

12. How quickly everything disappears: the bodies themselves into the universe, and the memories of them into eternity. Think what all perceptible things are like, especially those that lure us with pleasure, frighten us with pain, or are loudly praised out of vanity—how worthless, contemptible, dirty, perishable, and dead they are. Consider also who these people are whose opinions and voices give someone a good or bad reputation. Consider what death is. If a person looks at death by itself and analyzes the idea of it, breaking down the images attached to it, he will no longer think it is anything except a natural process. Anyone who fears a natural process is a child. Yet death is not only a natural process; it also benefits nature. Consider how a human being makes contact with god, by what part of himself, and what condition that human part must be in when he does.

13. Nothing is more miserable than someone who investigates everything around him, “searching,” as the saying goes, “what lies beneath the earth,” and trying to guess what is in other people’s minds, without realizing that it is enough to stay close to the divine spirit within himself and care for it sincerely. Caring for it means keeping it free from emotion, pointless activity, and resentment at what gods and human beings bring about. What comes from the gods should be respected because it is good; what comes from people should be met with affection because we are related. Sometimes it should also be pitied, in a way, because people do not know what is good and what is bad. That disability is no less serious than being unable to tell white from black.

14. Even if you were going to live for three thousand years, or ten thousand times that long, remember that no one loses any life other than the life he is living, and no one lives any life other than the life he loses. So the longest life and the shortest amount to the same thing. The present is equal for everyone, so what passes away is equal, and what is lost turns out to last only an instant. No one can lose the past or the future. How could anyone take from you what you do not have?

So always remember two things. First, everything has been the same in kind from all eternity and keeps coming around again in cycles. It makes no difference whether you see the same things over a hundred years, two hundred years, or endless time. Second, the person who lives longest and the person who dies soonest lose the same amount. The present is the only thing a person can be deprived of, since it is the only thing he has, and no one loses what he does not have.

15. Everything is a judgment. The criticisms made against Monimus the Cynic are obvious. The usefulness of the statement is also obvious, as long as you accept its appealing part only to the extent that it is true.

16. The human soul does greatest violence to itself when it becomes, as far as it can, an abscess or a kind of tumor in the universe. Resenting anything that happens is a rebellion against Nature, which contains within itself the individual natures of all other things.

It also harms itself when it turns away from another person or acts against him in order to hurt him, as angry people do.

Third, it harms itself when pleasure or pain defeats it.

Fourth, when it pretends and does or says something falsely and insincerely.

Fifth, when it directs an action or impulse toward no goal, but acts at random and without thinking about what it is doing. Even the smallest actions should be carried out with their final purpose in view. The purpose of rational beings is to follow the reason and law of the oldest city and political community.

17. The time of a human life is a moment; its substance is always flowing; perception is faint; the whole body is made of material that soon decays; the soul wanders; fortune is hard to predict; reputation is undiscerning. In short, everything bodily is a river, and everything in the soul is dream and conceit. Life is a war and a foreigner’s temporary stay; later fame is forgetfulness.

What, then, can guide us through? One thing only: philosophy. This means keeping the divine spirit within us free from violation and harm, stronger than pleasures and pains; doing nothing at random, falsely, or hypocritically; not depending on another person to do or not do something; and accepting whatever happens and is assigned to us as coming from the same source from which that spirit itself came. Above all, it means waiting for death with a peaceful mind, since death is nothing more than the separation of the elements from which every living thing is composed. If the elements themselves suffer nothing terrible by constantly changing into one another, why should anyone distrust the change and dissolution of them all? It is in accordance with nature, and nothing in accordance with nature is bad.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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