Book III

1. It is not only this that must be reckoned: that with each passing day life is being spent, and a smaller part of it is left. This too must be reckoned: that even if one should live longer, it is uncertain whether the mind will still remain equally sufficient for understanding affairs and for that contemplation which tends toward experience of things divine and human. For if the mind begins to wander, there will be no lack of breathing, feeding, receiving impressions, feeling impulses, and all else of that kind; but the power to make use of oneself, to calculate precisely the measures of duty, to articulate what appears before us, to consider whether the time has already come to conduct oneself out of life, and all else of this kind—which has the utmost need of a reason trained by exercise—is extinguished beforehand. We must hurry, then, not only because at every moment we draw nearer to death, but also because our comprehension of things and our ability to follow them may cease before it comes.

2. We should also watch for such things as these: even what arises incidentally from things coming into being by nature possesses a certain grace and allure. When bread is baking, for example, parts of it split open; and these very fissures, though in a way they lie outside the baker’s intended result, have their own fitting beauty and peculiarly stir our appetite for the food. Again, figs gape when they are ripest; and in olives ripening on the tree, the very nearness of decay adds a beauty of its own to the fruit. So too the bending heads of grain, the lion’s knitted brow, the foam flowing from boars’ mouths, and many other things: viewed each by itself, they are far from comely, yet because they attend what comes to pass by nature, they adorn it besides and charm the soul. Thus, if someone has feeling and a deeper apprehension for what comes to pass in the Whole, scarcely anything even among incidental consequences will fail to appear to him somehow pleasingly composed. Such a person will look upon the real gaping jaws of wild beasts with no less pleasure than upon the images painters and sculptors display in imitation; with his own discerning eyes he will be able to see in an old woman and an old man a certain prime and ripeness.. and the lovely bloom in children. And many such things—not persuasive to everyone—will present themselves to the one alone who has become genuinely intimate with nature and her works.

3. Hippocrates, after healing many illnesses, fell ill himself and died. The Chaldaeans foretold the deaths of many; then destiny overtook them too. Alexander, Pompey, and Gaius Caesar, after so many times utterly destroying whole cities and cutting down many tens of thousands of cavalry and infantry in battle, one day departed from life themselves. Heraclitus, after all his inquiries into nature concerning the world’s conflagration, died with his insides filled with water and his body smeared in cow dung. Lice killed Democritus; other lice killed Socrates. What of it? You embarked, you sailed, you have come to harbor: disembark. If into another life, nowhere is empty of gods, not even there. If into insensibility, you will cease enduring pains and pleasures and serving a vessel so much worse than that which serves it: the one is mind and divinity; the other, earth and gore.

4. Do not wear away the portion of life that remains to you in impressions concerning other people, unless you refer them to some common good. For you deprive yourself of another work.. whenever you imagine what this person is doing and why, what he is saying, what he is thinking, what he is contriving, and all else of the kind that makes you stray from attending to your own ruling faculty.

You must therefore keep out of the train of your impressions whatever is aimless and futile, and above all whatever is meddlesome and malicious. Accustom yourself to imagine only such things that, if someone were suddenly to ask, “What are you thinking now?” you could at once answer frankly, “This” or “That”; so that your very words would immediately make it plain that all within you is simple and benevolent, worthy of a social being who gives no care to impressions of pleasure or, in a word, self-indulgence, nor to any contentiousness, envy, suspicion, or anything else whose presence in your mind you would blush to acknowledge.

For such a man—no longer postponing his place among the best—is a kind of priest and servant of the gods. He makes use also of the power established within him, which keeps a human being unstained by pleasures, unwounded by any pain, untouched by every outrage, insensible to every wickedness: an athlete in the greatest contest, never to be thrown by any passion; steeped to the depths in justice; welcoming with his whole soul all that happens and all that is allotted; and seldom, and never without some great necessity serving the common good, imagining what another person says or does or thinks.

For he makes only what is his own his field of action, and continually considers what is spun together with him from the Whole. The former he makes noble, and the latter he is convinced is good; for the lot allotted to each is carried along with him and carries him along. He remembers also that every rational being is kin, and that care for all human beings accords with human nature; yet he must not hold fast to the opinion of everyone, but only of those who avowedly live in agreement with nature. As for those who do not so live, he keeps in mind what they are like at home and outside it, by night and by day, and with what sort of people they mingle. So he takes no account of praise from such people, who are not even pleasing to themselves.

5. Act neither unwillingly, nor without regard for fellowship, nor without examination, nor while pulled in contrary directions. Let no affectation adorn your thought. Be neither a torrent of words nor a busybody.

And let the god within you be guardian of a being manly and mature, a citizen, a Roman, a ruler—one who has taken up his post like a man awaiting the recall from life, ready to be released, needing neither an oath nor any human witness. Let there be cheerfulness within, and no need of service from outside, no need of the repose that others provide. You must therefore stand upright, not be held upright.

6. If, in human life, you find anything better than justice, truth, self-command, courage—and, in a word, than your mind’s contentment with itself in whatever it enables you to do according to right reason, and with destiny in whatever is apportioned without your choosing—if, I say, you see anything better than this, turn toward it with your whole soul and enjoy the supreme good you have found.

But if nothing appears better than the guardian spirit established within you—which has brought its own impulses under its rule, examines its impressions, has drawn itself away, as Socrates used to say, from the persuasions of the senses, has subjected itself to the gods, and gives humanity its care—if you find everything else smaller and cheaper than this, give no room to anything else. Once you incline and turn aside toward it, you will no longer be able, without distraction, to honor above all that good which is your own, truly yours. For it is not right to set against the good of a rational and civic being anything of another kind whatsoever: the praise of the crowd, for example, or offices, wealth, or the enjoyment of pleasures. All these, even if for a little while they seem to accord with it, suddenly gain mastery and sweep us away.

But you, I say, choose the better simply and freely, and hold fast to it. “Yet the better is what benefits.” If it benefits you as a rational being, preserve it; if only as an animal, declare that plainly, and keep your judgment free of conceit. Only make sure that your examination is secure.

7. Never value as your own advantage anything that will one day compel you to break faith, abandon reverence, hate someone, grow suspicious, curse, play a part, or desire anything that needs walls and curtains. The one who has chosen before all else his own mind and guardian spirit, and the sacred rites of that spirit’s virtue, makes no tragedy of life, does not groan, and will need neither solitude nor crowds. Most important, he will live neither pursuing nor fleeing. Whether his soul remains enclosed in the body for a longer span or a shorter one matters to him not at all. Even if he must depart at once, he will go as readily released as he would undertake any other act that can be performed with reverence and good order. Throughout his life he guards against this alone: that his mind should ever take on a disposition alien to a rational and civic creature.

8. In the mind of one disciplined and cleansed you would find nothing suppurating, nothing bruised, nothing festering underneath. Nor does destiny overtake his life unfinished, as one might say of an actor in tragedy who leaves before completing his part and playing the drama through. There is, moreover, nothing servile in him, nothing affected, nothing fastened on, nothing torn away, nothing liable to judgment, nothing skulking in a den.

9. Revere your power of judgment. In it lies everything: that no judgment should ever again arise in your ruling faculty contrary to nature and to the constitution of a rational creature. This power promises deliberation without rashness, kinship with humankind, and a following in the steps of the gods.

10. Cast all else away, then, and hold fast to these few things alone. Remember this as well: each of us lives only this present instant, a point of time; all the rest has either been lived or lies unseen. Small, then, is the span each person lives; small the corner of earth where he lives; small even the longest fame to come—and that too passes down through a succession of little human beings who will very soon be dead, who do not know even themselves, much less one who died long, long ago.

11. To the guiding principles already spoken, let one more be added: always make a definition or outline of whatever presents itself to your impression, so that you may see it as it is in its essence—naked, whole, divided through and through—and tell yourself its proper name and the names of the things from which it was compounded and into which it will be dissolved.

For nothing so creates greatness of mind as the ability to test, methodically and truthfully, each thing that meets us in life, and always to look into it so as to grasp at once what kind of universe this is, what kind of use the thing provides within it, what value it has for the Whole, and what value for the human being—a citizen of the highest city, of which all other cities are like households. What is this thing now making an impression on me? From what is it compounded? How long is it naturally fitted to remain? What virtue does it require of me—gentleness, courage, truthfulness, good faith, simplicity, self-sufficiency, or another?

Therefore, at each event one must say: “This comes from a god; this comes through the conjunction of events, the interweaving thread spun with them, and a meeting and chance of this kind; this comes from one of my own tribe and kind and fellowship, though he does not know what accords with his own nature. But I do know. Therefore I treat him with goodwill and justice, according to the natural law of fellowship; and at the same time, among things neither good nor bad, I aim at the value proper to each.”

12. If you perform the work at hand in obedience to right reason—earnestly, vigorously, with goodwill—and allow no side concern to intrude, but keep your own guardian spirit standing pure, as though you might have to return it even now; if you bind yourself to this, expecting nothing and fleeing nothing, content with your present activity according to nature and with heroic truth in all you say and utter, you will live well. And no one has the power to prevent it.

13. As physicians always keep their instruments and blades ready to hand for sudden demands of treatment, so keep your principles ready for understanding things divine and human, and for doing everything, even the smallest thing, in remembrance of the bond between the two. For you will not perform any human act well without referring it also to the divine, nor the reverse.

Wander no more. For you are not going to read your notebooks, nor the deeds of the ancient Romans and Greeks, nor the extracts from writings that you were laying aside for your old age. Hasten, then, toward the goal; abandon empty hopes and, if you care at all for yourself, come to your own aid while you still may.

14. Wander no more. For you are not going to read your notebooks, nor the deeds of the ancient Romans and Greeks, nor the extracts from writings that you were laying aside for your old age. Hasten, then, toward the goal; abandon empty hopes and, if you care at all for yourself, come to your own aid while you still may.

15. They do not know how much is signified by “to steal,” “to sow,” “to buy,” “to be at rest,” “to see what must be done”—a seeing accomplished not with the eyes, but with another kind of sight.

16. Body, soul, mind: sensations belong to the body, impulses to the soul, judgments to the mind. To receive the stamp of impressions is shared even by grazing beasts; to be jerked by the strings of impulse, even by wild animals, androgynes, Phalaris, and Nero; and to have the mind as guide toward duties that appear before it, even by those who acknowledge no gods, those who abandon their country, and those who do ‹anything whatever› once they have shut their doors.

If, then, all the rest is shared with those already named, what remains as the good person’s own is this: to love and welcome what befalls him and what is spun together with him; not to soil the guardian spirit established within his breast, nor trouble it with a mob of impressions, but to keep it serene, following God in seemly order, uttering nothing contrary to truth and doing nothing contrary to justice. And though everyone distrusts him, doubting that he lives simply, modestly, and with a cheerful heart, he is neither angry with any of them nor turned aside from the road that leads to life’s end—where he must arrive pure, tranquil, ready to be released, joined without force in harmony with his own allotted fate.

1. Do not consider only that life is used up day by day and that less and less of it remains. Consider also that, even if a person lives longer, it is uncertain whether the mind will continue to be equally capable of understanding events and of the reflection that gives us knowledge of divine and human matters. If the mind begins to fail, the person will still be able to breathe, eat, receive impressions, have impulses, and do other things like these. But the ability to direct oneself, work out exactly what duty requires, analyze what appears to us, consider whether it is already time to take oneself out of life, and do all the other things that require a thoroughly trained power of reasoning will die out first. So we must act without delay, not only because we are continually getting closer to death, but also because our understanding of events and our ability to keep track of them may end sooner.

2. We should also notice that even the side effects of natural processes can have something pleasing and attractive about them. For example, when bread is baked, some parts crack open. These cracks are in a sense contrary to what baking is meant to produce, yet they look good in their own way and especially stimulate our appetite. Figs split open when they are fully ripe. In olives that ripen on the tree, being close to decay gives the fruit a special beauty. The drooping heads of grain, a lion’s furrowed brow, foam running from boars’ mouths, and many other things are not beautiful when considered separately. Yet because they result from natural processes, they add beauty to those processes and give pleasure. So if a person has sensitivity and a deeper understanding of what happens in the universe, almost nothing that occurs as a consequence of something else will seem to lack a pleasing arrangement. That person will enjoy seeing the actual open jaws of wild animals no less than the imitations shown by painters and sculptors. With clear and self-controlled eyes, he will be able to see a certain vigor and mature beauty in an old woman or an old man.. and the loveliness of children. Many things like these, which do not appeal to everyone, will occur only to someone who has a genuine affinity with nature and its works.

3. Hippocrates cured many diseases, then became ill himself and died. The Chaldaeans predicted the deaths of many people, and then fate caught up with them too. Alexander, Pompey, and Gaius Caesar completely destroyed whole cities many times and slaughtered many tens of thousands of cavalry and infantry in battle; eventually they too left this life. Heraclitus wrote at length about the natural causes of the world’s destruction by fire, but died with his body full of water and covered in cow dung. Lice killed Democritus, and other lice killed Socrates. So what? You boarded the ship, you sailed, you reached port. Now get off. If you are entering another life, not even there will any place be empty of gods. If you are entering unconsciousness, you will stop having to bear pain and pleasure and to serve a container far inferior to the thing that serves it. The servant is mind and divine spirit; the container is earth and filth.

4. Do not use up the rest of your life thinking about other people unless your thoughts contribute to the common good. You keep yourself from doing other work.. when you imagine what a certain person is doing and why, what he is saying, thinking, or planning, and similar things that distract you from watching your own ruling mind.

You must remove from the sequence of your thoughts everything pointless and useless, and especially everything nosy or spiteful. Train yourself to think only thoughts that would let you answer openly and at once if someone suddenly asked, “What are you thinking about now?” You should be able to say, “This” or “That,” and your answer should immediately show that all your thoughts are straightforward and kind, the thoughts of a social being who is not concerned with ideas of pleasure or self-indulgence of any kind, or with rivalry, envy, suspicion, or anything else you would be ashamed to admit was on your mind.

A person like this, who no longer puts off joining the best, is a kind of priest and assistant of the gods. He also uses the power settled within him, which keeps a person unpolluted by pleasures, unharmed by any pain, untouched by any insult, and unresponsive to every kind of evil. He is a competitor in the greatest contest: not to be defeated by any passion. He is deeply saturated with justice, accepts with all his heart everything that happens and is assigned to him, and rarely thinks about what another person says, does, or thinks—and never does so without a serious need connected with the common good.

He treats only his own affairs as material for action, and he constantly considers what the universe weaves into his fate. He makes his own actions honorable, and he is convinced that what happens to him is good, because the lot assigned to each person is carried along with him and carries him along. He also remembers that every rational being is related to him and that caring for all people is part of human nature. But he should value the approval not of everyone, only of those who clearly live in agreement with nature. As for people who do not live that way, he continually remembers what they are like at home and away from home, at night and during the day, and what kind of company they keep. He therefore places no value on praise from people like that, since they are not even pleased with themselves.

5. Do nothing unwillingly, without concern for the community, without examining it, or while divided against yourself. Do not decorate your thoughts with clever affectation. Do not talk too much or involve yourself in too many things.

Let the god within you guide a mature and manly human being, a citizen, a Roman, and a leader—someone at his post, waiting for the signal recalling him from life and ready to leave, needing neither an oath nor another person as witness. Keep a cheerful spirit, needing no help from outside and no peace supplied by others. You must stand straight on your own, not be kept straight by someone else.

6. If you find anything in human life better than justice, truth, self-control, courage, and, in short, than having your mind satisfied with itself when it enables you to act according to right reason and satisfied with fate in what is assigned to you without your choice—if, I repeat, you see anything better than this, turn to it with your whole soul and enjoy the best thing you have found.

But if nothing seems better than the inner spirit set within you, which has put its own impulses under its control, tests its impressions, has detached itself—as Socrates said—from the senses’ attempts to persuade it, submits itself to the gods, and cares for human beings; if you find everything else smaller and less valuable than this, then give nothing else any room. Once you lean and turn toward something else, you will no longer be able to give undistracted priority to that good which belongs properly and personally to you. For it is wrong to place anything of a different kind in competition with the good of a rational, social being—such as popular praise, positions of power, wealth, or pleasurable enjoyment. All these things, even if they seem compatible with that good for a short time, suddenly take control and carry you away.

So choose the better thing plainly and freely, and stick to it. “But the better thing is what is beneficial.” If it benefits you as a rational being, keep to it. If it benefits you merely as an animal, say so, and maintain your judgment without vanity. Just make sure that you conduct the examination reliably.

7. Never treat as being to your advantage anything that will eventually force you to betray a trust, give up your sense of decency, hate anyone, be suspicious, curse, pretend, or want something that has to be hidden behind walls and curtains. A person who puts his own mind, his inner spirit, and the sacred practice of its virtue first does not turn life into a tragedy, does not complain, and will need neither isolation nor a crowd. Above all, he will live without chasing things or running from them. He does not care at all whether his soul remains contained in his body for a longer or shorter time. Even if he has to leave right now, he will depart as easily as he would do anything else that can be done decently and properly. During his whole life, he is careful of this one thing only: that his mind should not enter a state unfit for a rational and social creature.

8. In the mind of someone trained and purified, you would find nothing infected, bruised, or festering beneath the surface. Fate does not catch his life incomplete, as might be said of a tragic actor who leaves before finishing his part and performing the whole play. Nor is there anything in him that is slavish, artificial, attached, cut off, accountable to another, or hiding away.

9. Respect your ability to form judgments. Everything depends on preventing any judgment from arising in your governing mind that conflicts with nature and with the way a rational creature is made. This ability offers freedom from hasty conclusions, a sense of kinship with other people, and obedience to the gods.

10. So throw everything else away and keep hold of only these few things. Also remember that each person lives only the present moment, which is instantaneous. Everything else has either already been lived or is uncertain. The time each person lives is short; the little corner of the earth where he lives is small; and even the longest fame after death is small. That fame is handed down through a succession of insignificant people who will die very soon and who do not even know themselves, still less someone who died long ago.

11. Add one more rule to those already given: always define or describe whatever appears to you, so that you can see what it is in its actual substance—stripped bare, viewed as a whole, and analyzed into all its parts. Tell yourself its own proper name and the names of the things from which it was put together and into which it will break down.

Nothing produces a noble mind as effectively as being able to examine each thing that occurs in life methodically and truthfully, and always to look at it in a way that lets you understand at the same time what sort of universe it belongs to, what use it serves there, what value it has in relation to the whole, and what value it has for a human being, who is a citizen of the highest city, while all other cities are like its households. Ask: What is this thing that is now making an impression on me? What is it made of? How long is it naturally able to last? What virtue do I need in dealing with it—gentleness, courage, honesty, faithfulness, simplicity, self-reliance, or some other virtue?

So in every case you must say: “This comes from a god. This other thing results from the combination of events, the threads woven together with them, and this particular meeting and chance. And this comes from a member of my own people, family, and community, although he does not know what is in accordance with his own nature. But I do know. That is why I treat him kindly and justly, following the natural law of community, while also aiming, in matters that are neither good nor bad, to give each thing its appropriate value.”

12. If you do what is in front of you in accordance with right reason, seriously, energetically, and kindly; if you let no secondary concern interfere, but keep your inner spirit pure and upright as if you might have to give it back at once; if you hold to this without expecting anything or running from anything, and are satisfied with your present natural action and with complete, courageous truth in everything you say, you will live well. No one can stop you.

13. Just as doctors always keep their tools and surgical knives at hand for unexpected treatments, keep your principles ready so that you can understand divine and human matters and do everything, even the smallest thing, while remembering the connection between them. You cannot do anything human well without relating it to what is divine, or anything divine without relating it to what is human.

Stop wandering. You are not going to read your notebooks, the histories of the ancient Romans and Greeks, or the selections from books that you were saving for your old age. So hurry toward the goal, give up empty hopes, and help yourself—if you care about yourself at all—while you still can.

14. Stop wandering. You are not going to read your notebooks, the histories of the ancient Romans and Greeks, or the selections from books that you were saving for your old age. So hurry toward the goal, give up empty hopes, and help yourself—if you care about yourself at all—while you still can.

15. People do not know how many meanings there are in “stealing,” “sowing,” “buying,” “being still,” and “seeing what needs to be done”—which is seen not with the eyes, but with a different kind of vision.

16. Body, soul, mind. The body has sensations, the soul has impulses, and the mind has judgments. Even grazing animals receive impressions. Even wild beasts, androgynes, Phalaris, and Nero are pulled around by their impulses like puppets. Even people who do not believe in gods, people who desert their country, and people who do ‹anything at all› after closing their doors can use the mind to guide them toward what seems to be their duty.

So if everything else is shared with the kinds of beings just mentioned, what belongs especially to a good person is this: to love and accept what happens and what fate has woven together with him; not to corrupt the divine spirit seated within his chest or disturb it with a crowd of impressions, but to keep it calm, following God with proper conduct, saying nothing untrue and doing nothing unjust. Even if everyone doubts that he lives sincerely, modestly, and cheerfully, he does not become angry with any of them or turn away from the road leading to the end of life. He must reach that end pure, calm, ready to be set free, and brought into harmony with his own fate without compulsion.

1. We ought not to think only upon the fact that our life each day is waning away, what is left of it being ever less, but this also should be a subject for thought, that even if life be prolonged, yet is it uncertain whether the mind will remain equally fitted in the future for the understanding of facts and for that contemplation which strains after the knowledge of things divine and human. For if a man has entered upon his dotage, there will still be his the power of breathing, and digestion, and thought, and desire, and all such-like faculties; but the full use of himself, the accurate appreciation of the items of duty, the nice discrimination of what presents itself to the senses, and a clear judgment on the question whether it is time for him to end his own life, and all such decisions, as above all require well-trained powers of reasoning—these are already flickering out in him. It needs, then, that we should press onwards, not only because we come each moment nearer to death, but also because our insight into facts and our close touch of them is gradually ceasing even before we die.

2. Such things as this also we ought to note with care, that the accessories too of natural operations have a charm and attractiveness of their own. For instance, when bread is in the baking, some of the parts split open, and these very fissures, though in a sense thwarting the bread-maker's design, have an appropriateness of their own and in a peculiar way stimulate the desire for food. Again when figs are at their ripest, they gape open; and in olives that are ready to fall their very approach to over-ripeness gives a peculiar beauty to the fruit. And the full ears of corn bending downwards, and the lion's beetling brows, and the foam dripping from the jaws of the wild-boar, and many other things, though, if looked at apart from their setting, they are far from being comely, yet, as resultants from the operations of Nature, lend them an added charm and excite our admiration.

3. Hippocrates, after healing many a sick man, fell sick himself and died. Many a death have Chaldaeans foretold, and then their own fate has overtaken them also. Alexander, Pompeius and Gaius Caesar times without number utterly destroyed whole cities, and cut to pieces many myriads of horse and foot on the field of battle, yet the day came when they too departed this life. Heraclitus, after endless speculations on the destruction of the world by fire, came to be filled internally with water, and died beplastered with cowdung. And lice caused the death of Democritus, and other vermin of Socrates.

4. Fritter not away what is left of thy life in thoughts about others, unless thou canst bring these thoughts into relation with some common interest. For verily thou dost hereby cut thyself off from other work, that is, by thinking what so and so is doing and why, what he is saying, having what in mind, contriving what, and all the many like things such as whirl thee aside from keeping close watch over thine own ruling Reason.

5. Do that thou doest neither unwillingly nor selfishly nor without examination nor against the grain. Dress not thy thought in too fine a garb. Be not a man of superfluous words or superfluous deeds. Moreover let the god that is in thee be lord of a living creature, that is manly, and of full age, and concerned with statecraft, and a Roman, and a ruler, who hath taken his post as one who awaits the signal of recall from life in all readiness, needing no oath nor any man as his voucher. Be thine the cheery face and independence of help from without and independence of such ease as others can give. It needs then to stand, and not be set, upright.

6. If indeed thou findest in the life of man a better thing than justice, than truth, than temperance, than manliness, and, in a word, than thy mind's satisfaction with itself in things wherein it shews thee acting according to the true dictates of reason, and with destiny in what is allotted thee apart from thy choice—if, I say, thou seest anything better than this, turn to it with all thy soul and take thy fill of the best, as thou findest it.

7. Prize not anything as being to thine interest that shall ever force thee to break thy troth, to surrender thine honour, to hate, suspect, or curse anyone, to play the hypocrite, to lust after anything that needs walls and curtains. For he that has chosen before all else his own intelligence and good genius, and to be a devotee of its supreme worth, does not strike a tragic attitude or whine, nor will he ask for either a wilderness or a concourse of men; above all he will live neither chasing anything nor shunning it. And he recks not at all whether he is to have his soul imprisoned in his body for a longer or a shorter span of time, for even if he must take his departure at once, he will go as willingly as if he were to discharge any other function that can be discharged with decency and orderliness, making sure through life of this one thing, that his thoughts should not in any case assume a character out of keeping with a rational and civic creature.

8. In the mind of the man that has been chastened and thoroughly cleansed thou wilt find no foul abscess or gangrene or hidden sore. Nor is his life cut short, when the day of destiny overtakes him, as we might say of a tragedian's part, who leaves the stage before finishing his speech and playing out the piece. Furthermore there is nothing there slavish or affected, no dependence on others or severance from them, no sense of accountability or skulking to avoid it.

9. Hold sacred thy capacity for forming opinions. With that it rests wholly that thy ruling Reason should never admit any opinion out of harmony with Nature, and with the constitution of a rational creature. This ensures due deliberation and fellowship with mankind and fealty to the Gods.

10. Jettison everything else, then, and lay hold of these things only, few as they are; and remember withal that it is only this present, a moment of time, that a man lives: all the rest either has been lived or may never be. Little indeed, then, is a man's life, and little the nook of earth whereon he lives, and little even the longest after-fame, and that too handed on through a succession of manikins, each one of them very soon to be dead, with no knowledge even of themselves, let alone of a man who has died long since.

11. To the stand-bys mentioned add one more, that a definition or delineation should be made of every object that presents itself, so that we may see what sort of thing it is in its essence stripped of its adjuncts, a separate whole taken as such, and tell over with ourselves both its particular designation and the names of the elements that compose it and into which it will be disintegrated.

12. If in obedience to right reason thou doest the thing that thy hand findeth to do earnestly, manfully, graciously, and in no sense as a by-work, and keepest that divine 'genius' of thine in its virgin state, just as if even now thou wert called upon to restore it to the Giver—if thou grapple this to thee, looking for nothing, shrinking from nothing, but content with a present sphere of activity such as Nature allows, and with old-world truth in every word and utterance of thy tongue, thou shalt be happy in thy life. And there is no one that is able to prevent this.

13. Just as physicians always keep their lancets and instruments ready to their hands for emergency operations, so also do thou keep thine axioms ready for the diagnosis of things human and divine, and for the performing of every act, even the pettiest, with the fullest consciousness of the mutual ties between these two. For thou shalt never carry out well any human duty unless thou correlate it to the divine, nor the reverse.

14. Go astray no more; for thou art not likely to read thy little Memoranda, or the Acts of the Romans and the Greeks of Old Time, and the extracts from their writings which thou wast laying up against thine old age. Haste then to the consummation and, casting away all empty hopes, if thou carest aught for thy welfare, come to thine own rescue, while it is allowed thee.

15. They know not how full of meaning are—to thieve, to sow, to buy, to be at peace, to see what needs doing, and this is not a matter for the eye but for another sort of sight.

16. Body, Soul, Intelligence: for the body sensations, for the soul desires, for the intelligence axioms. To receive impressions by way of the senses is not denied even to cattle; to be as puppets pulled by the strings of desire is common to wild beasts and to pathics and to a Phalaris and a Nero. Yet to have the intelligence a guide to what they deem their duty is an attribute of those also who do not believe in Gods and those who fail their country in its need and those who do their deeds behind closed doors.