Book IV

1. The ruling power within, when it is disposed according to nature, stands so toward whatever happens that it always shifts with ease to what is possible and what is given. For it cherishes no material marked out beforehand, but sets out toward preferred things with reservation; and whatever is brought against it, it makes into material for itself—like a fire when it masters what falls upon it, though a little lamp would have been quenched by the same. A blazing fire swiftly makes its own whatever is heaped upon it, consumes it, and rises higher from those very things.

2. Let no act be done at random, nor otherwise than in accordance with a principle that brings the art to completion.

3. People seek retreats for themselves in country places, on shores, among mountains; and you too are accustomed to long for such things above all. But this is altogether most unsophisticated, since you may, at whatever hour you wish, retreat into yourself. For nowhere does a human being retreat to greater quiet or freedom from affairs than into his own soul—especially one who has within him things upon which he need only gaze to find himself at once in perfect ease; and by ease I mean nothing other than good order. Continually, then, grant yourself this retreat and renew yourself. Let the truths that first meet your gaze be brief and fundamental, enough at once to wash away all distress and send you back without resentment toward those things to which you return.

For what will you resent? Human wickedness? Recall the judgment that rational creatures have come into being for one another; that forbearance is a part of justice; that people go wrong unwillingly; and how many who once were enemies, suspicious, hateful, locked in combat, now lie stretched out and turned to ash. Be still at last.

Or do you resent what is allotted from the Whole? Renew the disjunction: either providence or atoms; and remember all the proofs that the cosmos is as it were a city.

Will bodily things still lay hold of you? Consider that the mind does not mingle with the breath, whether it moves smoothly or roughly, once the mind has recovered itself and recognized its own authority; and consider, besides, all that you have heard and assented to concerning pain and pleasure.

Will your scrap of reputation distract you? Look at the swiftness with which all things are forgotten; the abyss of infinite time on either side; the emptiness of applause; the fickleness and lack of judgment in those who seem to speak well of us; and the narrowness of the place within which fame is confined. For the whole earth is a point, and what a tiny corner of it is this inhabited land—and here, how few and what sort are those who will praise you?

Remember, then, to withdraw into this little field of your own. Above all, do not wrench or strain yourself; be free, and look upon things as a man, as a human being, as a citizen, as a mortal creature. And among the truths nearest at hand, into which you will gaze, let these two stand: first, that things do not touch the soul, but stand outside it, motionless, while disturbances arise solely from the judgment within; second, that all these things you see will, in almost no time, change and be no more. Keep constantly in mind how many transformations you yourself have already witnessed.

The cosmos is alteration; life is judgment.

4. If the power of understanding is common to us, then reason, by which we are rational, is also common. If so, then the reason that commands what is to be done or not done is common. If so, law too is common. If so, we are citizens. If so, we share in some commonwealth. If so, the cosmos is as it were a city—for in what other common polity will anyone say that the whole human race shares? And from there, from this common city, comes our very power of understanding, reason, and law—or from where? For just as the earthy part of me has been apportioned from some earth, the watery from another element, the breath-like from some source, and the warm and fiery from its own particular source—for nothing comes from nothing, just as nothing departs into nonbeing—so too the power of understanding comes from somewhere.

5. Death is a thing like birth, a mystery of nature: a joining of the same elements, a dissolution into the same. In all respects it is nothing one should be ashamed of, for it is neither contrary to what follows for an intelligent creature nor contrary to the reason of its constitution.

6. Such things, by necessity, naturally come from such people; whoever does not wish it wishes the fig tree to have no sap. And in all things remember this: within the briefest time, both you and this man will be dead, and shortly afterward not even your names will remain.

7. Take away the judgment, and “I have been harmed” is taken away; take away “I have been harmed,” and the harm is taken away.

8. What does not make a man worse than he is does not make his life worse either, nor does it harm him from without or within. The nature of what is beneficial was bound to do this.

9. “Everything that happens, happens justly.” If you watch closely, you will find it so. I do not mean only that it follows in due sequence, but that it accords with justice, as though allotted by one who assigns to each what is deserved. Keep watch, then, as you began; and whatever you do, do it together with this: being good—good in the proper sense in which the good person is conceived. Preserve this in every act.

10. Do not form such judgments as the insolent man forms, or as he wishes you to form; see things instead as they truly are.

11. Two kinds of readiness must always be yours: one, to do only what the reason of kingship and lawgiving proposes for the benefit of humankind; the other, to change your position if someone is at hand to correct you and lead you away from some belief. Yet this change must always arise from some persuasive ground, such as justice or the common good; and only things of that kind should be preferred—not anything merely because it appeared pleasant or glorious.

12. “Do you possess reason?”“I do.”“Why, then, do you not use it? For if reason is doing its own work, what else do you want?”

13. You came into being as a part. You will vanish again into that which generated you—or rather, through transformation you will be taken back into its generative reason.

14. Many grains of incense upon the selfsame altar: one fell into the fire sooner, another later. It makes no difference.

15. Within ten days you will seem a god to these very people to whom you now seem a beast and an ape, if you return to your principles and to reverence for reason.

16. Do not live as though you were destined for ten thousand years. What is due hangs over you. While you live, while it is possible, become good.

17. How much leisure is gained by the man who does not watch what his neighbor has said or done or thought, but only what he himself is doing, to ensure that this very thing is just and reverent, or worthy of the good man; not casting about for a dark character, but running straight along the line, unswerving.

18. The man enthralled by fame after death does not picture to himself that every person who remembers him will very soon be dead as well, and then in turn the one who succeeds that person, until all memory is extinguished as it passes through lives that flare up and go out. But suppose those who will remember you are immortal, and the memory immortal: what is that to you? I do not even say, “What is it to the dead?”—but to the living, what is praise, except perhaps as an instrument of some practical ordering? For now, out of season, you are letting pass the gift of nature, which rests on no other account. In short...

19. Whatever is beautiful in any way is beautiful from itself, and ends in itself, with praise no part of it. What is praised, then, becomes neither worse nor better. I say this even of things called beautiful in the more ordinary sense—material objects, for example, and works fashioned by art. And what is beautiful in truth—what need has it of anything? No more than law does, no more than truth, no more than goodwill or self-respect. Which of these is beautiful because it is praised, or spoiled because it is blamed? Does an emerald become inferior to itself if it is not praised? And what of gold, ivory, purple, a lyre, a little knife, a floweret, a sapling?

20. If souls endure, how has the air held them from all eternity? And how does the earth hold the bodies of those buried through so vast an age? For just as here, after the bodies remain awhile, their alteration and dissolution make room for other dead, so the souls translated into the air remain together for a time, then change, diffuse, and kindle, being taken back into the generative reason of the Whole; and in this way they make room for those who come to dwell there after them. Such an answer might be given on the assumption that souls endure.

But we must consider not only the multitude of bodies buried in this fashion, but also the multitude of animals eaten each day by us and by other animals. How vast a number is consumed and, in a manner, buried in the bodies of those they nourish; and yet there is room to receive them, through their conversion into blood, through their transformation into what is airy or fiery.

What is the means of investigating the truth of this? Division into the material and the causal.

21. Do not drift away, but in every impulse render what justice requires, and with every impression preserve the power of apprehending what is true.

22. All that accords with you accords with me, O Cosmos. Nothing is early for me, nothing late, that is timely for you. All is fruit to me that your seasons bear, O Nature: from you are all things, in you all things, into you all things. One man says,

“Beloved city of Cecrops”;

and will you not say,

“Beloved city of Zeus”?

23. “Do few things,” he says, “if you would keep a tranquil heart.” But might it not be better to do what is necessary, and all that the reason of a being political by nature chooses, and in the manner it chooses? For this brings not only the serenity born of acting well, but also that born of doing few things. Most of what we say and do is unnecessary; remove it, and one will have more leisure and less disturbance. So at every occasion we must remind ourselves: Is this, perhaps, not among the necessary things? And we must remove not only unnecessary actions, but unnecessary impressions as well; for then no superfluous actions will follow in their train.

24. Put it to the test: see how the life of the good man fares for you—the man content with what is apportioned from the Whole, satisfied with the justice of his own action and the goodwill of his own disposition.

25. You have looked at those things; now look at these. Do not trouble yourself. Make yourself simple. Someone does wrong? He does wrong to himself. Something has happened to you? Good. From the beginning, everything that happens was assigned to you and woven into your thread from the Whole. To sum it all up: life is short. The present must be won with sound judgment and justice. Be sober, yet at ease.

26. Either an ordered cosmos, or a medley tumbled together—yet still a cosmos. Or can an order subsist in you, but disorder in the Whole, when all things are so distinct, so diffused, and so bound in sympathy?

27. A black character; an effeminate character; a tortuous character; beastly, cattle-like, childish, witless, counterfeit, buffoonish, huckstering, tyrannical.

28. If one who does not know the beings within the cosmos is a stranger to it, no less a stranger is one who does not know what comes to pass within it. A fugitive is one who flees the reason of civic fellowship; blind, one who shuts the eye of understanding; a beggar, one who needs another and does not have within himself all that life requires; an abscess on the cosmos, one who withdraws and severs himself from the reason of our common nature by resenting what happens—for the same nature brings this forth that brought you forth; a splinter from the city, one who splinters his own soul away from the soul of rational beings, which is one.

29. One man practices philosophy without a tunic, another without a book. Here is another, half-naked: “I have no bread,” he says, “and still I abide by reason.” But I have the nourishment that learning gives, and do not abide by it.

30. Love the modest craft you have learned, and take your rest in it. Pass through what remains of life as one who, with his whole soul, has entrusted all that is his to the gods, while making himself neither tyrant nor slave to any human being.

31. Picture, for argument’s sake, the age of Vespasian, and you will see all the same things: people marrying, raising children, falling ill, dying, waging war, keeping festivals, trading, farming, flattering, behaving arrogantly, suspecting, plotting, praying for certain people to die, grumbling at their present lot, falling in love, hoarding treasure, coveting consulships and thrones. And now that life of theirs is nowhere at all. Pass next to the age of Trajan: again, all the same things; that life too is dead. In the same way, survey the inscriptions of other ages and of whole peoples, and see how many, after straining to the utmost, soon fell and were dissolved into the elements. Above all, recall those you yourself knew tugging at empty things, abandoning the work that accorded with their own constitution instead of holding fast to it and finding it enough. But here it is necessary to remember that the attention given to each action has its own proper worth and measure. For then you will not lose heart, provided you spend no more time than is fitting on lesser things.

32. Words once familiar are now strange glosses; so too the names of those once hymned by all are now, in a way, strange glosses: Camillus, Caeso, Volesus, Dentatus; then, little by little, Scipio and Cato as well; then Augustus; then Hadrian and Antoninus. For all things fade, and swiftly pass into legend; swiftly, too, utter oblivion buries them. And I say this of those who somehow shone with wondrous brilliance. As for all the rest, the moment they breathed their last, they were “out of sight, out of hearing.” And what, in any case, is everlasting remembrance? Emptiness altogether. On what, then, must we expend our earnest care? This one thing: a just mind; actions for the common good; speech incapable of falsehood; and a disposition that welcomes everything that happens as necessary, as familiar, as flowing from a source and origin of this very kind.

33. Give yourself willingly into Clotho’s hands, and let her entwine you with whatever affairs she chooses.

34. Everything is for a day—both what remembers and what is remembered.

35. Contemplate continually how all things come to be through change, and train yourself to understand that the nature of the Whole loves nothing so much as changing what exists and making new things like it. For everything that exists is, in a certain way, the seed of what will arise from it. Yet you imagine that seeds are only those cast into earth or womb—and that is far too limited a view.

36. Soon you will be dead, and still you are neither simple nor untroubled, neither free of the suspicion that anything outside can harm you, nor gracious toward all; nor do you place wisdom in this alone: acting justly.

37. Look through into their ruling minds—even those of the discerning—and see what things they shun and what they pursue.

38. No evil of yours can subsist in another person’s ruling mind, nor indeed in any turn or alteration of what surrounds you. Where, then? Wherever within you lies the faculty that judges things to be evils. So let it make no such judgment, and all is well. Even if the nearest thing to it, this little body, is cut, burned, festers, or rots, still let the part that judges these things remain at rest—that is, let it decide that whatever can happen equally to a bad person and a good one is neither evil nor good. For whatever happens equally to one who lives contrary to nature and to one who lives according to nature is itself neither according to nature nor contrary to it.

39. Continually conceive of the cosmos as one living creature, containing one substance and one soul; how all things are delivered up into its single field of perception; how by one impulse it does all things; how all that comes to be shares in causing everything else that comes to be; and what a weaving together, what an interwinding, there is.

40. You are a little soul carrying a corpse, as Epictetus used to say.

41. For things coming to be through change there is no evil, just as for things arising from change there is no good.

42. Time is a river of things coming to be, a violent current: no sooner has each thing appeared than it is swept away; another is swept past, and another will be borne along.

43. Everything that happens is as customary and familiar as the rose in spring and fruit in summer. Such too are sickness and death, slander and conspiracy, and all that delights or grieves the foolish.

44. What follows always comes fittingly upon what went before. For this is not like some mere tally of disconnected items, joined only by necessity, but a rational coherence. And just as existing things have been ordered into a harmonious whole, so events display not a bare succession, but a wondrous kinship.

45. Always remember the saying of Heraclitus: that earth’s death is to become water, water’s death to become air, air’s death to become fire—and the reverse. Remember also the one who forgets where the road leads; and that they are at odds with what they encounter most continually—the Logos that governs the Whole; and that the things they meet each day appear strange to them; and that we must not act and speak as though asleep, for even then we seem to act and speak; and that we must not be like children of our parents—that is, follow blindly merely what we have received.

46. Suppose one of the gods told you that you would die tomorrow, or at all events the day after tomorrow. Unless you were utterly ignoble, you would no longer make much of dying the day after tomorrow rather than tomorrow—for how great is the interval? In the same way, consider it no great matter whether you die many years from now or tomorrow.

47. Consider continually how many physicians have died, after so often knitting their brows over the sick; how many astrologers, after solemnly foretelling the deaths of others; how many philosophers, after endlessly arguing about death or immortality; how many champions, after killing multitudes; how many tyrants, after wielding power over human lives with dreadful arrogance, as though they themselves were immortal; and how many whole cities have, so to speak, died—Helice, Pompeii, Herculaneum, and countless others. Pass in review also all whom you yourself have known, one after another: one man buried another and then was laid out himself; another buried him—and all within a little while. The sum of it is this: always look upon human things as fleeting and cheap—yesterday a drop of mucus, tomorrow cured flesh or ash. Pass, then, through this instant of time according to nature, and reach your end graciously, as a ripe olive might fall, blessing the earth that bore it and grateful to the tree that gave it growth.

48. Be like the headland against which the waves break without cease: it stands fast, and around it the water’s fury falls asleep.

“Unfortunate am I, that this has happened to me.” Not so—but rather: “Fortunate am I, that though this has happened to me, I remain untouched by grief, neither shattered by the present nor afraid of what is to come.” For such a thing could have happened to anyone; but not everyone could have remained untouched by grief because of it. Why, then, is the one a misfortune rather than the other a good fortune? And do you call anything a human misfortune if it is not a failure of human nature? Or does something seem to you a failure of human nature when it does not run counter to the purpose of that nature? Well, then: you have learned its purpose. Does what has happened prevent you from being just, great-hearted, self-controlled, thoughtful, unerring, undeceived, honorable, free—and all the rest whose presence together enables human nature to possess what is its own?

Remember, then, whenever anything would lead you into grief, to make use of this conviction: this is not misfortune; to bear it nobly is good fortune.

49. A commonplace aid, yet an effective one, toward contempt for death is to call to mind those who clung tenaciously to life. What more have they now than those who died before their time? Somewhere, by now, they surely lie—Caedicianus, Fabius, Julianus, Lepidus, or any others of that kind—men who carried many to burial and then were carried out themselves. All in all, the interval is small; and through how much, in what company, and in what a little body it is endured! Do not, then, regard it as a matter... Look behind you at the boundless reach of time, and ahead at another infinity. Within that expanse, what difference is there between one who lives three days and one who lives three lifetimes?

50. Always run by the shortest way; and the shortest is the way according to nature. Thus speak and act in everything by the soundest rule. For such a purpose releases you from drudgery and campaigning, from every contrivance and affectation.

1. When the ruling part within us is in its natural condition, it responds to events by readily adapting to what is possible and available. It does not require any particular material. It pursues preferred things with a reservation, and turns whatever obstructs it into material for its own use. It is like a fire strong enough to master what is thrown onto it, though the same things would put out a small lamp. A bright fire quickly takes in what is piled on it, consumes it, and grows higher because of it.

2. Do nothing aimlessly or except according to a principle that completes the art.

3. People look for retreats in the countryside, by the sea, and in the mountains, and you too tend to want such places very much. But this is extremely naive, because you can withdraw into yourself whenever you choose. Nowhere can a person find a quieter or less troubled retreat than in his own soul, especially if he has within himself thoughts that he can examine and immediately become completely at ease. By ease I mean nothing but inner order. So keep giving yourself this retreat and renew yourself. The thoughts you meet there should be brief and basic, enough to wash away all distress at once and send you back without irritation toward what you must return to.

What are you irritated by? Other people's badness? Think again about the conclusion that rational beings were made for one another, that tolerance is part of justice, and that people do wrong unwillingly. Remember how many people who were enemies, suspicious of one another, full of hatred, and stabbing one another with spears are now dead and reduced to ashes. Stop at last.

Or are you irritated by what the universe assigns you? Recall the alternatives: either providence or atoms. Recall also all the arguments showing that the universe is like a city.

Or will bodily conditions still affect you? Remember that once the mind separates itself and recognizes its own authority, it does not mix with the vital breath whether that breath is moving smoothly or roughly. Remember too everything you have heard and accepted about pain and pleasure.

Or will your little bit of fame distract you? Look at how quickly everything is forgotten, at the endless gulf of time before and after us, at the emptiness of echoed praise, at the changeability and poor judgment of those who appear to praise us, and at how small the place is in which fame is confined. The whole earth is a point, and this inhabited region is only a tiny corner of it. Even here, how many people will praise you, and what sort of people are they?

So remember to withdraw into this small field of your own. Above all, do not pull yourself apart or strain yourself. Be free, and look at things as a man, as a human being, as a citizen, and as a mortal creature. Keep these two thoughts especially ready for examination: first, external things do not touch the soul but remain outside it, unmoving, while disturbances come only from the judgment within; second, everything you see will very soon change and cease to exist. Constantly remember how many changes you have already seen yourself.

The universe is change; life is judgment.

4. If intelligence is shared by us all, then reason, which makes us rational, is also shared. If that is so, then the reason that tells us what to do and what not to do is shared. If so, law is shared too. If so, we are citizens. If so, we belong to some common political community. If so, the universe is like a city. What other shared political community could anyone say the whole human race belongs to? It is from there, from this common city, that our intelligence, reason, and sense of law come—or where else could they come from? The earthy part of me was apportioned from earth, the watery part from another element, the breath in me from some source, and my heat and fire from their own particular source. Nothing comes from nothing, just as nothing passes into nonexistence. In the same way, intelligence too comes from somewhere.

5. Death is like birth, one of nature's mysteries: in birth the same elements are combined, and in death they are dissolved into the same elements. There is nothing shameful about it. It does not violate the proper course of an intelligent creature or the reason for which it was constituted.

6. People of this kind necessarily do things of this kind. Anyone who does not want that is asking a fig tree to have no sap. In any case, remember that very soon both you and this person will be dead, and soon after that not even your names will remain.

7. Remove the judgment, and the thought “I have been harmed” disappears. Remove the thought “I have been harmed,” and the harm disappears.

8. Anything that does not make a person morally worse does not make his life worse and does not harm him externally or internally. The nature of what is beneficial required this to happen.

9. “Everything that happens happens justly.” If you observe carefully, you will find this is true. I do not mean only that each event follows in order, but that it happens according to justice, as if someone were assigning each person what he deserves. So continue the careful observation you have begun. Whatever you do, do it while being good, in the specific sense in which a good person is truly understood. Maintain this in every action.

10. Do not think about things as the person insulting you judges them or wants you to judge them. See them as they really are.

11. You must always be ready in two ways: first, to do only what kingly and lawgiving reason recommends for people's benefit; second, to change your view if someone present corrects you and turns you away from a belief. But you should always change your mind because a reason convinces you that something is just or benefits everyone. Only things like these should be preferred, not something merely because it seemed pleasant or prestigious.

12. “Do you have reason?”“Yes.”“Then why not use it? If reason is doing its proper work, what more do you want?”

13. You came into existence as a part. You will disappear back into what produced you—or rather, through change you will be taken back into its generative reason.

14. Many pieces of incense lie on the same altar. One falls into the fire earlier and another later. There is no difference.

15. Within ten days, the same people who now think you are a wild animal and an ape will think you are a god, if you return to your principles and your respect for reason.

16. Do not act as if you were going to live for ten thousand years. Death hangs over you. While you are alive, while you still can, become good.

17. A person gains so much free time by not looking at what someone else has said, done, or thought, and looking only at what he himself is doing, so that his own action is just and right, or what a good person would do. He should not look around for bad character in others, but run straight along his course without straying.

18. Someone obsessed with being famous after death fails to realize that every person who remembers him will soon die too, and then the next person after that, until the whole memory fades as it passes through people who come to life and die. But suppose the people who remember you are immortal, and the memory is immortal too. What does that matter to you? I will not even ask what it matters to the dead person. What does praise matter to the living, except perhaps for some practical purpose? You are now, at the wrong time, neglecting the natural gift that depends on no other consideration. In short...

19. Anything beautiful, in whatever way, is beautiful in itself and complete in itself; praise is not part of it. So something does not become better or worse by being praised. This is true even of things commonly called beautiful, such as physical objects and things made by skilled work. What, then, does what is truly beautiful need? Nothing—just as law, truth, goodwill, and modesty need nothing. Which of these is beautiful because people praise it, or ruined because they criticize it? Does an emerald become worse than it was if no one praises it? What about gold, ivory, purple cloth, a lyre, a small knife, a little flower, or a young tree?

20. If souls continue to exist, how can the air have had room for them from all eternity? And how does the earth have room for the bodies of all those buried over so long a time? Bodies remain in the earth for a while, then change and dissolve, making room for other dead bodies. In the same way, souls that move into the air remain together for a while, then change, disperse, and catch fire as they are taken back into the generative reason of the universe. In this way they make room for souls that arrive later. That would be one answer if we assume that souls continue to exist.

We should think not only about the great number of bodies buried in this way, but also about all the animals eaten every day by us and by other animals. An enormous number are consumed and, in a sense, buried in the bodies of the creatures they feed. Yet there is room for them because they are turned into blood and changed into air-like or fire-like substance.

How do we investigate the truth of this? By separating the material element from the causal element.

21. Do not wander off course. With every intention, do what is just; with every impression, keep your judgment able to grasp the truth.

22. Everything that suits you suits me, universe. Nothing is too early or too late for me if it comes at the right time for you. Everything your seasons produce is fruit for me, nature. Everything comes from you, everything exists in you, and everything returns to you. One man says,

“Dear city of Cecrops”;

will you not say,

“Dear city of Zeus”?

23. “Do few things,” he says, “if you want peace of mind.” But perhaps it is better to do what is necessary: whatever the reason of a naturally social being chooses, and in the way it chooses to do it. This brings the peace of mind that comes both from acting well and from doing few things. Most of what we say and do is unnecessary. If a person cuts it out, he will have more free time and be less troubled. So in each situation we should remind ourselves: “Is this perhaps unnecessary?” We should remove not only unnecessary actions but also unnecessary impressions, since pointless actions will then no longer follow them.

24. Try living the life of a good person: someone who is content with what the universe assigns him, and satisfied that his own actions are just and his attitude is kind.

25. You have considered those things; now consider these. Do not upset yourself. Be straightforward. Has someone done wrong? He harms himself. Has something happened to you? Good. From the beginning, everything that happens to you was allotted and woven into your fate by the universe. In short, life is brief. Make good use of the present with clear thinking and justice. Stay alert, but relaxed.

26. Either there is an ordered universe, or there is a confused mixture that still forms a universe. Can there be order in you but disorder in the whole, especially when everything is distinct, spread through everything else, and mutually connected?

27. A corrupt character, a weak character, a twisted character; savage, animal-like, childish, stupid, false, vulgar, dishonest, domineering.

28. A person who does not know what exists in the universe is a stranger to it, and so is a person who does not know what happens in it. The person who runs away from the reason that binds society is a fugitive. The person who closes his mind’s eye is blind. The person who depends on someone else and does not have within himself everything needed for life is poor. The person who resents what happens and separates himself from the reason of our common nature is an infected growth on the universe, because the same nature that produces each event also produced him. The person who cuts his own soul off from the single shared soul of rational beings is a fragment broken from the community.

29. One person practices philosophy without a shirt, another without a book. Here is someone else, half naked, who says, “I have no bread, but I remain faithful to reason.” I have the nourishment supplied by my studies, yet I do not remain faithful to reason.

30. Love the craft you have learned and find rest in it. Live the rest of your life as someone who has wholeheartedly entrusted everything of his own to the gods, while making himself neither master nor slave of any other person.

31. Imagine, for example, the time of Vespasian. You will see all the same things: people getting married, bringing up children, getting sick, dying, fighting wars, celebrating festivals, doing business, farming, flattering others, acting arrogantly, distrusting people, making plots, wishing for certain people to die, complaining about present conditions, falling in love, storing up wealth, and wanting consulships and imperial power. That whole way of life now exists nowhere. Move on to the time of Trajan: once again, all the same things. That life too has died. Survey in the same way the records of other periods and entire nations, and see how many people pushed themselves hard, then soon fell and dissolved into the elements. Remember especially those you personally knew who wore themselves out over empty things, neglecting the work suited to their own nature instead of holding firmly to it and being content with it. But remember also that the attention you give each action should have its own proper value and proportion. Then you will not become discouraged, as long as you do not spend more time than you should on minor matters.

32. Words that used to be common are now obscure terms. In the same way, the names of people who were once widely celebrated have now become, in a sense, obscure terms: Camillus, Caeso, Volesus, Dentatus; soon afterward Scipio and Cato too; then Augustus; and then Hadrian and Antoninus. Everything fades, quickly turns into legend, and is soon buried in complete forgetfulness. I am speaking here even of people who shone with extraordinary fame. Everyone else, as soon as they breathed their last, was “unseen, unheard of.” And what does being remembered forever really amount to? Complete emptiness. So what deserves our serious effort? Only this: a just mind, actions that serve the community, words that never deceive, and a disposition that welcomes everything that happens as necessary, familiar, and flowing from an origin and source of the same nature.

33. Willingly hand yourself over to Clotho, and let her weave you together with whatever circumstances she wishes.

34. Everything lasts only a day: both the person who remembers and the thing remembered.

35. Keep looking at how everything comes into being through change, and get used to understanding that the nature of the universe loves nothing more than changing existing things and making new ones like them. Everything that exists is, in a way, a seed of what will come from it. But you think only what is planted in the ground or placed in a womb is a seed. That is a very narrow view.

36. You will soon be dead, and you are still not straightforward or calm. You are still not free from the belief that outside things can harm you, not kind toward everyone, and not convinced that wisdom consists only in acting justly.

37. Look closely into their minds, including the minds of intelligent people, and see what they avoid and what they seek.

38. Your evil cannot exist in someone else’s mind, or in any change or alteration in the world around you. Where can it exist, then? In the part of you that judges things to be evil. So let that part make no such judgment, and everything is fine. Even if what is closest to it—this small body—is cut, burned, filled with pus, or left to rot, the part that judges these things should remain calm. It should decide that anything that can happen equally to a bad person and a good person is neither bad nor good. Whatever happens equally to someone who lives against nature and someone who lives according to nature is itself neither according to nature nor against it.

39. Keep thinking of the universe as one living being, with one substance and one soul. Think how everything is taken into its single awareness, how it does everything through one impulse, how everything that happens helps cause everything else that happens, and how closely all things are woven and twisted together.

40. You are a small soul carrying a dead body, as Epictetus said.

41. There is nothing bad for things undergoing change, just as there is nothing good for things that come into existence through change.

42. Time is a river of events, a powerful current. The moment each thing appears, it is carried away; another is carried past, and the next will be carried along.

43. Everything that happens is as normal and familiar as roses in spring and fruit in summer. The same is true of illness, death, abuse, plots, and everything else that makes foolish people happy or sad.

44. What comes next always follows appropriately from what came before. Events are not just a numbered list of separate items linked only by necessity; they form a reasonable connection. Just as existing things are arranged in harmony, events show not merely a sequence but an extraordinary relationship with one another.

45. Always remember what Heraclitus said: earth dies by becoming water, water dies by becoming air, and air dies by becoming fire—and the process also goes the other way. Remember the person who forgets where the road leads. Remember that people disagree with what they are in contact with most constantly: the reason that governs the universe. What they encounter every day seems foreign to them. We should not act and speak as if asleep, since even in sleep we seem to act and speak. And we should not behave simply as children of our parents—that is, do things blindly just because that is how we received them.

46. If a god told you that you would die tomorrow, or certainly by the day after tomorrow, you would not care much whether it was the day after tomorrow rather than tomorrow, unless you were extremely cowardly. How much difference is there between them? In the same way, do not think it makes any great difference whether you die many years from now or tomorrow.

47. Keep thinking how many doctors have died after often furrowing their brows over their patients; how many astrologers have died after making a great display of predicting other people’s deaths; how many philosophers have died after arguing endlessly about death or immortality; how many warriors after killing many people; how many tyrants after using their power over human lives with terrible arrogance, as if they were immortal; and how many entire cities have, so to speak, died—Helice, Pompeii, Herculaneum, and countless others. Then go through all the people you know, one after another. One person buried someone else and was then laid out for burial himself; another buried him. It all happened in a short time. The point is always to see human affairs as short-lived and of little value: yesterday a little drop of mucus, tomorrow preserved flesh or ashes. So pass through this brief moment of time in accordance with nature, and finish life contentedly, like a ripe olive falling from its tree, praising the earth that bore it and thanking the tree that made it grow.

48. Be like a rocky headland that the waves keep crashing against. It remains standing, and the raging water settles down around it.

“I am unlucky because this happened to me.” No. Say instead: “I am lucky because, although this happened to me, I continue without distress, neither broken by what is happening now nor afraid of what may come.” Something like this could happen to anyone, but not everyone could go through it without distress. So why call the event bad luck rather than your response good luck? Can you call something a human misfortune when it is not a failure of human nature? And do you think something is a failure of human nature if it does not oppose what human nature intends? You have learned what it intends. So does this event stop you from being just, generous in spirit, self-controlled, sensible, steady, truthful, honorable, free, or from having any of the other qualities that together give human nature what properly belongs to it?

From now on, whenever something is leading you toward distress, remember to use this principle: the event is not bad luck; bearing it nobly is good luck.

49. One ordinary but effective way to help yourself stop fearing death is to remember people who stubbornly held on to life. What advantage do they have now over those who died young? By this time they are all lying somewhere—Caedicianus, Fabius, Julianus, Lepidus, or anyone else like them. They buried many people and were later buried themselves. The whole span is short—and think of all that must be endured during it, the people one must endure it with, and the frail little body one must endure it in. So do not treat it as a matter... Look back at the endless stretch of time and forward at another infinity. In all that time, what is the difference between someone who lives three days and someone who lives to three times old age?

50. Always take the direct route. The direct route is the one that follows nature: say and do everything in the soundest way. This aim frees you from hard labor, struggle, all kinds of maneuvering, and showing off.

1. That which holds the mastery within us, when it is in accordance with Nature, is so disposed towards what befalls, that it can always adapt itself with ease to what is possible and granted us. For it is wedded to no definite material, but, though in the pursuit of its high aims it works under reservations, yet it converts into material for itself any obstacle that it meets with, just as fire when it gets the mastery of what is thrown in upon it. A little flame would have been stifled by it, but the blazing fire instantly assimilates what is cast upon it and, consuming it, leaps the higher in consequence.

2. Take no act in hand aimlessly or otherwise than in accordance with the true principles perfective of the art.

3. Men seek out retreats for themselves in the country, by the seaside, on the mountains, and thou too art wont to long intensely for such things. But all this is unphilosophical to the last degree, when thou canst at a moment's notice retire into thyself. For nowhere can a man find a retreat more full of peace or more free from care than his own soul—above all if he have that within him, a steadfast look at which and he is at once in all good ease, and by good ease I mean nothing other than good order. Make use then of this retirement continually and regenerate thyself. Let thy axioms be short and elemental, such as, when set before thee, will at once rid thee of all trouble, and send thee away with no discontent at those things to which thou art returning.

4. If the intellectual capacity is common to us all, common too is the reason, which makes us rational creatures. If so, that reason also is common which tells us to do or not to do. If so, law also is common. If so, we are citizens. If so, we are fellow-members of an organised community. If so, the Universe is as it were a state —for of what other single polity can the whole race of mankind be said to be fellow-members?—and from it, this common State, we get the intellectual, the rational, and the legal instinct, or whençe do we get them? For just as the earthy part has been portioned off for me from some earth, and the watery from another element, and the aerial from some source, and the hot and fiery from some source of its own—for nothing comes from the non-existent, any more than it disappears into nothingness—so also the intellect has undoubtedly come from somewhere.

5. Death like birth is a secret of Nature—a combination of the same elements, a breaking up into the same—and not at all a thing in fact for any to be ashamed of, for it is not out of keeping with an intellectual creature or the reason of his constitution.

6. Given such men, it was in the nature of the case inevitable that their conduct should be of this kind. To wish it otherwise, is to wish that the fig-tree had no acrid juice. As a general conclusion call this to mind, that within a very short time both thou and he will be dead, and a little later not even your names will be left behind you.

7. Efface the opinion, I am harmed, and at once the feeling of being harmed disappears; efface the feeling, and the harm disappears at once.

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

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

10. Note that all that befalls befalleth justly. Keep close watch and thou wilt find this true, I do not say, as a matter of sequence merely but as a matter of justice also, and as would be expected from One whose dispensation is based on desert. Keep close watch, then, as thou hast begun, and whatsoever thou doest, do it as only a good man should in the strictest sense of that word. In every sphere of activity safeguard this.

11. Harbour no such opinions as he holds who does thee violence, or as he would have thee hold. See things in all their naked reality.

12. Thou shouldest have these two readinesses always at hand; the one which prompts thee to do only what thy reason in its royal and law-making capacity shall suggest for the good of mankind; the other to change thy mind, if one be near to set thee right, and convert thee from some vain conceit. But this conversion should be the outcome of a persuasion in every case that the thing is just or to the common interest—and some such cause should be the only one—not because it is seemingly pleasant or popular.

13. Hast thou reason? I have. Why then not use it? For if this performs its part, what else wouldest thou have?

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

15. Many little pellets of frankincense fall upon the same altar, some are cast on it sooner, some later: but it makes no difference.

16. Ere ten days are past, thou shalt rank as a god with them that hold thee now a wild-beast or an ape, if thou but turn back to thy axioms and thy reverence of reason.

17. Behave not as though thou hadst ten thousand years to live. Thy doom hangs over thee. While thou livest, while thou mayest, become good.

18. What richness of leisure doth he gain who has no eye for his neighbour's words or deeds or thoughts, but only for his own doings, that they be just and righteous! Verily it is not for the good man to peer about into the blackness of another's heart, but to 'run straight for the goal with never a glance aside.'

19. He whose heart flutters for after-fame does not reflect that very soon every one of those who remember him, and he himself, will be dead, and their successors again after them, until at last the entire recollection of the man will be extinct, handed on as it is by links that flare up and are quenched. But put the case that those who are to remember are even immortal, and the remembrance immortal, what then is that to thee? To the dead man, I need scarcely say, the praise is nothing, but what is it to the living, except, indeed, in a subsidiary way? For thou dost reject the bounty of nature unseasonably in the present, and clingest to what others shall say of thee hereafter.

20. Everything, which has any sort of beauty of its own, is beautiful of itself, and looks no further than itself, not counting praise as part of itself. For indeed that which is praised is made neither better nor worse thereby. This is true also of the things that in common parlance are called beautiful, such as material things and works of art. Does, then, the truly beautiful need anything beyond? Nay, no more than law, than truth, than kindness, than modesty. Which of these owes its beauty to being praised, or loses it by being blamed? What! Does an emerald forfeit its excellence by not being praised? Does gold, ivory, purple, a lyre, a poniard, a floweret, a shrub?

21. If souls outlive their bodies, how does the air contain them from times everlasting? How does the earth contain the bodies of those who have been buried in it for such endless ages? For just as on earth the change of these bodies, after continuance for a certain indefinite time, followed by dissolution, makes room for other dead bodies, so souls, when transferred into the air, after lasting for a certain time, suffer change and are diffused and become fire, being taken again into the Seminal Reason of the Whole, and so allow room for those that subsequently take up their abode there. This would be the answer one would give on the assumption that souls outlive their bodies.

22. Be not whirled aside; but in every impulse fulfil the claims of justice, and in every impression safeguard certainty.

23. All that is in tune with thee, O Universe, is in tune with me! Nothing that is in due time for thee is too early or too late for me! All that thy seasons bring, O Nature, is fruit for me! All things come from thee, subsist in thee, go back to thee. There is one who says Dear City of Cecrops! Wilt thou not say O dear City of Zeus?

24. If thou wouldest be tranquil in heart, says the Sage, do not many things. Is not this a better maxim: do but what is needful, and what the reason of a living creature born for a civic life demands, and as it demands. For this brings the tranquillity which comes of doing few things no less than of doing them well. For nine tenths of our words and deeds being unnecessary, if a man retrench there, he will have more abundant leisure and fret the less. Wherefore forget not on every occasion to ask thyself, Is this one of the unnecessary things? But we must retrench not only actions but thoughts which are unnecessary, for then neither will distracting actions follow.

25. Try living the life of the good man who is more than content with what is allotted to him out of the whole, and is satisfied with his own acts as just and his own disposition as kindly: see how that answers.

26. Hast thou looked on that side of the picture? Look now on this! Fret not thyself; study to be simple. Does a man do wrong? The wrong rests with him. Has something befallen thee? It is well. Everything that befalls was from the beginning destined and spun for thee as thy share out of the Whole. In a word, life is short. Make profit of the present by right reasoning and justice. In thy relaxation be sober.

27. Either there is a well-arranged Order of things or a medley that is confused, yet still an order. Or can a sort of order subsist in thee, while in the Universe there is no order, and that too when all things, though separated and dispersed, are still in sympathetic connexion?

28. A black character, an unmanly character, an obstinate character, inhuman, animal, childish, stupid, counterfeit, shameless, mercenary, tyrannical.

29. If he is an alien in the Universe who has no cognizance of the things that are in it, no less is he an alien who has no cognizance of what is happening in it. He is an exile, who exiles himself from civic reason; blind, he who will not see with the eyes of his understanding; a beggar, he who is dependent on another, and cannot draw from his own resources all that his life requires; an imposthume on the Universe, he who renounces, and severs himself from, the reason of our common Nature, because he is ill pleased at what happens—for the same Nature brings this into being, that also brought thee; a limb cut off from the community, he who cuts off his own soul from the soul of all rational things, which is but one.

30. One philosopher goes without a shirt, a second without a book, a third yonder half-naked: says he, I am starving for bread, yet cleave I fast to Reason; and I get no living out of my learning, yet cleave I to her.

31. Cherish the art, though humble, that thou hast learned, and take thy rest therein; and pass through the remainder of thy days as one that with his whole soul has given all that is his in trust to the Gods, and has made of himself neither a tyrant nor a slave to any man.

32. Think by way of illustratiou upon the times of Vespasian, and thou shalt see all these things: mankind marrying, rearing children, sickening, dying, warring, making holiday, trafficking, tilling, flattering others, vaunting themselves, suspecting, scheming, praying for the death of others, murmuring at their own lot, loving, hoarding, coveting a consulate, coveting a kingdom. Not a vestige of that life of theirs is left anywhere any longer.

33. Expressions once in use are now obsolete. So also the names of those much be-sung heroes of old are in some sense obsolete, Camillus, Caeso, Volesus, Dentatus, and a little later Scipio and Cato, then also Augustus, and then Hadrianus and Antoninus. For all things quickly fade away and become legendary, and soon absolute oblivion encairns them. And here I speak of those who made an extraordinary blaze in the world. For the rest, as soon as the breath is out of their bodies, it is, Out of sight, out of mind. But what, when all is said, is even ever-lasting remembrance? Wholly vanity. What then is it that calls for our devotion? This one thing: justice in thought, in act unselfishness and a tongue that cannot lie and a disposition ready to welcome all that befalls as unavoidable, as familiar, as issuing from a like origin and fountain-head.

34. Offer thyself whole-heartedly to Clotho, letting her spin thy thread to serve what purpose soever she will.

35. Ephemeral all of them, the rememberer as well as the remembered!

36. Unceasingly contemplate the generation of all things through change, and accustom thyself to the thought that the Nature of the Universe delights above all in changing the things that exist and making new ones of the same pattern. For in a manner everything that exists is the seed of that which shall come out of it. But thou imaginest that only to be seed that is deposited in the earth or the womb, a view beyond measure unphilosophical.

37. A moment and thou wilt be dead; and not even yet art thou simple, nor unperturbed, nor free from all suspicion that thou canst be injured by externals, nor gracious to all, nor convinced that wisdom and just dealing are but one.

38. Consider narrowly their ruling Reason, and see what wise men avoid and what they seek after.

39. Harm to thee cannot depend on another's ruling Reason, nor yet on any vagary or phase of thy environment. On what then? On the power that is thine of judging what is evil. Let this, then, pass no judgment, and all is well. Even if its closest associate, the poor body, be cut, be burnt, fester, gangrene, yet let the part which forms a judgment about these things hold its peace, that is, let it assume nothing to be either good or bad, which can befall a good man or a bad indifferently. For that which befalls alike the man who lives by the rule, and the man who lives contrary to the rule, of Nature, is neither in accordance with Nature nor contrary to it.

40. Cease not to think of the Universe as one living Being, possessed of a single Substance and a single Soul; and how all things trace back to its single sentience; and how it does all things by a single impulse; and how all existing things are joint causes of all things that come into existence; and how intertwined in the fabric is the thread and how closely woven the web.

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

42. Nothing is evil to that which is subject to change, even as there is no good for that which exists as the result of change.

43. As a river consisting of all things that come into being, aye, a rushing torrent, is Time. No sooner is a thing sighted than it is carried past, and lo, another is passing, and it too will be carried away.

44. Everything that happens is as usual and familiar, as the rose in spring and the fruit in autumn. The same applies to disease and death and slander and treachery and all that gladdens the foolish or saddens them.

45. That which comes after always has a close relationship to what has gone before. For it is not like some enumeration of items separately taken and following a mere inevitable sequence, but there is a rational connection; and just as existing things have been combined in a harmonious order, so also all that comes into being bears the stamp not of a mere succession but of a wonderful relationship.

46. Always bear in mind what Heraclitus said: The death of earth is to pass into water, and the death of water to pass into air, and of air to pass into fire, and so back again. Bear in mind too: the wayfarer who forgets the trend of his way, and that men are at variance with the one thing with which they are in the most unbroken communion, the Reason that administers the whole Universe; and that what they encounter every day, this they deem strange; and that we must not act and speak like men asleep, —for in fact even in sleep we seem to act and speak;—and that there should be nothing of the children from parents style, that is, no mere perfunctory what our Fathers have told us.

47. Just as, if a God had told thee, Thou shalt die to-morrow or in any case the day after, thou wouldest no longer count it of any consequence whether it were the day after to-morrow or to-morrow, unless thou art in the last degree mean-spirited, for how little is the difference! —so also deem it but a trifling thing that thou shouldest die after ever so many years rather than to-morrow.

48. Cease not to bear in mind how many physicians are dead after puckering up their brows so often over their patients; and how many astrologers after making a great parade of predicting the death of others; and how many philosophers after endless disquisitions on death and immortality; how many great captains after butchering thousands; how many tyrants after exercising with revolting insolence their power of life and death, as though themselves immortal; and how many entire cities are, if I may use the expression, dead, Helice and Pompeii and Herculaneum, and others without number.

49. Be like a headland of rock on which the waves break incessantly; but it stands fast and around it the seething of the waters sinks to rest.

50. An unphilosophical, but none the less an effective, help to the contemning of death is to tell over the names of those who have clung long and tenaciously to life. How are they better off than those who were cut off before their time? After all, they lie buried somewhere at last, Cadicianus, Fabius, Julianus, Lepidus, and any others like them, who after carrying many to their graves were at last carried to their own. Small, in any point of view, is the difference in length, and that too lived out to the dregs amid what great cares and with what sort of companions and in what kind of a body! Count it then of no consequence. For look at the yawning gulf of Time behind thee, and before thee at another Infinity to come. In this Eternity the life of a baby of three days and the life of a Nestor of three centuries are as one.

51. Run ever the short way; and the short way is the way of Nature, that leads to all that is most sound in speech and act. For a resolve such as this is a release from troubles and strife, from all mental reservation and affectation.