Book V

1. At dawn, when you wake reluctantly, have this ready to hand: I am rising to a human being’s work. Am I still resentful, then, if I am going to do what I was born for, what I was brought into the world to do? Or was I fashioned for this—to lie under the covers and keep myself warm?

“But this is more pleasant.”

Were you born, then, for pleasure—for being acted upon, in short, and not for action? Do you not see the little plants, the little birds, the ants, the spiders, the bees, each doing its own work, each in its own way helping to order the world? And then you refuse to do what belongs to a human being; you do not hasten toward what accords with your own nature.

“But one must rest as well.”

One must; I say so too. Yet nature has given rest its measure, just as it has given measures to eating and drinking. And still you go beyond those measures, beyond what is enough; but in your actions you no longer go beyond—there you stop short of what you can do. For you do not love yourself; if you did, you would also love your nature and what it wills. Others, loving their crafts, consume themselves in their proper tasks, unwashed and unfed. Do you value your own nature less than the engraver values engraving, the dancer dancing, the lover of money his silver, or the lover of empty fame his scrap of glory? When these people are impassioned, they would sooner forgo food and sleep than fail to increase the things to which they are devoted. But to you, do actions for the common good seem cheaper, and worth less effort?

2. How easy it is to thrust away and erase every troubling or alien impression, and at once to be in perfect calm.

3. Judge yourself worthy of every word and deed that accords with nature, and do not let the blame or talk that follows from certain people lead you aside. If the doing or saying is noble, do not deem yourself unworthy of it. They have their own ruling mind and follow an impulse of their own. Do not look around at that, but complete your straight course, following both your own nature and the nature common to all; for the road of both is one.

4. I journey on through what accords with nature until, fallen, I come to rest—breathing my last into that from which I draw breath each day, and falling upon that from which my father gathered the seed, my mother the blood, and my nurse the milk; that from which, day after day for so many years, I am fed and watered; that which bears me as I tread upon it and make such manifold use of what it gives.

5. They have no sharpness of yours to admire. So be it. But there are many other things of which you cannot say, “I was not born for this.” Offer, then, what lies wholly within your power: integrity, dignity, endurance of hardship, indifference to pleasure, no grievance against your lot, few needs, goodwill, freedom, simplicity, freedom from idle talk, greatness of spirit. Do you not see how many things you are already able to offer—things for which no lack of natural gift or aptitude can serve as an excuse—and yet you still remain beneath them by choice? Or are you compelled by some defect in your natural make-up to grumble, to be miserly, to flatter, to accuse your little body, to curry favor, to vaunt yourself, and to let your soul be tossed about so much? No, by the gods. You could have been rid of these long ago. At most, perhaps, you need only be faulted for being somewhat slow and hard to follow. But this too must be trained, without making light of your slowness or taking a secret pleasure in it.

6. One person, when he has done someone a good turn, is quick to set the favor down to that person’s account. Another is not quick to do this, yet inwardly regards the man as a debtor and knows what he has done. A third, in a certain sense, does not even know what he has done, but is like a vine that has borne a cluster of grapes and seeks nothing more once it has borne its own fruit. A horse has run, a hound has followed the scent, a bee has made honey—and a human being, having done good, does not make a record of it, but passes on to another act, as the vine passes on to bearing another cluster in its season.

We ought, then, to be among those who do this in a certain sense without watching themselves do it.

“Yes, but this very thing must be watched: for it is characteristic,” he says, “of a social being to be conscious that he is acting for the common good—and, by Zeus, to want his fellow also to be conscious of it.”

“What you say is true, but you are misconstruing what is now being said. For that reason you will be one of those I mentioned before; they too are led astray by a certain rational plausibility. But if you are willing to understand what the saying means, do not fear that this will make you neglect any act for the common good.”

7. A prayer of the Athenians:

“Rain, rain, beloved Zeus,on the Athenians’ ploughlandand on their plains.”

Either we should not pray, or we should pray like this—simply and freely.

8. What is meant by saying, “Asclepius prescribed this man riding, or cold baths, or going barefoot,” is the same as saying, “The nature of the whole prescribed this man illness, or disability, or loss, or something else of that kind.” For there too, “prescribed” means something like this: “It assigned him this as fitting for his health”; and here, what befalls each person has in some fashion been assigned to him as fitting for his destiny. Indeed, we speak of things “befalling” us just as craftsmen say that squared stones in walls or pyramids “come together,” when, in a given arrangement, they fit one another.

For there is one harmony embracing all. And just as the cosmos, a body of this kind, is completed from all bodies, so destiny, a cause of this kind, is completed from all causes. Even the wholly unlearned understand what I mean, for they say, “This was what came his way.” Then this was coming his way, and this was prescribed for him. Let us accept such things, therefore, as we accept what Asclepius prescribes. Many of his prescriptions too are harsh, yet we welcome them in hope of health.

Regard the accomplishment and fulfillment of what the common nature intends as you regard your own health; and in this spirit welcome everything that happens, even if it seems severe, because it leads toward that end: toward the health of the cosmos and the prosperous course and success of Zeus. For he would not have brought this to anyone unless it contributed to the whole; nor does any nature bring about something unfitted to what it governs.

For two reasons, then, you should cherish what befalls you. First, because it happened to you, was prescribed for you, and stood in some relation to you, spun together from above out of the most ancient causes. Second, because even what comes separately to each person is a cause of the good course, the fulfillment—and, by Zeus, the very continuance—of the one who governs the whole. For the complete whole is maimed if you sever even the smallest thing from the coherence and continuity of its parts—and likewise of its causes. And you do sever it, so far as you can, whenever you are discontented; in a manner, you destroy it.

9. Do not grow disgusted, do not give up, do not lose heart if acting in every case from right judgments does not become unbroken practice for you. When you are knocked away, return again; be glad if most of what you do is worthier of a human being; love that to which you return. Do not return to philosophy as to a schoolmaster, but as sore-eyed people turn to the sponge and the egg, as another turns to a poultice, another to a soothing rinse. In this way you will make no display of obedience to reason, but will find rest in it.

Remember that philosophy wants only what your nature wants, while you wanted something else, contrary to nature. What could be more gracious than what nature wants? Is it not by seeming gracious that pleasure makes us fall? But look and see whether greatness of soul is not more gracious, and freedom, simplicity, fair-mindedness, reverence. What is more gracious than wisdom itself, when you consider how unerring and smooth in all things is the power that apprehends and knows?

10. Things themselves lie beneath such a veil that more than a few philosophers—and no ordinary ones—have judged them wholly beyond comprehension; even the Stoics themselves find them difficult to comprehend. And every assent of ours is liable to shift—for where is the person who never shifts? Pass on, then, to the objects themselves: how brief their life, how little their worth, how they may be in the possession of a male prostitute, a whore, or a robber. Next, turn to the characters of those who live with you: even the most gracious of them can scarcely be endured, to say nothing of how a person can scarcely endure himself.

In such darkness and filth, amid so great a flux of substance and time, of motion and all that moves, I cannot conceive what could possibly be highly valued or taken seriously at all. On the contrary, one must console oneself and await the natural dissolution, without chafing at the delay, but finding rest in these two things alone: first, that nothing will befall me which is not in accord with the nature of the whole; second, that it is within my power to do nothing against my own god and daimon. No one can force me to transgress against him.

11. What use am I now making of my soul? At every turn, ask yourself this again, and examine what is now present in this part of me they call the ruling faculty. Whose soul do I have now? A child’s? A youth’s? A little woman’s? A tyrant’s? A beast of burden’s? A wild beast’s?

12. You may grasp the character of what the multitude takes for goods from this as well. If someone were to conceive certain things as truly good—wisdom, temperance, justice, courage—then, with these already in mind, he could no longer bear to hear the phrase “under the weight of good things,” for it would not fit. But if someone first calls to mind the things that appear good to the multitude, he will listen on and readily accept the comic poet’s words as a natural conclusion. The multitude too perceives the distinction in this way. Otherwise, the first saying would not jar upon us and be rejected, while in the case of wealth and the lucky gifts that serve luxury or reputation, we accept it as pointed and wittily expressed.

Go on, then, and ask whether things should be honored and judged good when, once they are called to mind, it can aptly be added that the man who possesses them, from sheer abundance, “has nowhere to shit.”

13. I am composed of a causal principle and a material one. Neither will perish into nonbeing, just as neither arose out of nonbeing. Every part of me, then, will by transformation be assigned to some part of the cosmos; that in turn will change into some other part of the cosmos, and so onward to infinity. Through such transformation I too came into being, and those who begot me—and, tracing back, into another infinity. Nothing prevents us from speaking this way, even if the cosmos is governed in cycles with finite bounds.

14. Reason and the rational art are powers sufficient to themselves and to the works that accord with them. They set out, then, from their own proper source and make their way toward the end before them. That is why actions of this kind are called right actions: the name signifies the straightness of the road.

15. None of these things is to be prized by a human being if it does not befit a human being precisely as human. They are not requirements of humanity; human nature does not profess them, nor are they fulfillments of human nature. Therefore neither does the human end lie in them, nor what completes that end—the good. Further, if any of them truly befitted a human being, it would not be fitting to look down upon them and rise above them; the one who makes himself independent of them would not be praiseworthy; nor, if these things were good, would anyone who deprived himself of any one of them be good. But as things are, the more a person strips himself of these and other things like them—or, when stripped of any of them, bears the loss—the better he is.

16. As are the impressions you picture again and again, so will your mind become; for the soul is dyed by its impressions. Dye it, then, in the unbroken succession of impressions such as these: wherever it is possible to live, there it is also possible to live well; it is possible to live at court; therefore it is also possible to live well at court. And again: that for whose sake each thing has been fashioned, toward that it has been fashioned; toward what it has been fashioned, it is borne; where it is borne, there lies its end; and where its end lies, there too lie each thing’s advantage and good. The good of a rational creature, then, is fellowship. For it has long been shown that we came into being for fellowship. Or was it not plain that the lower things exist for the sake of the higher, and the higher for one another? Living things are higher than lifeless things, and rational beings higher than living things.

17. To pursue the impossible is madness; and it is impossible that bad people should not do things of this kind.

18. Nothing happens to anyone that the person is not naturally made to bear. The same things happen to another, and either because he does not recognize what has happened, or because he makes a display of greatness of soul, he stands firm and remains uninjured. Is it not dreadful, then, that ignorance and vanity should prove stronger than practical wisdom?

19. Things themselves do not touch the soul in the least. They have no entrance into the soul, nor can they turn or move it. The soul alone turns and moves itself; and whatever judgments it deems itself worthy of making, such does it make for itself the things that stand before it.

20. In one respect, a human being is the being most akin to us, insofar as we must do people good and bear with them. But insofar as some obstruct the works proper to me, a human being becomes for me one of the indifferent things, no less than the sun, the wind, or a wild animal. These may obstruct some activity, but they cannot obstruct impulse or disposition, because of the reservation and the power to turn. For the mind turns and shifts every hindrance to activity into what takes precedence: what checked the deed becomes a means to the deed, and what barred the road becomes a means along that road.

21. Honor what is sovereign in the cosmos: that which makes use of all things and governs all things. In the same way, honor what is sovereign in you: it is of one kind with that cosmic power. For in you too, this is what makes use of everything else, and by this your life is governed.

22. What does no harm to the city does no harm to the citizen. Whenever the impression arises that you have been harmed, apply this rule: if the city is not harmed by this, neither am I harmed; but if the city is harmed, do not be angry—show the one who harms the city what he has failed to see.

23. Often consider the swiftness with which things that are and things coming to be are swept along and carried out of sight. For substance is like a river in unceasing flow; its activities are in continual change, its causes in ten thousand turnings, and almost nothing stands still—not even what is nearest. Consider too the gaping infinity of past and future, in which all things vanish from view. How, then, is one not a fool who amid such things is puffed with pride, or pulled this way and that, or cries out in distress, as though troubled by something enduring and destined to last?

24. Remember the substance of the whole, of which you partake in the smallest measure; the whole of time, from which a brief and momentary interval has been marked off for you; and fate—what infinitesimal part of it are you?

25. Another does wrong. What is that to me? He shall see to it: his disposition is his own, his action his own. I now have what universal nature wills me now to have, and I do what my own nature wills me now to do.

26. Let the governing and sovereign part of your soul remain unchanged by any smooth or rough motion in the flesh, and let it not blend with it; let it draw a boundary around itself and confine those pressures to the bodily parts. But when, through that other sympathy natural to a united body, they rise into the mind, you must not try to resist the sensation, since it is natural. Only let the governing part add from itself no judgment that the sensation concerns either good or evil.

27. “To live with the gods.” The one who lives with the gods continually shows them a soul content with what is allotted, and doing all that the divine spirit wills—the spirit Zeus gave to each person as guardian and guide, a fragment of himself. This is each person’s mind and reason.

28. Are you angry with the man who reeks of sweat? Angry with the man whose breath stinks? What can he do to you? Such is his mouth, such are his armpits; from such things, such an odor must arise. “But the man has reason,” you say, “and, if he pays attention, can understand how he offends.” Good for you. Then you too have reason: move a rational disposition by your rational disposition; show him, remind him. If he listens, you will cure him, and there will be no need for anger.Neither a tragic actor nor a whore.

29. As you intend to live once you have gone away, so you may live here. But if they do not allow it, then depart from life itself—yet as one suffering no evil. “There is smoke, and I leave.” Why regard this as any great affair? But until something of that kind drives me out, I remain free, and no one will prevent me from doing what I will; and I will what accords with the nature of a rational and social creature.

30. The mind of the whole is social. Accordingly, it made the lower things for the sake of the higher, and joined the higher to one another in harmony. You see how it subordinated and coordinated, allotted to each according to its worth, and gathered the sovereign beings into concord with one another.

31. How have you borne yourself until now toward gods, parents, brother, wife, children, teachers, tutors, friends, kin, and servants? Can it be said of you, toward them all, down to this day:

“Neither to do anyone a lawless deed, nor speak one”?

Call to mind, too, all that you have passed through, and all you have proved able to endure; that the story of your life is full now, and your service complete; how many beautiful things you have seen; how many pleasures and pains you have looked beyond; how many honors you have passed by; and toward how many ungrateful people you have shown gratitude.

32. Why should unskilled and untaught souls throw a skilled and knowing soul into confusion? What soul, then, is skilled and knowing? The one that knows beginning and end, and the Reason that reaches through the whole of being and, through all eternity, orders the universe in appointed cycles.

33. A little while, and you are ash or skeleton—and either a name, or not even a name; and a name is a sound and its echo. The things prized so highly in life are empty, rotten, petty: puppies snapping at one another, quarrelsome children, laughing and then at once in tears.

But Faith and Reverence and Justice and Truthhave gone to Olympus from the broad-wayed earth.

What, then, still holds you here, if sensible things are quick to change and never still, the senses dim and easily stamped with impressions, the little soul itself an exhalation from blood, and good repute among such beings an emptiness? What, then? Await with grace either extinction or removal. And until the time for it arrives, what is enough? What else but to revere the gods and bless them; to do good to human beings, to bear with them and refrain from them; and to remember that whatever lies within the bounds of this scrap of flesh and wisp of breath is neither yours nor in your power?

34. You can always flow well, if you can also fare well upon the way—if your judgments and actions follow the way. Two things are common to the soul of god and human being and every rational creature: not to be obstructed by another, and to find its good in a disposition and action governed by justice, letting desire come to rest there.

35. If this is neither a vice of mine, nor an activity arising from vice in me, and if the common good is not harmed, why am I troubled over it? And what harm has come to the common good?

36. Do not be swept away wholesale by an impression. Help as far as you can and as the matter deserves; and even if people suffer loss in things indifferent, do not picture the loss itself as harm—for that is a bad habit. Rather, as the old man, when he left, asked back for his foster-child’s spinning top, remembering that it was a spinning top, so must you do here.

And when you are crying out upon the Rostra: Human being, have you forgotten what these things were?

“Yes—but to them they matter desperately.”

Must you, for that reason, become a fool as well?

37. “Once, wherever I was overtaken, I was a man blessed with a good lot.”

But to be blessed with a good lot is to allot a good lot to yourself; and a good lot is this: good turns of the soul, good impulses, good actions.

1. At dawn, when you have trouble making yourself get up, keep this thought ready: I am getting up to do a human being’s work. So why am I still annoyed if I am going to do the things I was born and brought into the world to do? Or was I made to lie in bed under warm blankets?

“But that is more pleasant.”

Then were you born just to feel pleasure—to receive sensations rather than to act? Don’t you see the plants, birds, ants, spiders, and bees doing their own work, each helping in its own way to put the world in order? Yet you don’t want to do the work of a human being. You don’t hurry to do what your nature calls for.

“But I also need to rest.”

Yes, you do; I say that too. But nature has set limits for rest, just as it has for eating and drinking. Yet in those things you go past the limits and beyond what is enough. In your actions, however, you do not: there you stay below what you are capable of. You do not really love yourself, because if you did, you would love your nature and what it wants. Other people love their trades so much that they wear themselves out at their work without washing or eating. Do you respect your own nature less than an engraver respects engraving, a dancer dancing, a greedy person money, or a vain person a little fame? When these people are absorbed in what they care about, they would rather go without food and sleep than stop advancing it. But do actions that serve other people seem less valuable to you and less worthy of effort?

2. It is so easy to push away and wipe out any disturbing or unsuitable impression, and immediately be completely calm.

3. Consider yourself fit for every word and action that agrees with nature, and do not let other people’s later criticism or comments turn you aside. If it is right to do or say something, do not think yourself unworthy of it. They have minds of their own and act on their own impulses. Do not keep looking to them. Go straight ahead, following both your own nature and the nature we all share, since both follow the same road.

4. I go on through the things that agree with nature until I fall and rest. I will breathe my last into the air from which I breathe every day, and I will fall onto the earth from which my father got the seed, my mother the blood, and my nurse the milk; the earth that has fed and watered me every day for so many years, and that supports me as I walk on it and use its resources in so many ways.

5. People cannot admire you for being intellectually sharp. Fine. But you have many other qualities for which you cannot say, “I was not born with them.” So show the qualities that are entirely under your control: honesty, dignity, the ability to bear hard work, lack of attachment to pleasure, no complaints about your fate, few needs, kindness, freedom, simplicity, no pointless talk, and greatness of character. Don’t you realize how many qualities you can already show, with no excuse that you lack the talent or ability, and yet you still choose to fall short? Does the way you were born force you to complain, be stingy, flatter people, blame your weak little body, try to please others, boast, and let your mind be thrown around in so many ways? No, by the gods. You could have freed yourself from all that long ago. At worst, you might be criticized for being rather slow and not quick to understand. But you must train this too, without dismissing your slowness or enjoying it.

6. One person, after doing someone a good turn, is quick to count the favor as something that person owes him. Another does not do that openly, but still thinks of the person as a debtor and remains aware of what he has done. A third person, in a sense, does not even know what he has done. He is like a grapevine that produces a bunch of grapes and asks for nothing more after bearing its own fruit. A horse runs, a dog follows a scent, a bee makes honey, and a human being does good without keeping track of it, then moves on to do something else, just as a vine bears another bunch of grapes when the season comes.

So we should be among those who do good, in a sense, without monitoring themselves as they do it.

“Yes, but we need to be aware of this very fact. It is a social being’s special trait,” someone says, “to know that he is acting for others and, by Zeus, to want the other person to know it too.”

“What you say is true, but you are misunderstanding the present point. That will make you one of the people I mentioned earlier, because they too are misled by an argument that sounds reasonable. But if you are willing to understand what is being said, don’t be afraid that it will make you neglect any action that helps others.”

7. An Athenian prayer:

“Send rain, send rain, dear Zeus,on the Athenians’ farmlandand plains.”

Either we should not pray at all, or we should pray this simply and openly.

8. Saying, “Asclepius prescribed horseback riding, cold baths, or going barefoot for this person,” means the same sort of thing as saying, “The nature of the universe prescribed illness, injury, loss, or something similar for this person.” In the first case, “prescribed” means that the treatment was assigned to the person because it suited his health. In the second, whatever happens to each person has somehow been assigned because it suits his destined course. We say that events “happen to” us in the same way builders say that squared stones in walls or pyramids “fit together”: in that particular arrangement, they join one another properly.

There is one harmony in everything. Just as the universe is one body made complete from all bodies, destiny is one cause made complete from all causes. Even completely uneducated people understand this when they say, “That was what came to him.” So it came to him and was prescribed for him. We should therefore accept these events as we accept the treatments Asclepius prescribes. Many of those treatments are unpleasant, but we welcome them because we hope to become healthy.

Think of the completion and fulfillment of what universal nature intends as you think of your own health. Accept everything that happens in this way, even if it seems very harsh, because it leads to the health of the universe and to the successful progress and work of Zeus. He would not have brought something upon a person unless it benefited the whole. No nature produces anything that is unsuited to what it directs.

You should therefore willingly accept what happens to you for two reasons. First, it happened to you, was assigned to you, and was connected with you in some way, woven into your life from the oldest causes above. Second, even what comes to an individual helps the ruler of the whole achieve his successful course and completion and, by Zeus, his continued existence. The whole is damaged if you cut even the smallest thing out of the connection and continuity of its parts, and the same is true of its causes. As far as you are able, you make such a cut whenever you resent what happens; in a sense, you destroy it.

9. Do not become sick of it, give up, or get discouraged if you do not manage to act consistently from sound judgments in every situation. When you are pushed off course, come back again. Be glad if most of your conduct is becoming more worthy of a human being, and value what you are returning to. Do not return to philosophy as though you were going back to a strict tutor. Return as people with inflamed eyes turn to a sponge and an egg, or as someone turns to a poultice or a soothing wash. Then you will not be making a show of obeying reason; you will be finding relief in it.

Remember that philosophy wants only what your own nature wants. You were the one who wanted something else, against nature. What could be more pleasant than what nature wants? Is that appearance of pleasantness not exactly how pleasure deceives us? Consider whether nobility of mind, freedom, honesty, reasonableness, and piety are not more pleasant. And what could be more pleasant than good judgment itself, when you remember how steadily and effortlessly our capacity to understand and know can move through everything?

10. Reality is hidden so deeply that many serious philosophers have thought it completely impossible to understand. Even the Stoics themselves think it is hard to understand. Every judgment to which we assent can change—for who never changes his mind? Now consider the actual things involved. They last a short time, have little value, and can belong to a male prostitute, a sex worker, or a thief. Then consider the character of the people around you. It is hard to tolerate even the most agreeable person, not to mention that each of us can barely tolerate himself.

Everything is so dark and dirty, and substance, time, motion, and moving things are all in such constant flux, that I cannot see what could deserve to be highly valued or treated as truly important. Instead, comfort yourself and wait for your natural end. Do not be irritated by the wait, but take comfort in only these two thoughts: nothing will happen to me that is contrary to the nature of the universe; and I am able to do nothing contrary to my own god and guiding spirit. No one can force me to disobey that spirit.

11. What am I using my mind for right now? Ask yourself this about everything, and examine what is now in the part called the governing mind. What kind of person’s mind do I have at this moment? A child’s? A teenager’s? A petty woman’s? A dictator’s? A farm animal’s? A wild animal’s?

12. Here is another way to see what sort of things most people consider good. Suppose someone thinks first of things that really are good, such as practical wisdom, self-control, justice, and courage. After thinking of these, he would not be able to accept the phrase “because of all the good things,” since it would not fit. But if someone first thinks of what most people regard as good, he will hear the rest and easily accept the comic poet’s line as an appropriate ending. Most people also recognize the difference. Otherwise, the first use would not sound wrong and be rejected, while we accept the same words as apt and clever when they refer to wealth and the lucky advantages that provide luxury or fame.

So continue, and ask whether we should value and regard as good things of which it can appropriately be said that the person who owns them, because he has so much, “has nowhere to shit.”

13. I consist of cause and matter. Neither of them will be destroyed into nothing, just as neither came into existence from nothing. Every part of me will therefore be changed and placed among some part of the universe. That part will then change into another part of the universe, and the process will continue without limit. I came into being through this kind of change, and so did my parents, with the same process extending endlessly backward. We can say this even if the universe is governed through cycles that are themselves limited.

14. Reason and the skill of reasoning are capacities that need nothing beyond themselves to perform their own work. They begin from their own starting point and travel toward the goal set before them. Such deeds are therefore called correct actions, indicating that their path is straight.

15. A person need not value any of these things if they do not belong to being human as such. They are not human requirements. Human nature does not call for them, and they do not perfect human nature. So the goal of a human being does not lie in them, nor does the good that completes that goal. Besides, if any of them were proper to a human being, it would not be proper to despise and resist them. A person who made himself need none of them would not deserve praise, and anyone who deprived himself of one of them would not be good, if these things really were good. Yet in fact, the more someone gives up these and similar things—or endures being deprived of them—the better he is.

16. Your mind will take the character of the thoughts you repeatedly form, because the soul is colored by its impressions. So keep coloring it with thoughts like these: wherever you can live, you can also live well. You can live at the imperial court; therefore you can also live well at the imperial court. Again, each thing was made for some purpose. It moves toward the purpose for which it was made, and its goal lies in what it moves toward. Where its goal is, there too are its benefit and its good. It follows that the good of a rational being is community. It has already been established that we were made for community. Was it not obvious that lower things exist for higher things, while higher things exist for one another? Living things are higher than things without life, and rational beings are higher than other living things.

17. It is insane to chase what is impossible. And it is impossible for bad people not to do bad things of this sort.

18. Nothing happens to anyone that he is not naturally able to bear. The same event happens to someone else, and he stays steady and unharmed, either because he does not realize it has happened or because he wants to show how noble-minded he is. Is it not terrible if ignorance and showmanship are stronger than good judgment?

19. External things do not touch the mind at all. They cannot enter it, change it, or set it in motion. The mind alone changes and moves itself, and it makes the circumstances before it conform to the judgments it chooses to make.

20. In one sense, another person is the being closest to me, because I must help people and be patient with them. But when someone obstructs the work that belongs to me, that person becomes as indifferent to me as the sun, the wind, or a wild animal. These things may block a particular action, but they cannot block my intention or state of mind, because I can act with a condition in reserve and redirect myself. The mind turns every obstacle to action to its own advantage and gives it a new role: what hindered the work helps the work forward, and what blocked the path helps me along the path.

21. Respect the highest power in the universe: the power that uses everything and directs everything. Likewise, respect the highest power within you, which is of the same nature as that. It is what uses everything else in you, and it directs your life.

22. Anything that does not harm the community does not harm one of its citizens. Whenever you think you have been harmed, use this test: if this does not harm the community, then it has not harmed me either. If it does harm the community, do not get angry; point out to the person harming it what he has overlooked.

23. Think often about how quickly existing things and new events are swept away and removed. Matter is like a river flowing without a break. Its activities are always changing, and its causes take countless turns. Almost nothing is stable, not even what is close at hand. Past and future are boundless abysses in which everything disappears. So anyone who becomes conceited, agitated, or miserable about these things is foolish, as if what bothered him would remain for a long time.

24. Remember the whole of matter, of which your share is tiny; all of time, of which only a short instant has been assigned to you; and fate, of which you are only the smallest part.

25. Someone else does wrong. What has that to do with me? That is for him to deal with. His state of mind and his action belong to him. At this moment I have what the nature of the whole wants me to have, and I do what my own nature wants me to do.

26. Do not let the ruling part of your mind be changed by pleasant or painful movements in the body, and do not let it mix with them. It should keep itself separate and limit those effects to the parts of the body. But when they pass into the mind through the natural connection within the body as a whole, do not try to fight the physical sensation. The ruling mind should simply avoid adding its own opinion that the sensation is good or bad.

27. “Live with the gods.” A person lives with the gods when he constantly shows them that his soul is satisfied with what it has been given and does everything the inner divinity wishes. Zeus gave each person this divinity as a guardian and leader, a part of himself. It is each person’s mind and reason.

28. Are you angry with someone who smells of sweat? Are you angry with someone who has bad breath? What do you expect him to do? He has that kind of mouth and those kinds of armpits, so that kind of smell must come from them. “But he has the power of reason,” you say, “and if he thinks about it, he can understand what he is doing wrong.” Very well: you have reason too. Use your reasonable attitude to influence his. Explain it to him; remind him. If he listens, you will correct him, and there will be no need for anger.Do not be either a tragic performer or a prostitute.

29. You can live here in the same way you plan to live after leaving. But if people do not let you, then leave life itself, though without thinking that anything bad is happening to you. “There is smoke, so I am going.” Why consider that a serious matter? Until something like that forces me to leave, I remain free, and no one can stop me from doing what I choose. I choose to do what fits the nature of a rational and social being.

30. The intelligence of the universe is directed toward community. It therefore made lower things for the sake of higher ones and fitted the higher ones together. You can see how it placed some below others, arranged them together, gave each what matched its value, and brought the highest beings into agreement with one another.

31. How have you treated the gods, your parents, brother, wife, children, teachers, caregivers, friends, relatives, and servants up to now? Is it true of your conduct toward them all, right up to now, that you have neither done nor said anything wrongful to anyone?

Also remember what you have gone through, how much you have been able to endure, that the record of your life is now full and your service complete, how many fine things you have seen, how many pleasures and pains you have disregarded, how many distinctions you have passed up, and how many ungrateful people you have treated with gratitude.

32. Why do untrained and ignorant minds confuse a trained and knowledgeable mind? What kind of mind is trained and knowledgeable? One that knows the beginning and the end, and knows the rational principle that extends through all existence and governs the universe throughout eternity in ordered cycles.

33. Very soon you will be ashes or a skeleton, and either a name or not even a name. A name is only a sound and an echo. The things highly valued in life are empty, decayed, and trivial. They are like puppies biting one another and argumentative children who laugh and then immediately cry.

But Faith, Respect, Justice, and Truthhave left the broad-pathed earth for Olympus.

So what is still keeping you here? Things perceived by the senses change easily and never stay fixed. The senses themselves are weak and easily influenced. The little soul is a vapor rising from blood. And being admired by people like these is empty. What should you do, then? Wait calmly for either extinction or a change of place. Until that time comes, what is enough? Simply this: respect the gods and speak well of them; do good to people, put up with them, and refrain from harming them; and remember that everything contained within the limits of this bit of flesh and breath is neither yours nor under your control.

34. You can always move smoothly if you can travel the right path—that is, if you judge and act in accordance with that path. The soul of a god, a human being, and every rational creature shares two qualities: no one else can obstruct it, and its good consists in a just state of mind and just action, with all its desire ending there.

35. If this is not a fault of mine, is not something I am doing because of my own fault, and does not harm the community, why should I be concerned about it? How does it harm the community?

36. Do not let an impression carry you away completely. Help as much as you can and as the situation deserves. Even if people lose some advantage in matters that are morally indifferent, do not imagine that the loss itself is real harm; that is a bad habit. Be like the old man who, as he was leaving, asked for his foster-child’s spinning top, remembering that it was only a spinning top. Act the same way here.

When you find yourself crying out on the public platform, ask yourself: Have you forgotten what these things really are?

“Yes, but these people care intensely about them.”

Does that mean you must become a fool too?

37. “Once, no matter where circumstances caught me, I was a fortunate man.”

But being fortunate means assigning yourself a good fortune. And good fortune consists in good states of mind, good motives, and good actions.

1. At daybreak, when loth to rise, have this thought ready in thy mind: I am rising for a man's work. Am I then still peevish that I am going to do that for which I was born and for the sake of which I came into the world? Or was I made for this, that I should nuzzle under the bed-clothes and keep myself warm? But this is pleasanter. Hast thou been made then for pleasure, in a word, I ask thee, to be acted upon or to act? Consider each little plant, each tiny bird, the ant, the spider, the bee, how they go about their own work and do each his part for the building up of an orderly Universe. Dost thou then refuse to do the work of a man? Dost thou not hasten to do what Nature bids thee. But some rest, too, is necessary. I do not deny it. Howbeit Nature has set limits to this, and no less so to eating and drinking. Yet thou exceedest these limits and exceedest sufficiency. But in acts it is no longer so; there thou comest short of the possibility.

2. How easy a thing it is to put away and blot out every impression that is disturbing or alien, and to be at once in perfect peace.

3. Deem no word or deed that is in accord with Nature to be unworthy of thee, and be not plucked aside by the consequent censure of others or what they say, but if a thing is good to do or say, judge not thyself unworthy of it. For those others have their own ruling Reason and follow their own bent. Do not thou turn thine eyes aside, but keep to the straight path, following thy own and the universal Nature; and the path of these twain is one.

4. I fare forth through all that Nature wills until the day when I shall sink down and rest from my labours, breathing forth my last breath into the air whence I daily draw it in, and falling upon that earth, whence also my father gathered the seed, and my mother the blood, and my nurse the milk; whence daily for so many years I am fed and watered; which bears me as I tread it under foot and make full use of it in a thousand ways.

5. Sharpness of wit men cannot praise thee for. Granted! Yet there are many other qualities of which thou canst not say: I had not that by nature. Well then, display those which are wholly in thy power, sterling sincerity, dignity, endurance of toil, abstinence from pleasure. Grumble not at thy lot, be content with little, be kindly, independent, frugal, serious, high-minded. Seest thou not how many virtues it is in thy power to display now, in respect of which thou canst plead no natural incapacity or incompatibility, and yet thou art. content still with a lower standard? Or art thou forced to be discontented, to be grasping, to flatter, to inveigh against the body, to play the toady and the braggart, and to be so unstable in thy soul, because forsooth thou hast no natural gifts? By the Gods, No! but long ere now couldest thou have shaken thyself free from all this and have lain under the imputation only, if it must be so, of being somewhat slow and dull of apprehension. And this too thou must amend with training and not ignore thy dulness or be in love with it.

6. One man, when he has done another a kindness, is ready also to reckon on a return. A second is not ready to do this, but yet in his heart of hearts ranks the other as a debtor, and he is conscious of what he has done. But a third is in a manner not conscious of it, but is like the vine that has borne a cluster of grapes, and when it has once borne its due fruit looks for no reward beyond, as it is with a steed when it has run its course, a hound when it has singled out the trail, a bee when she hath made her comb. And so a man when he hath done one thing well, does not cry it abroad, but betakes himself to a second, as a vine to bear afresh her clusters in due season.

7. A prayer of the Athenians: Rain, Rain, O dear Zeus, upon the corn-land of the Athenians and their meads. Either pray not at all, or in this simple and frank fashion.

8. We have all heard, Aesculapius has prescribed for so and so riding exercise, or cold baths, or walking barefoot. Precisely so it may be said that the Universal Nature has prescribed for so and so sickness or maim or loss or what not of the same kind. For, in the former case, prescribed has some such meaning as this: He ordained this for so and so as conducive to his health; while in the latter what befalls each man has been ordained in some way as conducive to his destiny. For we say that things fall to us, as the masons too say that the huge squared stones in walls and pyramids fall into their places, adjusting themselves harmoniously to one another in a sort of structural unity. For, in fine, there is one harmony of all things, and just as from all bodies the Universe is made up into such a body as it is, so from all causes is Destiny made up into such a Cause. This is recognized by the most unthinking, for they say: Fate brought this on him. So then this was brought on this man, and this prescribed for this man. Let us then accept our fate, as we accept the prescriptions of Aesculapius. And in fact in these, too, there are many "bitter pills," but we welcome them in hope of health.

9. Do not feel qualms or despondency or discomfiture if thou dost not invariably succeed in acting from right principles; but when thou art foiled, come back again to them, and rejoice if on the whole thy conduct is worthy of a man, and love the course to which thou returnest. Come not back to Philosophy as to a schoolmaster, but as the sore-eyed to their sponges and their white of egg, as this patient to his plaster and that to his fomentations. Thus wilt thou rest satisfied with Reason, yet make no parade of obeying her. And forget not that Philosophy wishes but what thy nature wishes, whereas thy wish was for something else that accords not with Nature. Yes, for it would have been the acme of delight. Ah, is not that the very reason why pleasure trips us up? Nay, see if these be not more delightful still: high-mindedness, independence, simplicity, tenderness of heart, sanctity of life. Why what is more delightful than wisdom herself, when thou thinkest how sure and smooth in all its workings is the faculty of understanding and knowledge?

10. Things are in a sense so wrapped up in mystery that not a few philosophers, and they no ordinary ones, have concluded that they are wholly beyond our comprehension: nay, even the Stoics themselves find them hard to comprehend. Indeed every assent we give to the impressions of our senses is liable to error, for where is the man who never errs? Pass on then to the objective things themselves, how transitory they are, how worthless, the property, quite possibly, of a boy-minion, a harlot, or a brigand. After that turn to the characters of thine associates, even the most refined of whom it is difficult to put up with, let alone the fact that a man has enough to do to endure himself.

11. To what use then am I putting my soul? Never fail to ask thyself this question and to cross-examine thyself thus: What relation have I to this part of me which they call the ruling Reason? And whose Soul have I got now? The Soul of a child? Of a youth? Of a woman? Of a tyrant? Of a domestic animal? Of a wild beast?

12. What are counted as good things in the estimation of the many thou canst gather even from this. For if a man fix his mind upon certain things as really and unquestionably good, such as wisdom, temperance, justice, manliness, with this preconception in his mind he could no longer bear to listen to the poet's, By reason of his wealth of goods; for it would not apply. But, if a man first fix his mind upon the things which appear good to the multitude, he will listen and readily accept as aptly added the quotation from the Comic Poet. In this way even the multitude have a perception of the difference. For otherwise this jest would not offend and be repudiated, while we accept it as appropriately and wittily said of wealth and of the advantages which wait upon luxury and popularity. Go on, then, and ask whether we should prize and count as good those things, with which first fixed in our mind we might germanely quote of their possessor, that for his very wealth of goods he has no place to ease himself in.

13. I am made up of the Causal and the Material, and neither of these disappears into nothing, just as neither did it come into existence out of nothing. So shall my every part by change be told off to form some part of the Universe, and that again be changed into another part of it, and so on to infinity. It was by such process of change that I too came into being and my parents, and so backwards into a second infinity. And the statement is quite legitimate, even if the Universe be arranged according to completed cycles.

14. Reason and the art of reasoning are in themselves and in their own proper acts self-sufficing faculties. Starting from a principle peculiar to them, they journey on to the end set before them. Wherefore such actions are termed right acts, as signifying that they follow the right way.

15. Call none of those things a man's that do not fall to him as man. They cannot be claimed of a man; the man's nature does not guarantee them; they are no consummations of that nature. Consequently neither is the end for which man lives placed in these things, nor yet that which is perfective of the end, namely The Good. Moreover, if any of these things did fall to a man, it would not fall to him to contemn them and set his face against them, nor would a man be commendable who shewed himself independent of these things, nor yet would he be a good man who came short of his own standard in any of them, if so be these things were good. But as it is, the more a man can cut himself free, or even be set free, from these and other such things with equanimity, by so much the more is he good.

16. The character of thy mind will be such as is the character of thy frequent thoughts, for the soul takes its dye from the thoughts. Dye her then with a continuous succession of such thoughts as these: Where life is possible, there it is possible also to live well.— But the life is life in a Court. Well, in a Court too it is possible to live well. And again: A thing is drawn towards that for the sake of which it has been made, and its end lies in that towards which it is drawn and, where its end lies, there lie also its interest and its good. The Good, then, for a rational creature is fellowship with others. For it has been made clear long ago that we were constituted for fellowship. Or was it not obvious that the lower were for the sake of the higher and the higher for the sake of one another? And living things are higher than lifeless, and those that have reason than those that have life only.

17. To crave impossibilities is lunacy; but it is impossible for the wicked to act otherwise.

18. Nothing befalls anyone that he is not fitted by nature to bear. Others experience the same things as thou, but either from ignorance that anything has befallen them, or to manifest their greatness of mind, they stand firm and get no hurt. A strange thing indeed that ignorance and vanity should prove stronger than wisdom!

19. Things of themselves cannot take the least hold of the Soul, nor have any access to her, nor deflect or move her; but the Soul alone deflects and moves herself, and whatever judgments she deems it right to form, in conformity with them she fashions for herself the things that submit themselves to her from without.

20. In one respect a man is of very close concern to us, in so far as we must do him good and forbear; but in so far as any stand in the way of those acts which concern us closely, then man becomes for me as much one of things indifferent as the sun, as the wind, as a wild-beast. Though a man may in some sort fetter my activity, yet on my own initiative and mental attitude no fetters can be put because of the power they possess of conditional action and of adaptation to circumstances. For everything that stands in the way of its activity is adapted and transmuted by the mind into a furtherance of it, and that which is a check on this action is converted into a help to it, and that which is a hindrance in our path goes but to make it easier.

21. Prize the most excellent thing in the Universe; and this is that which utilizes all things and controls all things. Prize in like manner the most excellent thing in thyself; and this is that which is akin to the other. For this, which utilizes all else is in thee too, and by it thy life is governed.

22. That which is not hurtful to the community cannot hurt the individual. Test every case of apparent hurt by this rule: if the community be not hurt by this, neither am I hurt; but if the community be hurt, there is no need to be angry with him that hath done the hurt, but to enquire, What hath he seen amiss?

23. Think often on the swiftness with which the things that exist and that are coming into existence are swept past us and carried out of sight. For all substance is as a river in ceaseless flow, its activities ever changing and its causes subject to countless variations, and scarcely anything stable; and ever beside us is this infinity of the past and yawning abyss of the future, wherein all things are disappearing. Is he not senseless who in such an environment puffs himself up, or is distracted, or frets as over a trouble lasting and far-reaching?

24. Keep in memory the universal Substance, of which thou art a tiny part; and universal Time, of which a brief, nay an almost momentary span has been allotted thee; and Destiny, in which how fractional thy share?

25. Another does me some wrong? He shall see to it. His disposition is his own, his activities are his own. What the universal Nature wills me to have now, that I now have, and what my nature wills me now to do, that I do.

26. Let the ruling and master Reason of thy soul be proof against any motions in the flesh smooth or rough. Let it not mingle itself with them, but isolate and restrict those tendencies to their true spheres. But when in virtue of that other sympathetic connection these tendencies grow up into the mind as is to be expected in a single organism, then must thou not go about to resist the sensation, natural as it is, but see that thy ruling Reason adds no opinion of its own as to whether such is good or bad.

27. Walk with the Gods! And he does walk with the Gods, who lets them see his soul invariably satisfied with its lot and carrying out the will of that 'genius,' a particle of himself, which Zeus has given to every man as his captain and guide —and this is none other than each man's intelligence and reason.

28. If a man's armpits are unpleasant, art thou angry with him? If he has foul breath? What would be the use? The man has such a mouth, he has such armpits. Some such effluvium was bound to come from such a source. But the man has sense, quotha! With a little attention he could see wherein he offends. I congratulate thee! Well, thou too hast sense. By a rational attitude, then, in thyself evoke a rational attitude in him, enlighten him, admonish him. If he listen, thou shalt cure him, and have no need of anger.

29. Thou canst live on earth as thou dost purpose to live when departed. But if men will not have it so, then is it time for thee even to go out of life, yet not as one who is treated ill. ' Tis smoky and I go away. Why think it a great matter? But while no such cause drives me forth, I remain a free man, and none shall prevent me from doing what I will, and I will what is in accordance with the nature of a rational and social creature.

30. The intelligence of the Universe is social. It hath at any rate made the lower things for the sake of the higher, and it adapted the higher to one another. Thou seest how it hath subordinated, coordinated, and given each its due lot and brought the more excellent things into mutual accord.

31. How hast thou borne thyself heretofore towards Gods, parents, brothers, wife, children, teachers, tutors, friends, relations, household? Canst thou say truly of them all to this day,

32. Why do unskilled and ignorant souls confound him who has skill and has knowledge? What soul, then, has skill and knowledge? Even that which knoweth beginning and end, and the reason that informs all Substance, and governs the Whole from ordered cyele to cycle through all eternity.

33. But a little while and thou shalt be burnt ashes or a few dry bones, and possibly a name, possibly not a name even. And a name is but sound and a far off echo. And all that we prize so highly in our lives is empty and rotten and paltry, and we but as puppies snapping at each other, as quarrelsome children now laughing and anon in tears. But faith and modesty and justice and truth

34. Thou hast it in thy power that the current of thy life be ever fair, if also 'tis thine to make fair way, if also in ordered way to think and act. The Soul of God and the souls of men and of every rational creature have these two characteristics in common: to suffer no let or hindrance from another, and to find their good in a condition and practice of justice, and to confine their propension to this.

35. If this be no vice of mine nor the outcome of any vice of mine, and if the common interest does not suffer, why concern myself about it? And how can the common interest suffer?

36. Be not carried incontinently away by sense-impressions, but rally to the fight as thou canst and as is due. If there be failure in things indifferent, think not there is any great harm done; for that is an evil habit. But as the greybeard (in the play) taking his leave reclaimed his foster-child's top, not forgetting that it was but a top, so do thou here also. Since indeed thou art found haranguing on the hustings, O Man, hast thou forgotten what this really means? Aye, but people will have it. Must thou too be a fool in consequence?