Book VIII

1. Let this too lead you away from vanity: you can no longer claim to have lived your whole life—or even your life from youth onward—as a philosopher. To many others, and to yourself as well, it has become plain that you are far from philosophy. You have become entangled, then, so that it is no longer easy for you to win the reputation of a philosopher; your station, too, stands in the way. So if you have truly seen where the matter lies, let go of what people will think of you, and be content if, for whatever remains of your life, however much it may be, you live as your nature wills. Consider, then, what it wills, and let nothing else distract you. For by experience you know how many paths you have wandered without finding the good life anywhere—not in arguments, not in wealth, not in reputation, not in enjoyment: nowhere. Where, then, is it? In doing what human nature seeks. And how will you do that? By holding convictions from which your impulses and actions arise. What convictions? Those concerning goods and evils: that nothing is good for a human being unless it makes him just, self-controlled, courageous, and free; and nothing evil unless it makes him the opposite of these.

2. At every action ask yourself: How does this stand with me? Will I regret it? A little while, and I am dead, and everything has vanished from the scene. What more do I seek, if the work now before me is the work of a rational and social creature, living under the same law as god?

3. Alexander, Gaius, and Pompey—what were they beside Diogenes, Heraclitus, and Socrates? For these men saw things themselves, their causes and their materials, and their ruling minds were self-sufficient; but the others—how many things demanded their care, and to how many were they enslaved.

4. They will do the same things none the less, even if you burst apart.

5. First, do not be troubled: everything comes to pass according to the nature of the Whole, and in a little while you will be no one, nowhere, as Hadrian and Augustus are no longer. Then fix your gaze upon the matter and see it for what it is; remember that you must be a good human being, and what human nature requires, and do it without turning aside. Speak as seems most just to you—only with goodwill, modesty, and without pretence.

6. The nature of the Whole has this for its work: to transfer what is here to there, to transform it, to lift it from here and carry it there. Everything is change; yet the distributions are equitable. Everything is familiar—there is no cause to fear some novelty.

7. Every nature is content with itself when its course runs well. A rational nature runs well when it assents to no impression that is false or uncertain; when it directs its impulses solely toward works for the common good; when it confines desire and aversion to what is in our power alone; and when it welcomes everything allotted by the common nature. For it is a part of that nature, as the nature of a leaf is part of the plant’s nature—except that the leaf’s nature is part of a nature without perception or reason, and liable to hindrance, while human nature is part of a nature unhindered, intelligent, and just, since it apportions to each an equal and merited share of time, substance, cause, activity, and circumstance. But take care: do not look in every case for equality between one single thing and another; compare rather the sum of all that belongs to one with the whole gathered sum belonging to the other.

8. You have no leisure to read. But you do have leave to curb arrogance; you do have leave to rise above pleasures and pains; you do have leave to stand beyond petty fame; you do have leave not to rage at the insensible and ungrateful—and more, to care for them.

9. Let no one hear you complain again of life at court—not even you yourself.

10. Regret is a kind of self-reproach for having let something useful pass by. But the good must be something useful, and the good and noble man must care for it. Yet no good and noble man would regret having let a pleasure pass by. Pleasure, therefore, is neither useful nor good.

11. What is this thing in itself, in its own constitution? What in it is substance and material, and what is causal? What does it do within the cosmos, and for how long does it subsist?

12. When you find it hard to rise from sleep, remind yourself that to render social acts accords with your constitution and with human nature, while sleep is shared even by irrational animals. And what accords with each being’s nature is more its own, more native to it—and, indeed, more pleasing.

13. Continually, and with every impression if possible, examine its nature, its effect upon you, and its logic.

14. Whenever you meet someone, say to yourself at once: What convictions does this man hold about goods and evils? For if he holds certain convictions about pleasure and pain and what produces each, about fame and obscurity, death and life, it will not seem wonderful or strange to me if he acts in certain ways; and I shall remember that he is compelled to act so.

15. Remember: just as it is shameful to be startled when the fig tree bears figs, so it is when the cosmos bears those things it was made to bear. It is shameful, too, for a physician to be startled when a man has fallen into fever, or for a helmsman when a contrary wind has risen.

16. Remember that to change your position and follow the one who sets you right is no less an act of freedom. For the action is yours, fulfilled according to your own impulse and judgment—and therefore according to your own mind.

17. If it lies with you, why do you do it? If it lies with another, whom do you blame—the atoms or the gods? Either is madness. No one is to be blamed. If you can, set him right; if you cannot do that, then set the matter itself right; and if you cannot do even that, what use remains in blame? Nothing should be done without purpose.

18. What dies does not fall outside the cosmos. If it remains here and changes here, here too it is dissolved into the everlasting elements—the elements of the cosmos and of you. And they too change, and do not murmur.

19. Each thing came into being for something—a horse, a vine. Why are you astonished? The Sun too will say, “I came into being for some work,” and so will the other gods. For what, then, did you come into being? For pleasure? See whether the thought can endure.

20. Nature has aimed at each thing’s ending no less than at its beginning and the course between, like one who tosses up a ball. What good, then, comes to the little ball as it rises, or what evil as it descends—or even when it has fallen? What good comes to a bubble while it holds together, or what evil when it dissolves? And the same holds for a lamp.

21. Turn it inside out and look at what it is—what it becomes when it has grown old, when it has fallen sick, when it has prostituted itself. Short-lived alike are the praiser and the praised, the rememberer and the remembered; and all this in one corner of this region, where not even everyone agrees, nor does anyone agree even with himself. And the whole earth is a point.

22. Attend to the thing before you—or to the action, or the judgment, or what the words signify. You suffer this justly: you would rather become good tomorrow than be good today.

23. Am I doing something? I do it, referring the act to the good of humankind. Does something befall me? I receive it, referring it to the gods and to the fountain of all things, from which every event is spun together.

24. As bathing appears to you—oil, sweat, filth, slimy water, everything nauseating—so is every part of life and every substance beneath it.

25. Lucilla buried Verus, then Lucilla; Secunda buried Maximus, then Secunda; Epitynchanus buried Diotimus, then Epitynchanus; Antoninus buried Faustina, then Antoninus. Everything is so. Celer buried Hadrian, then Celer. And those men of piercing intellect, or prophetic sight, or swollen pride—where are they? Such piercing minds as Charax, Demetrius the Platonist, Eudaemon, and any other like them. All creatures of a day, long dead: some not remembered even briefly; some transformed into legends; some already faded even out of legend. Remember, then, that your little compound must either be scattered, or your little breath extinguished, or else removed and assigned its place elsewhere.

26. A human being’s gladness is to do what belongs to a human being. And what belongs to a human being is goodwill toward one’s own kind, disdain for the movements of the senses, discrimination among persuasive impressions, contemplation of the nature of the Whole and of all that comes to pass in accordance with it.

27. Three relations: one to what causally surrounds us; one to the divine cause, from which all things befall all; and one to those who share our life.

28. Pain is an evil either to the body—then let the body declare it—or to the soul. But the soul can preserve its own clear sky and calm, and refuse the judgment that pain is evil. For every judgment, impulse, desire, and aversion is within, and no evil climbs up into that citadel.

29. Erase your impressions, continually saying to yourself: It is now in my power that there be in this soul no wickedness, no desire, no disturbance of any kind; but, seeing everything as it is, I use each thing according to its worth. Remember this authority of yours, given by nature.

30. In the Senate and before anyone at all, speak with decorum, not display; let your speech be sound.

31. The court of Augustus: wife, daughter, descendants, forebears, sister, Agrippa, kinsmen, household, friends, Areius, Maecenas, physicians, priests—the death of an entire court. Then pass on to the others... not the death of one man, but of whole lines, such as the Pompeys. And there is that inscription placed upon tombs: “The last of his line.” Consider how intensely those before them strove to leave some successor, and yet someone must inevitably be the last. Here again, the death of an entire line.

32. Life must be composed one action at a time; and if each action achieves what is its own, so far as it can, be content. That it should achieve its own no one can prevent.“But something external will stand in the way.”Nothing can stand in the way of acting justly, temperately, and with due reason.“But perhaps some other exercise of action will be obstructed.”Yet through welcoming the obstacle itself, and through an understanding turn toward what is given, another action is immediately set in its place—one that fits the composition of which we speak.

33. Receive without conceit; release without resistance.

34. If ever you have seen a severed hand or foot, or a head cut off and lying somewhere apart from the rest of the body, that is what a person makes of himself, so far as he can, when he refuses what befalls him and tears himself away, or when he does something against the common good. You have cast yourself out somewhere from the unity of nature: you grew as a part, but now you have cut yourself off. Yet here is the exquisite thing: you can unite yourself again. To no other part has God granted that, once divided and cut away, it may come together again. Consider the goodness with which he has honored the human being: he made it depend upon the person not to be torn from the Whole in the first place, and, once torn away, to return again, grow together, and recover the station of a part.

35. As with the other powers that the nature of the Whole has allotted to each rational being, so too we have received this power from her. For just as she turns around everything that obstructs and opposes her, weaves it into fate’s order, and makes it a part of herself, so the rational creature can make every obstacle material for itself and use it for whatever purpose it originally set in motion.

36. Do not let the image of your whole life confound you. Do not embrace in a single thought all the painful things, in kind and number, that have probably occurred and will occur. With each present thing, ask yourself: What in this task is unbearable, past endurance? You will blush to confess it. Then remind yourself that neither the future nor the past weighs upon you, but always the present; and this is reduced to littleness if you circumscribe it alone and put your mind to the test, should it claim that it cannot withstand even this, stripped bare.

37. Can it be that Panthea or Pergamus now sits beside the coffin of Verus? Or Chabrias or Diotimus beside Hadrian’s? Absurd. And if they sat there, would the dead perceive it? And if they perceived it, would they take pleasure in it? And if they took pleasure, would the mourners therefore be immortal? Was it not fated for them too first to become old women and old men, and then to die? And once they had died, what were the dead to do afterward? All this is grease and gore in a bag.

38. “If you can see keenly, then look,” he says, “judging with the wisest judgments.”

39. In the constitution of the rational creature I see no virtue that rises in revolt against justice; but against pleasure I see self-mastery.

40. If you remove your judgment concerning what seems to grieve you, you yourself stand in the safest place.“What is this self?”Reason.“But I am not reason.”So be it. Then let reason itself not grieve itself; and if something else in you fares badly, let that form its own judgment about itself.

41. An obstruction of perception is an evil for animate nature. An obstruction of impulse is likewise an evil for animate nature. There is also something else that obstructs, and is an evil to, the vegetative constitution. Just so, then, an obstruction of mind is an evil for an intelligent nature. Now apply all these things to yourself. Does pain or pleasure touch you? Perception will see to it. Has an obstacle arisen against your impulse? If you launched the impulse without reservation, the harm is already yours as a rational being; but if you include the common good, you have not yet been harmed or obstructed. Yet no one else is accustomed to obstruct what belongs to the mind itself: neither fire, nor iron, nor tyrant, nor abuse, nor anything whatever touches it, once it has become “a sphere, rounded and steadfast.”

42. I am not worthy of causing myself grief; for I have never willingly caused grief to another.

43. One thing delights one person, another thing another. My delight is to keep my governing faculty sound: turning away from no human being and from nothing that befalls humanity, but looking upon and receiving everything with kindly eyes, and using each thing according to its worth.

44. Look: grant this present time to yourself. Those who pursue posthumous fame all the more fail to reckon that the people to come will be just such people as those they find burdensome now—and they too will die. What, in the end, is it to you if those people echo with such voices or hold such an opinion of you?

45. Take me up and cast me wherever you will. There I shall keep my own daimon gracious and serene—that is, content, if its condition and activity follow the order of its own constitution. Is this thing truly worth my soul’s being in a bad state because of it, and becoming worse than itself: abased, craving, enslaved, terrified? What will you find that is worth such a price?

46. Nothing can befall a human being that is not a human eventuality; nor an ox what is not proper to an ox, nor a vine what is not proper to a vine, nor a stone what is not proper to a stone. If, then, what befalls each is both customary and natural to it, why be resentful? The common nature has brought you nothing you cannot bear.

47. If you are grieved by something external, it is not the thing that troubles you, but your judgment about it; and it is in your power to erase that judgment now. But if something in your own disposition grieves you, who prevents you from correcting your belief? Likewise, if you grieve because you are not doing some particular thing that appears sound to you, why not act rather than grieve?“But something stronger stands in the way.”Then do not grieve, for the cause of its not being done does not lie with you.“But life is not worth living if this is not done.”Then depart from life with goodwill, as even the one who does the deed must die, and be gracious at the same time toward those who stand in your way.

48. Remember that the governing faculty becomes unconquerable when, gathered into itself, it is content with itself and does nothing it does not will—even if its resistance is irrational. What, then, when it also judges a matter with reason and circumspection? For this reason the mind freed from passions is a citadel: a human being has no stronger refuge, and whoever takes shelter there is thereafter beyond capture. One who has not seen this is ignorant; one who has seen it and does not take shelter is unfortunate.

49. Say nothing more to yourself than the first impressions announce. You have been told that someone speaks ill of you. That is what was announced; it was not announced that you have been harmed. I see that the child is ill. I see that; I do not see that the child is in danger. Remain always, then, with the first impressions, and add nothing from within yourself, and nothing happens to you. Or rather, add what belongs to one who recognizes each thing that comes to pass within the cosmos.

50. A cucumber is bitter? Throw it away.Bramble bushes in the road? Go around them.That is enough. Do not add: “Why did such things ever arise in the cosmos?” For a student of nature will laugh at you, just as a carpenter and a shoemaker would laugh if you faulted them because you saw shavings and offcuts from the things being made in their workshops. They, however, have somewhere to throw these remnants, while the nature of the whole has nothing outside itself. The wonder of its craft is this: having bounded itself, it transforms into itself everything within it that seems to be decaying, aging, and becoming useless; and from these very things it fashions other things, young again, so that it needs neither substance from outside nor a place into which to cast what has rotted. It is content, then, with its own space, its own material, and its own art.

51. Do not drag out your actions, muddle your conversations, wander in your impressions, let your soul be wholly drawn tight or leap outward, or fill your life with business.“They kill us, carve up our flesh, hound us with curses.”What has any of this to do with the mind’s remaining pure, sane, temperate, and just? It is as if someone stood beside a clear and sweet spring and reviled it: the spring does not cease to bubble up with drinkable water. Even if he casts mud into it, even dung, it will quickly scatter and wash them away, and will not be stained at all. How, then, will you possess an ever-flowing spring and not a well? If at every hour you guard yourself in freedom, with goodwill, simplicity, and reverence.

52. One who does not know that there is a cosmos does not know where he is. One who does not know toward what end the cosmos is naturally constituted knows neither who he is nor what the cosmos is. And one who omits any one of these things could not say toward what end he himself was born. What, then, do you make of the person who flees or pursues the praise of those who clap—people who know neither where they are nor who they are?

53. Do you wish to be praised by someone who curses himself three times an hour? Do you wish to please someone who does not please himself? And does one please himself who repents of nearly everything he does?

54. No longer merely breathe in concert with the air surrounding you; now also think in concert with the intelligence that surrounds all things. For the power of intelligence is no less poured everywhere and diffused through all things for one willing to draw it in than the power of air is for one able to breathe.

55. In general, vice does no harm to the cosmos; in a particular case, one person’s vice does no harm to another. It is harmful only to the one who has also been granted release from it as soon as he himself wills.

56. To my faculty of choice, my neighbor’s faculty of choice is just as indifferent as his little breath and scrap of flesh. For even though we came into being above all for one another, each of our governing faculties has its own sovereignty. Otherwise my neighbor’s vice would have been an evil for me—which God did not see fit, lest my misfortune should lie in another’s hands.

57. The sun seems to have poured itself abroad, and everywhere indeed it has been poured, yet it has not poured itself away. For this pouring is a tension outward; hence its gleams are called rays, from their reaching out. What sort of thing a ray is you may see if you watch sunlight entering a shadowed house through some narrow opening: it reaches in a straight line and, as it were, braces itself against whatever solid body it encounters, which shuts off the air beyond. There it comes to a stand, and neither slips down nor falls. Such, then, must be the pouring and diffusion of the mind: never a spilling-away, but a tension outward; meeting the obstacles before it with no violent or headlong pressure, yet not falling either, but standing fast and shining upon whatever receives it. For that which does not let the light pass through will itself deprive itself of its radiance.

58. Whoever fears death fears either the loss of sensation or a different kind of sensation. But if you no longer have sensation, you will perceive no evil either; and if you acquire another kind of sensation, you will be another kind of living being and will not cease to live.

59. Human beings have come into being for one another; so either teach them or bear with them.

60. An arrow moves in one way, the mind in another. Yet even when the mind is on its guard, and even when it turns this way and that in inquiry, it moves no less directly forward and toward what lies before it.

61. Enter into each person’s ruling faculty, and let every other person enter into your own.

1. This too should help free you from concern for reputation: you can no longer have lived your whole life, or even your life from youth, as a philosopher. Many other people, and you yourself, can clearly see that you are far from philosophy. You are compromised, so it is no longer easy for you to gain a philosopher’s reputation; your position also works against you. So if you have truly understood where the real issue lies, forget what people will think of you. Be satisfied if, for however much of your life remains, you live in the way your nature requires. Think carefully about what it requires, and let nothing else distract you. Experience has taught you that, though you have wandered after many things, you have nowhere found the good life—not in reasoning, wealth, reputation, or pleasure. Where is it, then? In doing what human nature demands. How can you do that? By having principles that guide your impulses and actions. What principles? Those about good and evil: nothing is good for a person if it does not make that person just, self-controlled, brave, and free; and nothing is evil if it does not make that person the opposite of these.

2. With every action, ask yourself: What does this mean for me? Will I regret doing it? Soon I will be dead and everything will be gone. What more am I looking for, if what I am doing now is the work of a rational, social being governed by the same law as god?

3. What were Alexander, Gaius, and Pompey compared with Diogenes, Heraclitus, and Socrates? The philosophers understood things, their causes, and their materials, and their directing minds were self-sufficient. But the others had countless concerns and were servants to countless things.

4. They will keep doing the same things even if you work yourself into a fury.

5. First, do not be disturbed. Everything happens in accordance with the nature of the whole, and before long you will be nobody, nowhere, just like Hadrian and Augustus. Then look closely at the matter and see it clearly. Remember that you must be a good person and what human nature demands; do that without wavering. Say what seems most just to you, but say it kindly, modestly, and sincerely.

6. The nature of the whole has one task: to move what is here somewhere else, change it, take it from one place, and carry it to another. Everything changes, but everything receives its fair share. It has all happened before, so there is no reason to fear anything new.

7. Every kind of being is satisfied with itself when it functions well. A rational being functions well by not accepting any impression that is false or uncertain; by directing its impulses only toward actions that benefit the community; by limiting desire and avoidance to things under our control; and by welcoming everything assigned by universal nature. Human nature is part of universal nature, just as a leaf’s nature is part of the plant’s nature. But a leaf belongs to something without awareness or reason and capable of being obstructed, while a human being belongs to a nature that cannot be obstructed and is intelligent and just, since it gives each person an equal and appropriate share of time, substance, causation, activity, and circumstance. Do not try to find equality by comparing each individual thing with another. Compare the total given to one person with the total given to another.

8. You may not have time to read. But you can restrain your arrogance. You can master pleasure and pain. You can rise above petty concern for reputation. You can refuse to be angry with insensitive, ungrateful people and can even care for them.

9. Never again let anyone hear you complain about life at court, and do not let yourself hear it either.

10. Regret means blaming yourself because you missed something useful. What is good must be useful, and a good person must care about it. But no good person would regret passing up a pleasure. So pleasure is neither useful nor good.

11. What is this thing in itself, as it is actually made? What is its substance and material? What causes it to be what it is? What does it do in the universe, and how long does it last?

12. When you have trouble getting out of bed, remind yourself that your make-up and human nature call you to perform actions for the common good, while even animals without reason sleep. What suits a being’s nature is more proper to it, more natural, and also more pleasant.

13. As far as possible, examine every impression continually: what it is by nature, what response it produces in you, and whether the reasoning about it is sound.

14. Whenever you encounter someone, immediately ask yourself: What does this person believe about good and evil? If he has certain beliefs about pleasure and pain and what causes them, about fame and disgrace, and about death and life, I will not find it surprising or strange when he acts in certain ways. I will remember that his beliefs compel him to act that way.

15. Remember that it is as foolish to be surprised when the world produces the kinds of things it naturally produces as it is to be surprised when a fig tree grows figs. It is also foolish for a doctor to be surprised that a patient has developed a fever, or for a ship’s captain to be surprised by a headwind.

16. Remember that changing your mind and following someone who corrects you is just as much an act of freedom. The action is your own, carried out according to your own impulse, judgment, and understanding.

17. If it is under your control, why are you doing it? If it is under someone else’s control, whom do you blame—the atoms or the gods? Either choice is absurd. Blame no one. If you can, correct the person. If you cannot, correct the situation itself. If you cannot even do that, what is the point of blaming anyone? You should do nothing without a purpose.

18. What dies does not leave the universe. If it stays here and changes here, it also dissolves here into the lasting elements that make up both the universe and you. Those elements also change, without complaining.

19. Everything exists for some purpose—a horse and a grapevine, for example. Why are you surprised? The Sun will also say, “I exist to perform a certain work,” and the other gods will say the same. So what do you exist for? To enjoy pleasure? Consider whether that idea holds up.

20. Nature intends the end of each thing just as much as its beginning and its course, like someone throwing a ball into the air. What good happens to the ball as it rises, or what harm as it falls, or after it has landed? What good happens to a bubble while it stays whole, or what harm when it bursts? The same applies to a lamp.

21. Turn it inside out and see what it is like, what it becomes when it grows old, when it gets sick, when it prostitutes itself. The person who praises and the person praised are both short-lived, as are the person who remembers and the person remembered. And this all happens in one corner of this part of the world, where people do not even agree with one another, and no one even agrees with himself. The whole earth is only a point.

22. Pay attention to the matter itself, or to the action, or to the belief, or to what is meant. You deserve what you are suffering: you would rather become a good person tomorrow than be one today.

23. Am I doing something? I do it for the benefit of human beings. Does something happen to me? I accept it as coming from the gods and from the source of everything, from which all that happens is woven together.

24. Think what bathing is like: oil, sweat, dirt, slimy water—everything disgusting. Every part of life and every material thing is like that.

25. Lucilla buried Verus, and then Lucilla died; Secunda buried Maximus, and then Secunda; Epitynchanus buried Diotimus, and then Epitynchanus; Antoninus buried Faustina, and then Antoninus. Everything is like this. Celer buried Hadrian, and then Celer. And where are those famously sharp-minded men, prophets, or conceited thinkers? I mean people such as Charax, Demetrius the Platonist, Eudaemon, and anyone else like them. All were here for a day and have long been dead. Some were not remembered even for a short time; some became legends; and some have already faded from the legends themselves. So remember that your little collection of matter must either be scattered, your little breath must go out, or it must move away and be given a place somewhere else.

26. A person’s joy is to do what is proper to a human being. What is proper to a human being is goodwill toward others of the same kind, rising above the impulses of the senses, examining plausible impressions, and observing the nature of the universe and what happens according to it.

27. There are three relationships: with what surrounds and affects us; with the divine cause from which everything happens to everyone; and with the people who live alongside us.

28. Pain is bad either for the body—in which case let the body say so—or for the mind. But the mind can preserve its own clarity and calm and not judge pain to be bad. Every judgment, impulse, desire, and avoidance is inside us, and nothing bad can rise into that inner place.

29. Keep wiping away your impressions by telling yourself: Right now I can make sure there is no vice in this mind, no craving, and no disturbance at all. I can see everything as it is and deal with each thing according to its value. Remember that nature has given you this power.

30. Whether in the Senate or speaking to anyone at all, speak properly, not showily. Use sound language.

31. Think of Augustus’s court: his wife, daughter, grandchildren, ancestors, sister, Agrippa, relatives, household, friends, Areius, Maecenas, doctors, and priests. A whole court dead. Then move on to the others... not the death of one person, but of families such as the Pompeys. Think also of the words written on tombs: “The last of his family.” Consider how hard earlier generations tried to leave an heir, though someone still had to be the last. Here too, an entire family dies.

32. You must build your life one action at a time. If each action accomplishes its own purpose as far as possible, be satisfied. No one can stop it from accomplishing that purpose.“But something outside me will interfere.”Nothing can stop you from acting justly, with self-control, and reasonably.“But perhaps it will stop some other activity.”Then accept the obstacle and sensibly turn to what is now possible. Another action will immediately take its place, one that fits the life you are building.

33. Accept without pride, and let go without difficulty.

34. If you have ever seen a severed hand, foot, or head lying apart from the rest of the body, that is what someone makes himself, as far as he can, when he rejects what happens and separates himself from the whole, or when he acts against the community. You have thrown yourself out of the natural unity. You were born to be a part of it, but now you have cut yourself off. Yet the remarkable thing is that you can join yourself to it again. God has not allowed any other part, once separated and cut off, to reunite. Consider the kindness with which he has honored humanity: he has put it in your power not to break away from the Whole in the first place, and, if you do break away, to return, grow back into it, and recover your place as a part.

35. We have received this ability from the nature of the universe, just as each rational being has received its other abilities from her. The nature of the universe takes everything that blocks and resists her, turns it to her purpose, puts it into the order of fate, and makes it part of herself. In the same way, a rational being can make any obstacle into material for its own use and employ it toward whatever goal it set out to reach.

36. Do not let the thought of your whole life overwhelm you. Do not think all at once about every painful thing that has probably happened or will happen. With each present difficulty, ask yourself: What is so unbearable about this task that I cannot endure it? You will be ashamed to answer. Then remind yourself that neither the future nor the past is weighing on you, but only the present. And the present becomes very small if you limit your attention to it alone and challenge your mind if it says it cannot bear even that by itself.

37. Are Panthea or Pergamus now sitting beside Verus’s coffin? Are Chabrias or Diotimus beside Hadrian’s? That is ridiculous. Even if they were sitting there, would the dead men notice? If they noticed, would they enjoy it? If they enjoyed it, would the mourners therefore be immortal? Were those mourners not also destined to grow old and then die? And after they died, what would the dead men do then? All of this is fat and blood in a sack.

38. He says, “If you can see clearly, look and judge with the wisest judgment.”

39. In the nature of a rational being, I see no virtue that opposes justice. But I do see self-control opposing pleasure.

40. If you take away your judgment about what seems to be causing you pain, you yourself remain completely safe.“What do you mean by ‘you yourself’?”Your reason.“But I am not reason.”Very well. Then do not let your reason distress itself. If some other part of you is suffering, let that part judge its own condition.

41. Something that blocks perception is bad for a living creature. Something that blocks its drive to act is likewise bad for a living creature. There is also something that obstructs and harms the constitution of a plant. In the same way, something that blocks the mind is bad for a thinking being. Apply all this to yourself. Are pain and pleasure affecting you? Your senses will deal with that. Has something blocked an action you set out to take? If you began without allowing for obstacles, this is already bad for you as a rational being. But if you take the common good into account, you have not yet been harmed or hindered. No one else can normally obstruct what belongs to the mind itself. Fire cannot touch it, nor iron, nor a tyrant, nor abuse, nor anything at all, once it has become “a sphere, round and firm.”

42. I should not make myself unhappy, since I have never intentionally made anyone else unhappy.

43. Different things make different people glad. What makes me glad is having a healthy ruling mind that rejects no person and nothing that happens to people, but looks at and accepts everything with goodwill and makes proper use of each thing.

44. Give this present time to yourself. People who are especially eager for fame after death do not consider that future generations will be the same kind of people as those who annoy them now. And those future people will also die. What does it matter to you at all whether they make such remarks or have such an opinion of you?

45. Pick me up and put me wherever you want. Wherever I am, I will keep my inner spirit at peace—that is, content so long as its state and its actions conform to its own nature. Is anything worth letting my mind become unhealthy and worse than it was: humiliated, full of desire, enslaved, and frightened? What could you find that is worth that?

46. Nothing can happen to a human being unless it is something that can happen to humans. Nothing can happen to an ox unless it belongs to the life of an ox, to a vine unless it belongs to a vine, or to a stone unless it is proper to a stone. So if what happens to each thing is usual and natural for it, why resent it? Universal nature has not brought you anything unbearable.

47. If something outside you upsets you, the thing itself is not troubling you; your judgment about it is. You can remove that judgment right now. But if something in your own state of mind upsets you, who is stopping you from correcting your belief? Similarly, if you are upset because you are not doing something that seems right to you, why not do it instead of being upset?“But a stronger force prevents me.”Then do not be upset, because it is not your fault that the action is not being done.“But life is not worth living if it is not done.”Then leave life with goodwill, just as a person who does accomplish it must also die, while remaining well-disposed toward those who obstruct you.

48. Remember that the ruling mind becomes impossible to defeat when it draws inward, is satisfied with itself, and does nothing it does not choose to do—even if its refusal is unreasonable. How much stronger is it, then, when it makes a reasoned and careful judgment? This is why a mind free from passions is a fortress. A person has no stronger place of safety; once there, no one can capture him. Anyone who has not recognized this is ignorant. Anyone who has recognized it but does not take refuge there is miserable.

49. Do not tell yourself anything beyond what your initial impressions report. You have been told that someone is speaking badly of you. That is what you were told. You were not told that you had been harmed. I see that the child is sick. I see that, but I do not see that the child is in danger. So always stay with your first impressions. Add no judgment of your own from within, and nothing will happen to you. Better still, add only what a person who understands everything that happens in the universe would add.

50. Is a cucumber bitter? Throw it away.Are there thorn bushes in the road? Walk around them.That is enough. Do not go on to ask, “Why did these things come to exist in the universe?” Someone who studies nature will laugh at you, just as a carpenter or shoemaker would laugh if you complained because you saw wood shavings or scraps from their work lying in the workshop. They have somewhere to throw their waste, but the nature of the whole has nothing outside itself. The amazing thing about its skill is that, because it is self-contained, it changes into itself everything inside it that seems to decay, grow old, and become useless. Then it makes new and young things out of that same material. It therefore needs no matter from outside and no place to dump what has rotted. Its own space, its own material, and its own skill are enough for it.

51. Do not delay in your actions, be confused in your conversations, wander among your impressions, let your mind contract completely or burst outward, or be too busy in your life.“They kill us, cut us to pieces, and chase us with curses.”What does any of that have to do with keeping the mind pure, sensible, self-controlled, and just? Imagine someone standing beside a clear, sweet spring and insulting it. The spring does not stop producing drinkable water. Even if he throws mud or manure into it, the spring will quickly disperse and wash it away, and it will not be stained. How can you have an ever-flowing spring rather than a mere well? By keeping yourself free at every moment, with goodwill, honesty, and a sense of honor.

52. Someone who does not know that there is a universe does not know where he is. Someone who does not know what the universe is naturally for knows neither who he is nor what the universe is. And if he leaves out any one of these facts, he cannot say what he himself was born for. What do you think, then, of a person who avoids or seeks the praise of applauding crowds who know neither where they are nor who they are?

53. Do you want praise from someone who curses himself three times an hour? Do you want to please someone who is not pleased with himself? Can a person be pleased with himself when he regrets nearly everything he does?

54. Do not merely share your breath with the air around you. From now on, also bring your thought into harmony with the intelligence surrounding everything. The power of intelligence is spread and flows everywhere for anyone willing to draw it in, just as air is available to anyone able to breathe.

55. Vice as a whole does not harm the universe, and any one person’s vice does not harm another person. It harms only the person who has it—and that person is free of it as soon as he chooses to be.

56. Another person’s power of choice is no more relevant to my own power of choice than his small breath or his bit of flesh. Even though we were made especially for one another, each person’s ruling mind has authority over itself. Otherwise another person’s wrongdoing would be bad for me. God did not allow that, so that my failure to live well would not depend on someone else.

57. The sun seems to pour itself out, and its light does spread everywhere, but it is not emptied out. This spreading is really an extension. That is why its beams are called rays: they reach outward. You can see what a ray is like if you watch sunlight enter a darkened house through a narrow opening. It extends in a straight line and seems to press against any solid object it meets, which blocks off the air beyond. There it stops; it does not slide down or fall. The mind should spread and extend in the same way. It should not spill itself away, but reach outward. It should not press violently or rush against the obstacles it meets, nor should it collapse. It should stand firm and shine on whatever receives it. Anything that does not let the light pass through will deprive itself of that light.

58. Anyone who fears death is afraid either of feeling nothing or of feeling in a different way. If you no longer have any sensation, you will not feel anything bad. If you gain a different kind of sensation, you will be a different kind of living creature, and you will not stop living.

59. People exist for one another. So either teach them or put up with them.

60. An arrow travels in one way and the mind in another. But even when the mind is being cautious or turning things over as it examines them, it still moves straight ahead toward its purpose.

61. Look into the directing mind of each person, and allow every other person to look into yours.

1. This too serves as a corrective to vain-gloriousness, that thou art no longer able to have lived thy life wholly, or even from thy youth up, as a philosopher. Thou canst clearly perceive, and many others can see it too, that thou art far from Philosophy. So then thy life is a chaos, and no longer is it easy for thee to win the credit of being a philosopher; and the facts of thy life too war against it. If then thine eyes have verily seen where the truth lies, care no more what men shall think of thee, but be content if the rest of thy life, whether long or short, be lived as thy nature wills. Make sure then what that will is, and let nothing else draw thee aside. For past experience tells thee in how much thou hast gone astray, nor anywhere lighted upon the true life; no, not in the subtleties of logic, or in wealth or fame or enjoyment, or anywhere. Where then is it to be found? In doing that which is the quest of man's nature. How then shall a man do this? By having axioms as the source of his impulses and actions. What axioms? On the nature of Good and Evil, shewing that nothing is for a man's good save what makes him just, temperate, manly, free; nor any thing for his ill that makes him not the reverse of these.

2. In every action ask thyself, How does it affect me? Shall I regret it? But a little and I am dead and all that lies between is past. What more do I ask for, as long as my present work is that of a living creature, intelligent, social, and under one law with God?

3. What are Alexander and Gaius and Pompeius to Diogenes and Heraclitus and Socrates? For these latter had their eyes opened to things and to the causes and the material substance of things, and their ruling Reason was their very own. But those—what a host of cares, what a world of slavery!

4. Thou mayst burst thyself with rage, but they will go on doing the same things none the less.

5. Firstly, fret not thyself, for all things are as the Nature of the Universe would have them, and within a little thou shalt be non-existent, and nowhere, like Hadrianus and Augustus. Secondly, look steadfastly at the thing, and see it as it is and, remembering withal that thou must be a good man, and what the Nature of man calls for, do this without swerving, and speak as seemeth to thee most just, only be it graciously, modestly, and without feigning.

6. The Nature of the Universe is charged with this task, to transfer yonder the things which are here, to interchange them, to take them hence and convey them thither. All things are but phases of change, but nothing new-fangled need be feared; all things are of the wonted type, nay, their distributions also are alike.

7. Every nature is content with itself when it speeds well on its way; and a rational nature speeds well on its way, when in its impressions it gives assent to nothing that is false or obscure, and directs its impulses towards none but social acts, and limits its inclinations and its aversions only to things that are in its power, and welcomes all that the Universal Nature allots it. For it is a part of that, as the nature of the leaf is of the plant-nature; with the difference however, that in the case of the plant the nature of the leaf is part of a nature void both of sentience and reason, and liable to be thwarted, while a man's nature is part of a nature unthwartable and intelligent and just, if indeed it divides up equally and in due measure to every one his quotas of time, substance, cause, activity, circumstance. And consider, not whether thou shalt find one thing in every case equal to one thing, but whether, collectively, the whole of this equal to the aggregate of that.

8. Thou canst not be a student. But thou canst refrain from insolence; but thou canst rise superior to pleasures and pains; but thou canst tread under thy feet the love of glory; but thou canst forbear to be angry with the unfeeling and the thankless, aye and even care for them.

9. Let no one hear thee any more grumbling at life in a Court, nay let not thine own ears hear thee.

10. Repentance is a sort of self-reproach at some useful thing passed by; but the good must needs be a useful thing, and ever to be cultivated by the true good man; but the true good man would never regret having passed a pleasure by. Pleasure therefore is neither a useful thing nor a good.

11. What of itself is the thing in question as individually constituted? What is the substance and material of it? What the causal part? What doeth it in the Universe? How long doth it subsist?

12. When thou art loth to get up, call to mind that the due discharge of social duties is in accordance with thy constitution and in accordance with man's nature, while even irrational animals share with us the faculty of sleep; but what is in accordance with the nature of the individual is more congenial, more closely akin to him, aye and more attractive.

13. Persistently and, if possible, in every case test thy impressions by the rules of physics, ethics, logic.

14. Whatever man thou meetest, put to thyself at once this question: What are this man's convictions about good and evil? For if they are such and such about pleasure and pain and what is productive of them, about good report and ill report, about death and life, it will be in no way strange or surprising to me if he does such and such things. So I will remember that he is constrained to act as he does.

15. Remember that, as it is monstrous to be surprised at a fig-tree bearing figs, so also is it to be surprised at the Universe bearing its own particular crop. Likewise it is monstrous for a physician or a steersman to be surprised that a patient has fever or that a contrary wind has sprung up.

16. Remember that neither a change of mind nor a willingness to be set right by others is inconsistent with true freedom of will. For thine alone is the active effort that effects its purpose in accordance with thy impulse and judgment, aye and thy intelligence also.

17. If the choice rests with thee, why do the thing? if with another, whom dost thou blame? Atoms or Gods To do either would be crazy folly. No one is to blame. For if thou canst, set the offender right. Failing that, at least set the thing itself right. If that too be impracticable, what purpose is served by imputing blame? For without a purpose nothing should be done.

18. That which dies is not cast out of the Universe. As it remains here, it also suffers change here and is dissolved into its own constituents, which are the elements of the Universe and thy own. Yes, and they too suffer change and murmur not.

19. Every thing, be it a horse, be it a vine, has come into being for some end. Why wonder? Helios himself will say: I exist to do some work; and so of all the other Gods. For what then dost thou exist? For pleasure? Surely it is unthinkable.

20. Nature has included in its aim in every case the ceasing to be no less than the beginning and the duration, just as the man who tosses up his ball. But what good does the ball gain while tossed upwards, or harm as it comes down, or finally when it reaches the ground? Or what good accrues to the bubble while it coheres, or harm in its bursting? And the same holds good with the lamp-flame.

21. Turn it inside out and see what it is like, what it comes to be when old, when sickly, when carrion. They endure but for a season, both praiser and praised, rememberer and remembered. All this too in a tiny corner of this continent, and not even there are all in accord, no nor a man with himself; and the whole earth is itself a point.

22. Fix thy attention on the subject-matter or the act or the principle or the thing signified. Rightly served! Thou wouldst rather become a good man to-morrow than be one to-day.

23. Am I doing some thing? I do it with reference to the well-being of mankind. Does something befall me? I accept it with a reference to the Gods and to the Source of all things from which issue, linked together, the things that come into being.

24. What bathing is when thou thinkest of it—oil, sweat, filth, greasy water, everything revolting—such is every part of life and every object we meet with.

25. Lucilla buried Verus, then Lucilla was buried; Secunda Maximus, then Secunda; Epitynchanus Diotimus, then Epitynchanus; Antoņinus Faustina, then Antoninus. The same tale always: Celer buried Hadrianus and then Celer was buried. And those acute wits, men renowned for their prescience or their pride, where are they? Such acute wits, for instance, as Charax and Demetrius [the Platonist ] and Eudaemon, and others like them. All creatures of a day, dead long ago!—some not remembered even for a while, others transformed into legends, and yet others from legends faded into nothingness! Bear then in mind that either this thy composite self must be scattered abroad, or thy vital breath be quenched, or be transferred and set elsewhere.

26. It brings gladness to a man to do a man s true work. And a man's true work is to shew goodwill to his own kind, to disdain the motions of the senses, to diagnose specious impressions, to take a comprehensive view of the Nature of the Universe and all that is done at her bidding.

27. Thou hast three relationships—the first to the vessel thou art contained in; the second to the divine Cause wherefrom issue all things to all; and the third to those that dwell with thee.

28. Pain is an evil either to the body—let the body then denounce it —or to the Soul; but the Soul can ensure her own fair weather and her own calm sea, and refuse to account it an evil. For every conviction and impulse and desire and aversion is from within, and nothing climbs in thither.

29. Efface thy impressions, saying ever to thyself: Now lies it with me that this soul should harbour no wickedness nor lust nor any disturbing element at all; but that, seeing the true nature of all things, I should deal with each as is its due. Bethink thee of this power that Nature gives thee.

30. Say thy say in the Senate or to any person whatsoever becomingly and naturally. Use sound speech.

31. The court of Augustus—wife, daughter, descendants, ancestors, sister, Agrippa, kinsfolk, household, friends, Areius, Maecenas, physicians, haruspices—dead, the whole court of them! Pass on then to other records and the death not of individuals but of a clan, as of the Pompeii. And that well-known epitaph, Last of his race —think over it and the anxiety shewn by the man s ancestors that they might leave a successor. But after all some one must be the last of the line—here again the dearth of a whole race!

32. Act by act thou must build up thy life, and be content, if each act as far as may be fulfils its end. And there is never a man that can prevent it doing this. But there will be some impediment from without. There can be none to thy behaving justly, soberly, wisely. But what if some other exercise of activity be hindered? Well, a cheerful acceptance of the hindrance and a tactful transition to what is allowed will enable another action to be substituted that will be in keeping with the built-up life of which we are speaking.

33. Accept without arrogance, surrender without reluctance.

34. Thou hast seen a hand cut off or a foot, or a head severed from the trunk, and lying at some distance from the rest of the body. Just so does the man treat himself, as far as he may, who wills not what befalls and severs himself from mankind or acts unsocially. Say thou hast been torn away in some sort from the unity of Nature; for by the law of thy birth thou wast a part; but now thou hast cut thyself off. Yet here comes in that exquisite provision, that thou canst return again to thy unity. To no other part has God granted this, to come together again, when once separated and cleft asunder. Aye, behold His goodness, wherewith He hath glorified man! For He hath let it rest with a man that he be never rent away from the Whole, and if he do rend himself away, to return again and grow on to the rest and take up his position again as part.

35. Just as the Nature of rational things has given each rational being almost all his other powers, so also have we received this one from it; that, as this Nature moulds to its purpose whatever interference or opposition it meets, and gives it a place in the destined order of things, and makes it a part of itself, so also can the rational creature convert every hindrance into material for itself and utilize it for its own purposes.

36. Let not the mental picture of life as a whole confound thee. Fill not thy thoughts with what and how many ills may conceivably await thee, but in every present case ask thyself: What is there in this experience so crushing, so insupportable? Thou wilt blush to confess. Remind thyself further that it is not the future nor the past but the present always that brings thee its burden. But this is reduced to insignificance if thou isolate it, and take thy mind to task if it cannot hold out against this mere trifle.

37. Does Pantheia now watch by the urn of her lord, or Pergamus? What, does Chabrias or Diotimus by Hadrian's? Absurd! And had they sat there till now, would the dead have been aware of it? and, if aware of it, would they have been pleased? and, if pleased, would that have made the mourners immortal? Was it not destined that these like others should become old women and old men and then die? What then, when they were dead, would be left for those whom they had mourned to do? It is all stench and foul corruption in a sack of skin.

38. Hast thou keenness of sight? Use it with judgment ever so wisely, as the saying goes.

39. In the constitution of rational creatures I see no virtue incompatible with justice, but incompatible with pleasure I see—continence.

40. Take away thy opinion as to any imagined pain, and thou thyself art set in surest safety. What is 'thyself '? Reason. But I am not reason. Be it so. At all events let the Reason not cause itself pain, but if any part in thee is amiss, let it form its own opinion about itself.

41. To the animal nature a thwarting of sense-perception is an evil, as is also to the same nature the thwarting of impulse. There is similarly some other thing that can thwart the constitution of plants and is an evil to them. Thus then the thwarting of intelligence is an evil to the intelligent nature. Transfer the application of all this to thyself. Does pain, does pleasure take hold of thee? The senses shall look to it. Wast thou impelled to a thing and wast thwarted? If thy impulse counts on an unconditional fulfilment, failure at once becomes an evil to thee as a rational creature. But accept the universal limitation, and thou hast so far received no hurt nor even been thwarted. Indeed no one else is in a way to thwart the inner purposes of the mind. For it no fire can touch, nor steel, nor tyrant, nor obloquy, nor any thing soever: a sphere once formed continues round and true.

42. It were not right that I should pain myself for not even another have I ever knowingly pained.

43. One thing delights one, another thing another. To me it is a delight if I keep my ruling Reason sound, not looking askance at man or anything that befalls man, but regarding all things with kindly eyes, accepting and using everything for its intrinsic worth.

44. See thou dower thyself with this present time. Those that yearn rather for after-fame do not realize that their successors are sure to be very much the same as the contemporaries whom they find such a burden, and no less mortal. What is it anyway to thee if there be this or that far-off echo of their voices, or if they have this or that opinion about thee?

45. Take me up and cast me where thou wilt. For even there will I keep my 'genius' tranquil, that is, content if in itself and in its activity it follow the laws of its own constitution.

46. Nothing can befall a man that is not a contingency natural to man; nor befall an ox, that is not natural to oxen, nor a vine that is not natural to a vine, nor a stone that is not proper to it. If therefore only what is natural and customary befalls each, why be aggrieved? For the common Nature brings thee nothing that thou canst not bear.

47. When thou art vexed at some external cross, it is not the thing itself that troubles thee, but thy judgment on it. And this thou canst annul in a moment. But if thou art vexed at something in thine own character, who can prevent thee from rectifying the principle that is to blame? So also if thou art vexed at not undertaking that which seems to thee a sound act, why not rather undertake it than be vexed? But there is a lion in the path! Be not vexed then, for the blame of inaction rests not with thee. But life is not worth living, this left undone. Depart then from life, dying with the same kindly feelings as he who effects his purpose, and accepting with a good grace the obstacles that thwart thee.

48. Never forget that the ruling Reason shews itself unconquerable when, concentrated in itself, it is content with itself so it do nothing that it doth not will, even if it refuse from mere opposition and not from reason—much more, then, if it judge of a thing on reasonable grounds and advisedly. Therefore the Mind, unmastered by passions, is a very citadel, for a man has no fortress more impregnable wherein to find refuge and be untaken for ever. He indeed who hath not seen this is ignorant, but he that hath seen it and takes not refuge therein is luckless.

49. Say no more to thyself than what the initial impressions report. This has been told thee, that so and so speaks ill of thee. This has been told thee, but it has not been told thee that thou art harmed. I see that my child is ailing. I see it, but I do not see that he is in danger. Keep then ever to first impressions and supplement them not on thy part from within, and nothing happens to thee. And yet do supplement them with this, that thou art familiar with every possible contingency in the world.

50. The gherkin is bitter. Toss it away. There are briars in the path. Turn aside. That suffices, and thou needest not to add: Why are such things found in the world? For thou wouldst be a laughing stock to any student of nature; just as thou wouldst be laughed at by a carpenter and a cobbler if thou tookest them to task because in their shops are seen sawdust and parings from what they are making. And yet they have space for the disposal of their fragments; while the Universal Nature has nothing outside herself; but the marvel of her craftsmanship is that, though she is limited to herself, she transmutes into her own substance all that within her seems to be perishing and decrepit and useless, and again from these very things produces other new ones; whereby she shews that she neither wants any substance outside herself nor needs a corner where she may cast her decaying matter. Her own space, her own material, her own proper craftsmanship is all that she requires.

51. Be not dilatory in doing, nor confused in conversation, nor vague in thought; let not thy soul be wholly concentred in itself nor uncontrollably agitated; leave thyself leisure in thy life.

52. He that knoweth not what the Universe is knoweth not where he is. He that knoweth not the end of its being knoweth not who he is or what the Universe is. But he that is wanting in the knowledge of any of these things could not tell what is the end of his own being. What then must we think of those that court or eschew the verdict of the clappers, who have no conception where or who they are?

53. Carest thou to be praised by a man who execrates himself thrice within the hour? to win the approval of a man who wins not his own? Can he be said to win his own approval who regrets almost every thing he does?

54. Be no longer content merely to breathe in unison with the all-embracing air, but from this moment think also in unison with the all-embracing Intelligence. For that intelligent faculty is every where diffused and offers itself on every side to him that can take it in no less than the aerial to him that can breathe.

55. Taken collectively wickedness does no harm to the Universe, and the particular wickedness does no harm to others. It is harmful to the one individual alone, and he has been given the option of being quit of it the first moment he pleases.

56. To my power of choice the power of choice of my neighbour is as much a matter of indifference as is his vital breath and his flesh. For however much we may have been made for one another, yet our ruling Reason is in each case master in its own house. Else might my neighbour's wickedness become my bane; and this was not God s will, that another might not have my unhappiness in his keeping.

57. The sun's light is diffused down, as it seems, yes, and in every direction, yet it does not diffuse itself away. For this diffusion is an extension. At any rate the beams of the Sun are called Extension rays, because they have an extension in space. And what a ray is you may easily see, if you observe the sun's light entering through a narrow chink into a darkened room, for it extends straight on, and is as it were brought up against any solid body it encounters that cuts off the air beyond. There the ray comes to a standstill, neither slipping off nor sinking down. Such then should be the diffusion and circumfusion of the mind, never a diffusing away but extension, and it should never make a violent or uncontrollable impact against any obstacle it meets with, no, nor collapse, but stand firm and illuminate what receives it. For that which conducts it not on its way will deprive itself wilfully of its beams.

58. Dread of death is a dread of non-sensation or new sensation. But either thou wilt feel no sensation, and so no sensation of any evil; or a different kind of sensation will be thine, and so the life of a different creature, but still a life.

59. Mankind have been created for the sake of one another. Either instruct therefore or endure.

60. One is the way of an arrow, another of the mind. Howbeit the mind, both when it cautiously examines its ground and when it is engaged in its enquiry, is none the less moving straight forward and towards its goal.

61. Enter into every man's ruling Reason, and give every one else an opportunity to enter into thine.