Book IX

1. Whoever does wrong commits impiety. For the nature of the Whole fashioned rational creatures for one another, so that they might benefit one another according to their worth and never do harm; whoever transgresses her purpose plainly commits impiety against the eldest of the gods. For the nature of the Whole is the nature of all beings, and beings stand in kinship with everything that exists.

Moreover, whoever lies commits impiety against this same goddess. Her name is Truth, and she is the first cause of all truths. The willing liar, then, commits impiety insofar as he deceives and thereby does wrong; the unwilling liar, insofar as he is out of harmony with the nature of the Whole, and makes disorder by contending with the nature of the cosmos. For anyone carried of himself toward what is contrary to the truth is in conflict: nature had already given him the first grounds of understanding, but by neglecting them he has now become unable to distinguish falsehoods from truths.

And indeed, whoever pursues pleasures as goods and flees pains as evils commits impiety. Such a person must often reproach the common nature for distributing things contrary to merit among the base and the virtuous, since the base are often surrounded by pleasures and possess what produces them, while the virtuous encounter pain and what produces it. Again, whoever fears pains will one day fear something destined to occur within the cosmos—and that is already impious. Whoever pursues pleasures will not refrain from wrongdoing—and that is manifestly impious.

Toward those things to which the common nature is impartial—for she would not make both if she were not equally disposed toward both—those who wish to follow nature must, being of one mind with her, be impartial as well. Whoever, then, is not equally disposed toward pain and pleasure, death and life, fame and obscurity—things which the nature of the Whole employs impartially—plainly commits impiety.

By saying that the common nature employs these things impartially, I mean that they occur impartially, in due succession, to all that comes to be and follows after, through a certain primordial impulse of providence. From some first beginning, by this impulse, she set forth toward the present ordering of the world, conceiving certain formative principles of what was to be and defining generative powers for substances, transformations, and successions of this kind.

2. It would have been the part of a finer man to depart from humankind without ever tasting falsehood, any hypocrisy, luxury, or conceit. Yet to breathe one’s last when at least one has had one’s fill of them is the second-best voyage. Or have you chosen to sit close beside vice? Has experience not yet persuaded you to flee this pestilence? For the corruption of the mind is a pestilence far more truly than any such imbalance and alteration of this surrounding air. The latter is a pestilence of living creatures insofar as they are creatures; the former, of human beings insofar as they are human.

3. Do not disdain death; welcome it, since it too is one of the things nature wills. For dissolution itself is like being young and growing old, growing and coming to one’s prime, bringing forth teeth, beard, and grey hairs, begetting, carrying a child, giving birth, and all the other natural activities that the seasons of life bring.

It is therefore the course of a human being who has reasoned well not to meet death thoughtlessly, impulsively, or disdainfully, but to await it as one of nature’s activities. Just as you now await the moment when the child will emerge from your wife’s womb, so await the hour when your little soul will fall from this sheath.

But if you also want a simple, heartening support, what will make you readiest for death is a close consideration of the things you are about to leave and of the characters with which your soul will no longer be entangled. You must not take offense at them in the least, but rather care for them and bear with them gently—while remembering that your departure will not be from people who hold the same convictions as you. This alone, if anything could, would draw you the other way and hold you in life: if you were permitted to live among people who had made the same convictions their own. But now you see how exhausting the discord of life together is, enough to make you say:

“Come sooner, Death,before I too forget myself.”

4. Whoever goes astray goes astray against himself; whoever does wrong wrongs himself, by making himself bad.

5. Often the one who does not act does wrong, not only the one who acts.

6. Enough: the present judgment that grasps what is, the present action directed toward the common good, and the present disposition content with everything that comes to pass from the cause outside us.

7. Erase the impression;halt the impulse;extinguish desire;keep the governing mind in its own power.

8. One soul is distributed among irrational creatures, and one intelligent soul apportioned among rational beings—just as there is one earth for all things earthy, and we all who have sight and soul see by one light and breathe one air.

9. All things that share in something common hasten toward their own kind. Everything earthy inclines toward earth; everything liquid flows together; what is airy does likewise, so that barriers—and force—are needed to keep it apart. Fire rises because of the elemental fire, yet every fire here is so ready to kindle together with any other that all matter even slightly drier is easily ignited, because less of what hinders ignition has been mixed into it.

Accordingly, everything that shares in a common intelligent nature hastens toward its kind in the same way—or more. For the more excellent it is than other things, the readier it is to mingle and merge with what is its own. Thus, already among irrational creatures there appeared swarms and herds, the nurturing of young, and semblances of love. For souls were now present, and in the higher order the power of gathering together was found intensified, as it was not among plants or stones or timber.

Among rational creatures there are communities, friendships, households, and assemblies—and in wars, treaties and truces. Among beings higher still, though in a way far separated, a unity has arisen such as that among the stars. Thus ascent to what is higher could create fellow-feeling even among things far apart.

See, then, what is happening now. Rational beings alone have now forgotten their earnest movement and convergence toward one another; here alone no confluence can be seen. Yet even as they flee, they are caught and enclosed—for nature prevails. Watch closely, and you will see what I mean: one could sooner find something earthy touching nothing earthy than find a human being wholly severed from humankind.

10. A human being bears fruit, and so does a god, and so does the cosmos; each bears its fruit in its proper season. If common usage has worn the word down by applying it chiefly to the vine and things like it, that makes no difference. Reason, too, has fruit both common and its own, and from it arise other fruits of the same kind as reason itself.

11. If you can, instruct them; if not, remember that kindness was given you for this. The gods themselves are kind to such people, and in some pursuits they even work beside them—toward health, toward wealth, toward reputation: so gracious are they. You may do the same. Or tell me, who prevents you?

12. Work hard—not as one afflicted, nor as one who wants pity or admiration. Desire one thing only: to move and to come to rest as civic reason requires.

13. Today I escaped every constriction—or rather, I cast every constriction out. For it was not outside me, but within, in my judgments.

14. All things are the same: familiar through experience, fleeting in time, foul in their matter. Everything now is as it was in the days of those we buried.

15. Things stand outside the doors, each by itself, knowing nothing about itself and making no pronouncement. What, then, pronounces upon them? The ruling mind.

16. The evil and the good of a rational, civic creature lie not in what it undergoes but in what it does—just as its virtue and vice lie not in what it undergoes but in what it does.

17. For a stone flung upward, there is no evil in falling and no good in rising.

18. Pass within, into their ruling minds, and you will see what sort of judges you fear—and what sort of judges they are even of themselves.

19. All things are in transformation; you yourself are in unceasing alteration and, in some measure, decay—and so is the entire cosmos.

20. Another's error must be left where it is.

21. The ending of an activity, the cessation of an impulse or a judgment—a kind of death—is nothing evil. Turn now to the stages of life: childhood, boyhood, youth, old age. Every change among these is also a death. Is there anything terrible in that? Turn now to your life under your grandfather, then under your mother, then under your father; and as you discover many other dissolutions, changes, and endings, ask yourself: Was there anything terrible in them? So too the ending, cessation, and transformation of your whole life is nothing terrible.

22. Hasten to your own ruling mind, to the ruling mind of the Whole, and to this person's. To your own, that you may make it a mind of justice; to the Whole's, that you may remember again whose part you are; to this person's, that you may discern whether ignorance or considered purpose is at work, and at the same time reckon that his mind is kindred to yours.

23. As you yourself are a constituent part of a civic order, so let every action of yours contribute to civic life. Any action of yours, then, that bears no reference—whether directly or remotely—to the communal end tears your life apart, does not allow it to remain one, and is seditious: like someone in a people who, for his own part, breaks away from its concord.

24. Children's rages and children's games, and “little breaths carrying corpses”—so that the vision of the Descent among the Dead strikes home more vividly.

25. Go to the quality of the cause, mark it off from the material, and behold it; then bound the time as well—the longest for which this thing, qualified as it is, can by nature subsist.

26. You have endured ten thousand sufferings because you were not content to let your ruling mind do the things for which it was formed. But enough.

27. Whenever another reproaches or hates you, or people give voice to anything of that kind, approach their little souls; pass within and see what sort of people they are. You will see that you need not wrench yourself about over whatever opinion of you they may hold. Yet you must bear them goodwill, for by nature they are friends. The gods, moreover, help them in every way—through dreams, through oracles—at least toward those very things on which they set their hearts.

28. The cycles of the cosmos are the same, up and down, from age to age. Either the mind of the Whole directs its impulse toward each single thing—and if so, welcome what its impulse brings—or it made one primal impulse, and all the rest follows in consequence. Why, then, strain against it? The Whole—whether it is God, all is well; whether it is chance, in some fashion atoms or indivisible particles, do not you too act at random.

Soon earth will cover us all; then earth herself will change, and those things will change into others without end, and those again without end. Whoever considers the surging waves of change and alteration, and the swiftness of everything mortal, will hold it all in contempt.

29. A torrent is the cause of all things: it carries everything away. Human being, what are you doing? Do what nature now requires. Set out, if the way is given, and do not look around to see whether anyone will know. Do not hope for Plato's republic, but be satisfied if the smallest thing advances, and consider the outcome of that small thing as no small matter.

How paltry are these little political men who, in their own estimation, practice philosophy in public life—full of mucus. For who will change their doctrines? And without a change of doctrines, what else is there but the slavery of people groaning while pretending to obey?

Go on now, tell me of Alexander and Philip and Demetrius of Phalerum. I will follow them if they saw what universal nature willed and schooled themselves accordingly. But if they played tragic heroes, no one has sentenced me to imitate them. Philosophy's work is simple and modest; do not lead me away into pompous vanity.

30. “Look from above” upon ten thousand herds and ten thousand rites; upon voyages of every kind through storms and calms; upon the differences among those coming to be, living together, and passing away. Consider also the life lived long ago by others, the life that will be lived after you, and the life now being lived among foreign peoples: how many do not even know your name, how many will very soon forget it, how many who perhaps praise you now will very soon condemn you—and how neither remembrance nor fame nor anything else whatever is worth accounting much.

31. Undisturbed calm toward what occurs from the cause outside you; justice in what is done through the cause within you—that is, impulse and action coming to rest in this alone: acting for the common good, because this is according to your nature.

32. You can strip away many needless things that trouble you, all of them resting wholly in your judgment, and at once secure a vast expanse for yourself: embrace the whole cosmos in your understanding, contemplate everlasting time, and consider the swift transformation of each particular thing—how brief the span from birth to dissolution, how boundless the time before birth, and how the time after dissolution is boundless in the same way.

33. Everything you see will very swiftly pass away; and those who watched these things passing away will very swiftly pass away themselves. And the man who dies in extreme old age will be brought to the same state as the man who died before his time.

34. What are their ruling minds? What have they set their hearts upon, and for the sake of what do they love and honor? Imagine that you see their little souls stripped bare. When they suppose that their blame can harm or their praise confer a benefit—what presumption!

35. Loss is nothing other than change. In this the nature of the Whole delights, and in accordance with it all things come to pass well. From eternity they came to pass in the same manner, and to infinity other things of this kind will be. What, then, are you saying? That all things have always come to pass badly, and all things will always be bad? That among so many gods no power was ever found capable of setting them right, but the cosmos stands condemned to be held fast in unceasing evils?

36. The rottenness of the matter underlying each thing: water, dust, little bones, grease. Or again: marble is earth’s hardened crust, gold and silver its sediments; clothing is little hairs, purple is blood—and everything else is of the same kind. The breathlike substance too is another such thing, changing from these forms into these forms.

37. Enough of this wretched life, this grumbling and aping. Why are you troubled? What is new in any of this? What drives you out of yourself? The cause? Look at it. But is it the matter? Look at that. Outside these there is nothing. And now, at long last, become simpler and kinder toward the gods as well.

38. To survey these events for a hundred years is the same as to survey them for three hundred.

39. If he has done wrong, the evil lies there, in him. And perhaps he has not done wrong.

40. Either all things flow from one intelligent spring and befall as parts of one body—and the part must not find fault with what comes to pass for the sake of the whole—or there are atoms, and nothing but a welter and a scattering. Why, then, are you troubled? Say to your ruling mind: “You are dead; you have decayed; you have turned beast; you play a part, run with the herd, and graze.”

41. Either the gods have no power, or they have power. If they have none, why do you pray? But if they have power, why not pray instead that they grant you neither to fear any of these things, nor to desire any of them, nor to grieve over any of them—rather than pray that one of them may not be present, or may be present? For surely, if they can work with human beings, they can work with them toward these ends as well. But perhaps you will say: “The gods have left these things in my power.” Then is it not better to use what is in your power with freedom than to struggle over what is not in your power with servility and abasement? And who told you that the gods do not assist us even in what is up to us? Begin, then, to pray about these things, and you will see.

This man prays: “How may I sleep with that woman?”You: “How may I not desire to sleep with her?”

Another: “How may I be rid of that man?”You: “How may I not need to be rid of him?”

Another: “How may I avoid losing my little child?”You: “How may I not fear to lose him?”

Turn your prayers around in this way altogether, and watch what happens.

42. Epicurus says: “During my illness, my conversations were not about the sufferings of this poor body, nor, as he puts it, did I chatter about such matters with those who came to see me. I continued instead to reason about nature’s first principles, dwelling especially on this: how the understanding, though it shares in such movements of the flesh, remains untroubled and preserves its own good. Nor, he says, did I give the doctors an opening to strut as though they were accomplishing something; my life went on well and nobly.”

So let it be with you as it was with him in illness, if you fall ill, and in any other circumstance. For never to desert philosophy, whatever may befall, and never to join in the nonsense of the unlearned man who does not study nature—this is common to every school. Attend solely to what is being done now, and to the instrument through which you do it.

43. Whenever you collide with someone’s shamelessness, ask yourself at once: “Can there be a world without shameless people?” There cannot. Then do not demand the impossible. This man too is one of those shameless people who must exist in the world. Keep the same thought ready to hand for the scoundrel, the faithless man, and anyone who goes wrong in any way. For as soon as you remind yourself that it is impossible for this breed of men not to exist, you will be more kindly disposed toward each one of them.

It is useful also to consider at once what virtue nature has given a human being to meet this error. Against the unfeeling man she has given gentleness as an antidote, and against another, some other power. In general, it is open to you to teach the wanderer a better way; for everyone who goes wrong misses the end set before him and has gone astray.

And how have you been harmed? You will find that none of the people who provoke you has done anything capable of making your understanding worse; yet it is there that all your evil and harm have their being. And what evil or strange thing has happened if the uneducated man acts as the uneducated do? See whether you ought rather to blame yourself for failing to expect that he would commit this error. Your reason gave you grounds for reflecting that he was likely to go wrong in this way; yet you forgot, and now you marvel that he did.

Above all, when you reproach a man for faithlessness or ingratitude, turn back upon yourself. For plainly the error is yours: either you trusted that a man with such a disposition would keep faith, or, when you gave a kindness, you did not give it wholeheartedly, in such a way as to gather the whole fruit from the act itself, there and then.

What more do you want, human being, after doing good? Is it not enough that you have done something in accordance with your own nature? Do you seek payment for it besides—as though the eye demanded a reward for seeing, or the feet for walking? Just as these were made for a certain end and, by acting according to their own constitution, obtain what is their own, so too the human being, born to benefit others, whenever he does some beneficent act or otherwise helps toward common ends, has done what he was constituted to do, and has what is his own.

1. A person who does wrong acts irreverently toward the divine. The nature of the universe made rational beings for one another, so that they would help one another as each deserves and never cause harm. Anyone who violates her purpose is therefore acting irreverently toward the oldest of the gods. The nature of the universe is the nature of everything that exists, and everything that exists is naturally related to all other existing things.

A person who lies also acts irreverently toward this same goddess. She is called Truth and is the primary cause of everything true. Someone who lies deliberately acts irreverently because deception is wrongdoing. Someone who lies unintentionally does so because he is out of tune with the nature of the universe and creates disorder by opposing the nature of the world. A person who moves on his own toward views contrary to the truth is fighting against it. Nature had already given him the basic means of recognizing truth, but because he neglected them, he can no longer tell what is false from what is true.

Anyone who pursues pleasure as good and avoids pain as evil also acts irreverently. Such a person will often have to blame universal nature for giving things unfairly to bad and good people, since bad people are often surrounded by pleasures and possess the things that produce them, while good people meet with pain and the things that produce it. Also, a person who fears pain will eventually fear something that is going to happen in the universe, and that is already irreverent. A person who pursues pleasure will not keep from doing wrong, and that is clearly irreverent.

Universal nature treats certain things equally; if she did not, she would not produce both of each pair. People who want to follow nature and share her judgment must therefore treat those things equally too. So anyone who does not regard pain and pleasure, death and life, fame and lack of fame equally, though the nature of the universe uses them equally, is plainly acting irreverently.

When I say that universal nature uses these things equally, I mean that, in the course of events, they happen equally to the things that come into being and to those that arise afterward, through a primal impulse of providence. Following that impulse, providence advanced from an original beginning toward the present arrangement of the world, forming certain principles of what would come to be and assigning generative powers for substances, changes, and successions of this kind.

2. A better man would have left this world without ever experiencing lies, hypocrisy, self-indulgence, or vanity. Still, dying after becoming thoroughly sick of them is the next-best course. Or have you decided to remain with vice? Hasn’t your experience yet convinced you to escape this plague? The corruption of the mind is much more a plague than an unhealthy disturbance and change in the air around us. The second is a plague for living beings as living beings; the first is a plague for human beings as human beings.

3. Do not look down on death; accept it willingly, because it too is one of the things nature wants. Dissolving is like being young and becoming old, growing and reaching maturity, developing teeth, a beard, and grey hair, fathering a child, carrying a child, giving birth, and all the other natural processes brought by the stages of life.

So the reasonable human attitude is not to face death carelessly, impulsively, or arrogantly, but to wait for it as one of nature’s processes. Just as you now wait for the baby to come out of your wife’s womb, wait in the same way for the hour when your little soul will drop out of this casing.

If you also want a simple encouragement that speaks to the heart, consider carefully the things you are going to leave and the kinds of people among whom your soul will no longer be mixed up. You should not be irritated with them at all, but should care for them and put up with them gently. Still, remember that you will not be leaving people who share your beliefs. This alone, if anything, could have pulled you back and kept you alive: being allowed to live with people who had adopted the same beliefs. But as things are, you see how tiring the disagreements of life together are—enough to say:

“Come quickly, Death,before I too forget who I am.”

4. A person who does wrong harms himself. A person who acts unjustly is unjust to himself, because he makes himself a bad person.

5. We often do wrong by failing to do something, not only by doing something.

6. All that is needed is an accurate judgment now, an action now that serves others, and an attitude now that accepts whatever happens from an external cause.

7. Wipe away the impression.Stop the impulse.Put out the desire.Keep your directing mind under its own control.

8. One soul is divided among non-rational animals, and one thinking soul is shared among rational beings. In the same way, there is one earth for everything made of earth, and all living things that can see use one light to see and breathe one air.

9. Everything that shares something in common moves toward others of the same kind. Everything made of earth is drawn toward the earth. All liquid runs together. Air does the same, so barriers and force are needed to separate it. Fire moves upward because of elemental fire, but every fire here is so ready to catch together with another fire that any material which is even a little drier burns easily, since it contains less of what prevents ignition.

In the same way, everything that shares a common rational nature moves toward what is related to it—and does so even more strongly. The better it is than other things, the more ready it is to mix and unite with its own kind. So among non-rational animals we immediately find swarms, herds, care for offspring, and things like love. Souls were now present, and in the superior kind the force that draws things together was stronger than it was in plants, stones, or wood.

Among rational animals there are states, friendships, families, and associations, and in wartime there are treaties and truces. Among still higher beings, even though they are in some sense far apart, a unity exists, as it does among the stars. Rising to a higher level can therefore produce a shared bond even between things separated by distance.

Look, then, at what happens now. Rational beings alone have forgotten their concern for one another and their tendency to come together, and only here is no flowing together seen. Yet even when they try to escape, they are surrounded and held, because nature is stronger. Watch carefully and you will see what I mean: you would sooner find something made of earth that touches nothing earthly than a human being completely cut off from another human being.

10. A person, a god, and the universe all produce fruit; each does so at the proper time. It does not matter that ordinary usage has applied the word mainly to vines and similar things. Reason also produces both shared and particular fruit, and from it come other things like reason itself.

11. If you can, teach them better. If you cannot, remember that you have kindness for this purpose. The gods too are kind to people like them, and even help them in some things—with health, wealth, and reputation. That is how good the gods are. You can be the same. Who is stopping you?

12. Make the effort, but not as if you were miserable or wanted people to pity or admire you. Want only this: to act or hold back as reason directed toward the common good demands.

13. Today I got out of every difficulty—or rather, I threw every difficulty out. It was not outside me but inside, in my judgments.

14. Everything is the same: familiar from experience, short-lived in time, and dirty in its material. Everything now is just as it was for those we buried.

15. Things remain outside us, simply as they are. They know nothing about themselves and make no judgments. What judges them, then? The mind that governs us.

16. For a rational and social being, good and bad are not found in what happens to it but in what it does. In the same way, its virtue and vice are found not in what it undergoes but in its actions.

17. A stone thrown upward is not harmed by coming down or benefited by going up.

18. Look inside their minds, and you will see what kind of judges you are afraid of and how poorly they judge even themselves.

19. Everything is changing. You too are constantly being altered and, in some respect, destroyed. The whole universe is as well.

20. Leave another person's wrongdoing with that person.

21. When an action ends, or an impulse or judgment stops, that is a kind of death, but it is not bad. Now think of the stages of life: childhood, adolescence, youth, and old age. Every change from one to another is a death too. Is that frightening? Think next of your life with your grandfather, then with your mother, then with your father. As you find many other endings, changes, and losses, ask yourself whether any of them was frightening. In the same way, the ending, stopping, and changing of your entire life is not frightening either.

22. Turn quickly to your own governing mind, to the mind of the universe, and to the other person's mind. Turn to your own so that you can make it just; to the universe's so that you remember what you are part of; and to the other person's so that you can tell whether he acts from ignorance or deliberate intent, while also considering that his mind is related to yours.

23. Just as you are a part that helps complete a community, every action you take should help complete a life in community. Any action that is not directed, either closely or remotely, toward the common goal breaks your life apart and keeps it from being unified. It is rebellious, like a person in a community who separates his own part from its shared harmony.

24. Children's tantrums and games, and “little breaths carrying dead bodies”—which makes the scene of the Journey to the Dead come vividly to mind.

25. Examine the quality of the cause by separating it in thought from the material, and look at it. Then set a limit to the longest time this particular kind of thing can naturally last.

26. You have suffered countless troubles because you were not satisfied with your governing mind doing what it was made to do. But that is enough.

27. When someone criticizes or hates you, or people say things like that about you, look into their small souls and see what kind of people they are. You will see that you do not need to be upset about what they think of you. Still, you must wish them well, because they are your friends by nature. The gods also help them in every way, through dreams and prophecies, at least to gain the things they care about.

28. The universe goes through the same cycles, up and down, from one age to another. Either the mind of the universe directs every single event; if so, accept what it directs. Or it gave one original impulse, and everything else follows as a result. So why resist? If the whole is God, everything is well. If it is chance—atoms or indivisible particles in some sense—do not you also behave at random.

The earth will soon cover all of us. Then the earth itself will change, and what it becomes will go on changing without end, and those later things will change without end as well. Anyone who thinks about the waves of change and alteration and the speed of everything mortal will look down on it all.

29. The cause of everything is a rushing torrent; it carries everything along. Human being, what are you doing? Do what nature requires now. Begin, if you have the opportunity, and do not look around to see whether anyone will notice. Do not expect Plato's ideal state. Be content if even the smallest thing moves forward, and do not think that this small result is unimportant.

How trivial these political figures are, though they imagine that they practice philosophy in public affairs. They are full of mucus. Who will change their beliefs? Without a change in beliefs, what can there be except the slavery of people who groan and pretend to obey?

Now go ahead and tell me about Alexander, Philip, and Demetrius of Phalerum. I will follow them if they understood what universal nature wanted and trained themselves accordingly. But if they merely acted like tragic heroes, no one has condemned me to imitate them. The work of philosophy is simple and modest. Do not draw me toward pompous self-importance.

30. “Look from above” at countless crowds and countless ceremonies, every kind of voyage in storms and calm weather, and the differences among people being born, living together, and dying. Think also of the lives other people lived long ago, the lives that will be lived after you, and the lives now being lived in foreign nations. Think how many people do not even know your name, how many will soon forget it, and how many who may praise you now will soon criticize you. Neither being remembered nor having fame nor anything else at all is of much value.

31. Remain calm about events caused by things outside you, and act justly in what comes from you. In other words, let your intentions and actions aim at acting for the common good, since that is natural for you.

32. You can remove many unnecessary things that bother you, since they depend entirely on your judgment, and immediately make a great deal of room for yourself. Hold the whole universe in your mind, think about endless time, and consider how quickly each individual thing changes: how short the time is from birth to dissolution, how vast the time before birth, and how equally endless the time after dissolution is.

33. Everything you see will soon perish. The people who see it perishing will soon perish too. And someone who dies at a very old age will end up no different from someone who dies young.

34. What are these people’s minds like? What do they care about, and what makes them love and honor things? Picture their petty souls naked. When they think they can hurt someone by criticizing him or help him by praising him, how conceited they are.

35. Loss is simply change. The nature of the universe takes pleasure in change, and by it everything happens as it should. Things have happened in the same way from eternity, and similar things will continue without end. So what are you saying? That everything has always gone badly and always will? That among so many gods there has never been any power able to put things right, and that the universe is condemned to remain trapped in endless evils?

36. Look at the decaying material each thing is made from: water, dust, small bones, fat. Marble is hardened earth, gold and silver are its deposits, clothes are hairs, and purple dye is blood. Everything else is like this too. The substance of breath is likewise material of this kind, changing from one of these forms into another.

37. Enough of this miserable life, this complaining and playacting. Why are you upset? What is new here? What throws you off balance? Is it the cause? Examine it. Is it the material? Examine that. There is nothing besides these two. And from now on, be more straightforward and gracious toward the gods.

38. It makes no difference whether you examine the history of these things for a hundred years or for three hundred.

39. If he did wrong, the harm is in him. But perhaps he did nothing wrong.

40. Either everything comes from one intelligent source and happens to the parts of a single body, in which case no part should complain about what happens for the good of the whole; or there are atoms, and nothing exists but a confused mixture and dispersion. So why are you upset? Say to your mind: “You are dead, ruined, and turned into an animal. You are pretending, joining the herd, and feeding with it.”

41. Either the gods can do nothing, or they can. If they can do nothing, why pray? If they can, why not ask them to help you stop fearing, wanting, or grieving over any of these things, rather than asking them to make some particular thing happen or not happen? If the gods can help human beings at all, they can certainly help them with this. But perhaps you will say, “The gods have put these matters in my own hands.” Then isn’t it better to use what is in your control freely than to struggle like a slave, humbly and helplessly, with what is not in your control? And who told you that the gods do not help us even with what is in our control? Start praying for these things and you will see.

One person prays, “How can I sleep with that woman?”You should pray, “How can I stop wanting to sleep with her?”

Another prays, “How can I get free of that man?”You should pray, “How can I stop needing to get free of him?”

Another prays, “How can I avoid losing my child?”You should pray, “How can I stop being afraid of losing my child?”

Change all your prayers in this way, and see what happens.

42. Epicurus says: “When I was ill, I did not talk about the pains of my poor body, and I did not chatter about such things with my visitors. I kept discussing the basic questions of nature, concentrating on how the mind can share in these disturbances of the flesh yet remain calm and preserve its own good. And I did not give the doctors a chance to boast over me as if they were achieving something. My life continued well and honorably.”

If you become ill, or find yourself in any other difficult situation, do as he did. Every philosophical school agrees that, whatever happens, we should not abandon philosophy or join in the idle talk of an uneducated person who knows nothing of nature. Focus only on what you are doing now and on the faculty with which you are doing it.

43. Whenever someone’s shameless behavior offends you, immediately ask yourself, “Is it possible for there to be no shameless people in the world?” No, it is not. So do not ask for the impossible. This person is one of the shameless people who must exist in the world. Keep the same thought ready when you meet a dishonest person, someone you cannot trust, or anyone else who does wrong. As soon as you remember that people of this kind cannot fail to exist, you will feel kinder toward each individual.

It also helps to consider immediately what strength nature has given human beings to deal with this particular fault. Nature has given gentleness as an antidote to the insensitive person, and some other ability to meet each different fault. In every case, you can teach someone who has gone astray. Everyone who does wrong misses the goal he was aiming at and loses his way.

Besides, how have you been harmed? You will find that none of the people you are angry with has done anything that had to make your mind worse. But that is where everything bad and harmful to you exists. What is bad or surprising about an uneducated person behaving like an uneducated person? Consider whether you should blame yourself instead, because you did not expect him to do this wrong. Your reason gave you grounds for thinking that he was likely to do it, but you forgot, and now you are surprised that he did.

Most of all, when you accuse someone of being untrustworthy or ungrateful, turn your attention back to yourself. The mistake is clearly yours: either you trusted that a person with such a character would keep his word, or you did him a favor without giving it completely and without receiving the full benefit from the act of doing it itself.

What more do you want after doing someone good? Isn’t it enough that you have acted according to your own nature? Do you also want a reward for it? That would be like the eye asking to be paid for seeing, or the feet for walking. Eyes and feet were made for particular functions, and by acting according to their own design they receive what belongs to them. In the same way, a human being is naturally made to help others. Whenever he does something helpful, or contributes in some other way to shared purposes, he has done what he was made to do and has received what belongs to him.

1. Injustice is impiety. For in that the Nature of the Universe has fashioned rational creatures for the sake of one another with a view to mutual benefit based upon worth, but by no means for harm, the transgressor of her will acts with obvious impiety against the most venerable of Deities.

2. It were more graceful doubtless for a man to depart from mankind untainted with falsehood and all dissimulation and luxury and arrogance; failing that, however, the 'next best course' is to breathe out his life when his gorge has risen at these things. Or is it thy choice to throw in thy lot with vice, and does not even thy taste of it yet persuade thee to fly from the pestilence? For the corruption of the mind is a pest far worse than any such miasma and vitiation of the air which we breathe around us. The latter is a pestilence for living creatures and affects their life, the former for human beings and affects their humanity.

3. Despise not death, but welcome it, for Nature wills it like all else. For dissolution is but one of the processes of Nature, associated with thy life's various seasons, such as to be young, to be old, to wax to our prime and to reach it, to grow teeth and beard and gray hairs, to beget, conceive and bring forth. A man then that has reasoned the matter out should not take up towards death the attitude of indifference, reluctance, or scorn, but await it as one of the processes of Nature. Look for the hour when thy soul shall emerge from this its sheath, as now thou awaitest the moment when the child she carries shall come forth from thy wife's womb.

4. He that does wrong, does wrong to himself. The unjust man is unjust to himself, for he makes himself bad.

5. There is often an injustice of omission as well as of commission.

6. The present assumption rightly apprehended, the present act socially enacted, the present disposition satisfied with all that befalls it from the Cause external to it—these will suffice.

7. Efface imagination. Restrain impulse. Quench desire. Keep the ruling Reason in thine own power.

8. Among irrational creatures one life is distributed, and among the rational one intellectual soul has been parcelled out. Just as also there is one earth for all the things that are of the earth; and one is the light whereby we see, and one the air we all breathe that have sight and life.

9. All that share in a common element have an affinity for their own kind. The trend of all that is earthy is to earth; fluids all run together; it is the same with the aerial; so that only interposing obstacles and force can keep them apart. Fire indeed has a tendency to rise by reason of the elemental fire, but is so quick to be kindled in sympathy with all fire here below that every sort of matter, a whit drier than usual, is easily kindled owing to its having fewer constituents calculated to offer resistance to its kindling. So then all that shares in the Universal Intelligent Nature has as strong an affinity towards what is akin, aye even a stronger. For the measure of its superiority to all other things is the measure of its readiness to blend and coalesce with that which is akin to it.

10. They all bear fruit—Man and God and the Universe: each in its due season bears. It matters nought that in customary parlance such a term is strictly applicable only to the vine and such things. Reason too hath its fruit both for all and for itself, and there issue from it other things such as is Reason itself.

11. If thou art able, convert the wrong-doer. If not, bear in mind that kindliness was given thee to meet just such a case. The Gods too are kindly to such persons and even co-operate with them for certain ends—for health, to wit, and wealth and fame, so benignant are they. Thou too canst be the same; or say who is there that prevents thee.

12. Do thy work not as a drudge, nor as desirous of pity or praise. Desire one thing only, to act or not to act as civic reason directs.

13. This day have I got me out of all trouble, or rather have cast out all trouble, for it was not from without, but within, in my own imagination.

14. All these are things of familiar experience; in their duration ephemeral, in their material foul. Everything is now as it was in the days of those whom we have buried.

15. Objective things stand outside the door, keeping themselves to themselves, without knowledge of or message about themselves. What then has for us a message about them? The ruling Reason.

16. Not in being acted upon but in activity lies the evil and the good of the rational and civic creature, just as his virtue too and his vice lie in activity and not in being acted upon.

17. The stone that is thrown into the air is none the worse for falling down, or the better for being carried upwards.

18. Find the way within into their ruling Reason, and thou shalt see what these judges are whom thou fearest and what their judgment of themselves is worth.

19. Change is the universal experience. Thou art thyself undergoing a perpetual transformation and, in some sort, decay: aye and the whole Universe as well.

20. Another's wrong-doing should be left with him.

21. A cessation of activity, a quiescence from impulse and opinion and, as it were, their death, is no evil. Turn now to consider the stages of thy life—childhood, boyhood, manhood, old age—each step in the ladder of change a death. Is there anything terrible here? Pass on now to thy life under thy grandfather, then under thy mother, then under thy father, and finding there many other alterations, changes, and cessations, ask thyself: Is there anything terrible here? No, nor any in the ending and quiescence and change of the whole of life.

22. Speed to the ruling Reason of thyself, and of the Universe, and of thy neighbour of thine own, that thou mayest make it just; of that of the Universe, that thou mayest therewithal remember of what thou art a part; of thy neighbour, that thou mayest learn whether it was ignorance with him or understanding, and reflect at the same time that it is akin to thee.

23. As thou thyself art a part perfective of a civic organism, let also thine every act be a part perfective of civic life. Every act of thine then that has no relation direct or indirect to this social end, tears thy life asunder and destroys its unity, and creates a schism, just as in a commonwealth does the man who, as far as in him lies, stands aloof from such a concord of his fellows.

24. Children's squabbles and make-believe, and little souls bearing up corpses —the Invocation of the Dead might strike one as a more vivid reality!

25. Go straight to that which makes a thing what it is, its formative cause, and, isolating it from the material, regard it so. Then mark off the utmost time for which the individual object so qualified is calculated to subsist.

26. By not being content with thy ruling Reason doing the work for which it was constituted, thou hast borne unnumbered ills. Nay, 'tis enough!

27. When men blame or hate thee or give utterance to some such feelings against thee, turn to their souls, enter into them, and see what sort of men they are. Thou wilt perceive that thou needest not be concerned as to what they think of thee. Yet must thou feel kindly towards them, for Nature made them dear to thee. The Gods too lend them aid in divers ways by dreams and oracles, to win those very things on which their hearts are set.

28. The same, upwards, downwards, from cycle to cycle are the revolutions of the Universe. And either the Universal Mind feels an impulse to act in each separate case—and if this be so, accept its impulsion—or it felt this impulse once for all, and all subsequent things follow by way of consequence; and what matters which it be, for if you like to put it so the world is all atoms [or indivisible]. But as to the Whole, if God—all is well; if haphazard—be not thou also haphazard.

29. The World-Cause is as a torrent, it sweeps everything along. How negligible these manikins that busy themselves with civic matters and flatter themselves that they act therein as philosophers! Drivellers all! What then, O Man? Do what Nature asks of thee now. Make the effort if it be given thee to do so and look not about to see if any shall know it. Dream not of Utopias but be content if the least thing go forward, and count the outcome of the matter in hand as a small thing. For who can alter another's conviction? Failing a change of conviction, we merely get men pretending to be persuaded and chafing like slaves under coercion. Go to now and tell me of Alexander and Philip and Demetrius of Phalerum. Whether they realized the will of Nature and schooled themselves thereto, is their concern. But if they played the tragedy-hero, no one has condemned me to copy them. Simple and modest is the work of Philosophy: lead me not astray into pomposity and pride.

30. Take a bird's-eye view of the world, its endless gatherings and endless ceremonials, voyagings manifold in storm and calm, and the vicissitudes of things coming into being, participating in being, ceasing to be. Reflect too on the life lived long ago by other men, and the life that shall be lived after thee, and is now being lived in barbarous countries; and how many have never even heard thy name, and how many will very soon forget it, and how many who now perhaps acclaim, will very soon blame thee, and that neither memory nor fame nor anything thing else whatever is worth reckoning.

31. Freedom from perturbance in all that befalls from the external Cause, and justice in all that thine own inner Cause prompts thee to do; that is, impulse and action finding fulfilment in the actual performance of social duty as being in accordance with thy nature.

32. It is in thy power to rid thyself of many unnecessary troubles, for they exist wholly in thy imagination. Thou wilt at once set thy feet in a large room by embracing the whole Universe in thy mind and including in thy purview time everlasting, and by observing the rapid change in every part of everything, and the shortness of the span between birth and dissolution, and that the yawning immensity before birth is only matched by the infinity after our dissolution.

33. All that thine eyes behold will soon perish and they, who live to see it perish, will in their turn perish no less quickly; and he who outlives all his contemporaries and he who dies before his time will be as one in the grave.

34. What is the ruling Reason of these men, and about what sort of objects have they been in earnest, and from what motives do they lavish their love and their honour! View with the mind's eye their poor little souls in their nakedness. What immense conceit this of theirs, when they fancy that there is bane in their blame and profit in their praises!

35. Loss and change, they are but one. Therein doth the Universal Nature take pleasure, through whom are all things done now as they have been in like fashion from time everlasting; and to eternity shall other like things be. Why then dost thou say that all things have been evil and will remain evil to the end, and that no help has after all been found in Gods, so many as they be, to right these things, but that the fiat hath gone forth that the Universe should be bound in an unbroken chain of ill?

36. Seeds of decay in the underlying material of everything—water, dust, bones, reek! Again, marble but nodules of earth, and gold and silver but dross, garments merely hair-tufts, and purple only blood. And so so with everything else. The soul too another like thing and liable to change from this to that.

37. Have done with this miserable way of life, this grumbling, this apism! Why fret? What is the novelty here? What amazes thee? The Cause? Look fairly at it. What then, the Material? Look fairly at that. Apart from these two, there is nothing. But in regard to the Gods also now even at the eleventh hour show thyself more simple, more worthy.

38. If he did wrong, with him lies the evil. But maybe he did no wrong.

39. Either there is one intelligent source, from which as in one body all after things proceed—and the part ought not to grumble at what is done in the interests of the whole—or there are atoms, and nothing but a medley and a dispersion. Why then be harassed? Say to thy ruling Reason: Thou art dead! Thou art corrupt! Thou hast become a wild beast! Thou art a hypocrite! Thou art one of the herd! Thou battenest with them!

40. Either the Gods have no power or they have power. If they have no power, why pray to them? But if they have power, why not rather pray that they should give thee freedom from fear of any of these things and from lust for any of these things and from grief at any of these things [rather] than that they should grant this or refuse that. For obviously if they can assist men at all, they can assist them in this. But perhaps thou wilt say: The Gods have put this in my power. Then is it not better to use what is in thy power like a free man than to concern thyself with what is not in thy power like a slave and an abject? And who told thee that the Gods do not co-operate with us even in the things that are in our power? Begin at any rate with prayers for such things and thou wilt see. One prays: How may I lie with that woman! Thou: How may I not lust to lie with her! Another: How may I be quit of that man! Thou: How may I not wish to be quit of him! Another: How may I not lose my little child! Thou: How may I not dread to lose him. In a word, give thy prayers this turn, and see what comes of it.

41. Listen to Epicurus where he says: In my illness my talk was not of any bodily feelings, nor did I chatter about such things to those who came to see me, but I went on with my cardinal disquisitions on natural philosophy, dwelling especially on this point, hom the mind, having perforce its share in such affections of the flesh, yet remains unperturbed, safeguarding its own proper good. Nor did I —he goes on— let the physicians ride the high horse as if they were doing grand things, but my life went on well and happily. Imitate him then in sickness, if thou art sick, and in any other emergency; for it is a commonplace of every sect not to renounce Philosophy whatever difficulties we encounter, nor to consent to babble as he does that is unenlightened in philosophy and nature;... devote thyself to thy present work alone and thy instrument for performing it.

42. When thou art offended by shamelessness in any one, put this question at once to thyself: Can it be that shameless men should not exist in the world? It can not be. Then ask not for what can not be. For this man in question also is one of the shameless ones that must needs exist in the world. Have the same reflection ready for the rogue, the deceiver, or any other wrongdoer whatever. For the remembrance that this class of men cannot but exist will bring with it kindlier feelings towards individuals of the class. Right useful too is it to bethink thee at once of this: What virtue has Nature given man as a foil to the wrong-doing in question? For as an antidote against the unfeeling man she has given gentleness, and against another man some other resource.