troublesome or unsuitable, and immediately to be in all tranquility.
Judge every word and deed which are according to nature to be fit
for thee; and be not diverted by the blame which follows from any
people nor by their words, but if a thing is good to be done or said,
do not consider it unworthy of thee. For those persons have their
peculiar leading principle and follow their peculiar movement; which
things do not thou regard, but go straight on, following thy own nature
and the common nature; and the way of both is one.
I go through the things which happen according to nature until I shall
fall and rest, breathing out my breath into that element out of which
I daily draw it in, and falling upon that earth out of which my father
collected the seed, and my mother the blood, and my nurse the milk;
out of which during so many years I have been supplied with food and
drink; which bears me when I tread on it and abuse it for so many
purposes.
Thou sayest, Men cannot admire the sharpness of thy wits.- Be it so:
but there are many other things of which thou canst not say, I am
not formed for them by nature. Show those qualities then which are
altogether in thy power, sincerity, gravity, endurance of labour,
aversion to pleasure, contentment with thy portion and with few things,
benevolence, frankness, no love of superfluity, freedom from trifling
magnanimity. Dost thou not see how many qualities thou art immediately
able to exhibit, in which there is no excuse of natural incapacity
and unfitness, and yet thou still remainest voluntarily below the
mark? Or art thou compelled through being defectively furnished by
nature to murmur, and to be stingy, and to flatter, and to find fault
with thy poor body, and to try to please men, and to make great display,
and to be so restless in thy mind? No, by the gods: but thou mightest
have been delivered from these things long ago. Only if in truth thou
canst be charged with being rather slow and dull of comprehension,
thou must exert thyself about this also, not neglecting it nor yet
taking pleasure in thy dulness.
One man, when he has done a service to another, is ready to set it
down to his account as a favour conferred. Another is not ready to
do this, but still in his own mind he thinks of the man as his debtor,
and he knows what he has done. A third in a manner does not even know
what he has done, but he is like a vine which has produced grapes,
and seeks for nothing more after it has once produced its proper fruit.
As a horse when he has run, a dog when he has tracked the game, a
bee when it has made the honey, so a man when he has done a good act,
does not call out for others to come and see, but he goes on to another
act, as a vine goes on to produce again the grapes in season.- Must
a man then be one of these, who in a manner act thus without observing
it?- Yes.- But this very thing is necessary, the observation of what
a man is doing: for, it may be said, it is characteristic of the social
animal to perceive that he is working in a social manner, and indeed
to wish that his social partner also should perceive it.- It is true
what thou sayest, but thou dost not rightly understand what is now
said: and for this reason thou wilt become one of those of whom I
spoke before, for even they are misled by a certain show of reason.
But if thou wilt choose to understand the meaning of what is said,
do not fear that for this reason thou wilt omit any social act.
A prayer of the Athenians: Rain, rain, O dear Zeus, down on the ploughed
fields of the Athenians and on the plains.- In truth we ought not
to pray at all, or we ought to pray in this simple and noble fashion.
Just as we must understand when it is said, That Aesculapius prescribed
to this man horse-exercise, or bathing in cold water or going without
shoes; so we must understand it when it is said, That the nature of
the universe prescribed to this man disease or mutilation or loss
or anything else of the kind. For in the first case Prescribed means
something like this: he prescribed this for this man as a thing adapted
to procure health; and in the second case it means: That which happens
to (or, suits) every man is fixed in a manner for him suitably to
his destiny. For this is what we mean when we say that things are
suitable to us, as the workmen say of squared stones in walls or the
pyramids, that they are suitable, when they fit them to one another
in some kind of connexion. For there is altogether one fitness, harmony.
And as the universe is made up out of all bodies to be such a body
as it is, so out of all existing causes necessity (destiny) is made
up to be such a cause as it is. And even those who are completely
ignorant understand what I mean, for they say, It (necessity, destiny)
brought this to such a person.- This then was brought and this was
precribed to him. Let us then receive these things, as well as those
which Aesculapius prescribes. Many as a matter of course even among
his prescriptions are disagreeable, but we accept them in the hope
of health. Let the perfecting and accomplishment of the things, which
the common nature judges to be good, be judged by thee to be of the
same kind as thy health. And so accept everything which happens, even
if it seem disagreeable, because it leads to this, to the health of
the universe and to the prosperity and felicity of Zeus (the universe).
For he would not have brought on any man what he has brought, if it
were not useful for the whole. Neither does the nature of anything,
whatever it may be, cause anything which is not suitable to that which
is directed by it. For two reasons then it is right to be content
with that which happens to thee; the one, because it was done for
thee and prescribed for thee, and in a manner had reference to thee,
originally from the most ancient causes spun with thy destiny; and
the other, because even that which comes severally to every man is
to the power which administers the universe a cause of felicity and
perfection, nay even of its very continuance. For the integrity of
the whole is mutilated, if thou cuttest off anything whatever from
the conjunction and the continuity either of the parts or of the causes.
And thou dost cut off, as far as it is in thy power, when thou art
dissatisfied, and in a manner triest to put anything out of the way.
Be not disgusted, nor discouraged, nor dissatisfied, if thou dost
not succeed in doing everything according to right principles; but
when thou bast failed, return back again, and be content if the greater
part of what thou doest is consistent with man's nature, and love
this to which thou returnest; and do not return to philosophy as if
she were a master, but act like those who have sore eyes and apply
a bit of sponge and egg, or as another applies a plaster, or drenching
with water. For thus thou wilt not fail to obey reason, and thou wilt
repose in it. And remember that philosophy requires only the things
which thy nature requires; but thou wouldst have something else which
is not according to nature.- It may be objected, Why what is more
agreeable than this which I am doing?- But is not this the very reason
why pleasure deceives us? And consider if magnanimity, freedom, simplicity,
equanimity, piety, are not more agreeable. For what is more agreeable
than wisdom itself, when thou thinkest of the security and the happy
course of all things which depend on the faculty of understanding
and knowledge?
Things are in such a kind of envelopment that they have seemed to
philosophers, not a few nor those common philosophers, altogether
unintelligible; nay even to the Stoics themselves they seem difficult
to understand. And all our assent is changeable; for where is the
man who never changes? Carry thy thoughts then to the objects themselves,
and consider how short-lived they are and worthless, and that they
may be in the possession of a filthy wretch or a whore or a robber.
Then turn to the morals of those who live with thee, and it is hardly
possible to endure even the most agreeable of them, to say nothing
of a man being hardly able to endure himself. In such darkness then
and dirt and in so constant a flux both of substance and of time,
and of motion and of things moved, what there is worth being highly
prized or even an object of serious pursuit, I cannot imagine. But
on the contrary it is a man's duty to comfort himself, and to wait
for the
natural dissolution and not to be vexed at the delay, but to rest
in these principles only: the one, that nothing will happen to me
which is not conformable to the nature of the universe; and the other,
that it is in my power never to act contrary to my god and daemon:
for there is no man who will compel me to this.
About what am I now employing my own soul? On every occasion I must
ask myself this question, and inquire, what have I now in this part
of me which they call the ruling principle? And whose soul have I
now? That of a child, or of a young man, or of a feeble woman, or
of a tyrant, or of a domestic animal, or of a wild beast?
What kind of things those are which appear good to the many, we may
learn even from this. For if any man should conceive certain things
as being really good, such as prudence, temperance, justice, fortitude,
he would not after having first conceived these endure to listen to
anything which should not be in harmony with what is really good.
But if a man has first conceived as good the things which appear to
the many to be good, he will listen and readily receive as very applicable
that which was said by the comic writer. Thus even the many perceive
the difference. For were it not so, this saying would not offend and
would not be rejected in the first case, while we receive it when
it is said of wealth, and of the means which further luxury and fame,
as said fitly and wittily. Go on then and ask if we should value and
think those things to be good, to which after their first conception
in the mind the words of the comic writer might be aptly applied-
that he who has them, through pure abundance has not a place to ease
himself in.
I am composed of the formal and the material; and neither of them
will perish into non-existence, as neither of them came into existence
out of non-existence. Every part of me then will be reduced by change
into some part of the universe, and that again will change into another
part of the universe, and so on for ever. And by consequence of such
a change I too exist, and those who begot me, and so on for ever in
the other direction. For nothing hinders us from saying so, even if
the universe is administered according to definite periods of revolution.
Reason and the reasoning art (philosophy) are powers which are sufficient
for themselves and for their own works. They move then from a first
principle which is their own, and they make their way to the end which
is proposed to them; and this is the reason why such acts are named
catorthoseis or right acts, which word signifies that they proceed
by the right road.
None of these things ought to be called a man's, which do not belong
to a man, as man. They are not required of a man, nor does man's nature
promise them, nor are they the means of man's nature attaining its
end. Neither then does the end of man lie in these things, nor yet
that which aids to the accomplishment of this end, and that which
aids towards this end is that which is good. Besides, if any of these
things did belong to man, it would not be right for a man to despise
them and to set himself against them; nor would a man be worthy of
praise who showed that he did not want these things, nor would he
who stinted himself in any of them be good, if indeed these things
were good. But now the more of these things a man deprives himself
of, or of other things like them, or even when he is deprived of any
of them, the more patiently he endures the loss, just in the same
degree he is a better man.
Such as are thy habitual thoughts, such also will be the character
of thy mind; for the soul is dyed by the thoughts. Dye it then with
a continuous series of such thoughts as these: for instance, that
where a man can live, there he can also live well. But he must live
in a palace;- well then, he can also live well in a palace. And again,
consider that for whatever purpose each thing has been constituted,
for this it has been constituted, and towards this it is carried;
and its end is in that towards which it is carried; and where the
end is, there also is the advantage and the good of each thing. Now
the good for the reasonable animal is society; for that we are made
for society has been shown above. Is it not plain that the inferior
exist for the sake of the superior? But the things which have life
are superior to those which have not life, and of those which have
life the superior are those which have reason.
To seek what is impossible is madness: and it is impossible that the
bad should not do something of this kind.
Nothing happens to any man which he is not formed by nature to bear.
The same things happen to another, and either because he does not
see that they have happened or because he would show a great spirit
he is firm and remains unharmed. It is a shame then that ignorance
and conceit should be stronger than wisdom.
Things themselves touch not the soul, not in the least degree; nor
have they admission to the soul, nor can they turn or move the soul:
but the soul turns and moves itself alone, and whatever judgements
it may think proper to make, such it makes for itself the things which
present themselves to it.
In one respect man is the nearest thing to me, so far as I must do
good to men and endure them. But so far as some men make themselves
obstacles to my proper acts, man becomes to me one of the things which
are indifferent, no less than the sun or wind or a wild beast. Now
