Book Four

The ruling power within, when it is in accordance with nature, stands toward whatever befalls in such a way that it can always adapt itself easily to what is possible and granted. For it has no fondness for any particular material, but moves toward its chief ends with a reservation, and makes whatever crosses it into material for itself; just as fire, when it masters the things that fall into it, by which a little lamp would have been put out — the bright fire very swiftly appropriates to itself what is heaped upon it, consumes it, and from those very things rises higher.

Let no act be done at random, nor otherwise than according to a principle that fulfils the art.

Men seek retreats for themselves — country places, beaches, hills; and you too are wont to long for such things above all. But this is the mark of the most ordinary man, since it is in your power, whenever you wish, to retreat into yourself. For nowhere can a man retreat more quietly or more free of trouble than into his own soul, especially one who has within such things that, by looking into them, he is at once wholly at ease; and by ease I mean nothing but good order. Give yourself, then, continually this retreat, and renew yourself. But let your maxims be brief and elemental, such as, meeting you at once, will suffice to wash away all distress and to send you back without resentment to the things you return to. For what is it that vexes you? The wickedness of men? Recall the judgment that rational beings are made for one another, that to bear with them is part of justice, that they do wrong unwillingly, and how many, after their feuds, suspicions, hatreds, and battles, now lie stretched out and turned to ashes — and cease at last. But are you vexed too with what is allotted to you out of the whole? Then recall the alternative: either providence or atoms; and from how much it has been shown that the universe is, as it were, a city. But will bodily things still take hold of you? Then consider that the mind, once it has taken possession of itself and come to know its own power, does not mingle with the breath, whether it moves smoothly or roughly; and consider, too, all that you have heard and assented to concerning pain and pleasure. But will the desire for a little fame distract you? Then look at the swiftness with which all things are forgotten, at the chaos of infinite time on either hand, at the emptiness of applause, the fickleness and the want of judgment in those who seem to praise, and the narrowness of the space in which it is confined. For the whole earth is a mere point, and of this how tiny a corner is your dwelling-place; and here, how many will there be to praise you, and what manner of men? Remember, then, this withdrawal into your own little field, and above all do not strain or force yourself, but be free, and look at things as a man, as a human being, as a citizen, as a mortal creature. And among the maxims most ready to hand, into which you will look, let these two be: first, that things do not touch the soul, but stand outside it unmoved, and our troubles come from the opinion within us alone; second, that all these things you see will in a moment change and be no more — and dwell continually on how many changes you yourself have already witnessed. The universe is alteration; life is opinion.

If the intellectual faculty is common to us, then so too is the reason by which we are rational; if so, then that reason also is common which commands what is to be done or not done; if so, then law also is common; if so, then we are fellow citizens; if so, then we share in a commonwealth; if so, then the universe is, as it were, a city. For of what other common commonwealth will anyone say that the whole race of men shares? And from there, from this common city, comes the very faculty that is intellectual, rational, and law-abiding in us — or from where else? For just as the earthy part in me has been apportioned from some earth, the watery from another element, the breath from some source, and the hot and fiery from some source of its own — since nothing comes from nothing, just as nothing departs into nothing — so too the intellectual part has come from somewhere.

Death, like birth, is a mystery of nature: a combining of the same elements, and a dissolving into the same. It is altogether nothing to be ashamed of; for it is not contrary to the order of a rational being, nor against the reason of its constitution.

These things are bound by their nature to come from such men by necessity; and he who would not have it so would have the fig-tree yield no juice. And in any case remember this: that within a very little while both you and he will be dead, and soon after not even your name will be left.

Take away the opinion, and the "I have been harmed" is taken away; take away the "I have been harmed," and the harm is taken away.

What does not make a man himself worse does not make his life worse either, nor does it harm him from without or from within.

The nature of what is beneficial has been compelled to do this.

That "everything that happens, happens justly" — which, if you watch closely, you will find to be so; I mean not merely in the order of sequence, but in accordance with justice, and as if by one who apportions according to desert. Watch closely, then, as you have begun, and whatever you do, do it together with this: with being good, in the sense in which the good man is properly understood. Keep this in every act.

Do not take things to be such as the man who insults you judges them, or wishes you to judge them; but see them as they are in truth.

These two readinesses one must always have: the one, to do only what the reason of the kingly and law-giving faculty suggests for the benefit of men; the other, to change one's course if someone is at hand to correct and turn one aside from some opinion. But the turning aside must always come from some persuasion of justice or common good, and the things preferred must be such only for that reason, and not because they appeared pleasant or won esteem.

"Have you reason?" "I have." "Why then do you not use it? For if it does its own work, what more do you want?"

You have come into being as a part; you will vanish into that which gave you birth — or rather, you will be taken up again, through change, into its generative reason.

Many grains of incense fall on the same altar; one falls first, another later, but it makes no difference.

Within ten days you will seem a god to the very men to whom you now seem a beast and an ape, if you return to your principles and to the reverence of reason.

Do not act as though you had ten thousand years to live. The inevitable hangs over you. While you live, while it is in your power, be good.

How much leisure he gains who does not look at what his neighbour said or did or intended, but only at what he himself does, that it may be just and holy — or, as the good man does, who does not gaze about at the dark character of others, but runs straight along the line, without swerving.

The man who is in a flutter about fame hereafter does not picture to himself that each of those who remember him will himself very soon die, and then in turn the one who succeeded him, until all memory is quenched, passing on through men who are kindled and put out. But suppose that those who will remember are immortal, and the memory immortal: what is that to you? And I do not say merely that it is nothing to the dead; but to the living, what is praise, except for some practical use? For you are now putting off, out of season, the gift of nature, and clinging instead to some other consideration.

Everything that is in any way beautiful is beautiful of itself, and ends in itself, having praise as no part of it; for the thing praised is made neither worse nor better by it. This I say also of the things commonly called beautiful — material things and works of art. As for that which is truly beautiful, what need has it of anything beyond? No more than law, no more than truth, no more than kindness or modesty. Which of these is beautiful because it is praised, or marred because it is blamed? Does an emerald become worse than itself if it is not praised? And what of gold, ivory, purple, a lyre, a little knife, a flower, a little shrub?

If souls continue to exist, how does the air contain them from all eternity? And how does the earth contain the bodies of those buried for so long an age? For just as here the change and dissolution of these bodies, after they have lasted a certain time, makes room for other corpses, so the souls that pass into the air, after enduring for a time, change and are diffused and kindled into flame, taken up again into the generative reason of the whole, and in this way make room for those who come to dwell beside them. This is what one might answer, on the supposition that souls continue to exist. But one must consider not only the multitude of bodies thus buried, but also that of the living creatures eaten each day by us and by the other animals. For what a number is consumed and, in a manner, buried in the bodies of those who feed on them; and yet the place receives them, through their being turned to blood, through their alteration into air or fire. What, in this matter, is the way to truth? Division into the material and the causal.

Do not be carried this way and that, but in every impulse render what is just, and in every impression preserve the power of clear comprehension.

All that is in tune with you is in tune with me, O Universe; nothing is too early or too late for me that is timely for you. All is fruit for me that your seasons bring, O Nature; from you are all things, in you are all things, to you return all things. The poet says, "Dear city of Cecrops"; will you not say, "Dear city of Zeus"?

"Do few things," he says, "if you would have peace of mind." But is it not better to do the necessary things, and only what the reason of a creature made for fellowship requires, and as it requires? For this brings not only the peace that comes from doing well, but also the peace that comes from doing few things. For if a man strips away the greater part of what we say and do, being unnecessary, he will have more leisure and less disturbance. Therefore on each occasion one should remind oneself: is this one of the unnecessary things? And one must strip away not only unnecessary acts, but unnecessary impressions as well; for so no superfluous acts will follow either.

Try how the life of the good man also suits you — the man content with what is allotted to him out of the whole, and satisfied with his own just conduct and kindly disposition.

You have seen those things; now look at these. Do not trouble yourself; make yourself simple. Does someone do wrong? He does wrong to himself. Has something befallen you? Good; it was woven for you out of the whole from the beginning, and spun together with your fate, all that befalls. In sum, life is short; gain from the present moment by good sense and justice. Be sober, but at ease.

Either an ordered universe, or a medley jumbled together but still a universe. Or can there be order subsisting within you, while in the whole there is disorder? And this when all things are so distinguished, so interfused, and so bound by sympathy.

A black character, a womanish character, a stubborn character, bestial, brutish, childish, dull, counterfeit, buffoonish, hucksterish, tyrannical.

If he is a stranger to the universe who does not recognize the things that are in it, no less a stranger is he who does not recognize the things that come to pass in it. He is a runaway who flees the reason of the commonwealth; blind, who shuts the eye of the mind; a beggar, who has need of another and does not have within himself all that is useful for life. He is an abscess on the universe who withdraws and cuts himself off from the reason of our common nature through discontent with what befalls; for that same nature brings this to pass, which also brought you forth. He is a fragment torn from the city who tears his own soul away from the soul of rational beings, which is one.

One man philosophizes without a tunic, another without a book. Here is one half-naked: "I have no bread," he says, "and yet I hold fast to reason." And I have not the nourishment that comes of learning, and yet I hold fast.

Love the modest craft you have learned, and rest in it; and pass through the remainder of your life as one who has entrusted all that is his to the gods with his whole soul, making yourself neither the tyrant nor the slave of any man.

Consider, for example, the times of Vespasian: you will see all the same things — men marrying, raising children, falling sick, dying, making war, keeping festivals, trading, farming, flattering, asserting themselves, suspecting, plotting, praying for the death of some, grumbling at the present, loving, hoarding, longing for consulships and kingdoms. And that life of theirs is now nowhere. Pass again to the times of Trajan: again all the same things; and that life too is dead. Likewise survey the other inscriptions of the ages, of whole nations, and see how many, after great straining, soon fell and were resolved into the elements. But above all you should recall those whom you yourself have known wasting their efforts on empty things, neglecting to do what their own constitution required, to cling fast to that and be content with it. And here it is needful to remember that the attention given to each action has its own proper worth and measure; for so you will not lose heart, if you do not busy yourself with lesser things beyond what is fitting.

The words once in common use are now archaic; so too the names of men once much sung are now in a way archaisms — Camillus, Caeso, Volesus, Dentatus; and a little later Scipio and Cato, then Augustus too, then Hadrian and Antoninus. For all things fade and quickly become the stuff of legend, and quickly utter oblivion buries them. And this I say of those who shone in some wonderful way; for the rest, the moment they breathe their last, are "out of sight, out of mind." And what, in any case, is everlasting remembrance? Wholly empty. What, then, is the thing on which we should spend our care? This one thing: a just mind, and acts done for the common good, and speech that never lies, and a disposition that welcomes all that befalls as necessary, as familiar, as flowing from such a source and spring.

Of your own will give yourself up to Clotho, and let her spin you into whatever events she pleases.

All is of a day, both what remembers and what is remembered.

Observe continually that all things come to be by change, and accustom yourself to consider that the Nature of the Whole loves nothing so much as to change what exists and to make new things like them. For everything that exists is, in a way, the seed of what will come to be from it; but you imagine that only those things are seeds which are cast into the earth or the womb — and that is very crude.

You will soon be dead, and you are still not simple, not untroubled, not free of the suspicion of being harmed from without, not gracious to all, nor placing wisdom solely in acting justly.

Look closely into their ruling faculties — even the wise — and see what they shun and what they pursue.

Your evil does not subsist in another's ruling faculty, nor indeed in any turn or alteration of your surroundings. Where, then? In that part of you which forms opinions about evils. Let it, then, not form such opinions, and all is well. And even if the body nearest to it is cut, burned, festers, rots, still let the part that forms opinions about these things keep quiet; that is, let it judge nothing to be either evil or good which can befall the bad man and the good alike. For what befalls alike the man who lives contrary to nature and the man who lives in accordance with nature is neither in accordance with nature nor contrary to it.

Conceive continually of the universe as one living being, holding one substance and one soul; and how all things are taken up into its single perception; and how it does all things by a single impulse; and how all things are joint causes of all that comes to be; and what manner of spinning and weaving together there is.

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

There is no evil for things that are in process of change, just as there is no good for things that subsist out of change.

Time is a kind of river of the things that come to be, a violent stream; for no sooner is each thing seen than it has been swept by, and another is borne along, and that too will be swept away.

Everything that happens is as familiar and well known as the rose in spring and the fruit in summer; for such is disease, and death, and slander, and treachery, and all that gladdens or grieves fools.

The things that follow are always akin to those that went before; for it is not like a mere enumeration of separate items bound only by necessity, but a reasonable connection. And as existing things are arranged in harmony together, so the things that come to be display no bare succession, but a wonderful kinship.

Always remember the saying of Heraclitus, that the death of earth is to become water, the death of water to become air, of air fire, and back again. Remember too the man who forgets where the road leads; and that men are at variance with the very reason with which they most continually associate, the reason that governs all things; and that the things they meet with every day appear strange to them; and that we ought not to act and speak as men asleep — for even then we seem to act and speak; and that we ought not to act like children of our parents, that is, simply because we have received it so.

Just as, if one of the gods told you that you would die tomorrow, or at the latest the day after, you would make no great matter of the day after rather than tomorrow — unless you were utterly base; for how small is the interval? — so too think it no great thing to die after very many years rather than tomorrow.

Consider continually how many physicians have died, who often knit their brows over the sick; how many astrologers, after foretelling the deaths of others as something great; how many philosophers, after endless disputations about death or immortality; how many warriors, after slaying many men; how many tyrants, who used their power over lives with dreadful arrogance, as though they were immortal; and how many whole cities have died, if one may say so — Helice, Pompeii, Herculaneum, and others without number. Go over, too, all whom you have known, one after another: this man, after burying that one, was then laid out himself; another buried him; and all in a short space. In a word, look always upon human things as fleeting and cheap: yesterday a little mucus, tomorrow a mummy or ashes. Pass, then, through this instant of time in accordance with nature, and lay down your life graciously, as an olive might fall when ripe, blessing the earth that bore it and giving thanks to the tree that brought it forth.

Be like the headland on which the waves break continually; it stands firm, and around it the boiling waters are laid to rest. "Unhappy am I, that this has befallen me." No: rather, "Happy am I, that, though this has befallen me, I continue free from pain, neither crushed by the present nor afraid of what is to come." For such a thing might have befallen anyone, but not everyone would have continued free from pain under it. Why then is that a misfortune, rather than this a good fortune? And do you call at all a misfortune for a man what is not a frustration of man's nature? And does that seem to you a frustration of man's nature which is not contrary to the will of his nature? What, then? You have learned that will. Does this that has befallen prevent you from being just, high-minded, temperate, sensible, free from rashness, free from deceit, modest, free, and the rest, in whose presence the nature of man attains what is its own? Remember, then, on every occasion that leads you toward grief, to use this maxim: this is no misfortune, but to bear it nobly is good fortune.

A homely yet effective help toward contempt of death is to run over those who have clung tenaciously to life. What more had they than those who died untimely? At all events, they lie somewhere — Cadicianus, Fabius, Julianus, Lepidus, or any such man, who carried out many to their graves and then were themselves carried out. In short, the interval is small, and that drawn out through how many troubles, in what company, in what a poor body. Do not, then, treat it as a great matter. For look behind you at the boundless gulf of time, and before you at another infinity. In this, what difference is there between him who lives three days and him who lives three generations?

Always run by the short road; and the short road is the natural one, so that you say and do everything in the soundest way. For such a purpose frees a man from toils, from contention, from all calculation and affectation.