Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (good books to read .txt) 📕

than to perfect the things which they care for. But are the acts which

concern society more vile in thy eyes and less worthy of thy labor?

2. How easy it is to repel and to wipe away every impression which is

troublesome or unsuitable, and immediately to be in all tranquillity.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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 labor, 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.

6. One man, when he has done a service to another, is ready to set it

down to his account as a favor 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.

7. 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.

8. 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

connection. 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 prescribed 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.

9. Be not disgusted, nor discouraged, nor dissatisfied, if thou dost not

succeed in doing everything according to right principles, but when thou

hast failed, return back again, and be content if the greater part of

what thou dost 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?

10. 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 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.

11. 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?

12. 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.

13. 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