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

that for thyself also to change is just the same, and equally necessary

for the universal nature?

19. Through the universal substance as through a furious torrent all

bodies are carried, being by their nature united with and co-operating

with the whole, as the parts of our body with one another. How many a

Chrysippus, how many a Socrates, how many an Epictetus has time already

swallowed up! And let the same thought occur to thee with reference to

every man and thing (V. 23; VI. 15).

20. One thing only troubles me, lest I should do something which the

constitution of man does not allow, or in the way which it does not

allow, or what it does not allow now.

21. Near is thy forgetfulness of all things; and near the forgetfulness

of thee by all.

22. It is peculiar to man to love even those who do wrong. And this

happens, if when they do wrong it occurs to thee that they are kinsmen,

and that they do wrong through ignorance and unintentionally, and that

soon both of you will die; and above all, that the wrongdoer has done

thee no harm, for he has not made thy ruling faculty worse than it was

before.

23. The universal nature out of the universal substance, as if it were

wax, now moulds a horse, and when it has broken this up, it uses the

material for a tree, then for a man, then for something else; and each of

these things subsists for a very short time. But it is no hardship for

the vessel to be broken up, just as there was none in its being fastened

together (VIII. 50).

24. A scowling look is altogether unnatural; when it is often assumed,

[Footnote: 5] the result is that all comeliness dies away, and at last is

so completely extinguished that it cannot be again lighted up at all. Try

to conclude from this very fact that it is contrary to reason. For if

even the perception of doing wrong shall depart, what reason is there for

living any longer?

25. Nature which governs the whole will soon change all things which thou

seest, and out of their substance will make other things, and again other

things from the substance of them, in order that the world may be ever

new (XII. 23).

26. When a man has done thee any wrong, immediately consider with what

opinion about good or evil he has done wrong. For when thou hast seen

this, thou wilt pity him, and wilt neither wonder nor be angry. For

either thou thyself thinkest the same thing to be good that he does or

another thing of the same kind. It is thy duty then to pardon him. But if

thou dost not think such things to be good or evil, thou wilt more

readily be well disposed to him who is in error.

27. Think not so much of what thou hast not as of what thou hast: but of

the things which thou hast select the best, and then reflect how eagerly

they would have been sought, if thou hadst them not. At the same time,

however, take care that thou dost not through being so pleased with them

accustom thyself to overvalue them, so as to be disturbed if ever thou

shouldst not have them.

28. Retire into thyself. The rational principle which rules has this

nature, that it is content with itself when it does what is just, and so

secures tranquillity.

29. Wipe out the imagination. Stop the pulling of the strings. Confine

thyself to the present. Understand well what happens either to thee or to

another. Divide and distribute every object into the causal [formal] and

the material. Think of thy last hour. Let the wrong which is done by a

man stay there where the wrong was done (VIII. 29).

30. Direct thy attention to what is said. Let thy understanding enter

into the things that are doing and the things which do them (VII. 4).

31. Adorn thyself with simplicity and modesty, and with indifference

towards the things which lie between virtue and vice. Love mankind.

Follow God. The poet says that law rules all—And it is enough to

remember that law rules all.

32. About death: whether it is a dispersion, or a resolution into atoms,

or annihilation, it is either extinction or change.

33. About pain: the pain which is intolerable carries us off; but that

which lasts a long time is tolerable; and the mind maintains its own

tranquillity by retiring into itself, and the ruling faculty is not made

worse. But the parts which are harmed by pain, let them, if they can,

give their opinion about it.

34. About fame: look at the minds [of those who seek fame], observe what

they are, and what kind of things they avoid, and what kind of things

they pursue. And consider that as the heaps of sand piled on one another

hide the former sands, so in life the events which go before are soon

covered by those which come after.

35. From Plato: The man who has an elevated mind and takes a view of all

time and of all substance, dost thou suppose it possible for him to think

that human life is anything great? It is not possible, he said.—Such a

man then will think that death also is no evil.—Certainly not.

36. From Antisthenes: It is royal to do good and to be abused.

37. It is a base thing for the countenance to be obedient and to regulate

and compose itself as the mind commands, and for the mind not to be

regulated and composed by itself.

38. It is not right to vex ourselves at things, For they care nought

about it.

39. To the immortal gods and us give joy.

40. Life must be reaped like the ripe ears of corn. One man is born;

another dies.

41. If gods care not for me and for my children, There is a reason for

it.

42. For the good is with me, and the just.

43. No joining others in their wailing, no violent emotion.

44. From Plato: But I would make this man a sufficient answer, which is

this: Thou sayest not well, if thou thinkest that a man who is good for

anything at all ought to compute the hazard of life or death, and should

not rather look to this only in all that he does, whether he is doing

what is just or unjust, and the works of a good or bad man.

45. For thus it is, men of Athens, in truth: wherever a man has placed

himself thinking it the best place for him, or has been placed by a

commander, there in my opinion he ought to stay and to abide the hazard,

taking nothing into the reckoning, either death or anything else, before

the baseness [of deserting his post].

46. But, my good friend, reflect whether that which is noble and good is

not something different from saving and being saved; for as to a man

living such or such a time, at least one who is really a man, consider if

this is not a thing to be dismissed from the thoughts: and there must be

no love of life: but as to these matters a man must intrust them to the

Deity and believe what the women say, that no man can escape his destiny,

the next inquiry being how he may best live the time that he has to live.

47. Look around at the courses of the stars, as if thou wert going along

with them; and constantly consider the changes of the elements into one

another, for such thoughts purge away the filth of the terrene life.

48. This is a fine saying of Plato: That he who is discoursing about men

should look also at earthly things as if he viewed them from some higher

place; should look at them in their assemblies, armies, agricultural

labors, marriages, treaties, births, deaths, noise of the courts of

justice, desert places, various nations of barbarians, feasts,

lamentations, markets, a mixture of all things and an orderly combination

of contraries.

49. Consider the past,—such great changes of political supremacies; thou

mayest foresee also the things which will be. For they will certainly be

of like form, and it is not possible that they should deviate from the

order of the things which take place now; accordingly to have

contemplated human life for forty years is the same as to have

contemplated it for ten thousand years. For what more wilt thou see?

50.

That which has grown from the earth to the earth,

But that which has sprung from heavenly seed,

Back to the heavenly realms returns.

This is either a dissolution of the mutual involution of the atoms, or a

similar dispersion of the unsentient elements.

51.

With food and drinks and cunning magic arts

Turning the channel’s course to ‘scape from death.

The breeze which heaven has sent

We must endure, and toil without complaining.

52. Another may be more expert in casting his opponent; but he is not

more social, nor more modest, nor better disciplined to meet all that

happens, nor more considerate with respect to the faults of his

neighbors.

53. Where any work can be clone conformably to the reason which is common

to gods and men, there we have nothing to fear; for where we are able to

get profit by means of the activity which is successful and proceeds

according to our constitution, there no harm is to be suspected.

54. Everywhere and at all times it is in thy power piously to acquiesce

in thy present condition, and to behave justly to those who are about

thee, and to exert thy skill upon thy present thoughts, that nothing

shall steal into them without being well examined.

55. Do not look around thee to discover other men’s ruling principles,

but look straight to this, to what nature leads thee, both the universal

nature through the things which happen to thee, and thy own nature

through the acts which must be done by thee. But every being ought to do

that which is according to its constitution; and all other things have

been constituted for the sake of rational beings, just as among

irrational things the inferior for the sake of the superior, but the

rational for the sake of one another.

The prime principle then in man’s constitution is the social. And the

second is not to yield to the persuasions of the body,—for it is the

peculiar office of the rational and intelligent motion to circumscribe

itself, and never to be overpowered either by the motion of the senses or

of the appetites, for both are animal; but the intelligent motion claims

superiority, and does not permit itself to be overpowered by the others.

And with good reason, for it is formed by nature to use all of them. The

third thing in the rational constitution is freedom from error and from

deception. Let then the ruling principle holding fast to these things go

straight on, and it has what is its own.

56. Consider thyself to be dead, and to have completed thy life up to the

present time; and live according to nature the remainder which is allowed

thee.

57. Love that only which happens to thee and is spun with the thread of

thy destiny. For what is more suitable?

58. In everything which happens keep before thy eyes those to whom