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

to myself the same necessity never happened, to receive anything from

another; that I have such a wife, so obedient, and so affectionate, and

so simple; that I had abundance of good masters for my children; and that

remedies have been shown to me by dreams, both others, and against

bloodspitting and giddiness …; and that, when I had an inclination to

philosophy, I did not fall into the hands of any sophist, and that I did

not waste my time on writers [of histories], or in the resolution of

syllogisms, or occupy myself about the investigation of appearances in

the heavens; for all these things require the help of the gods and

fortune.

Among the Quadi at the Granua. [Footnote: 3]

BOOK II.

Begin the morning by saying to thyself, I shall meet with the busybody,

the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial. All these things

happen to them by reason of their ignorance of what is good and evil. But

I who have seen the nature of the good that it is beautiful, and of the

bad that it is ugly, and the nature of him who does wrong, that it is

akin to me, not [only] of the same blood or seed, but that it

participates in [the same] intelligence and [the same] portion of the

divinity, I can neither be injured by any of them, for no one can fix on

me what is ugly, nor can I be angry with my kinsman, nor hate him. For we

are made for co-operation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the

rows of the upper and lower teeth. To act against one another, then, is

contrary to nature; and it is acting against one another to be vexed and

to turn away.

2. Whatever this is that I am, it is a little flesh and breath, and the

ruling part. Throw away thy books; no longer distract thyself: it is not

allowed; but as if thou wast now dying, despise the flesh; it is blood

and bones and a network, a contexture of nerves, veins, and arteries. See

the breath also, what kind of a thing it is; air, and not always the

same, but every moment sent out and again sucked in. The third, then, is

the ruling part, consider thus: Thou art an old man; no longer let this

be a slave, no longer be pulled by the strings like a puppet to unsocial

movements, no longer be either dissatisfied with thy present lot, or

shrink from the future.

3. All that is from the gods is full of providence. That which is from

fortune is not separated from nature or without an interweaving and

involution with the things which are ordered by providence. From thence

all things flow; and there is besides necessity, and that which is for

the advantage of the whole universe, of which thou art a part. But that

is good for every part of nature which the nature of the whole brings,

and what serves to maintain this nature. Now the universe is preserved,

as by the changes of the elements so by the changes of things compounded

of the elements. Let these principles be enough for thee; let them always

be fixed opinions. But cast away the thirst after books, that thou mayest

not die murmuring, but cheerfully, truly, and from thy heart thankful to

the gods.

4. Remember how long thou hast been putting off these things, and how

often thou hast received an opportunity from the gods, and yet dost not

use it. Thou must now at last perceive of what universe thou art now a

part, and of what administrator of the universe thy existence is an

efflux, and that a limit of time is fixed for thee, which if thou dost

not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind, it will go and thou

wilt go, and it will never return.

5. Every moment think steadily as a Roman and a man to do what thou hast

in hand with perfect and simple dignity, and feeling of affection, and

freedom, and justice, and to give thyself relief from all other thoughts.

And thou wilt give thyself relief if thou dost every act of thy life as

if it were the last, laying aside all carelessness and passionate

aversion from the commands of reason, and all hypocrisy, and self-love,

and discontent with the portion which has been given to thee. Thou seest

how few the things are, the which if a man lays hold of, he is able to

live a life which flows in quiet, and is like the existence of the gods;

for the gods on their part will require nothing more from him who

observes these things.

6. Do wrong to thyself, do wrong to thyself, my soul; but thou wilt no

longer have the opportunity of honoring thyself. Every man’s life is

sufficient. But thine is nearly finished, though thy soul reverences not

itself, but places thy felicity in the souls of others.

7. Do the things external which fall upon thee distract thee? Give

thyself time to learn something new and good, and cease to be whirled

around. But then thou must also avoid being carried about the other way;

for those too are triflers who have wearied themselves in life by their

activity, and yet have no object to which to direct every movement, and,

in a word, all their thoughts.

8. Through not observing what is in the mind of another a man has seldom

been seen to be unhappy; but those who do not observe the movements of

their own minds must of necessity be unhappy.

9. This thou must always bear in mind, what is the nature of the whole,

and what is my nature, and how this is related to that, and what kind of

a part it is of what kind of a whole, and that there is no one who

hinders thee from always doing and saying the things which are according

to the nature of which thou art a part.

10. Theophrastus, in his comparison of bad acts—such a comparison as one

would make in accordance with the common notions of mankind—says, like a

true philosopher, that the offences which are committed through desire

are more blamable than those which are committed through anger. For he

who is excited by anger seems to turn away from reason with a certain

pain and unconscious contraction; but he who offends through desire,

being overpowered by pleasure, seems to be in a manner more intemperate

and more womanish in his offences. Rightly, then, and in a way worthy of

philosophy, he said that the offence which is committed with pleasure is

more blamable than that which is committed with pain; and on the whole

the one is more like a person who has been first wronged and through pain

is compelled to be angry; but the other is moved by his own impulse to do

wrong, being carried towards doing something by desire.

11. Since it is possible that thou mayest depart from life this very

moment, regulate every act and thought accordingly. But to go away from

among men, if there are gods, is not a thing to be afraid of, for the

gods will not involve thee in evil; but if indeed they do not exist, or

if they have no concern about human affairs, what is it to me to live in

a universe devoid of gods or devoid of providence? But in truth they do

exist, and they do care for human things, and they have put all the means

in man’s power to enable him not to fall into real evils. And as to the

rest, if there was anything evil, they would have provided for this also,

that it should be altogether in a man’s power not to fall into it. Now

that which does not make a man worse, how can it make a man’s life worse?

But neither through ignorance, nor having the knowledge but not the power

to guard against or correct these things, is it possible that the nature

of the universe has overlooked them; nor is it possible that it has made

so great a mistake, either through want of power or want of skill, that

good and evil should happen indiscriminately to the good and the bad. But

death certainly, and life, honor and dishonor, pain and pleasure,—all

these things equally happen to good men and bad, being things which make

us neither better nor worse. Therefore they are neither good nor evil.

12. How quickly all things disappear,—in the universe the bodies

themselves, but in time the remembrance of them. What is the nature of

all sensible things, and particularly those which attract with the bait

of pleasure or terrify by pain, or are noised abroad by vapory fame; how

worthless, and contemptible, and sordid, and perishable, and dead they

are,—all this it is the part of the intellectual faculty to observe. To

observe too who these are whose opinions and voices give reputation; what

death is, and the fact that, if a man looks at it in itself, and by the

abstractive power of reflection resolves into their parts all the things

which present themselves to the imagination in it, he will then consider

it to be nothing else than an operation of nature; and if any one is

afraid of an operation of nature, he is a child. This, however, is not

only an operation of nature, but it is also a thing which conduces to the

purposes of nature. To observe too how man comes near to the Deity, and

by what part of him, and when this part of man is so disposed (VI. 28).

13. Nothing is more wretched than a man who traverses everything in a

round, and pries into the things beneath the earth, as the poet says, and

seeks by conjecture what is in the minds of his neighbors, without

perceiving that it is sufficient to attend to the daemon within him, and

to reverence it sincerely. And reverence of the daemon consists in

keeping it pure from passion and thoughtlessness, and dissatisfaction

with what comes from gods and men. For the things from the gods merit

veneration for their excellence; and the things from men should be dear

to us by reason of kinship; and sometimes even, in a manner, they move

our pity by reason of men’s ignorance of good and bad; this defect being

not less than that which deprives us of the power of distinguishing

things that are white and black.

14. Though thou shouldest be going to live three thousand years, and as

many times ten thousand years, still remember that no man loses any other

life than this which he now lives, nor lives any other than this which he

now loses. The longest and shortest are thus brought to the same. For the

present is the same to all, though that which perishes is not the same;

and so that which is lost appears to be a mere moment. For a man cannot

lose either the past or the future: for what a man has not, how can any

one take this from him? These two things then thou must bear in mind; the

one, that all things from eternity are of like forms and come round in a

circle, and that it makes no difference whether a man shall see the same

things during a hundred years, or two hundred, or an infinite time; and

the second, that the longest liver and he who will die soonest lose just

the same. For the present is the only thing of which a man can be

deprived, if it