Book III

1 We must take into account not only that our life is being spent day by day and a smaller part of it is left, but also this: that if a man lives longer, it is uncertain whether his mind will remain equal to understanding things and to the contemplation that aims at knowledge of the divine and the human. For if he begins to grow senile, breathing, nourishment, imagination, impulse and the rest of that kind will not fail him; but the power of making use of himself, of measuring exactly what duty requires, of analysing appearances, of judging whether the time has come to depart from life, and all such things that need a well-trained reason, is extinguished first. We must hurry, then, not only because we come nearer to death each day, but also because our grasp of things and our attention to them fail us first.

2 We should also notice things like this: that even what comes about incidentally in the works of nature has a certain grace and charm. When bread is baked, for instance, some parts split open; and these cracks, which in a way go against the baker's art, somehow catch the eye and in their own way whet the appetite.

Again, figs, when they are ripest, burst open; and in ripe olives about to fall, their very nearness to decay gives the fruit a beauty of its own. Ears of corn bending down, the lion's wrinkled brow, the foam flowing from a wild boar's mouth, and many other things — if one looked at them by themselves, they are far from beautiful; yet because they follow upon the works of nature, they add to their adornment and give delight;

so that if a man has feeling and deeper insight into what happens in the universe, there is hardly anything, even among the things that come about as by-products, that will not seem to him to fit pleasingly into the whole. Such a man will look at the real gaping jaws of wild beasts with no less pleasure than at the imitations of painters and sculptors; with his own temperate eyes he will be able to see a certain prime and bloom in an old woman or an old man, and the loveliness of children; and many such things will strike him — not persuasive to everyone, but only to one who has become truly at home with nature and her works.

3 Hippocrates, after curing many diseases, fell ill himself and died. The Chaldeans foretold the deaths of many, and then fate caught up with them too. Alexander, Pompey and Gaius Caesar, after so often razing whole cities to the ground and cutting down many tens of thousands of horsemen and foot soldiers in battle, themselves departed this life at last. Heraclitus, after all his speculations about the conflagration of the universe, was filled with water inside and died plastered with cow-dung.¹ Vermin killed Democritus, and another kind of vermin Socrates.² What of it? You have embarked, you have made the voyage, you have come into port: step ashore. If it is to another life, nothing is empty of gods, not even there; and if to a state without sensation, you will cease to be gripped by pains and pleasures, and to serve a vessel as much inferior as that which serves it is superior: for the one is mind and divinity, the other earth and gore.

4 Do not waste what remains of your life in thoughts about others, unless you refer them to some common good. For you rob yourself of other work: by imagining what so-and-so is doing and why, what he is saying, what he is thinking, what he is scheming, and all such things that make you drift away from watching over your own ruling mind.

You must avoid, then, in the train of your thoughts, all that is random and idle, and above all curiosity and malice; and you must accustom yourself to think only those thoughts about which, if someone suddenly asked you, "What are you thinking about now?", you could at once answer frankly, "This and that" — so that it would be plain at once that everything in you is simple and kindly and befits a social being, one who cares nothing for thoughts of pleasure or of indulgence in general, nor for rivalry, envy, suspicion or anything else that you would blush to admit you had in mind.

For such a man, who no longer puts off taking his place among the best, is a kind of priest and servant of the gods, making use of the divinity enthroned within him, which keeps the man unstained by pleasures, unwounded by any pain, untouched by any insult, insensible to any wickedness; a wrestler in the greatest of contests, the struggle not to be thrown by any passion; dyed deep with justice; welcoming with all his soul everything that happens and is allotted to him; and not often, nor without great necessity for the common good, thinking about what another is saying or doing or thinking. For he makes only his own concerns the matter of his activity, and constantly reflects on what is spun for him out of the whole; the former he makes good, and he is persuaded that the latter is good. For the lot assigned to each is carried along with the whole and carries him along with it.

He remembers too that every rational being is his kinsman, and that to care for all men accords with man's nature; but that he should hold to the good opinion not of all men, but only of those who live in agreement with nature. As for those who do not live so, he keeps always in mind what sort of men they are at home and abroad, by night and by day, and with what sort of people they mix. So he sets no value on praise from such men, who are not even pleased with themselves.

5 Do not act unwillingly, nor selfishly, nor without due examination, nor against the grain. Do not dress up your thought in fine language. Do not be a man of many words or many affairs. Further, let the god within you be the guardian of a living being that is manly, mature, a statesman, a Roman and a ruler, who has taken his post like a man awaiting the signal that recalls him from life, ready to depart, needing neither an oath nor any man's testimony. Let there be cheerfulness in you, independence of help from outside, and independence of the peace that others give. You must stand upright, not be held upright.

6 If you find in human life anything better than justice, truth, self-control and courage — in short, than your mind's being content with itself in the things where it makes you act according to right reason, and content with destiny in what is allotted to you beyond your choice — if, I say, you see anything better than this, turn to it with all your soul and enjoy the best that you have found.

But if nothing appears better than the divinity enthroned within you, which has subjected its own impulses to itself, examines its impressions, has withdrawn itself, as Socrates used to say, from the persuasions of the senses, has submitted itself to the gods and cares for men; if you find all other things smaller and cheaper than this, give room to nothing else; for once you lean and turn aside towards it, you will no longer be able, without distraction, to give first place to that good which is properly your own.

For it is not right that anything of another kind — the praise of the many, power, wealth or the enjoyment of pleasures — should set itself up against the good of reason and of the community. All these things, even if for a little while they seem to fit in, suddenly gain the upper hand and carry you away. But you, I say, simply and freely choose the better, and hold fast to it. "But the better is what is useful." If it is useful to you as a rational being, keep to it; but if only as an animal, say so, and keep your judgement without arrogance; only make sure you conduct the examination safely.

7 Never value as profitable to yourself anything that will compel you to break your word, abandon your self-respect, hate anyone, suspect, curse, play the hypocrite, or desire anything that needs walls and curtains. For one who has chosen before all else his own mind and divinity and the worship of its excellence makes no tragic scenes, does not groan, will need neither solitude nor a crowd; above all, he will live neither pursuing nor fleeing; and whether for a longer or a shorter time he will have the use of a soul enclosed in a body is no concern of his at all. Even if he must depart at once, he will go as readily as he would do anything else that can be done with self-respect and decency, taking care throughout his life only of this: that his mind is never in a state unbecoming a rational and social being.

8 In the mind of one who has been disciplined and purified you will find nothing festering, nothing foul, no hidden sore. Nor does fate overtake his life unfinished, as one might say of an actor who leaves the stage before he has finished and played out the drama. There is nothing servile in him, nothing affected, nothing clinging, nothing cut off, nothing that must give account, nothing that hides.

9 Revere your faculty of judgement. Everything depends on it, so that no judgement may arise in your ruling mind that is out of keeping with nature and with the constitution of a rational being. And this promises freedom from rash judgement, fellowship with men, and obedience to the gods.

10 Throw everything else away, then, and hold fast to these few things only; and remember besides that each of us lives only in this present moment, this instant; the rest has either been lived already or is uncertain. Small, then, is the life each man lives; small the corner of the earth where he lives; small too the longest fame after death, and even that passes down through a succession of little men who will very soon die, and who do not know even themselves, let alone one who died long ago.

11 To the aids already mentioned let one more be added: always make a definition or description of whatever presents itself to your mind, so as to see what it is in its essence, stripped bare, as a whole and part by part, and to tell yourself its proper name, and the names of the things of which it was compounded and into which it will be resolved.

For nothing produces greatness of mind so much as to be able to examine methodically and truly everything that presents itself in life, and always to look at things in such a way as to consider at the same time what kind of universe this is, what use the thing serves in it, what value it has for the whole, and what for man — a citizen of the highest city, of which all other cities are like households; what it is, of what it is composed, how long it is of a nature to last, this thing that now makes an impression on me, and what virtue I need towards it: gentleness, courage, truthfulness, good faith, simplicity, self-sufficiency and the rest.

So you must say of each thing: this comes from god; this from the conjunction and interwoven thread of fate, from coincidence and chance; this from a fellow tribesman, a kinsman, a partner, who does not know, however, what is according to nature for him. But I know; and so I treat him kindly and justly, according to the natural law of fellowship, while at the same time aiming at what each deserves in the things that are indifferent.

12 If you do the work at hand following right reason, earnestly, vigorously, kindly, admitting nothing incidental, but keeping your divinity pure and upright, as if you had to give it back at any moment; if you hold to this, expecting nothing and avoiding nothing, but content with present action according to nature and with heroic truthfulness in every word you speak, you will live well. And there is no one who can prevent this.

13 As doctors always keep their instruments and knives at hand for sudden emergencies, so keep your principles ready for the understanding of things divine and human, and do everything, even the smallest, mindful of the bond that unites the two. For you will do nothing human well without referring it to the divine, nor the reverse.

14 Wander no longer. You are not going to read your little notebooks, nor the deeds of the ancient Romans and Greeks, nor the extracts from their writings that you were putting aside for your old age. Hurry, then, to the end; throw away vain hopes and come to your own rescue, if you care for yourself at all, while you still can.

15 They do not know how many things are meant by stealing, sowing, buying, keeping quiet, seeing what must be done — which is done not with the eyes but with another kind of sight.

16 Body, soul, mind: to the body belong sensations, to the soul impulses, to the mind principles. To receive the stamp of impressions belongs also to cattle; to be jerked by the strings of impulse belongs also to wild beasts, to effeminate men, to Phalaris and to Nero;³ to have the mind as guide to what appear to be duties belongs also to those who do not believe in the gods, to those who betray their country, and to those who will do anything once they have shut their doors.

If, then, everything else is shared with those I have named, what remains peculiar to the good man is to love and welcome what happens and is spun for him by fate; not to defile the divinity enthroned within his breast, nor to disturb it with a throng of impressions, but to keep it serene, following god in good order, saying nothing contrary to the truth and doing nothing contrary to justice. And if all men distrust him because he lives simply, modestly and cheerfully, he is not angry with any of them, nor does he turn aside from the road that leads to the end of life, which he must reach pure, peaceful, ready to depart, in harmony with his lot without compulsion.

1. According to tradition, Heraclitus, suffering from dropsy, tried to cure himself by covering his body with dung. ↩
2. Democritus was said to have died of lice; the "vermin" who killed Socrates were his accusers. ↩
3. Phalaris, tyrant of Acragas in Sicily, notorious for his cruelty; Nero, Roman emperor from 54 to 68. ↩