BOOK II.

1. Say this to yourself in the morning: Today I shall have to do with

meddlers, with the ungrateful, with the insolent, with the crafty,

with the envious and the selfish. All these vices have beset them,

because they know not what is good and what is evil. But I have

considered the nature of the good, and found it beautiful: I have

beheld the nature of the bad, and found it ugly. I also understand the

nature of the evil-doer, and know that he is my brother, not because

he shares with me the same blood or the same seed, but because he is a

partaker of the same mind and of the same portion of immortality. I

therefore cannot be hurt by any of these, since none of them can

involve me in any baseness. I cannot be angry with my brother, or

sever myself from him, for we are made by nature for mutual

assistance, like the feet, the hands, the eyelids, the upper and lower

rows of teeth. It is against nature for men to oppose each other; and

what else is anger and aversion?

2. All that I am is either flesh, breath, or the ruling part. Cast

your books from you; distract yourself no more; for you have not the

right to do so. Like one at the point of death despise this flesh,

this corruptible bone and blood, this network texture of nerves,

veins, and arteries. Consider, too, what breath is--mere air, and

that always changing, expelled and inhaled again every moment. The

third is the ruling part. As to this, take heed, now that you are old,

that it remain no longer in servitude; that it be no more dragged

hither and thither like a puppet by every selfish impulse. Repine no

more at what fate now sends, nor dread what may befall you hereafter.

3. Whatever the Gods ordain is full of wise forethought. The workings

of chance are not apart from nature, and not without connexion and

intertexture with the designs of Providence. Providence is the source

of all things; and, besides, there is necessity, and the utility of

the Universe, of which you are a part. For, to every part of a being,

that is good which springs from the nature of the whole and tends to

its preservation. Now, the order of Nature is preserved in the changes

of elements, just as it is in the changes of things that are

compound. Let this suffice you, and be your creed unchangeable. Put

from you the thirst of books, that you may not die murmuring, but

meekly, and with true and heartfelt gratitude to the Gods.

4. Think of your long procrastination, and of the many opportunities

given you by the Gods, but left unused. Surely it is high time to

understand the Universe of which you are a part, and the Ruler of that

Universe, of whom you are an emanation; that a limit is set to your

days, which, if you use them not for your enlightenment, will depart,

as you yourself will, and return no more.

5. Hourly and earnestly strive, as a Roman and a man, to do what falls

to your hand with perfect unaffected dignity, with kindliness, freedom

and justice, and free your soul from every other imagination. This you

will accomplish if you perform each action as if it were your last,

without wilfulness, or any passionate aversion to what reason

approves; without hypocrisy or selfishness, or discontent with the

decrees of Providence. You see how few things it is necessary to

master in order that a man may live a smooth-flowing, God-fearing

life. For of him that holds to these principles the Gods require no

more.

6. Go on, go on, O my soul, to affront and dishonour thyself! The time

that remains to honour thyself will not be long. Short is the life of

every man; and thine is almost spent; spent, not honouring thyself,

but seeking thy happiness in the souls of other men.

7. Cares from without distract you: take leisure, then, to add some

good thing to your knowledge; have done with vacillation, and avoid

the other error. For triflers, too, are they who, by their activities,

weary themselves in life, and have no settled aim to which they may

direct, once and for all, their every desire and project.

8. Seldom are any found unhappy from not observing what is in the

minds of others. But such as observe not well the stirrings of their

own souls must of necessity be unhappy.

9. Remember always what the nature of the Universe is, what your own

nature is, and how these are related--the one to the other. Remember

what part your qualities are of the qualities of the whole, and that

no man can prevent you from speaking and acting always in accordance

with that nature of which you are a part.

10. In comparing crimes together, as, according to the common idea,

they may be compared, Theophrastus makes the true philosophical

distinction, that those committed from motives of pleasure are more

heinous than those which are due to passion. For he who is a prey to

passion is clearly turned away from reason by some spasm and

convulsion that takes him unawares. But he who sins from desire is

conquered by pleasure, and so seems more incontinent and more

effeminate in his vice. Justly then, and in a truly philosophical

spirit, he says that sin, for pleasure's sake, is more wicked than sin

which is due to pain. For the latter sinner was sinned against, and so

driven to passion by his wrongs, while the former set out to sin of

his own motion, and was led into ill-doing by his own lust.

11. Do every deed, speak every word, think every thought in the

knowledge that you may end your days any moment. To depart from men,

if there be really Gods, is nothing terrible. The Gods could bring no

evil thing upon you. And if there be no Gods, or if they have no

regard to human affairs, why should I desire to live in a world void

of Gods and without Providence? But Gods there are, and assuredly they

regard human affairs; and they have put it wholly in man's power that

he should not fall into what is truly evil. And of other things, had

any been bad, they would have made provision also that man should have

the power to avoid them altogether. For how can that make a man's life

worse which does not corrupt the man himself? Presiding Nature could

not in ignorance, or in knowledge impotent, have omitted to prevent or

rectify these things. She could not fail us so completely that, either

from want of power or want of skill, good and evil should happen

promiscuously to good men and to bad alike. Now death and life, glory

and reproach, pain and pleasure, riches and poverty--all these

happen equally to the good and to the bad. But, as they are neither

honourable nor shameful, they are therefore neither good nor evil.

12. It is the office of our rational power to apprehend how swiftly

all things vanish; how the corporeal forms are swallowed up in the

material world, and the memory of them in the tide of ages. Such are

all the things of sense, especially those which ensnare us with

pleasure or terrify us with pain, or those things which vanity

trumpets in our ears. How mean, how despicable, how sordid, how

perishable, how dead are they! What are they whose opinions and whose

voices bestow renown? What is it to die? Your mind can tell you that,

did a man think of it alone, and, by close consideration, strip it of

its ghastly trappings, he would no longer deem it anything but a work

of Nature. To dread a work of Nature is a childish thing, and this is,

indeed, not only Nature's work, but beneficial to her. Your reason

tells you how man reaches God, and through what part, and what is the

state of that part, when he has attained unto him.

13. Nothing, says the poet, is more miserable than to range over all

things, to spy into the depths of the earth, and search, by

conjecture, into the souls of those around us, yet not to perceive

that it is enough for a man to devote himself to that divinity which

is within him, and to pay it genuine worship. And this worship

consists in keeping it pure from every passion and folly, and from

repining at anything done by Gods or men. The work of the Gods is to

be reverenced for its excellence. The works of men should be dear for

the sake of the bond of kinship, or pitied, as we must pity them

sometimes, for their lack of the knowledge of good and evil. And men

are not less maimed by this defect than by their want of power to know

white from black.

14. Though you should live three thousand ears or as many myriads, yet

remember that no man loses any other life than that which now lives,

nor lives any other than that which he is now losing. The longest and

the shortest lives come to one effect. The present moment is the same

for all men, and their loss, therefore, is equal, for it is clear that

what they lose in death is but a fleeting instant of time. No man can

lose either the past or the future, for how can a man be deprived of

what he has not? These two things then are to be remembered: First,

that all things recur in cycles, and are the same from everlasting,

and that, therefore, it matters nothing whether a man shall

contemplate these same things for one hundred years, or for two

hundred, or for an infinite stretch of time: and, secondly, that he

who lives longest and he who dies soonest have an equal loss in

death. The present moment is all of which either is deprived, since

that is all he has. No man can be robbed of that which he has not.

15. Beyond opinion there is nothing. The objections to this saying of

Monimus the Cynic are obvious. But obvious also is the utility of what

he said, if one accept his pleasantry as far as truth will warrant it.

16. Man's soul dishonours itself, firstly and chiefly when it does all

it can to become an excrescence, and as it were an abscess on the

Universe. To fret against any particular event is to revolt against

the general law of Nature, which comprehends the order of all events

whatsoever. Again it is dishonour for the soul when it has aversion to

any man, and opposes him with intention to hurt him, as wrathful men

do. Thirdly, it affronts itself when conquered by pleasure or pain;

fourthly, when it does or says anything hypocritically, feignedly or

falsely; fifthly, when it does not direct to some proper end all its

desires and actions, but exerts them inconsiderately and without

understanding. For, even the smallest things should be referred to the

end, and the end of rational beings is to follow the order and law of

the venerable state and polity which comprehends them all.

17. The duration of man's life is but an instant; his substance is

fleeting, his senses dull; the structure of his body corruptible; the

soul but a vortex. We cannot reckon with fortune, or lay our account

with fame. In fine, the life of the body is but a river, and the life

of the soul a misty dream. Existence is a warfare, and a journey in a

strange land; and the end of fame is to be forgotten. What then avails

to guide us? One thing, and one alone--Philosophy. And this consists

in keeping the divinity within inviolate and intact; victorious over

pain and pleasure; free from temerity, free from falsehood, free from

hypocrisy; independent of what others do or fail to do; submissive to

hap and lot, which come from the same source as we; and, above all,

with equanimity awaiting death, as nothing else than a resolution of

the elements of which every being compounded. And, if in their

successive interchanges no harm befall the elements, why should one

suspect any in the change and dissolution of the whole? It is natural,

and nothing natural can be evil.

AT CARNUNTUM.

END OF THE SECOND BOOK.