Book 10

Will you ever, my soul, be good, simple, one, and naked—more visible than the body surrounding you? Will you ever taste real love? Real care? Will you ever be complete, needing nothing, missing nothing, wanting nothing living or lifeless for enjoying pleasures? Not needing time for longer enjoyment? Not needing place, country, or nice weather? Not needing people to get along with? Will you be satisfied with your present situation, pleased with everything present, and convince yourself that everything from the gods is here for you, that everything is and will be well for you, whatever they give for saving the perfect living being—good, just, beautiful, creating everything, holding together, surrounding, and embracing things that dissolve to create others like them? Will you ever be such that you can live with gods and humans without complaining to them or being condemned by them?

Watch what your nature demands as someone governed only by nature. Then do it and accept it, unless it would harm your nature as a living creature. Next watch what your nature as a living creature demands. Accept all of it, unless it would harm your nature as a rational living creature. The rational is immediately also social. Use these rules and don’t busy yourself with anything else.

Everything that happens either happens so you’re naturally able to bear it or so you’re not able to bear it. If it happens so you can bear it, don’t complain—bear it as you’re naturally able. If it happens so you can’t bear it, don’t complain—it will destroy you first. But remember you’re naturally able to bear everything that your opinion can make bearable and tolerable by thinking it’s either helpful or your duty.

If someone’s off course, show them gently. If you can’t, blame yourself—or no one.

Whatever happens to you was being prepared for you from forever. The web of causes was weaving together from eternity both your existence and this event.

Whether atoms or nature, let it first be clear that I’m part of the whole governed by nature. Second, that I’m somehow closely related to the parts that are like me. Remembering these things, as a part, I won’t be unhappy with anything assigned from the whole. Nothing harmful to the whole can be harmful to the part. The whole contains nothing that isn’t helpful to itself. All natures share this, but the nature of the universe also can’t be forced by any outside cause to create anything harmful to itself. So remembering I’m part of such a whole, I’ll be content with everything that happens. And since I’m closely related to parts like me, I’ll do nothing unfriendly to the community. Rather, I’ll aim at what’s like me, direct all my effort toward the common benefit, and turn away from the opposite. With these things done, life must flow well, just as you’d see a citizen’s life flows well when they proceed through acts that benefit citizens and welcome whatever the city assigns.

The parts of the whole—everything naturally included in the universe—must necessarily die (let’s use “die” to mean “change”). If this is naturally bad and necessary for them, the whole wouldn’t work well with its parts heading toward change and built in different ways to die. Did nature deliberately try to harm its own parts, making them likely to fall into evil and necessarily falling into evil? Or did this happen without nature noticing? Both are unbelievable. Even if someone leaves nature aside and explains these things as just natural, it’s still ridiculous to say it’s natural for the whole’s parts to change while being surprised or annoyed when something happens as if it weren’t natural—especially since things dissolve into the same elements they came from. It’s either a scattering of the elements that were combined or a change of the solid into earth and the breath into air, so these are taken back into the universe’s reason, whether it burns up from time to time or renews itself through eternal exchanges. Don’t imagine the solid and breath are from your original birth—all this received its input yesterday or the day before from food and breathed air. So what changes is what was received, not what mother gave birth to. Even if that binds you closely to your individual quality, I think that doesn’t affect what I’m saying now[1].

After giving yourself these names—good, modest, truthful, intelligent, accepting, high-minded—watch that you don’t change names. If you lose these names, quickly return to them. Remember that “intelligent” meant for you the careful grasp of each thing and not being careless. “Accepting” meant willingly accepting what common nature assigns. “High-minded” meant raising the thinking part above the smooth or rough movements of the flesh, above reputation, death, and all such things. So if you keep yourself in these names, not craving to be called them by others, you’ll be a different person and enter a different life. To still be the kind of person you’ve been until now, to be torn apart and ruined in such a life, is extremely senseless and life-loving, like those half-eaten beast fighters who, covered with wounds and gore, still beg to be kept until tomorrow to be thrown again to the same claws and bites. So throw yourself into these few names. If you can stay with them, stay as if you had reached the Islands of the Blessed. But if you feel you’re falling away and not keeping control, go bravely into some corner where you will keep control—or leave life entirely, not angry but simply, freely, and modestly, having done at least this one thing in life: leaving it this way. To remember the names, it will help greatly to remember the gods and that they don’t want flattery but for all rational beings to become like them—for the fig tree to do what fig trees do, the dog what dogs do, the bee what bees do, and human beings what human beings do[2].

War, panic, numbness, slavery—these will daily erase those sacred principles of yours that you imagine and let pass by without studying nature. You must see and do everything so that at the same time the practical is done, the thinking part is exercised, and the confidence from knowledge about each thing is kept—hidden, not concealed. When will you enjoy simplicity? When dignity? When knowledge of each thing—what it is in essence, what place it has in the universe, how long it naturally lasts, what it’s made of, who can have it, and who can give and take it away?

A spider is proud when it catches a fly. One person when they catch a rabbit, another small fish with a net, another wild boars, another bears, another Sarmatians. Aren’t these all robbers if you examine their principles?[3]

Get a method for thinking about how all things change into each other. Constantly pay attention to this and exercise yourself in this area. Nothing creates greatness of mind like this. Such a person has put off the body and, realizing they must soon leave all these things and depart from humans, has given themselves entirely to justice in their own actions and to the nature of the whole in what happens otherwise. What someone will say or think about them or do against them doesn’t even enter their mind, being satisfied with these two things: acting justly in what they’re currently doing and loving what’s currently assigned to them. They’ve thrown off all fuss and ambition, wanting nothing else but to run the straight course through the law and, running straight, to follow god.

What need is there for suspicion when you can examine what needs to be done? If you see it clearly, proceed that way kindly, without turning back. If you don’t see clearly, pause and use the best advisors. If other things oppose this, proceed according to what you have, carefully, holding to what seems just. Best to achieve that, since failing at that is the only real failure. Someone who follows reason in everything is both relaxed and ready for action, both cheerful and calm.

As soon as you wake up, ask yourself: Will it matter to you if someone else criticizes what’s actually just and good? It won’t matter. Have you forgotten what kind of people these are who show off praising and blaming others—what they’re like in bed, at table, what they do, what they avoid, what they pursue, what they steal and rob, not with hands and feet but with the most valuable part of themselves, which creates, when it chooses, trust, modesty, truth, law, and a good spirit?

To nature, which gives and takes back everything, the educated and modest person says: “Give what you want, take back what you want.” They say this not stubbornly but only doing what’s asked and satisfied with her.

You have little time left. Live as on a mountain. It doesn’t matter here or there, if everywhere you live as in a city—in the universe. Let people see, let them study a real human living according to nature. If they can’t bear it, let them kill you—better that than living as they do.

No more discussing what a good person is like—be one.

Constantly imagine the whole of time and the whole of substance. Everything particular is, in substance, a fig seed; in time, a twist of a drill.

Looking at each thing, consider that it’s already dissolving, in change, rotting or scattering—or how each thing is naturally born to die.

What are they like when eating, sleeping, mating, using the bathroom, and the rest? Then what are they like when bossing others around, acting proud, angry, or scolding from on high? Just now they were slaves to so many things and for what reasons—and soon they’ll be in the same state again.

What the nature of the whole brings each thing is helpful to it, and helpful when it brings it.

“Earth loves rain, the grand sky loves too.” The universe loves to make what’s about to be. So I say to the universe: “I love with you.” Isn’t that why we say “this loves to happen”?[4]

Either you live here and are now used to it, or you go away and this was your wish, or you die and have finished your service. Beyond these, nothing. So be cheerful.

Keep it clear that life is the same there in the country, exactly like things here—on a mountaintop, at the seashore, wherever. You’ll find Plato’s words directly: “building a wall around himself on the mountain, milking his bleating flocks”[5].

What is my ruling principle to me? What am I making it now? For what am I using it now? Is it empty of intelligence? Is it disconnected and torn from community? Is it so melted and mixed with flesh that it turns with it?

Someone who runs from their master is a runaway slave. Law is our master. So the lawbreaker is a runaway. Similarly, someone sad, angry, or afraid doesn’t want something that happened, is happening, or will happen that was arranged by the one governing everything, which is law, giving out what falls to each. So the one afraid, sad, or angry is a runaway.

Someone puts seed in a womb and leaves. Another cause takes over, works on it, and completes a baby—from what materials, what a result! Again: someone sends food down the throat, and another cause takes over, creating sensation, impulse, life in general, strength, and so many other things. Watch these things happening in such hiding. See the power just as we see the power that makes things fall or rise—not with our eyes, but no less clearly.

Constantly consider how everything happening now also happened before. Consider that it will happen again. Put before your eyes whole dramas and similar scenes from your own experience or ancient history—the whole court of Hadrian, the whole court of Antoninus, the whole court of Philip, Alexander, Croesus. All those were the same, just with different actors[6].

Picture everyone who complains or grumbles about anything as like a pig being sacrificed, kicking and squealing. Similar is the person moaning on their bed alone in silence about our chains. Consider that only the rational creature is given the ability to follow willingly what happens. Simply following is necessary for all.

For each thing you do, stop and ask yourself whether death is terrible because you’d lose this.

When you’re offended by someone’s fault, immediately shift to thinking what similar fault you have—like judging money as good, or pleasure, or reputation, and so on. By focusing on this, you’ll quickly forget your anger, with the thought that they’re forced to act this way. What else could they do? Or if you can, remove what forces them.

When you see Satyrus, picture Socraticus or Eutyches or Hymen. When you see Euphrates, picture Eutychion or Silvanus. When you see Alciphron, picture Tropaeophorus. When you see Severus, picture Crito or Xenophon. Looking at yourself, picture one of the Caesars. For each person, picture their match. Then let this thought strike you: Where are they now? Nowhere—or who knows where? This way you’ll constantly see human things as smoke and nothing, especially if you remember that what changes once will never exist again in infinite time. Why strain? Why isn’t this brief moment enough to pass through decently? What material and situation are you running from? What is all this but training exercises for reason that has seen precisely and scientifically what happens in life? So stay until you make these things familiar to yourself, as a strong stomach makes everything familiar, as a bright fire makes whatever you throw in it into flame and light[7].

Let no one be able to say truthfully about you that you’re not simple or good. Let anyone who thinks this about you be lying. This is entirely up to you. Who stops you from being good and simple? Just decide to live no longer if you won’t be this kind of person. Reason doesn’t require you to live if you’re not.

What can be done or said in the most healthy way with this material? Whatever it is, you can do or say it. Don’t pretend you’re being prevented. You won’t stop groaning until you feel the same way about doing what’s proper to human nature with whatever material is presented or falls to you as pleasure-seekers feel about luxury. You should consider enjoyment everything you can do according to your own nature. You can do this everywhere. A cylinder can’t roll its own way everywhere, neither can water or fire or other things governed by nature or irrational soul—many things interfere and block them. But mind and reason can go through every obstacle as they’re naturally able and as they wish. Put before your eyes this ease with which reason proceeds through everything—like fire upward, a stone downward, a cylinder on a slope—and look for nothing more. Other obstacles are either of the dead body or—without judgment and reason’s own surrender—don’t break or harm anything. If they did, the person experiencing them would immediately become bad. With all other constructions, when something bad happens to them, the thing experiencing it becomes worse. But here, if I may say so, a person becomes better and more praiseworthy by using what falls to them correctly. Remember that nothing harms the natural citizen that doesn’t harm the city, and nothing harms the city that doesn’t harm the law. None of these so-called misfortunes harms the law. So what doesn’t harm the law harms neither city nor citizen.

For someone gripped by true principles, even the briefest, most common reminder is enough for freedom from grief and fear. Like: “Leaves—wind scatters some to earth: so with the race of humans.” Your children are little leaves. Little leaves too are those who cry out convincingly and praise or, the opposite, curse or secretly blame and mock. Little leaves equally are those who will carry your reputation after death. All these “spring up in the season,” then wind knocks them down, then the forest grows others in their place. Brief time is common to all, but you avoid and pursue everything as if it will be eternal. A little while and you’ll close your eyes. And soon another will mourn the one who carried you out[8].

The healthy eye must see everything visible and not say “I want green things”—that’s a diseased eye. The healthy ear and nose must be ready for everything you can hear and smell. The healthy stomach must be toward all food like a mill toward everything it was made to grind. So the healthy mind must be ready for everything that happens. The mind that says “Let my children be safe” or “Let everyone praise whatever I do” is an eye wanting green things or teeth wanting soft things.

No one is so fortunate that when they’re dying, some people won’t be there welcoming the bad event. Were they serious and wise? At the very end, won’t someone say to themselves: “We’ll finally breathe freely without this teacher. He wasn’t harsh to any of us, but I sensed he was silently judging us.” That’s for the serious person. But in our case, how many other reasons are there for many to want to be rid of us? You’ll think about this when dying and leave more easily, reasoning: “I’m leaving a life where even my companions, for whom I struggled, prayed, and cared so much—even they want me to go, hoping perhaps for some relief from this.” Why then would anyone cling to staying here longer? But don’t leave less kindly toward them because of this. Keep your own character, remaining friendly, well-wishing, and gentle. Don’t leave as if being torn away, but as when someone dies well and the soul slips easily from the body—that’s how your departure from them should be. Nature bound and mixed you with them, but now dissolves the bond. I’m dissolved from relatives, but not dragged away, just unforced. This too is according to nature.

Get used, as much as possible, to asking yourself about everything someone does: What is this person aiming for? Start with yourself and examine yourself first.

Remember that what pulls the strings is that hidden thing inside. That’s speech, that’s life, that is, if we must say it, the person. Never include in your imagination the surrounding vessel and these organs shaped around it. They’re like tools, differing only in being attached. There’s no more use for these parts without the cause that moves and stops them than for the shuttle without the weaver, the pen without the writer, or the whip without the driver.