Book 4

When the ruling power inside us is in harmony with nature, it stands ready to adapt easily to whatever happens and whatever is possible. It doesn’t need any specific material to work with. It heads toward its primary goals but with reservation. Whatever gets in the way becomes material for it, like fire when it takes over what falls into it. A small flame would be put out, but a bright fire quickly makes whatever you throw on it part of itself, consumes it, and rises higher because of it[1].

Don’t do anything without purpose or without a principle to guide it.

People look for retreats—country places, the seashore, mountains. You’ve wanted this too. But this is completely stupid. You can retreat into yourself whenever you want. Nowhere is quieter or less busy than your own soul—especially if you have things inside to look at that immediately put you at ease. And by ease I mean good order. So constantly give yourself this retreat and renew yourself. Have short, basic principles ready that will wash away all distress and send you back not frustrated with what you’re returning to. What are you frustrated with? People’s wickedness? Remember: rational beings exist for each other, patience is part of justice, they do wrong involuntarily, and think how many people have been enemies, suspicious, hating, fighting—and now they’re ashes. Stop it. But you’re also frustrated with what the universe assigns you? Refresh the alternative: either providence or atoms. Remember the proofs that the universe is like a city. But physical things still affect you? Remember that once the mind understands itself and knows its power, it doesn’t mix with the breath moving smoothly or roughly. Remember everything you’ve learned and agreed to about pain and pleasure. But will that bit of fame pull you off course? Look at how fast everything is forgotten, the chaos of infinite time on either side, the emptiness of applause, how changeable and uncritical those who seem to praise are, how small the space where it’s confined. The whole earth is a point, and how small a corner of it is where we live. And how many people there will praise you—what kind of people are they? So remember to retreat into this little territory of your own. Above all, don’t strain or stress. Be free. Look at things like a man, like a human being, like a citizen, like a mortal. Among the things you have ready to look at, these two: first, things don’t touch the soul—they stand outside it, unmoved. Disturbances come only from the opinion inside. Second, everything you see will change almost immediately and won’t exist anymore. Keep thinking about how many changes you’ve already witnessed. The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it[2].

If we share intelligence, then we share reason that makes us rational. If so, we share the reason that tells us what to do or not do. If so, we share law. If so, we’re citizens. If so, we share in government. If so, the universe is like a city. What other common government could you say the whole human race shares in? From there, from this common city, comes our intelligence, reason, and law—or where else? Just as the earth in me has been separated off from some earth, the liquid from another element, the breath from some source, the heat and fire from its own source (nothing comes from nothing or returns to nothing), so the mind also comes from somewhere[3].

Death is like birth—a mystery of nature. Elements combine, then dissolve back into the same elements. Nothing to be ashamed of. It’s not against the nature of a rational being or the logic of our design.

These things naturally happen this way from these kinds of people. It’s inevitable. Wanting it not to happen is like wanting a fig tree not to have juice. Remember: in a very short time both you and he will be dead. Soon not even your names will be left.

Get rid of the judgment, and “I’ve been harmed” is gone. Get rid of “I’ve been harmed,” and the harm is gone.

What doesn’t make a person worse doesn’t make his life worse either, and doesn’t harm him from outside or inside.

The nature of the beneficial had to make this happen.

“Everything that happens is just.” Watch carefully and you’ll find this is true. I don’t mean just in sequence, but also just, as if someone were giving out what each deserves. Keep watching like you’ve started to, and whatever you do, do it with this: with being good in the specific sense of good. Keep this in every action.

Don’t think the way the person insulting you wants you to think, or the way he wants you to think. See things as they really are.

Always have these two things ready: first, to do only what the royal and lawmaking reason suggests for helping people; second, to change your mind if someone’s there to correct you and move you away from some opinion. But the change should always come from being convinced it’s just or helps the community—only reasons like that, not because it seems pleasant or popular.

“You have reason?” “Yes.” “Why don’t you use it? If it’s doing its job, what else do you want?”

You exist as a part. You’ll disappear into what created you. Or rather, you’ll be transformed back into the universal reason[4].

Many grains of incense on the same altar. One falls before, another after—no difference.

Within ten days you’ll seem like a god to the same people who now think you’re a beast and an ape—if you go back to your principles and honoring reason.

Don’t act like you’re going to live thousands of years. Death hangs over you. While you’re alive, while you can, become good.

How much free time someone gains who doesn’t look at what his neighbor said or did or thought, but only at what he himself is doing—to make sure it’s just and holy. Or as Agathon says: don’t peer around at other people’s bad character, but run straight down the line without looking side to side[5].

The person who gets excited about fame after death doesn’t realize that each person who remembers him will also die very soon. Then the next one who takes over from him, until all memory is extinguished as it passes through people who light up and then go out. But suppose those who remember were immortal and the memory was immortal—what’s that to you? And I don’t mean what’s it to the dead person, but what is praise to the living person, except maybe for some practical use? You’re now rejecting nature’s gift at the wrong moment while clinging to something else…

Everything beautiful in any way is beautiful in itself and complete in itself, with praise no part of it. Does anything become worse or better by being praised? I mean even ordinary things—material objects, craftsmanship. What does something really beautiful need? No more than law, or truth, or kindness, or self-respect. Which of these is beautiful because it’s praised or ruined because it’s criticized? Does an emerald become worse if no one praises it? What about gold, ivory, purple, a lyre, a knife, a flower, a bush?

If souls survive, how has the air contained them from eternity? How does the earth contain the bodies of those buried for so long? Just as here, after bodies last for a while, their change and breakdown makes room for other corpses, so souls that move to the air, after lasting a while, change and pour out and ignite, taken back into the universal reason, and this way make room for souls that come to join them. That’s what someone might answer, assuming souls survive. But we shouldn’t just think about the number of bodies buried this way—think about all the animals eaten every day by us and other animals. What a huge number is consumed and in a way buried in the bodies of those who feed on them. Yet there’s room because they’re turned into blood, changed into air and fire. What’s the way to investigate the truth about this? By dividing into material and cause[6].

Don’t wander. In every impulse, give what’s just. In every impression, preserve what you can grasp.

Everything harmonizes with me that harmonizes with you, Universe. Nothing is too early or too late for me that’s in your good time. Everything is fruit to me that your seasons bring, Nature. From you everything, in you everything, to you everything. That man says “Dear city of Cecrops.” Won’t you say “Dear city of Zeus”?[7]

“Do little, if you want contentment.” Maybe it’s better to do what’s necessary, what the reason of a naturally social being demands, and how it demands. This brings not only the contentment from doing right but also from doing little. Most of what we say and do isn’t necessary. Eliminate it and you’ll have more time and less disturbance. So on each occasion remind yourself: is this unnecessary? And we need to eliminate not just unnecessary actions but unnecessary thoughts too—then unnecessary actions won’t follow.

Try how the life of a good person suits you—someone pleased with what’s assigned from the whole and satisfied with his own just action and kind disposition.

You’ve seen those things? Look at these too. Don’t disturb yourself. Simplify yourself. Someone does wrong? He does wrong to himself. Something happened to you? Good—everything that happens was woven for you from the beginning by the whole. In short, life is brief. Use the present with reason and justice. Be sober even when relaxing.

Either an ordered universe or a jumble thrown together—but still a universe. Or can order exist in you while disorder exists in the whole? And this when everything is so distinguished, diffused, and sympathetic[8].

A dark character, feminine character, stubborn character, beast-like, cattle-like, childish, stupid, counterfeit, buffoon, commercial, tyrannical[9].

If someone’s a stranger to the universe who doesn’t know what’s in it, no less a stranger is someone who doesn’t know what happens in it. He’s a runaway who runs from social reason, blind who shuts his mental eye, a beggar who needs others and doesn’t have everything useful for life in himself. He’s an abscess on the universe who separates and cuts himself off from the reason of our common nature by being dissatisfied with what happens—for the nature that brings this also brought you. He’s a fragment cut from the city who cuts his own soul off from the soul of rational beings, which is one[10].

One philosopher has no cloak, another no book. Here’s another half-naked: “I have no bread,” he says, “but I stay faithful to reason.” And I don’t get food from my learning, but I stay faithful[11].

Love the art you’ve learned and rest in it. Go through what’s left of life like someone who’s entrusted everything to the gods with his whole soul, making yourself neither tyrant nor slave to anyone.

Think about the times of Vespasian—you’ll see all the same things: people marrying, raising children, getting sick, dying, fighting wars, celebrating, trading, farming, flattering, being arrogant, suspicious, plotting, praying for others to die, complaining about the present, loving, hoarding, wanting consulships and kingdoms. That life of theirs—it doesn’t exist anywhere anymore. Move on to Trajan’s time—again, all the same. That life is dead too. Look at the other labels of times and whole nations the same way. See how many struggled intensely and soon fell and dissolved into elements. But especially remember those you yourself knew wasting their time on empty things, neglecting to do what fit their own nature, to hold tight to that and be satisfied with it. And here you need to remember that the attention you give each action should match its value. This way you won’t get discouraged if you don’t spend more time than you should on less important things[12].

Words that used to be common are now strange. So too the names of much-praised men from the past are now in a way strange: Camillus, Caeso, Volesus, Dentatus. Soon Scipio and Cato too. Then Augustus. Then Hadrian and Antoninus. Everything fades and quickly becomes legend. Soon complete oblivion covers it. And I’m talking about those who shone amazingly. The rest, the moment they breathed their last—unknown, unmentioned. What is eternal remembrance anyway? Complete emptiness. So what should we work for? Just this: right thinking, social action, speech that never lies, and a disposition that welcomes everything that happens as necessary, as familiar, as flowing from the same source and spring[13].

Willingly give yourself to Clotho, letting her weave you into whatever she wants[14].

Everything is ephemeral—what remembers and what’s remembered.

Constantly observe everything coming about through change, and get used to thinking that the nature of the whole loves nothing more than changing things and making new ones like them. Everything that exists is in a way the seed of what will come from it. But you only think of seeds that are planted in earth or a womb—that’s a very shallow way to think.

You’re about to die and you’re still not simple, not undisturbed, not without suspicion that externals can harm you, not kind to everyone, not seeing that wisdom is only in acting justly.

Look into their ruling principles—even the wise ones—what they avoid and what they pursue.

Your harm doesn’t exist in someone else’s ruling principle, nor in any change or alteration of your surroundings. Where then? In the part of you that judges things as bad. So don’t make that judgment and all is well. Even if what’s closest to it—your body—is cut, burned, festering, rotting, still let the part that judges these things stay calm. That is, let it judge that nothing is either bad or good if it can happen equally to bad and good people. What happens equally to someone living against nature and someone living according to nature is neither according to nature nor against it.

Constantly think of the universe as one living being, with one substance and one soul. Notice how everything relates to its one perception, how it does everything by one impulse, how everything cooperates in causing everything that happens, and the kind of web and weaving it is.

You’re a little soul carrying a corpse, as Epictetus said[15].

Change isn’t bad for things that change, just as it’s not good for things that exist because of change.

Time is a river of what happens, a violent stream. As soon as each thing appears, it’s swept away and another is carried past, and that will be swept away too.

Everything that happens is as familiar and known as a rose in spring or fruit in summer. The same goes for disease, death, slander, conspiracy, and everything that delights or pains fools.

What comes next always has a natural relationship to what came before. It’s not like a list of disconnected things that only has forced sequence, but a rational connection. And just as existing things are harmoniously arranged, what comes into being shows not mere succession but a wonderful relationship.

Always remember what Heraclitus said: earth’s death is to become water, water’s death is to become air, air’s to become fire, and back again. Remember the person who forgets where the road leads. And that people quarrel with what they’re most constantly in contact with—the reason that governs everything—and the things they encounter daily seem foreign to them. We shouldn’t act and speak like we’re asleep (for then too we seem to act and speak). And we shouldn’t be like children of our parents—that is, simply accepting things as we’ve received them[16].

If one of the gods told you that you’d die tomorrow or at most the day after, you wouldn’t make much difference between tomorrow or the day after (unless you’re completely cowardly)—it’s such a small difference. In the same way, don’t think it’s a big deal whether you die many years from now or tomorrow.

Constantly think how many doctors have died after frowning over their patients so many times. How many astrologers after predicting others’ deaths as something important. How many philosophers after endless arguments about death or immortality. How many heroes after killing so many people. How many tyrants after using their power over life and death with terrible arrogance, as if they were immortal. How many whole cities have died, so to speak—Helice, Pompeii, Herculaneum, and countless others. Go through all the people you know, one after another. One person buries another, then is laid out himself, and another buries him—all in a short time. The point is: always see human things as short-lived and cheap—yesterday slime, tomorrow mummy or ash. So pass through this tiny span of time according to nature and end cheerfully, like an olive that falls when ripe, blessing the earth that bore it and grateful to the tree that grew it[17].

Be like a rocky cliff that waves keep crashing against. It stands still and the boiling water settles around it. “I’m unlucky because this happened to me.” No—“I’m lucky because even though this happened, I’m not broken by the present or frightened of the future.” This could have happened to anyone, but not everyone would have remained unbroken. So why is that a misfortune rather than this a fortune? Do you call anything a human misfortune that isn’t a failure of human nature? Do you think something is a failure of human nature if it’s not against nature’s will? Well, you’ve learned what its will is. Does what happened stop you from being just, generous, self-controlled, sensible, careful, truthful, modest, free, and everything else that makes human nature complete? So remember from now on, for everything that tries to make you upset, to use this principle: this isn’t a misfortune—bearing it nobly is good fortune.

A simple but effective help for despising death: remember those who clung to life. What more did they get than those who died early? Anyway, they’re all lying somewhere—Cadicianus, Fabius, Julianus, Lepidus, and others like them who carried out many, then were carried out themselves. The whole interval is small, and through what troubles, with what kinds of people, in what a weak body. So don’t think it’s a big deal. Look behind you at the endless stretch of time and ahead at another infinity. In that, what’s the difference between a three-day-old and someone who lived three generations?[18]

Always take the shortest route—the natural one. That means saying and doing everything in the healthiest way. This intention frees you from troubles, from military service, from all management and pretense[19].