Book 7

What is evil? It’s what you’ve seen many times. With everything that happens, keep this ready: it’s what you’ve seen many times. Up and down, you’ll find the same things that fill ancient histories, middle histories, recent ones. The same things fill cities and houses now. Nothing new. Everything is familiar and short-lived.

How else can your principles die except when the corresponding impressions are put out? It’s up to you to keep rekindling them. I can think what I should about this. If I can, why am I troubled? What’s outside my mind has absolutely nothing to do with my mind. Learn this and you’re standing straight. You can come back to life. Look at things again the way you used to see them. That’s what coming back to life is.

Empty parades of pride. Stage plays. Flocks, herds. Mock battles. A bone thrown to puppies. A crumb tossed into fishponds. Ants laboring and carrying loads. Frightened mice scurrying. Puppets jerked by strings. So you need to stand among all this kindly, not arrogantly, but understand that each person is worth as much as the things they’re busy with[1].

You need to follow what’s being said word by word, and with every impulse follow what’s happening. With one, see immediately what it’s aiming at. With the other, watch what it means.

Is my mind up to this or not? If it is, I use it for the work like a tool given by the nature of the whole. If not, I either hand the work over to someone who can do it better (unless that’s not my duty) or I do it as best I can, bringing in someone who can use my ruling principle to do what’s timely and useful for the community. Whatever I do alone or with someone else should aim only at what’s useful and harmonious for the community.

How many once-famous people are already forgotten. How many who praised them are long gone.

Don’t be ashamed of being helped. Your job is to do your duty like a soldier in a siege. What if you’re wounded and can’t climb the wall alone, but can with someone’s help?

Don’t let the future trouble you. You’ll meet it, if you have to, with the same reason you use for the present.

Everything is woven together, and the connection is sacred. Practically nothing is alien to anything else. Things are arranged together and combine to make the same universe. There’s one universe made of everything, one god through everything, one substance, one law, one common reason for all intelligent creatures, and one truth—if there’s also one perfection for related creatures sharing the same reason.

Every material thing quickly vanishes into the substance of the whole. Every cause is quickly taken back into the reason of the whole. The memory of everything is quickly buried in eternity.

For a rational creature, the same action is both according to nature and according to reason.

Stand straight, not held straight[2].

Rational beings in separate bodies have the same relationship as body parts in unified organisms—they’re made for one single cooperation. This thought will strike you more if you often tell yourself: I’m a member of the system of rational beings. But if you say you’re a part (using the letter “r”), you don’t yet love people from your heart. You don’t yet enjoy doing good for its own sake. You’re still doing it as merely proper, not yet as doing good to yourself[3].

Let whatever wants to happen externally happen to those parts that can be affected by it. They’ll complain if they want. But I, unless I think what happened is bad, am not harmed yet. And I can choose not to think that.

Whatever anyone does or says, I must be good. It’s as if gold or emerald or purple dye kept saying: whatever anyone does or says, I must be emerald and keep my color.

The ruling principle doesn’t trouble itself—I mean, it doesn’t frighten itself or lead itself to desire. If someone else can frighten or pain it, let them. It won’t turn itself toward such states through its own judgment. Let the body take care not to suffer, if it can, and let it say if it suffers. But the little soul that gets frightened, that feels pain, that judges these things overall—it won’t suffer at all, because you won’t lead it to such a judgment. The ruling principle needs nothing on its own account unless it creates needs for itself. Similarly, it’s undisturbed and unimpeded unless it disturbs and impedes itself.

Happiness is a good spirit, a good ruling principle. What are you doing here, imagination? Go away, by the gods, the way you came. I don’t need you. You’ve come according to your old habit. I’m not angry with you. Just go[4].

Does someone fear change? What can happen without change? What’s dearer or more natural to the nature of the whole? Can you take a bath if wood doesn’t change? Can you be nourished if food doesn’t change? Can anything useful be accomplished without change? Don’t you see that your own change is similar and equally necessary to the nature of the whole?

Through the substance of the universe, as through a rushing stream, all bodies pass—connected to the whole and cooperating like our body parts do with each other. How many Chrysippuses, how many Socrateses, how many Epictetuses has time already swallowed? Let the same thought strike you about every person and thing[5].

Only one thing troubles me: that I might do something human nature doesn’t want, or not the way it wants, or not what it wants now.

Soon you’ll forget everything. Soon everyone will forget you.

It’s unique to humans to love even those who stumble. This happens if it occurs to you that they’re relatives, that they do wrong through ignorance and against their will, that you’ll both be dead soon, and above all, that they haven’t harmed you—they haven’t made your ruling principle worse than it was before.

The nature of the whole, from the whole substance, like from wax, now molds a little horse. Then melting this down, it uses the material for a little tree, then for a little person, then for something else. Each of these exists for the briefest time. It’s no hardship for a box to be taken apart, just as it wasn’t to be put together.

An angry expression is very unnatural. When it’s constantly dying or finally extinguished so it can’t be rekindled at all, try to understand from this very fact that it’s against reason. If even the awareness of doing wrong is gone, what reason is there to keep living?

Soon the nature that governs the whole will change everything you see and make other things from their substance, and others again from those, so the universe stays forever young.

When someone does wrong to you, immediately consider what they thought was good or bad when they did it. Seeing this, you’ll pity them and neither wonder nor get angry. Either you still think the same thing is good that they do, or something similar, so you must forgive. Or if you no longer think such things are good and bad, you’ll more easily be kind to someone who sees incorrectly.

Don’t think about what’s absent as if it’s already present. Instead, pick out the best of what you have and remember how eagerly you’d seek these things if you didn’t have them. But at the same time, be careful not to get so used to enjoying them that you’d be upset if you lost them.

Withdraw into yourself. The rational ruling principle naturally is satisfied with itself when it acts justly and thereby has tranquility.

Wipe out imagination. Stop being jerked like a puppet. Define the present moment. Recognize what’s happening to you or someone else. Divide and separate the object into cause and material. Think about your last hour. Leave the wrong done by that person where the wrong occurred.

Pay attention to what’s being said. Let your understanding grasp what’s happening and who’s doing it.

Brighten yourself with simplicity, modesty, and indifference to what’s between virtue and vice. Love humanity. Follow god. The poet says “all things are by law, but in reality only elements exist.” It’s enough to remember that all things are by law—very few things really[6].

About death: either scattering if we’re atoms, or if we’re unified, either extinction or a change of place[7].

About pain: what’s unbearable kills you. What lasts is bearable. The mind keeps its own tranquility by withdrawing, and the ruling principle isn’t made worse. As for the parts harmed by pain, let them say something about it if they can.

About fame: look at their minds—what they are, what they avoid, what they pursue. And remember that just as sand dunes pile on top of earlier ones and hide them, so in life earlier things are quickly covered by what comes after.

From Plato: “Do you think a mind that grasps great things and contemplates all time and all existence thinks human life is something big?” “Impossible,” he said. “So such a person won’t think death is terrible?” “Not at all”[8].

From Antisthenes: “It’s royal to do good and be spoken ill of”[9].

It’s shameful that the face obeys and shapes and arranges itself as the mind commands, but the mind doesn’t shape and arrange itself.

“There’s no point getting angry at things—they don’t care at all”[10].

“May you bring joy to the immortal gods and to us”[11].

“Life must be harvested like ripe grain—one exists, another doesn’t”[12].

“If the gods have forgotten me and my children, this too has its reason”[13].

“The good and the just are with me”[14].

Don’t join in their mourning, don’t get excited.

From Plato: “I’d give this person a just answer—that you’re wrong to think a man who’s worth anything should calculate chances of living or dying. He should only consider whether he’s acting justly or unjustly, doing the work of a good or bad man”[15].

“It’s like this, men of Athens, in truth: wherever someone stations himself thinking it’s best, or is stationed by a commander, there he should stay and face danger, not considering death or anything else compared to disgrace”[16].

“But look, my friend, whether what’s noble and good isn’t something other than saving and being saved. A real man must set aside how long he lives. He shouldn’t love life but should trust god in these things and believe the women who say you can’t escape fate. Then consider how to live the time he has as well as possible”[17].

Watch the courses of the stars as if you were running alongside them. Constantly think about the changes of elements into each other. Such visions purify the filth of earthly life.

This is good from Plato: when talking about people, one should look at earthly things as if from above—herds, armies, farms, marriages, divorces, births, deaths, noisy courtrooms, desert places, various foreign peoples, festivals, mourning, marketplaces—all mixed together and harmonized from opposites[18].

Look at the past—such great changes in governments. You can also foresee the future. It will be completely similar, unable to escape the rhythm of current events. So it’s the same to observe human life for forty years or ten thousand. What more will you see?

“What grows from earth returns to earth, but what springs from heavenly seed goes back to the heavenly pole.” Or else: a loosening of the atoms’ entanglements and a similar scattering of the unfeeling elements[19].

“With food and drinks and magic tricks, trying to turn aside the stream to avoid death. When wind sent from the gods blows, we must endure and toil without complaining”[20].

He’s better at wrestling, but not more public-spirited, not more modest, not better prepared for what happens, not more forgiving of neighbors’ mistakes[21].

Where work can be done according to the reason common to gods and humans, there’s nothing to fear. Where you can gain benefit from activity that moves along successfully according to your constitution, no harm should be suspected.

Everywhere and constantly it’s up to you to be reverently satisfied with what’s happening now, to treat present people justly, and to use skill on the present impression so nothing unexamined slips in.

Don’t look at other people’s ruling principles. Look straight at where nature is leading you—the nature of the whole through what happens to you, and your nature through what you must do. Each must do what follows from its constitution. Other things are made for rational beings (just as in everything else, inferior things exist for superior ones), and rational beings exist for each other. So the primary thing in human constitution is social connection. Second is not yielding to bodily disturbances. It’s characteristic of rational and intelligent movement to limit itself and never be defeated by sensory or impulse movements—both of those are animal-like. Intellectual movement wants to be superior and not controlled by them. Rightly so—it’s naturally meant to use all of them. Third in the rational constitution is not being hasty or easily deceived. So let the ruling principle hold to these things and go straight ahead. Then it has what belongs to it.

Consider yourself dead and your life over until now. Live the rest as extra time according to nature.

Love only what happens to you and is spun for you by fate. What could be more suited to you?

In each event, keep before your eyes those to whom the same things happened—then they were upset, surprised, complained. Where are they now? Nowhere. So do you want to act the same way? Why not leave those twists to those who twist and are twisted, and focus entirely on how to use these events? You’ll use them well and they’ll be material for you. Just pay attention and resolve to be good in everything you do. Remember both things: the action is important; the material it works on is indifferent.

Dig inside. Inside is the spring of good, and it can keep bubbling up if you keep digging.

The body should also be steady and not thrown around, either in movement or at rest. Just as the mind shows itself in the face, keeping it composed and decent, the same should be required of the whole body. But all this should be watched without affectation.

The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing—you have to stand ready and unshaken for what comes at you unexpectedly.

Constantly consider who these people are whose testimony you want, and what ruling principles they have. Then you won’t blame those who stumble involuntarily, and you won’t need their testimony when you look into the sources of their opinions and impulses.

“Every soul,” he says, “is unwillingly deprived of truth.” The same with justice, self-control, kindness, and everything like that. It’s most necessary to remember this constantly—you’ll be gentler with everyone[22].

For any pain, have this ready: it’s not shameful and doesn’t make the governing intelligence worse. It doesn’t damage it as rational or as social. For most pains, let Epicurus help you: pain is neither unbearable nor eternal if you remember its limits and don’t add to it in imagination. Remember too that many things are actually pain in disguise—drowsiness, fever, loss of appetite. When you’re annoyed by any of these, tell yourself you’re giving in to pain[23].

Make sure you don’t feel toward people-haters what people-haters feel toward everyone else.

How do we know Telauges wasn’t better in character than Socrates? It’s not enough that Socrates died more gloriously, argued more skillfully with sophists, endured cold nights better, thought it nobler to refuse when ordered to arrest the Salaminian, and “strutted in the streets” (though one might especially question whether this was true). We need to examine what kind of soul Socrates had—whether he could be satisfied with being just toward people and reverent toward gods, not getting upset pointlessly at evil or enslaved to anyone’s ignorance, not treating as strange what the whole assigns or enduring it as unbearable, not letting his mind sympathize with the flesh’s experiences[24].

Nature hasn’t blended you with the compound so you can’t set boundaries for yourself and make what’s yours subject to yourself. It’s very possible to become divine and be recognized by no one. Remember this always, and also that living happily requires very few things. Don’t give up on becoming free, modest, social, and obedient to god just because you’ve given up on being a logician or physicist.

You can live without violence in the deepest joy even if everyone shouts whatever they want against you, even if wild beasts tear apart the pieces of this molded flesh around you. What prevents the mind from keeping itself in tranquility, in true judgment about circumstances, and ready use of what’s presented to it? So judgment can say to what it meets: “This is what you are in substance, even if you seem different in opinion.” And use can say to what it encounters: “I was looking for you. The present is always material for rational and social virtue—in short, for human or divine art.” Everything that happens belongs to god or humans, and is neither new nor hard to handle, but familiar and easy to work with.

Perfection of character is this: to live each day as if it were the last, without frenzy, without laziness, without pretense.

The gods, being immortal, don’t complain that through such a long eternity they must always put up with so many worthless people. They even care for them in every way. But you, who are about to end, give up—and you’re one of the worthless ones yourself.

It’s ridiculous not to flee from your own wickedness, which is possible, but to flee from other people’s, which is impossible.

Whatever the rational and social faculty finds to be neither intelligent nor social, it rightly judges to be beneath itself.

When you’ve done good and someone has benefited, why do you seek a third thing besides these, like fools do—to be thought well of or to get something in return?

No one gets tired of being helped. Help is acting according to nature. Don’t get tired of being helped while you help.

The nature of the whole set out to make the universe. Now either everything that happens follows as a consequence, or even the most important things that the world’s ruling principle directs its own impulse toward are irrational. Remembering this will make you calmer about many things[25].