Book 9

It would be more elegant to leave human life without tasting lies, pretending, luxury, or pride. Second best is to breathe your last when you’re sick of these things. Or have you chosen to stick with evil? Doesn’t experience convince you to flee this plague? Corruption of the mind is much more a plague than any change or disorder in the surrounding air. That’s a plague for animals as animals. This is a plague for humans as humans.

Don’t hate death. Welcome it, since it’s one of the things nature wants. Like being young and growing old, growing up and reaching your prime, getting teeth, a beard, gray hair, having sex, being pregnant, giving birth, and all the other natural activities life’s seasons bring—so is dying. It’s thoughtful not to be reckless, impatient, or scornful toward death, but to wait for it as one of nature’s activities. As you now wait for your child to come out of your wife’s womb, so await the hour when your soul will drop out of this shell. If you want a simple comfort that touches the heart, what will most help you accept death is looking at the objects you’ll leave and the characters your soul will no longer be mixed up with. You shouldn’t be offended by them—you should care for them and bear them gently—but remember you won’t be leaving people who share your principles. The only thing that could hold and keep you in life, if it were allowed, would be living with people who’d adopted the same principles. But now you see how tiring the conflict of living together is, so you say: “Come quickly, death, before I too forget myself.”

Someone who does wrong wrongs themselves. Someone who acts unjustly makes themselves unjust—makes themselves bad.[1]

Often someone acts unjustly by not doing something, not only by doing something.

Present judgment that grasps the truth, present action that’s social, present attitude that welcomes everything from the external cause—that’s enough.

Wipe out imagination. Stop impulse. Put out desire. Keep your ruling principle in your control.

One soul is distributed among irrational animals. One intelligent soul is divided among rational beings. Just as there’s one earth for all earthly things, we see by one light and breathe one air—all of us that have sight and life.

Everything that shares in something common rushes toward what’s like it. Everything earthy leans toward earth. Everything liquid flows together. Everything airy likewise—they need barriers and force to keep them apart. Fire rises because of elemental fire, but down here it’s ready to ignite with any fire, so that any material that’s a bit dry easily catches fire because less of what prevents ignition is mixed in. So everything that shares in common intelligent nature rushes toward what’s related, or even more so. The better it is compared to other things, the more ready it is to mix and blend with its own kind. Among irrational creatures you immediately find swarms, herds, bird colonies, and something like love—there are already souls there, and the binding force is found stronger in the better creature, as it isn’t in plants, stones, or wood. Among rational creatures there are governments, friendships, households, assemblies, and in wars, treaties and truces. Among things still better, a kind of unity exists even across distance, as with the stars. So ascending to the better can create sympathy even in separated things. But see what happens now: only intelligent beings have now forgotten their eagerness and leaning toward each other—only here is the flowing together not seen. But though they run away, they’re still caught—nature wins. Watch and you’ll see what I mean. You’d sooner find something earthy not touching anything earthy than a human cut off from humans[2].

Humans, god, and the universe all bear fruit—each in the right season. Usage normally applies this to vines and such things, but that doesn’t matter. Reason has fruit both common and individual. From it come other things of the same sort as reason itself.

If you can, teach them better. If not, remember that kindness was given you for this. The gods too are kind to such people—they even help them toward some things: health, wealth, reputation. They’re that good. You can be too. Or tell me—who’s stopping you?

Work, but not like you’re miserable or wanting pity or admiration. Want just one thing: to act or rest as civic reason demands.

Today I escaped all circumstance—or rather, I threw out all circumstance. It wasn’t outside, but inside in my judgments.

All these things are familiar from experience, temporary in duration, foul in material. Everything now is just as it was in the time of those we buried.

Things stand outside the doors, by themselves, knowing nothing about themselves, making no announcements about themselves. What announces things? The ruling principle.

Evil and good for the rational, social creature aren’t in what happens to them but in what they do—just as their virtue and vice aren’t in what happens but in what they do.

For a stone thrown up, it’s no evil to fall down, no good to rise up.

Get inside their ruling principles and you’ll see what judges you fear—and what judges they are of themselves.

Everything is changing. You yourself are constantly altering and in a way decaying—so is the whole universe.

Someone else’s wrong should be left there.

When activity ends, when impulse, opinion, and in a way life stops—no evil. Now turn to stages of life: childhood, teenage years, youth, old age. Every change is a death. Is that frightening? Now turn to life under your grandfather, then under your mother, then your father. Finding many other destructions, changes, and endings, ask yourself: Was that frightening? So neither is the ending, stopping, and change of your whole life[3].

Rush to your own ruling principle, to the ruling principle of the whole, and to this person’s. To your own, to make it just. To the whole’s, to remember what you’re part of. To this person’s, to see whether it’s ignorance or judgment—and remember they’re related to you.

As you yourself are a completing part of a social system, so let every action of yours complete social life. Any action that doesn’t refer, directly or remotely, to a social end tears your life apart, doesn’t let it be unified, and is rebellion—like someone in a democracy creating a faction separate from the common harmony.

Children’s tantrums and games. “Little souls carrying corpses”—the Underworld story becomes more vivid[4].

Go to the quality of the cause, separate it from the material, and look at it. Then determine the longest time this particular quality naturally lasts.

You’ve endured countless troubles by not being satisfied with your ruling principle doing what it was made for. But enough.

When someone blames or hates you, or people voice similar criticisms, go to their souls, go inside, and see what sort they are. You’ll see you don’t need to strain so they’ll have some opinion about you. But you should be kind to them—they’re naturally friends. The gods too help them in every way, through dreams, through signs, toward what they care about.

The universe’s cycles are the same, up and down, age to age. Either the universe’s mind sets each thing in motion—if so, accept what it starts. Or it set things in motion once, and everything else follows in sequence. Why worry? In a way, atoms or indivisibles. The whole point: if god, all is well. If chance, don’t you be random too. Soon earth will cover us all. Then earth itself will change, then what comes from that will change endlessly, then that endlessly again. Someone thinking about these waves of changes and alterations and their speed will look down on everything mortal.

The universal cause is a rushing stream—it carries everything. How cheap these political types are, supposedly philosophical and practical. Full of snot. Listen, what does nature demand now? Set out if it’s given you, and don’t look around to see if anyone will know. Don’t hope for Plato’s Republic. Be satisfied if the smallest thing goes forward, and consider this outcome no small matter. Who can change their principles? Without changing principles, what else is there but slavery of people groaning and pretending to obey? Go ahead, talk to me about Alexander, Philip, and Demetrius of Phalerum. They’ll see whether they saw what common nature wanted and trained themselves. But if they acted like tragic heroes, no one has sentenced me to copy them. Philosophy’s work is simple and modest. Don’t lead me to showing off[5].

Look from above at countless herds, countless ceremonies, all sorts of voyages in storms and calms, differences of creatures being born, living together, dying. Think too about life lived by others long ago, life that will be lived after you, life now being lived in foreign nations. How many don’t even know your name. How many will quickly forget it. How many who perhaps praise you now will soon blame you. How neither memory nor fame nor anything else at all is worth valuing.

Calm about what comes from external causes. Justice in what comes from the cause that’s you. That is, impulse and action ending in social acts—that’s according to your nature.

You can remove many troubles that disturb you, since they lie entirely in your judgment. You’ll immediately make plenty of room for yourself by embracing the whole universe in your mind, thinking about eternal time, and thinking about the rapid change of each particular thing—how brief the time from birth to dying, how infinite the time before birth, and equally infinite after dying.

Everything you see will soon die. Those who witness the dying will soon die themselves. Someone who dies in extreme old age will be brought to the same state as someone who died too young.

What are their ruling principles? What have they worked for? For what do they love and honor? Imagine you see their souls naked. When they think they harm by blaming or help by praising—what an idea!

Loss is nothing but change. The nature of the whole delights in this, according to which everything happens well, happened similarly from eternity, and will be the same forever. So what are you saying—that everything was bad and always will be bad, that no power among so many gods has ever been found to correct these things, but the universe is condemned to be held in unending evils?

The rottenness of the matter underlying everything: water, dust, bones, stench. Again: marble is earth’s sediment, gold and silver are deposits, clothes are hair, purple dye is blood, and everything else is the same. The soul too is another such thing, changing from this to that.

Enough of this miserable life, grumbling, and play-acting. Why are you disturbed? What’s new here? What drives you crazy? The cause? Look at it. The material? Look at that. Beyond these, there’s nothing. And toward the gods, become simpler and better at last. Whether you examine these things for a hundred years or three—it’s the same.

If they did wrong, the evil is there. But maybe they didn’t do wrong.

Either everything comes from one intelligent source and happens as in one body—the part shouldn’t complain about what happens for the whole. Or there are atoms and nothing but mixing and scattering. So why be disturbed? Say to your ruling principle: “You’re dead, you’re rotten, you’ve become a beast, you’re pretending, you’re herding with the flock, you’re feeding.”

Either the gods have no power or they have power. If they have no power, why pray? If they have power, why not pray for them to give you the ability not to fear, desire, or be pained by any of these things, rather than praying for something to be present or absent? Certainly if they can help people, they can help with this. But maybe you’ll say the gods put these things in my control. Then isn’t it better to use what’s in your control with freedom than to strain after what’s not in your control with slavery and shame? Who told you the gods don’t help us even with things in our control? Start praying about these things and you’ll see. One person prays: “How can I sleep with her?” You pray: “How can I not want to sleep with her?” Another: “How can I be rid of him?” You: “How can I not need to be rid of him?” Another: “How can I not lose my child?” You: “How can I not fear losing them?” Turn your prayers this way and see what happens.

Epicurus says: “During my illness, my conversations weren’t about my body’s sufferings, and I didn’t talk about such things with visitors. I continued my previous natural philosophy discussions, focusing on this point: how the mind, while participating in such movements in the flesh, remains undisturbed and maintains its own good. I didn’t let the doctors act important as if they were doing something big. My life went on well and happily.” Do the same as he did, in sickness if you’re sick, and in any other circumstance. Never abandon philosophy no matter what happens, and don’t chatter with the ignorant and those who know nothing of nature—this is common to all schools. Be present only to what you’re doing now and the tool you’re doing it with[6].

When you run into someone’s shamelessness, immediately ask yourself: Is it possible for shameless people not to exist in the world? It’s not possible. So don’t demand the impossible. This is one of those shameless people who must exist in the world. Have the same thought ready for the cheat, the betrayer, and anyone who does wrong. When you remember that the class of such people can’t not exist, you’ll be kinder to individuals. It’s also useful to think immediately: What virtue did nature give humans against this fault? Against the ungrateful, she gave gentleness as a cure, against another type, another power. And you can always teach someone who’s gone astray—everyone who does wrong misses their target and has gone astray. Besides, how have you been harmed? You’ll find that none of these people you’re angry at have done anything that could make your mind worse. Your evil and harm exist entirely there. What’s strange or surprising if an uneducated person acts uneducated? See whether you should blame yourself more for not expecting them to do wrong. Your reason gave you resources to realize this person would likely do wrong, yet you forgot and are surprised they did. Most of all, when you blame someone as faithless or ungrateful, turn to yourself. The fault is clearly yours—either you trusted someone with such character to keep faith, or when giving a favor you didn’t give it completely, or not so that you received all your reward from the act itself. What more do you want after doing good to someone? Isn’t it enough that you acted according to your nature? Do you seek payment for this? As if the eye demanded payment for seeing or feet for walking. Just as these exist for their function and have their own reward by working according to their construction, so humans, naturally made to do good, when they do something good or help with middle things, have done what they were made for and have their own reward[7].