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02 - The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius · The Philosophy Insights Collection

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  One begin the morning by saying to thyself, I shall meet with the busy
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  body, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial. All these
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  things happen to them by reason of their ignorance of what is good and evil.
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  But I, who have seen the nature of the good that is beautiful,
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  and of the bad that it is ugly, and the nature of him
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  who does wrong, that it is akin to me, not only of the
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  same blood or seed, but that it participates in the same intelligence and the
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  same portion of the divinity. I can neither be injured by any of them,
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  for no one can fix on me what is ugly, Nor can I
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  be angry with my kinsmen, nor hate him, for we are made for
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  co operation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows
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  of the upper and lower teeth. To act against one another, then is
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  contrary to nature, and it is acting against one another. To be vexed
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  and to turn away two. Whatever this is that I am, it is
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  a little flesh and breath, and the ruling part. Throw away thy books,
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  no longer distract thyself. It is not allowed. But as if thou
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  wast now dying, despise the flesh. It is blood and bones, and
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  a network a conjecture of nerves, veins and arteries. See the breath.
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  Also what kind of a thing? It is air, and not always the
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  same, but every moment sent out and again sucked in. The third,
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  then is the ruling part. Consider thus thou art an old man. No
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  longer let this be a slave. No longer be pulled by the strings like
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  a puppet to unsocial movements. No longer be either dissatisfied with thy present lot,
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  or shrink from the future. Three. All that is from the gods
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  is full of providence. That which is from fortune is not separated from nature,
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  or without an interweaving and involution with the things which are ordered by providence.
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  From thence all things flow, and theirs Besides necessity, and that which
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  is for the advantage of the whole universe, of which thou art apart,
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  but that is good for every part of nature which the nature of the whole
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  brings, and what serves to maintain this nature. Now the universe is preserved,
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  as by the changes of the elements, so by the changes of things
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  compounded of the elements. Let these principles be enough for thee Let them always
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  be fixed opinions, but cast away the thirst after books, that thou mayst
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  not die murmuring, but cheerfully, truly and from thy heart thankful to the
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  gods. Four. Remember how long thou hast been putting off these things,
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  and how often thou hast received an opportunity from the gods, and yet dost
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  not use it. Thou must now at last perceive of what universe thou art
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  apart, and of what administrator of the universe. Thy existence is in a
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  flux, and that a limit of time is fixed for thee, which if
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  thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind, it will
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  go, and thou wilt go, and it will never return. Five.
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  Every moment thinks steadily as a Roman and a man, to do what thou
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  hast in hand, with perfect and simple dignity and feeling of affection and freedom
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  and justice, and to give thy self relief from all other thoughts. And
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  thou wilt give thy self relief if thou doest every act of thy life as
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  if it were the last, laying aside all carelessness and passionate aversion from the
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  commands of reason and all hypocrisy, and self love, and discontent with the
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  portion which has been given to THEE. Thou seest how few the things are,
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  though which if a man lays hold of, he is able to live
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  a life which flows in quiet and is like the existence of the gods.
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  For the gods and their part will require nothing more from him who observes these
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  things. Six do wrong to thyself, do wrong to thyself my soul,
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  but thou wilt no longer have the opportunity of honoring thyself. Every man's life
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  is sufficient, but thine is nearly finished. Though thy soul reverences not itself,
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  but places thy felicity in the souls of others. Seven Do the things
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  external which fall upon thee distract thee? Give thyself time to learn something new
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  and good, and cease to be worled about. But then thou must also
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  avoid being carried about the other way. For those too are triflers, who
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  have wearied themselves in life by their activity, and yet have no object to
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  which to direct every movement, and, in a word, all their thoughts.
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  Eight. Through not observing what is in the mind of another man has
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  seldom been seen to be unhappy. But those who do not observe the movements
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  of their own minds, must of necessity be unhappy. Nine this thou must
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  always bear in mind, what is the nature of the whole, and what
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  is my nature? And how this is related to that? And what kind
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  of a part it is of what kind of a whole? And that there
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  is no one who hinders thee from always doing and saying the things which are
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  according to the nature of which thou thou art apart. Ten. Theophrastus,
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  in his comparison of bad acts, such a comparison as one would make in
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  accordance with the common notions of mankind, says, like a true philosopher,
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  that the offenses which are committed through desire are more blameable than those which are
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  committed through anger. For he who is excited by anger seems to turn away
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  from reason with a certain pain and unconscious contraction. But he who offends through
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  desire, being overpowered by pleasure, seems to be in a manner more intemperate
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  and more womanish in his offenses. Rightly, then, and in a way
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  worthy of philosophy, he said that the offense which is committed with pleasure is
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  more blameable than that which is committed with pain, and on the whole the
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  one is more like a person who has been first wronged, and through pain
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  is compelled to be angry. But the other is moved by his own impulse
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  to do wrong, being carried toward doing something by desire. Eleven. Since
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  it is possible that thou may as depart from life this very moment, regulate
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  every act and thought accordingly. But to go away from among men if there
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  are gods, is not a thing to be afraid of, For the gods
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  will not involve thee in evil. But if indeed they do not exist,
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  or if they have no concern about human affairs, what is it to me
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  to live in a universe devoid of gods or devoid of providence. But in
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  truth, they do exist, and they do not care for human things.
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  And they have put all the means in man's power to enable him not to
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  fall into real evils. And as to the rest, if there was anything
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  evil, they would have provided for this also, that it should be altogether
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  in a man's power not to fall into it. Now, that which does
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  not make a man worse, how can it make a man's life worse?
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  But neither through ignorance nor having the knowledge but not the power to guard against
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  or correct these things. It is possible that the nature of the universe has
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  overlooked them. Nor is it possible that has made so great a mistake,
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  either through want of power or want of skill, that good and evil should
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  happen indiscriminately to the good and the bad. But death, certainly, and
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  life, honor and dishonor pain and pleasure, all these things equally happen to
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  good men and bad being things which make us neither better nor worse. Therefore
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  they are neither good nor evil. Twelve. How quickly all these things disappear
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  in the universe the bodies themselves, but in time the remembrance of them.
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  What is the nature of all sensible things, and particularly those which attract with
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  the bit of pleasure, or terrify by pain, or are noised about by
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  vapory fame? How worthless and contemptible, and sordid and perishable and dead they
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  are. All this it is the part of the intellectual faculty to observe.
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  To observe too, who these are, whose opinions and voices give reputation,
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  What death is, And the fact that if a man looks at it in
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  himself, and by the abstractive power reflection resolves into their parts all the things
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  which present themselves to the imagination in it. He will then consider it to
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  be nothing else than an operation of nature. And if any one is afraid
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  of an operation of nature, he is a child. This, however,
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  is not only an operation of nature, but it is also a thing which
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  conduces to the purposes of nature. To observe too, how man comes near
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  to the deity, and by what part of him, and when this part
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  of man is so disposed thirteen, Nothing is more wretched than a man who
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  traverses everything in a round and pries into things beneath the earth, as the
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  poet says, and seeks by conjecture what is in the minds of his neighbors,
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  without perceiving that. It is sufficient to attend to the demon within him
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  and to reverence it sincerely. And reverence of the demon consists in keeping it
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  pure from passion and thoughtlessness and dissatisfaction with what comes from gods and men.
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  For the things from gods mayrit veneration for their excellence, and the things for
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  men should be dear to us by reason of kinship. And sometimes even in
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  a manner they move our pity by reason of men's ignorance of good and bad,
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  this defect being not less than that which deprives us of the power of
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  distinguishing things that are white and black. Fourteen. Though thou shouldst be going
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  to live three thousand years and as many times ten thousand years, still remember
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  that no man loses any other life than this which he now lives, nor
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  lives any other than this which he now loses. The longest and shortest are
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  thus brought to the same. For the present is the same to all,
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  though that which perishes is not the same. And so that which is lost
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  appears to be a mere moment. For a man cannot lose either the past
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  or the future. For what a man has not, how can anyone take
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  this from him? These two things, than thou must bear in mind,
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  the one that all things from eternity are of like forms and come in a
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  circle, and that it makes no difference whether a man shall see the same
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  things during a hundred years or two hundred or an infinite time. And the
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  second that the longest liver and he who will die soonest lose just the same.
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  For the present is the only thing of which a man can be deprived,
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  if it is true that this is the only thing which he has,
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  and that a man cannot lose a thing if he has it not. Fifteen,
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  Remember that all is opinion, for what was said by the cynic monymous
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  is manifest and manifest. Two is the use of what was said, if
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  a man receives what may be got out of it, as far as it
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  is true. Sixteen, the soul of man does violence to itself, first
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  of all, when it becomes as absess and, as it were, a
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  tumor on the universe, so far as it can for to be vexed at.
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  Anything which happens is a separation of ourselves from nature, in some part
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  of which the natures of all other things are contained. In the next place,
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  the soul does violence to itself when it turns away from any man,
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  or even moves towards him with the intention of injuring, such as are the
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  souls of those who are angry. In the third place, the soul does
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  violence to itself when it is overpowered by pleasure or by pain. Fourthly,
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  when it plays a part and does or says anything insincerely and untruly. Fifthly,
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  when it allows any act of its own and any movement to be without
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  an aim, and does anything thoughtlessly and without considering what it is being right
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  that even the smallest things be done with reference to an end. And the
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  end of rational animals is to follow the reason and the law of the most
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  ancient city and polity seventeen. Of human life, the time is a point,
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  and the substance is in a flux, and the perception dull, and
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  the composition of the whole body subject to putre faction, and the soul of
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  a world and fortune hard to divine, and fame a thing to do,
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  void of judgment, and to say all in a word. Everything which belongs
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  to the body is a stream, and what belongs to the soul is a
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  dream and vapor, and life is a warfare and a stranger's sojourn. And
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  after fame is oblivion. What then, is that which is able to conduct
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  a man one thing, and only one philosophy? But this consists in keeping
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  the demon within a man free from violence and unharmed, superior to pains and
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  pleasures, doing nothing without a purpose, nor yet falsely and with hypocrisy,
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  not feeling the need of another man's doing or not doing anything, and besides
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  accepting all that happens and all that is allotted, as coming from thence wherever
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  it is from, whence he himself came, and finally waiting for death with
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  a cheerful mind, as being nothing else than a dissolution of the elements of
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  which every living being is compounded. But if there is no harm to the
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  elements themselves, in each continually che changing into another, why should a man
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  have any apprehension about the change and dissolution of all the elements. For it
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  is according to nature, and nothing is evil which is according to nature. This incarnuntum