Book Three
1 We ought to consider not only that life is being spent day by day and that less of it is left, but also this: that if a man lives longer, it is far from certain that his mind will still be equal to understanding things, and to the kind of contemplation that aims at knowledge of things divine and human. For if he begins to wander in his wits, breathing and eating and having impressions and impulses and all the rest of it will not fail him; but the power to make use of himself, to measure out exactly every part of his duty, to analyze what appears to him, to judge whether the time has come to take his own leave of life, and all the other things that badly need a well-trained reason, these are snuffed out first. We must hurry, then, not only because we come closer to death every moment, but also because our understanding of things and our grasp of them give out before we do.
2 We should also notice things like this: that even what comes about as a by-product of nature’s works has something pleasing and attractive about it. When bread is baked, for instance, some parts of it split open; and these cracks, which are in a way contrary to the baker’s intention, are somehow becoming, and stir the appetite in a way of their own. Figs, too, burst open when they are ripest; and in olives ripe on the tree, the very nearness to rotting gives the fruit a beauty of its own. Ears of grain bending down, the lion’s wrinkled brow, the foam streaming from the mouth of a boar, and many other things, if one looked at them by themselves, are far from lovely; and yet, because they follow on the works of nature, they add to their beauty and give us pleasure. So that anyone who has a feeling for the things that come about in the whole, and a deeper understanding of them, will find hardly anything, even among those that follow by way of consequence, that does not fall pleasingly into place. Such a man will look at the real gaping jaws of wild beasts with no less pleasure than at the imitations painters and sculptors show us; he will be able to see a kind of ripeness and bloom in an old woman or an old man, and to look at the charm of the young with chaste eyes; and many such things will come to him, things that do not convince everyone, but only one who has become truly at home with nature and her works.
3 Hippocrates cured many diseases, then fell ill himself and died. The Chaldeans foretold the deaths of many, and then their own fate caught up with them. Alexander and Pompey and Gaius Caesar,1 after razing whole cities to the ground so many times and cutting down many tens of thousands of horse and foot in battle, they too departed this life at last. Heraclitus, after so much speculating about the burning of the universe, had his insides filled with water, and died smeared with cow dung. Lice killed Democritus, and another kind of lice killed Socrates.2 What does it all mean? You went aboard, you made the voyage, you have come into port: get off. If it is into another life, there is nothing empty of gods even there. If it is into a state without feeling, you will cease to be at the mercy of pains and pleasures, and to slave for a vessel so much worse than what serves in it: for the one is mind and spirit, the other earth and gore.
4 Do not waste what is left of your life in thinking about other people, unless you do it with some reference to the common good (for you are depriving yourself of other work). That is: thinking about what so-and-so is doing and why, what he is saying, what he has in mind, what he is plotting, and all such things, makes you stray from watching over your own ruling center.
We must, then, keep out of the chain of our thoughts whatever is random and pointless, and above all whatever is meddlesome and malicious; and we must train ourselves to have only those thoughts about which, if someone suddenly asked, “What are you thinking now?” you could answer at once and frankly, “This, and that”; so that from your answer it would be plain at once that everything in you is simple and kind and fit for a social being, one who cares nothing for pleasures or for any images of enjoyment at all, or for rivalry, or envy and suspicion, or anything else you would blush to admit you had in your mind.
For a man like this, one who no longer puts off taking his place among the best, is a kind of priest and servant of the gods, making use of what is enshrined within him, which keeps the man unstained by pleasures, unwounded by any pain, untouched by any insult, untouched by any wickedness; a wrestler in the greatest of contests, not to be thrown by any passion; dyed deep with justice; welcoming with his whole soul all that happens and is allotted to him; and only rarely, and not without some great necessity for the common good, thinking about what another person is saying or doing or thinking. For he makes only his own affairs the matter of his activity,3 and he keeps constantly in mind what has been spun for him out of the whole; and his own actions he makes fine, and what befalls him he is convinced is good. For the lot assigned to each is carried along with him and carries him along.
He remembers, too, that all rational beings are kin, and that to care for all men is in keeping with man’s nature, but that we should not hold to the opinion of all, only of those who live in agreement with nature. As for those who do not live so, he keeps always in mind what sort of people they are at home and away from home, by night and by day, and what sort of people they mix with. So he takes no account even of the praise of such people, who are not even pleased with themselves.
5 Do not act unwillingly, or selfishly, or without examining what you do, or with second thoughts pulling you back; do not dress up your thought in fine phrases; do not talk too much or take on too much. Further, let the god within you be the guardian of a living being who is a man, mature in years, a citizen, a Roman, and a ruler, who has taken up his post like one waiting for the signal to retreat from life, ready to go, needing no oath and no man as witness. And let there be cheerfulness in you, and no need of help from outside, and no need of the peace that others give. You must stand up straight, not be held up straight.
6 If you find in human life anything better than justice, truth, self-control, courage, and, in a word, than your mind’s being content with itself, where it makes you act according to right reason, and content with fate, in what is allotted to you without your choosing; if, I say, you see anything better than this, turn to it with your whole soul and enjoy the best you have found. But if nothing appears better than the very spirit that dwells in you, which has brought its own impulses under its control, and examines its impressions, and has drawn itself away, as Socrates used to say, from the persuasions of the senses, and has submitted itself to the gods, and cares for men; if you find everything else smaller and cheaper than this, give no room to anything else, for once you lean toward it and are drawn aside, you will no longer be able, without distraction, to honor above all that good which is properly yours. For it is not right that anything of a different kind should stand against the good of reason and of the citizen: the praise of the many, for instance, or office, or wealth, or the enjoyment of pleasures. All these, even if they seem to fit in for a little while, suddenly take control and carry us away. But you, I say, simply and freely choose the better, and hold on to it. “But the better is what is useful.” If it is useful to you as a rational being, keep to it; but if it is useful to you as an animal, say so, and keep your judgment without vanity; only make sure you conduct the inquiry soundly.
7 Never value as useful to yourself anything that will one day force you to break faith, to give up your self-respect, to hate anyone, to suspect, to curse, to play the hypocrite, to desire anything that needs walls and curtains. For the man who has chosen before all else his own mind and spirit and the rites of its virtue makes no tragic scene, does not groan, will need neither solitude nor a crowd; most important, he will live neither chasing nor fleeing; and whether he will have the use of his soul enclosed in his body for a longer stretch of time or a shorter, he does not care in the least. Even if he must depart this moment, he will go as readily as he would do any other thing that can be done with modesty and decency, guarding against this one thing all his life: that his thought should ever take a turn unfit for a thinking and civic being.
8 In the mind of a man who has been disciplined and thoroughly cleansed you would find nothing festering, nothing foul, no sore beneath a scar. Nor does fate catch his life unfinished, as one might say of a tragic actor who leaves the stage before the play is ended and played out. There is nothing servile in him, nothing affected, nothing clinging, nothing cut off, nothing to answer for, nothing hiding in a hole.
9 Revere your power of judgment. On it everything depends, so that there may never be in your ruling center a judgment out of keeping with nature and with the constitution of a rational being. And this promises freedom from hasty judgment, fellowship with men, and obedience to the gods.
10 Throw away everything else, then, and hold on to these few things only; and remember also that each of us lives only this present moment, this instant; all the rest has been lived already or is uncertain. Small, then, is the time each one lives; small the little corner of the earth he lives in; small too the longest fame after death, and even that passed on by a succession of little men who will very soon be dead, who do not know even themselves, much less someone who died long ago.
11 To the aids already mentioned let one more be added: always make a definition or a sketch of whatever presents itself to your mind, so as to see what sort of thing it is in its substance, stripped bare, whole and in all its parts, and to say to yourself its proper name, and the names of the things it was compounded from and into which it will be dissolved. For nothing so enlarges the mind as being able to examine methodically and truly each thing that comes before us in life, and always to look at things in such a way as to grasp at the same time what kind of universe this is, what use this thing serves in it, what worth it has for the whole, and what for man, a citizen of the highest city, of which all other cities are like households; what it is, what it is composed of, and how long it is meant to last, this thing that is now making an impression on me, and what virtue I need to meet it: gentleness, courage, trustworthiness, simplicity, self-sufficiency, and the rest. So in each case we must say: this has come from god; this from the drawing of lots, the weaving together of the threads, some such coincidence and chance; this from my fellow tribesman, kinsman, and companion, who does not know, however, what is in accord with his nature. But I do know; so I treat him kindly and justly, by the natural law of fellowship, while at the same time, in indifferent things, I aim to give him what he deserves.
12 If you do the work at hand following right reason, earnestly, vigorously, kindly, with no sideline, keeping your own spirit pure and standing straight, as if you had to give it back at any moment; if you hold to this, expecting nothing and avoiding nothing, but content with acting now according to nature and with heroic truthfulness in all you say and utter, you will live well. And there is no one who can prevent this.
13 As doctors always keep their instruments and scalpels at hand for emergencies, so keep your principles ready for understanding things divine and human, and for doing everything, even the smallest, as one who remembers the bond between the two. For you will not do anything human well without referring it at the same time to the divine, nor the other way round.
14 Wander no longer. You are not going to read your little notebooks, or the deeds of the ancient Romans and Greeks, or the extracts from their writings that you were putting aside for your old age. Hurry, then, to the end; throw away empty hopes, and come to your own rescue, if you care for yourself at all, while you still can.
15 They do not know how many meanings there are in stealing, sowing, buying, keeping quiet, seeing what must be done; which is not done with the eyes, but with another kind of sight.
16 Body, soul, mind. To the body belong sensations, to the soul impulses, to the mind principles. To take the stamp of impressions belongs to cattle as well; to be jerked like a puppet by impulses belongs to wild beasts as well, and to effeminate men, and to Phalaris and Nero;4 to have the mind as a guide to what appear to be duties belongs as well to those who do not believe in the gods, and to those who betray their country, and to those who do whatever they like once they have shut their doors. If, then, all the rest is shared with the people I have named, what remains proper to the good man is to love and welcome what happens to him and is spun for him by fate; not to defile the spirit enshrined within his breast, nor trouble it with a mob of impressions, but to keep it serene, following god in good order, saying nothing contrary to the truth, doing nothing contrary to justice. And if all men refuse to believe that he lives simply, modestly, and cheerfully, he is not angry with any of them, nor does he turn aside from the road that leads to the end of life, at which he must arrive pure, calm, ready to go, fitted to his lot without any forcing.
Notes
1. Hippocrates, the Greek physician of the fifth century BC; the Chaldeans, Babylonian astrologers; Alexander the Great; Pompey and Julius Caesar, generals of the late Roman Republic.
2. Heraclitus, the philosopher of fire and flux, was said to have died of dropsy after plastering himself with dung as a cure. Death by lice is usually told of Pherecydes, not Democritus; the “other lice” that killed Socrates are his accusers.
3. The text is damaged here; this is its likely sense.
4. Phalaris, tyrant of Acragas in Sicily in the sixth century BC, said to have roasted men alive in a bronze bull; Nero, emperor 54–68.