Book Four

1 When the master within us is in accord with nature, it stands toward events in such a way that it always adapts easily to what is possible and given. It wants no fixed material; it moves toward its aims with a reservation, and whatever is brought in to oppose it, it turns into material for itself, as a fire does when it masters what falls on it. A little lamp would have been put out by these things; but a blazing fire very quickly makes its own whatever is heaped on it, and consumes it, and from that very material rises higher.

2 Do nothing at random, nor otherwise than according to a principle that perfects the art.

3 People look for retreats for themselves, in the country, by the sea, in the mountains; and you too are given to longing for such things above all. But this is altogether the mark of an ordinary man, when you can retreat into yourself at any hour you like. For nowhere does a man retreat to more quiet or more freedom from trouble than into his own soul, especially one who has things within him such that, when he looks into them, he is at once completely at ease; and by ease I mean nothing but good order. Give yourself this retreat constantly, then, and renew yourself. And let the principles be brief and basic which, as soon as you meet them, will be enough to wash away all distress and send you back without resentment to the things you return to.

For what is it you resent? The wickedness of men? Recall the conclusion that rational beings were born for one another, that bearing with them is part of justice, that they do wrong against their will, and how many people have already lived in enmity, suspicion, hatred, and fighting, and been laid out and burned to ash; and stop, at last. Or do you resent what is allotted to you from the whole? Remind yourself of the alternative: either providence or atoms; and of all the arguments proving that the universe is a kind of city. Or will the things of the body still lay hold of you? Consider that the mind, once it has drawn itself apart and learned its own power, does not mix with the breath moving gently or roughly; and remember all the rest that you have heard and agreed to about pain and pleasure.

Or will a little fame distract you? Look at how quickly everything is forgotten, at the void of endless time on either side of us, at the emptiness of applause, at how changeable and undiscerning are those who seem to speak well of us, and how narrow the place in which it is confined. For the whole earth is a point, and how small a corner of it is this place where we live! And here, how many are there who will praise you, and what kind of people are they?

So remember, from now on, to retreat into this little plot of land that is yourself; and above all do not let yourself be pulled about or be strained, but be free, and look at things as a man, as a human being, as a citizen, as a mortal creature. And among the things most ready to hand, to which you will turn, let there be these two. One, that things do not touch the soul, but stand outside it, unmoved, and our troubles come only from the judgment within. The other, that all these things you see will change in a moment and be no more; and think constantly of how many changes you have yourself already witnessed. The universe is change, life is judgment.

4 If the mind is common to us, so is reason, by which we are rational beings. If so, the reason that commands us what to do and not to do is common too. If so, the law is common too. If so, we are fellow citizens. If so, we share in some kind of commonwealth. If so, the universe is a kind of city. For in what other shared commonwealth could anyone say the whole human race shares? And it is from there, from this common city, that our very mind and reason and sense of law come; or where else from? For just as the earthy part of me has been portioned out from some earth, and the watery from another element, and the breath from some source, and the hot and fiery from a source of its own (for nothing comes from nothing, just as nothing goes back into nothing), so the mind too has come from somewhere.

5 Death is, like birth, a mystery of nature: a combining of the same elements, a dissolving into the same. Nothing at all to be ashamed of, for it is not out of keeping with a thinking being or contrary to the plan of its constitution.

6 These things come about of necessity from people of this kind; to wish it otherwise is to wish that the fig tree had no juice. In any case, remember this: within a very short time both you and he will be dead, and soon not even your names will be left.

7 Take away the judgment, and “I have been harmed” is taken away; take away “I have been harmed,” and the harm is taken away.

8 What does not make a man worse than he was does not make his life worse either, and does not harm him, outside or within.

9 The nature of what is beneficial has been compelled to do this.

10 That “everything that happens, happens rightly.” Watch closely and you will find it so. I do not mean only in the sense of sequence, but in the sense of justice, as if by someone who gives each thing its due. Keep watching, then, as you have begun, and whatever you do, do it with this, with being good, in the sense in which good is properly understood. Keep to this in every action.

11 Do not judge things as the man who insults you judges them, or as he wants you to judge them, but see them as they really are.

12 You must always have these two rules ready. One, to do only what the reason of the ruling and lawgiving power suggests for the good of men. The other, to change your mind if someone is there to correct you and lead you away from some opinion. But the change must always come from being convinced that something is just or for the common good, and the reasons you are moved by must be of this kind only, not that something looked pleasant or would bring you credit.

13 “Do you have reason?” “I do.” “Then why not use it? If it is doing its own work, what more do you want?”

14 You came into being as a part. You will vanish into what gave you birth; or rather, you will be taken up, by way of change, into its seed principle.

15 Many grains of incense on the same altar. One falls first, another later; it makes no difference.

16 Within ten days you will seem a god to those very people to whom you now seem a beast and an ape, if you go back to your principles and to the worship of reason.

17 Do not act as if you were going to live ten thousand years. Your fate hangs over you. While you live, while you can, become good.

18 How much leisure a man gains who does not look at what his neighbor said or did or thought, but only at what he himself is doing, so that this very thing may be just and holy, or, as befits a good man,¹ not to look around at black characters, but to run straight along the line, not swerving.

19 The man who is excited about fame after death does not imagine that each of those who remember him will very soon die too, and then the one who succeeds him, until the whole memory goes out, passing along through people who flare up and are snuffed out. But suppose that those who will remember you are immortal, and the memory immortal: what is that to you? And I do not say it is nothing to the dead, but what is praise to the living, except perhaps for some practical purpose? For you are letting go of nature’s gift now at the wrong time, clinging to some other argument.²

20 Everything that is beautiful in any way is beautiful in itself, and ends in itself, with praise no part of it. What is praised becomes neither worse nor better for it. I say this also of things that are called beautiful in the common way, such as material objects and works of art. (What need has the truly beautiful of anything? No more than law, no more than truth, no more than kindness or modesty.) Which of these is beautiful because it is praised, or spoiled because it is blamed? Does an emerald become worse than it was if it is not praised? Or gold, ivory, purple, a lyre, a little knife, a flower, a shrub?

21 If souls live on, how does the air make room for them from all eternity? How does the earth make room for the bodies of those who have been buried for so many ages? For just as here, after these bodies have lasted for some time, their change and dissolution make room for other dead, so the souls that have moved into the air remain together for a time, and then they change and are diffused and kindled, being taken up into the seed principle of the whole, and in this way they make room for the souls that come to live there after them. This is how one might answer, supposing that souls live on. But we should consider not only the multitude of bodies buried in this way, but also that of the animals eaten every day by us and by the other animals. For what a number are consumed and in a sense buried in the bodies of those who feed on them! And yet there is room for them, because they are turned into blood, because they are changed into air or fire. How does one inquire into the truth of this? By dividing into the material and the causal.

22 Do not wander off, but in every impulse give what is just, and in every impression keep to what is clearly grasped.

23 Everything suits me that suits you, O universe. Nothing is too early for me or too late that comes in due time for you. Everything is fruit to me that your seasons bring, O nature. All things come from you, all things are in you, all things go back to you. The poet says, “Dear city of Cecrops”;³ will you not say, “Dear city of Zeus”?

24 “Do little,” he says, “if you want to be at peace.”⁴ Is it not better to do what is necessary, and whatever the reason of a creature born for the city requires, and as it requires? For this brings not only the peace that comes from doing things well, but also the peace that comes from doing few things. Most of what we say and do is unnecessary; take it away, and you will have more leisure and less disturbance. So at each step you must remind yourself: “Is this one of the unnecessary things?” And we must cut away not only unnecessary actions but unnecessary impressions as well; then no superfluous actions will follow in their train.

25 Try how the life of the good man goes for you, the man who is pleased with what is allotted to him from the whole and is content with just action of his own and a kindly disposition.

26 You have seen those things; now look at these. Do not disturb yourself; make yourself simple. Someone does wrong? He does wrong to himself. Something has happened to you? Good. Everything that happens was fated for you from the whole and spun for you from the beginning. In short, life is short. Gain from the present, with sound reasoning and justice. Be sober, at ease.

27 Either an ordered cosmos or a jumble mixed together. But surely a cosmos.⁵ Or can there be some order in you, and disorder in the whole? And this when all things are so distinct and yet so spread through one another and in sympathy?

28 A black character, a womanish character, a stubborn character, beastly, bovine, childish, stupid, false, buffoonish, huckstering, tyrannical.

29 If he is a stranger in the universe who does not know what is in it, no less a stranger is he who does not know what happens in it. An exile, the man who flees the reason of the city; blind, the man who shuts the eye of the mind; a beggar, the man who needs another and does not have from himself all that is useful for life; an abscess on the universe, the man who breaks away and separates himself from the reason of our common nature by being discontented with what happens (for it is nature that brings this, as it brought you too); a splinter of the city, the man who splits his own soul off from the soul of rational beings, which is one.

30 One man practices philosophy without a tunic, another without books. Here is another, half naked: “I have no bread,” he says, “and I abide by reason.”—And I have no food from my studies, and I abide.

31 Love the little craft you have learned, and rest in it; and go through the rest of your life as one who has entrusted all that is his to the gods with his whole soul, and who makes himself neither tyrant nor slave of any man.

32 Think, for example, of the times of Vespasian,⁶ and you will see all the same things: people marrying, raising children, falling sick, dying, waging war, feasting, trading, farming, flattering, putting on airs, suspecting, plotting, praying for someone to die, grumbling at their lot, falling in love, hoarding, longing for consulships, for kingdoms. Well, that life of theirs is nowhere now. Move on again to the times of Trajan: again all the same things; that life too is dead. In the same way look over the other records of the ages and of whole nations, and see how many strained every nerve and soon fell and were dissolved into the elements. Above all, call to mind those you yourself have known who were pulled about by empty things, neglecting to do what was in keeping with their own constitution, to hold on to it tightly and be content with it. And here you must remember that the attention given to each action has its own value and proportion; for then you will not lose heart, if you do not spend more time than is fitting on lesser things.

33 The words that were once in common use are now obsolete; so too the names of those who were once much celebrated are now, in a way, obsolete: Camillus, Caeso, Volesus, Dentatus,⁷ and a little later Scipio and Cato, then Augustus too, then Hadrian and Antoninus. All things fade quickly and turn into legend, and soon complete oblivion buries them. And I say this of those who shone in some astonishing way; as for the rest, as soon as they have breathed their last, they are “unseen, unheard of.”⁸ And what, after all, is eternal remembrance? A thing wholly empty. What, then, is there that deserves our effort? This one thing: a just mind, social actions, speech that never lies, and a disposition that welcomes all that happens as necessary, as familiar, as flowing from a source and spring of the same kind.

34 Give yourself up willingly to Clotho,⁹ letting her spin you into whatever things she pleases.

35 Everything lasts a day, both what remembers and what is remembered.

36 Watch constantly how all things come about by change, and get used to thinking that the nature of the whole loves nothing so much as changing the things that are and making new things like them. For everything that exists is in a way the seed of what will come from it; but you think of seeds only as what is cast into the earth or the womb, and that is the thought of a very ordinary man.

37 You will soon be dead, and you are still not simple, not untroubled, not free of the suspicion that you can be harmed from outside, not kindly toward everyone, nor do you yet place wisdom in acting justly alone.

38 Look into their ruling centers, the wise ones too, and see what they avoid and what they pursue.

39 What is bad for you does not exist in another’s ruling center, or in any turn or alteration of your surroundings. Where, then? Where the part of you is that forms judgments about bad things. Let it not form the judgment, and all is well. Even if what is closest to it, your poor body, is cut, burned, festering, rotting, still let the part that judges these things keep quiet; that is, let it judge that nothing is bad or good which can happen equally to a bad man and to a good one. For what happens equally to the man who lives against nature and to the man who lives according to nature is neither according to nature nor against nature.

40 Think constantly of the universe as one living being, with one substance and one soul; and how everything goes back to one perception, the perception of this being; and how it does everything by one impulse; and how all things are joint causes of all that happens; and what the spinning and weaving of the thread are like.

41 You are a little soul carrying a corpse, as Epictetus used to say.

42 It is nothing bad for things to be in the process of change, and nothing good for them to come into being as a result of change.

43 Time is a kind of river of things that come to be, a violent current. As soon as each thing has been seen, it has been swept past, and another is being carried by, and that too will be swept away.

44 Everything that happens is as usual and familiar as the rose in spring and fruit in summer. So too illness, death, slander, plotting, and everything that delights or grieves fools.

45 What follows is always akin to what went before. It is not like an enumeration of separate items that merely has its compelled order, but a rational connection; and as the things that exist are arranged in harmony, so the things that come to be show not mere succession but a wonderful kinship.

46 Always remember Heraclitus’s saying: “The death of earth is to become water, and the death of water to become air, and of air fire, and the other way round.”¹⁰ Remember too the man “who forgets where the road leads”; and that “they are at odds with that with which they are most constantly in touch,” the reason that governs the whole; and that “the things they meet every day seem strange to them”; and that “we must not act and speak like men asleep,” for in sleep too we think we act and speak; and that we must not act “like children of our parents,” that is, simply as we have been taught.

47 If one of the gods told you that you would die tomorrow, or in any case the day after, you would not make much of whether it was the day after rather than tomorrow, unless you were utterly mean-spirited; for how much is the difference? In the same way, do not think it any great thing whether it is after many years or tomorrow.

48 Think constantly how many doctors have died, after knitting their brows so often over the sick; how many astrologers, after foretelling the deaths of others as if it were some great thing; how many philosophers, after holding forth endlessly about death or immortality; how many heroes, after killing many; how many tyrants, after wielding power over men’s lives with terrible insolence, as if they were immortal; how many whole cities have, so to speak, died: Helice, Pompeii, Herculaneum,¹¹ and countless others. Go over, too, all those you have known, one after another: one buried another and then was laid out himself, and another buried another, and all in a short time. In short, always look at human things as short-lived and cheap: yesterday a little slime, tomorrow a mummy or ashes. Pass through this tiny span of time, then, in accordance with nature, and come to your rest content, as an olive falls when it is ripe, blessing the earth that bore it and thanking the tree that made it grow.

49 Be like the headland on which the waves break constantly; it stands firm, and around it the swelling waters are lulled to sleep. “I am unlucky, because this has happened to me.” Not at all: “I am lucky, because, though this has happened to me, I go on without distress, neither crushed by the present nor afraid of what is coming.” For such a thing could have happened to anyone, but not everyone would have gone on without distress in it. Why then is that a misfortune rather than this good fortune? Do you call anything at all a misfortune for a man that is not a failure of man’s nature? And do you think something is a failure of man’s nature that is not contrary to the will of his nature? What then? You have learned what that will is. Does what has happened prevent you from being just, magnanimous, self-controlled, sensible, slow to judge, truthful, modest, free, and all the rest, through whose presence man’s nature has what is its own? Remember, then, whenever something leads you to distress, to use this principle: not “This is a misfortune,” but “To bear it nobly is good fortune.”

50 An ordinary but effective help toward despising death is to recall those who clung stubbornly to life. What more did they gain than those who died young? Surely they are all lying somewhere now, Cadicianus, Fabius, Julianus, Lepidus,¹² or anyone like them, who carried many to their graves and then were carried out themselves. All in all, the interval is small, and this too is drained out through how many troubles, in what company, in what a poor body! So do not make anything of it. Look at the yawning gulf of time behind you, and the other infinity before. In this, what difference is there between an infant three days old and a man who lived three generations?

51 Always run by the short road; and the short road is the one according to nature: to say and do everything in the soundest way. For such a purpose frees you from toil and dithering, from all scheming and showing off.

Notes

1. 1. The text is damaged. Some editors read “as Agathon says,” after the Athenian tragic poet of the fifth century BC.

2. 2. The sense of this sentence is uncertain, and many think the text corrupt; it is translated here as it stands.

3. 3. Athens, named for its legendary first king Cecrops; probably a line of Aristophanes.

4. 4. Democritus, fragment 3.

5. 5. The Greek kosmos means both “order” and “universe”; the chapter plays on both.

6. 6. Vespasian (reigned 69–79) and Trajan (98–117), emperors before Marcus’s time.

7. 7. Camillus, Caeso, Volesus, and Dentatus were heroes of early Rome; Scipio and Cato, famous generals and statesmen of the Republic; Augustus, the first emperor; Hadrian and Antoninus Pius, Marcus’s immediate predecessors.

8. 8. Homer, Odyssey 1.242.

9. 9. One of the three Fates, the one who spins the thread of life.

10. 10. The sayings in this chapter come from Heraclitus (fragments 76 and 71–74).

11. 11. Helice, a city in Achaea swallowed by the sea after an earthquake in 373 BC; Pompeii and Herculaneum, buried by Vesuvius in AD 79.

12. 12. Apparently people who lived to a great age; none can be identified with certainty. The “man of three generations” recalls Homer’s Nestor, who outlived three generations.