Book Five

1 At dawn, when you are reluctant to get up, have this thought ready: I am getting up to do the work of a human being. Why then am I irritable, if I am going out to do what I was born for, what I was brought into the world to do? Or was I made for this, to lie under the blankets and keep myself warm? “But this is more pleasant.” Were you born for pleasure, then? In short, were you born to be acted on, or to act? Do you not see the little plants, the little sparrows, the ants, the spiders, the bees doing their own work, each helping in its own way to put the universe in order? And then you do not want to do the work of a human being? You do not hurry to do what is in keeping with your nature? “But one needs rest too.” I agree. Nature has set limits to this, though, as she has set limits to eating and drinking; and yet you go beyond the limits, beyond what is enough; but in your actions, no longer: there you stay well within what you could do. For you do not love yourself; if you did, you would love your nature and what it wants. Those who love their own crafts wear themselves out over the work, unwashed and unfed. Do you honor your own nature less than the engraver honors engraving, or the dancer dancing, or the money-lover money, or the vain man his little bit of fame? These people, when they are caught up in it, would rather not eat or sleep than fail to advance the things they care about; and do social acts seem to you cheaper, and less worth the effort?

2 How easy it is to push away and wipe out every impression that is troublesome or foreign, and at once to be in perfect calm.

3 Judge yourself worthy of every word and deed that is in accord with nature, and do not let the criticism or talk of others that may follow distract you. If it was right to do or say it, do not think yourself unworthy of it. Those people have their own ruling center and follow their own impulse. Do not look around at those things, but go straight on, following your own nature and the common nature; and the road of both is one.

4 I walk on through what is according to nature until I fall and come to rest, breathing out my last into this air from which I breathe in every day, falling onto this earth from which my father gathered his seed, my mother her blood, my nurse her milk; from which for so many years I have been fed and watered day by day; which bears me as I tread on it and make so many uses of it.

5 They cannot admire you for quickness of wit. So be it. But there are many other things of which you cannot say, “I have no gift for it.” Show those qualities, then, which are wholly in your power: sincerity, dignity, endurance of hardship, indifference to pleasure, not complaining of your lot, needing little, kindness, freedom, plainness, no idle talk, greatness of mind. Do you not see how many qualities you could show already, for which there is no excuse of lacking talent or aptitude, and yet you still choose to stay below? Or are you compelled by lack of talent to grumble, to be stingy, to flatter, to blame your poor body, to fawn, to show off, to toss your soul about so much? No, by the gods; you could have been rid of all this long ago, and only, if at all, be charged with being rather slow and dull of understanding. And this too must be worked on, without ignoring your slowness or taking pleasure in it.

6 One man, when he has done someone a good turn, is quick to put the favor down to his account. Another is not quick to do that, but still, in his own mind, he thinks of the other as his debtor, and he knows what he has done. A third in a way does not even know what he has done, but is like a vine that has borne grapes and asks for nothing more once it has borne its own fruit. A horse that has run, a dog that has tracked, a bee that has made honey, and a man who has done good does not cry it out, but goes on to the next, as a vine goes on to bear grapes again in season. So one should be among those who do this, in a way, without noticing.—Yes, but one must notice this very thing; for it is the mark of a social being, he says, to perceive that he is acting socially, and, by Zeus, to want his fellow to perceive it too.—What you say is true, but you misunderstand what I am saying now; and so you will be one of those I mentioned first, for they too are led astray by a plausible argument. But if you are willing to understand what I am saying, do not be afraid that for this reason you will neglect any social act.

7 A prayer of the Athenians: “Rain, rain, dear Zeus, on the fields and the plains of the Athenians.” Either we should not pray at all, or we should pray like this, simply and freely.

8 Just as we say, “Asclepius¹ has prescribed for this man riding, or cold baths, or going barefoot,” so we may say, “The nature of the whole has prescribed for this man sickness, or disability, or loss, or something else of the kind.” For in the first case “prescribed” means something like this: he ordered this for this man as suited to his health; and in the second, what happens to each one has been ordered for him in a way as suited to his fate.

For we say that things “fall in” for us in the same way that craftsmen say that squared stones “fall in” in walls or pyramids, fitting one another in a certain arrangement.² For in all there is one harmony; and just as the universe, a body of this kind, is made up of all bodies, so fate, a cause of this kind, is made up of all causes.

Even quite ordinary people understand what I mean, for they say, “Fate brought him this.” So this was brought to this man, and this was prescribed for this man. Let us accept these things, then, as we accept what Asclepius prescribes. Many of those too are harsh, but we welcome them in the hope of health.

Let the carrying out and completion of what the common nature sees fit seem to you something of this kind, like your own health; and so welcome everything that happens, even if it seems rather hard, because it leads to that: to the health of the universe and the well-being and success of Zeus. For he would not have brought this to anyone if it did not bring good to the whole; nor does any nature, whatever it may be, bring anything that is not suited to what it governs.

So there are two reasons why you should be content with what happens to you. One, that it happened to you, was prescribed for you, and was related to you in some way, spun for you from above out of the most ancient causes. The other, that even what comes to each one individually is a cause of the well-being, the completion, and, by Zeus, the very continuance of the one who governs the whole. For the whole is maimed if you cut off anything whatever from its connection and continuity, of its causes as of its parts; and you do cut it off, as far as you can, when you are discontented, and in a way you destroy it.

9 Do not be disgusted, or give up, or lose heart, if you do not always manage to do everything from right principles; but when you have been knocked off, come back again, and be glad if most of what you do is worthy of a human being, and love what you are coming back to. Do not come back to philosophy as to a schoolmaster, but as people with sore eyes go back to the sponge and the egg, or another to a poultice, or to a warm compress. For then you will not be making a show of obeying reason, but will rest in it. And remember that philosophy wants only what your nature wants; but you wanted something else, not in accord with nature. For what is more agreeable than these things? Is it not just this that makes pleasure trip us up? But see whether greatness of soul, freedom, simplicity, kindness, holiness are not more agreeable. For what is more agreeable than wisdom itself, when you consider how sure and smooth in all things is the working of the power to understand and to know?

10 Things are wrapped in such a veil, so to speak, that quite a few philosophers, and not ordinary ones, have thought them altogether beyond our grasp; even the Stoics themselves think them hard to grasp. And every assent of ours is fallible; for where is the man who never changes his mind? Pass on, then, to the objects themselves: how short-lived they are, how cheap, how they could belong to a catamite, a whore, or a thief. Then go on to the characters of those you live with, of whom even the most pleasant is hardly bearable, not to say that a man can hardly bear even himself. In such darkness and dirt, in such a flood of substance and of time, of motion and of things moved, what there is that deserves to be prized or taken seriously at all, I cannot imagine. On the contrary, one must comfort oneself while waiting for natural dissolution, and not chafe at the delay, but rest in these thoughts alone: first, that nothing will happen to me that is not in accord with the nature of the whole; and second, that it is in my power to do nothing against my god and spirit. For no one will force me to go against it.

11 What am I using my soul for now? Ask yourself this at every turn, and examine what you now have in this part that they call the ruling center, and whose soul you have now: a child’s? a boy’s? a weak woman’s? a tyrant’s? a beast of burden’s? a wild beast’s?

12 You can get some idea of what the things the many think good are like from this. If someone has in mind certain things that are truly good, such as good sense, self-control, justice, courage, he could not, with these in mind, listen to the line about “his goods,”³ for it would not fit. But anyone who has in mind what seem good to the many will listen to it, and will readily accept what the comic poet said as an apt addition. So even the many sense the difference. Otherwise the line would not offend us and be rejected in the first case, while in the case of wealth and the luck that brings luxury or fame we accept it as fitting and witty. Go on, then, and ask whether we should value and think good those things which, when we have them in mind, would fit the line that their owner, with all his riches, “has nowhere left to shit.”

13 I am made up of the causal and the material, and neither of these will perish into nothing, just as neither came into being out of nothing. So every part of me will be assigned by change to some part of the universe, and that again will change into another part of the universe, and so on to infinity. By such a change I too came into being, and those who begot me, and so on back into another infinity. For nothing prevents us from saying this, even if the universe is governed by limited cycles.

14 Reason and the art of reasoning are powers sufficient to themselves and to the works that belong to them. They start from their own first principle and make their way to the end set before them; that is why actions of this kind are called “right actions,” as marking the rightness of the road.

15 None of those things should be called a man’s that do not belong to a man as a man. They are not demanded of a man, nor does human nature promise them, nor are they perfections of human nature. So neither does man’s end lie in them, nor what completes that end, the good. Besides, if any of them belonged to a man, it would not belong to him to despise them and rise up against them, nor would the man who shows that he does not need them be praised, nor would a man who denies himself any of them be good, if they were good. As it is, the more a man strips himself of these things or others like them, or bears being stripped of any of them, the better he is.

16 As your repeated impressions are, so will your mind be; for the soul is dyed by its impressions. Dye it, then, with a constant stream of impressions like these: for instance, that where it is possible to live, it is possible to live well; and it is possible to live at court; so it is possible to live well at court. And again: that each thing is drawn toward that for which it was made; and its end lies in what it is drawn toward; and where its end is, there too is what benefits it and what is good for it; so the good of a rational being is fellowship. For it was shown long ago that we were born for fellowship. Or was it not plain that the lower things exist for the sake of the higher, and the higher for one another? And living things are higher than lifeless ones, and rational beings higher than living ones.

17 To pursue the impossible is madness; and it is impossible that bad people should not do things of this kind.

18 Nothing happens to anyone that he is not by nature able to bear. The same things happen to another, and either because he does not know that they have happened, or because he wants to show his greatness of mind, he stays steady and unhurt. It is shameful, then, that ignorance and the wish to please should be stronger than wisdom.

19 Things themselves do not touch the soul in any way at all; they have no way into the soul, and cannot turn it or move it. The soul alone turns and moves itself, and whatever judgments it sees fit to make, it makes the things presented to it accord with them.

20 In one respect man is the thing nearest to us, in so far as we must do good to men and bear with them. But in so far as some of them stand in the way of my proper work, man becomes for me one of the indifferent things, no less than the sun or the wind or a wild beast. These may hinder some action of mine, but they are no hindrance to my impulse and disposition, because of the reservation and the power of turning things round. For the mind turns round and converts every obstacle to its action into a means to its aim; what hinders a work becomes a help to that work, and what stands in the road helps us along that road.

21 Honor what is most powerful in the universe; and that is what makes use of all things and directs all things. In the same way honor what is most powerful in you; and that is akin to the other. For in you too it is this that makes use of the rest, and your life is governed by it.

22 What does not harm the city does not harm the citizen either. Whenever you have the impression that you have been harmed, apply this rule: if the city is not harmed by this, neither am I. And if the city is harmed, you must not be angry, but show the one who harms the city what he has overlooked.

23 Think often of how swiftly the things that are and the things that come to be are carried past and swept away. For substance is like a river in perpetual flow, its activities in constant change, its causes in countless variations, and hardly anything stands still, not even what is close at hand. And there is the infinite gulf of past and future, in which all things vanish. How is a man not a fool, then, who in the midst of these things is puffed up, or pulled about, or complains, as if something had troubled him for any length of time?

24 Remember the whole of substance, of which you have a very small share; and the whole of time, of which a brief and momentary span has been marked out for you; and fate, and how small a part of it you are.

25 Someone does wrong to me? That is his concern. He has his own disposition, his own activity. I have now what the common nature wants me to have now, and I do what my own nature wants me to do now.

26 Let the ruling and governing part of your soul be unmoved by the smooth or rough motions of the flesh. Let it not mix with them, but let it mark off its own bounds and confine those affections to their parts. But when they spread up into the mind by that other sympathy, as happens in a body that is one, then you must not try to resist the sensation, for it is natural; but let the ruling center not add of itself the judgment that it is good or bad.

27 “Live with the gods.” And he lives with the gods who constantly shows them that his soul is content with what is allotted to it, and does all that the spirit wishes, the spirit Zeus has given to each of us as guardian and guide, a fragment of himself. And this is each one’s mind and reason.

28 Are you angry with the man whose armpits smell? Are you angry with the man whose breath stinks? What will it do for you? He has such a mouth, he has such armpits; such a smell is bound to come from such things.—But the man has reason, they say, and can understand, if he gives it thought, what offends.—Good for you! Then you have reason too: move his rational disposition with your rational disposition; show him, remind him. If he listens, you will cure him, and there is no need for anger. Neither a tragic actor nor a whore.

29 As you intend to live when you have left this life, so you can live here. And if they do not allow it, then leave life itself, but as one who suffers nothing bad. “There is smoke, and I leave.”⁴ Why do you think it a great matter? But as long as nothing like this drives me out, I remain free, and no one will prevent me from doing what I want; and what I want is what is in accord with the nature of a rational and social being.

30 The mind of the whole is social. At any rate, it has made the lower things for the sake of the higher, and has fitted the higher to one another. You see how it has subordinated, coordinated, given each its due, and brought the best things together into agreement with one another.

31 How have you behaved until now toward gods, parents, brothers, wife, children, teachers, tutors, friends, relatives, servants? Can you say of all of them until now, “He did no one any wrong in deed or word”?⁵ And remember what you have been through, and what you have had the strength to endure; and that the story of your life is now complete and your service finished; and how many beautiful things you have seen, how many pleasures and pains you have looked down on, how many honors you have passed by, to how many ungrateful people you have been kind.

32 Why do unskilled and ignorant souls confound the skilled and the knowing? Which soul, then, is skilled and knowing? The one that knows the beginning and the end, and the reason that runs through all substance and governs the whole through all eternity in fixed cycles.

33 In no time at all, ashes or a skeleton, and either a name or not even a name; and a name is a sound and an echo. And the things prized in life are empty, rotten, and petty; puppies snapping at each other, quarrelsome children, laughing and then crying the next minute. And faith and modesty and justice and truth have fled “to Olympus from the wide-wayed earth.”⁶ What, then, still keeps you here, if the objects of sense are changeable and never stand still, and the senses dim and easily misled, and the poor soul itself a vapor rising from blood, and a good name among such people empty? What then? You wait, at peace, for extinction or removal. And until the time for that comes, what is enough? What else but to revere and praise the gods, to do good to men, to bear with them and keep clear of them; and as for all that lies within the bounds of your poor flesh and breath, to remember that it is neither yours nor in your power.

34 You can always have a good flow of life, if you can keep to the right road, if you can think and act along the road. These two things are common to the soul of god, of man, and of every rational being: not to be hindered by another, and to find the good in a just disposition and just action, and to end your desire there.

35 If this is neither my vice nor an act of my vice, and the common good is not harmed, why am I troubled about it? And what is the harm to the common good?

36 Do not be carried away wholesale by the impression, but help people as far as you can and as they deserve, even if their loss is in indifferent things; do not, however, imagine it is a harm, for that is a bad habit. But as the old man, when he went away, asked for his foster child’s top, remembering that it was a top, so do here as well. So it is, then, when you are crying out on the rostra: man, have you forgotten what these things were?—Yes, but they mean a great deal to these people.—Is that a reason for you to be a fool too? “I was once a fortunate man, wherever I was overtaken.” But “fortunate” means having given yourself a good portion; and good portions are good turnings of the soul, good impulses, good actions.⁷

Notes

1. 1. The god of healing. The Greek verb for “prescribed” also means “arranged together,” and Marcus plays on both senses.

2. 2. The Greek symbainein means both “to happen” and “to fit together.” Later in the chapter “brought” (pherein) and “bring good” (sympherein) make a similar play.

3. 3. A line from an unknown comedy, of which Marcus quotes only the beginning and the end. The Greek agatha means both “good things” and “possessions.”

4. 4. Epictetus’s image (Discourses 1.25.18): if the room fills with too much smoke, one can simply go out.

5. 5. Homer, Odyssey 4.690, said by Penelope of Odysseus.

6. 6. Hesiod, Works and Days 197, where Shame and Righteous Indignation abandon mankind.

7. 7. The second half of this chapter is damaged and its sense uncertain; the story of the old man and the top is otherwise unknown.