Book Seven
1 What is vice? It is what you have often seen. And with everything that happens, have this ready: this is what you have often seen. Up and down you will find the same things, the things that fill the histories of ancient times, of the times between, of recent days, the things that fill our cities and our houses now. There is nothing new. All things are familiar, and all things are short-lived.
2 How else can your principles die, unless the impressions that answer to them are put out? And it is in your power to keep fanning them into flame. I can form the judgment I ought about this; and if I can, why am I disturbed? What is outside my mind is nothing at all to my mind. Learn this, and you stand straight. You can come back to life: look at things again as you used to see them; for in that lies coming back to life.
3 The empty pomp of a procession, plays on the stage, flocks, herds, fights with spears, a bone thrown to puppies, a crumb into a fishpond, the toiling and burden-bearing of ants, the scurrying of frightened mice, puppets jerked on strings. You must stand among these things good-humoredly and without disdain, but keep in mind that each man is worth just as much as the things he cares about.
4 In speech you must follow what is said, word by word, and in every impulse what is happening; in the one case see at once what end it refers to, in the other watch for what is meant.
5 Is my mind equal to this, or not? If it is, I use it for the work as a tool given me by the nature of the whole. If not, either I give way to someone who can do the work better, unless for some reason it is not right to do so, or I do it as best I can, taking on someone who can, with the help of my ruling center, do what is timely and useful for the common good. For whatever I do, by myself or with another, must aim only at this: what is useful and fitting for the community.
6 How many who were once much celebrated have already been given over to oblivion; and how many who celebrated them have long since disappeared!
7 Do not be ashamed to be helped. Your task is to do what falls to you, like a soldier in an assault on a wall. What then if you are lame and cannot climb onto the battlements by yourself, but can do it with another’s help?
8 Do not let the future disturb you. You will come to it, if you must, carrying the same reason that you now use for the present.
9 All things are woven together, and the bond is holy; hardly anything is alien to anything else. For they have been ranged side by side, and together they make up the same ordered universe. For there is one universe made of all things, one god pervading all things, one substance, one law, one reason common to all thinking beings, and one truth; if indeed there is also one perfection for all beings that are of the same kind and share in the same reason.
10 Everything material very soon vanishes into the substance of the whole; every cause is very soon taken up into the reason of the whole; and the memory of everything is very soon buried in time.
11 For a rational being the same act is according to nature and according to reason.
12 Straight, not straightened.
13 What the limbs of the body are in a single whole, rational beings are in separate bodies, made to work together as one. You will grasp this more clearly if you often say to yourself, “I am a member of the system of rational beings.” But if you change one letter and say you are only a part,1 you do not yet love men from the heart; doing good does not yet delight you for its own sake; you still do it merely as the proper thing, not yet as doing good to yourself.
14 Let whatever likes fall from outside on those parts of me that can be affected by its falling. They will complain, if they like, those parts that are affected. But I, unless I judge that what has happened is bad, am not yet harmed; and it is in my power not to judge so.
15 Whatever anyone does or says, I must be good; as if gold or emerald or purple were always saying, “Whatever anyone does or says, I must be emerald and keep my own color.”
16 The ruling center does not disturb itself; I mean, it does not frighten itself into desire. And if someone else can frighten it or grieve it, let him do so; it will not of itself, by its own judgment, turn itself in such directions. Let the poor body take care, if it can, that it suffers nothing, and let it say so if it suffers. But the little soul that fears, that grieves, that forms judgments about these things at all, will suffer nothing; for you will not bring it to such a judgment. The ruling center, as far as it is concerned, needs nothing, unless it creates a need for itself; and in the same way it is undisturbed and unhindered, unless it disturbs and hinders itself.
17 Happiness is a good spirit, or a good ruling center.2 What are you doing here, then, imagination? Go away, by the gods, as you came; I have no need of you. You have come in your old way. I am not angry with you; only go away.
18 Is someone afraid of change? What can come about without change? What is dearer or more proper to the nature of the whole? Can you have a hot bath unless the firewood changes? Can you be fed unless your food changes? Can any other useful thing be done without change? Do you not see, then, that your own change is just the same, and just as necessary to the nature of the whole?
19 All bodies pass through the substance of the whole as through a torrent, of one nature with the whole and working with it, as our limbs work with one another. How many a Chrysippus, how many a Socrates, how many an Epictetus has time already swallowed up! Let the same thought come to you with every man and every thing whatever.
20 One thing only troubles me: that I myself may do something that man’s constitution does not want, or in a way it does not want, or something it does not want now.
21 Soon you will have forgotten all things; soon all things will have forgotten you.
22 It is proper to man to love even those who stumble. This comes about if it occurs to you that they are your kin, and that they do wrong through ignorance and against their will, and that soon both of you will be dead; and above all, that he has not harmed you, for he has not made your ruling center worse than it was before.
23 The nature of the whole, using the substance of the whole like wax, has now molded a little horse; then it melts it down and uses its material for a little tree, then for a little man, then for something else; and each of these lasted for a very short time. It is nothing terrible for a box to be broken up, just as there was nothing good in its being put together.
24 An angry look on the face is utterly against nature; when it is often put on, the beauty of the face dies in it, or is at last extinguished, so that it cannot be kindled again at all. Try to understand from this very fact that it is contrary to reason. For if even the awareness of doing wrong is gone, what reason is left for living?
25 All that you see, the nature that governs the whole will change in a moment, and make other things out of their substance, and again other things out of the substance of those, so that the universe may always be young.
26 When someone does you wrong, consider at once what judgment of good or bad led him to do it. When you see that, you will pity him, and be neither surprised nor angry. For either you yourself still think the same thing good as he does, or something like it; then you must forgive him. Or else you no longer think such things good or bad; then you will more easily be kind to one who sees wrongly.
27 Do not think of what you do not have as if it were already yours, but count up the best of what you do have, and on their account remind yourself how you would long for them if you did not have them. At the same time be careful not to get into the habit, by delighting in them so, of prizing them so highly that you will be disturbed if you ever lose them.
28 Draw back into yourself. The rational ruling center is by nature content with itself when it does what is just, and in that very act has calm.
29 Wipe out the impression. Stop the puppet-jerking. Mark off the present moment. Recognize what is happening to you or to another. Divide and analyze the object into the causal and the material. Think of your last hour. Leave the wrong another has done where the wrong was done.
30 Keep your attention on what is being said. Let your mind enter into what is happening and what is causing it.
31 Make yourself bright with simplicity and modesty, and with indifference to what lies between virtue and vice. Love the human race. Follow god. The philosopher says, “All things by convention, and in reality only the elements”; but it is enough to remember that all things are by law. That is little enough already.3
32 On death: either a scattering, if there are atoms; or, if there is unity, either extinction or a change of place.
33 On pain: what is unbearable takes us away; what lasts is bearable. And the mind keeps its own calm by withdrawing, and the ruling center is none the worse. As for the parts that are injured by the pain, let them, if they can, declare their opinion of it.
34 On fame: look at their minds, what they are like, and what they avoid and what they pursue. And remember that as sand dunes, heaped one upon another, hide the earlier ones, so in life what went before is very quickly covered by what came after.
35 “Do you think that a mind which has greatness of spirit and contemplates all time and all substance can think human life of great account? ‘Impossible,’ he said. Then such a man will not think death anything terrible either? ‘Not in the least.’”4
36 “It is a king’s part to do well and be spoken ill of.”5
37 It is shameful that the face should obey the mind, taking on whatever expression and composure the mind commands, while the mind itself does not shape and compose itself.
38 We must not be angry with things; they do not care at all.6
39 May you give joy to the immortal gods and to us.
40 To reap life like a ripe ear of grain, and one is, and another is not.
41 If I and my two sons are neglected by the gods, this too has its reason.
42 For the good and the just are on my side.
43 No joining in their wailing, no throbbing.
44 “But I would give this man a just reply: You are wrong, my friend, if you think that a man who is good for anything at all should weigh the risk of life or death, and not consider only this, when he acts, whether he is doing what is just or unjust, the deeds of a good man or a bad one.”7
45 “For this is the truth of the matter, men of Athens: wherever a man takes his stand, thinking it best, or is placed by his commander, there, I believe, he must stay and face the danger, taking nothing into account, neither death nor anything else, before disgrace.”
46 “But, my good friend, consider whether nobility and goodness are something other than saving and being saved. For a man who is truly a man must let go of this business of living for however long a time, and not cling to life, but leave these things to god, and believe the women when they say that no one can escape his fate, and then consider how he may best live the time he has to live.”
47 Watch the courses of the stars as if you were running round with them, and think constantly of the changes of the elements into one another; for thoughts of these things wash away the filth of life on the ground.
48 Plato puts it well. Whoever talks about men should look at earthly things as if from somewhere high above: herds, armies, farms, weddings, divorces, births, deaths, the noise of the law courts, deserted places, all the various foreign peoples, festivals, mourning, markets, the whole medley, an order made out of opposites.
49 Look back at the past, at so many changes of empire. You can foresee the future too; for it will be of exactly the same kind, and cannot step out of the rhythm of what happens now. So to study human life for forty years is the same as to study it for ten thousand. What more will you see?
50 What was born of earth goes back to earth, / what sprang from seed of the upper air / returns to the vault of heaven.8 Or else this is a dissolving of the tangles among the atoms, and some such scattering of the elements that cannot be affected.
51 With food and drink and magic spells / turning the channel aside so as not to die. ⟨…⟩ / The wind that blows from the gods / we must endure, in toil without complaint.9
52 A better wrestler, but not more social, or more modest, or better ordered in what happens, or kinder toward the oversights of his neighbors.
53 Where a work can be done according to the reason that is common to gods and men, there is nothing to fear. For where it is possible to get benefit through an activity that goes well and proceeds according to our constitution, there no harm need be suspected.
54 Everywhere and always it is in your power to be content, with reverence, with what is happening now, to deal justly with the people who are with you now, and to work with skill on the impression you have now, so that nothing slips in that you have not clearly grasped.
55 Do not look around at the ruling centers of others, but look straight at where nature is leading you: the nature of the whole through what happens to you, and your own nature through what you must do. Each must do what follows from his constitution. The other things have been made for the sake of rational beings, as in everything else the lower are for the higher, and rational beings for one another. The leading thing in man’s constitution, then, is the social. Second, not giving way to the affections of the body; for it is proper to rational and thinking motion to mark off its own bounds and never be overcome by the motion of the senses or of impulse, both of which are animal; the thinking motion wants to be first and not be mastered by them. And rightly so, for it is made by nature to use all of them. Third, in a rational constitution, freedom from hasty judgment and from deception. Let the ruling center hold on to these and go straight ahead, and it has what is its own.
56 As one who has died and whose life has run its course until now, you must live the rest that is left to you, as a bonus, according to nature.
57 Love only what happens to you and is spun for you by fate. For what could suit you better?
58 In everything that happens, keep before your eyes those to whom the same things happened, and who then were vexed, thought it strange, complained. Where are they now? Nowhere. Well then, do you want to be like them? Will you not leave these alien turns to those who cause them and are turned by them, and give yourself wholly to the question of how to use these things? For you will use them well, and they will be material for you. Only pay attention, and want to be good in your own eyes in everything you do. And remember both: ⟨that the action is what matters⟩, and that what the action is about is indifferent.10
59 Dig within. Within is the spring of good, and it can always well up, if you always dig.
60 The body too must be steady, and not sprawl, either in motion or at rest. For as the mind gives the face an expression of composure and grace, so we should require something like this of the whole body. But all this must be kept without affectation.
61 The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing, in that it must stand ready and firm to meet what comes, even the unforeseen.
62 Consider constantly who these people are whose testimony you want, and what ruling centers they have. Then you will neither blame those who stumble unwillingly nor need their testimony, when you look into the springs of their judgment and impulse.
63 “Every soul,” he says, “is deprived of the truth against its will.”11 So too of justice, of self-control, of kindness, of everything of the kind. It is most necessary to remember this constantly; for you will be gentler toward everyone.
64 With every pain have this ready: that it is not shameful, and does not make the mind that steers you worse; for it does not damage it either as rational or as social. In most pains let Epicurus’s saying help you too: that pain is neither unbearable nor endless, if you remember its limits and do not add to it with your own opinion. And remember this as well: that many things which are the same as pain annoy us without our noticing it, such as drowsiness, being overheated, having no appetite. When you are put out by one of these, then, say to yourself that you are giving in to pain.
65 See that you never feel toward the inhuman as the inhuman feel toward men.
66 How do we know that Telauges was not of a better disposition than Socrates?12 It is not enough that Socrates died a more glorious death, and argued more skillfully with the sophists, and spent the night in the frost with more endurance, and, when ordered to arrest the man from Salamis, thought it nobler to refuse, and “swaggered in the streets”; about which last one might well wonder, if it was true. What we must look at is this: what kind of soul Socrates had, and whether he could be content with being just toward men and holy toward the gods, not vexed at random by wickedness, nor yet a slave to anyone’s ignorance, not taking what is allotted to him from the whole as something strange, nor enduring it as unbearable, nor letting his mind share the feelings of his poor flesh.
67 Nature did not so blend you into the compound as not to allow you to mark off your own bounds and keep what is yours under your own control. For it is very possible to be a godlike man and be recognized by no one. Remember this always; and this too, that living happily depends on very few things. And just because you have given up hope of becoming a logician or a natural scientist, do not despair of being free, modest, social, and obedient to god.
68 To live out your life without being forced, in the greatest cheerfulness, even if all men shout what they like against you, even if wild beasts tear apart the limbs of this lump of clay that has grown around you. For what in all this prevents the mind from keeping itself in calm, in true judgment of what is around it, and in ready use of what is put before it? So that judgment can say to what meets it, “This is what you are in substance, though in opinion you appear something else”; and use can say to what comes to hand, “You are what I was looking for.” For the present is always for me material for rational and civic virtue, and, in a word, for the art of man or of god. For everything that happens is made familiar to god or man, and is neither new nor hard to handle, but well known and easy to work with.
69 This is the perfection of character: to live each day as if it were the last, without agitation, without torpor, without pretense.
70 The gods, who are immortal, do not resent having to bear with so many bad people, and such bad people, through all that age of time; more than that, they care for them in every way. And you, who are on the point of stopping, are you weary of it, and that when you are one of the bad yourself?
71 It is absurd not to escape your own vice, which is possible, but to try to escape the vice of others, which is impossible.
72 Whatever the rational and civic power finds to be neither intelligent nor social, it rightly judges to be beneath it.
73 When you have done good and another has been done good, why do you look, like fools, for a third thing besides, to be thought to have done good, or to get a return?
74 No one grows tired of being benefited; and to benefit is to act according to nature. Do not grow tired, then, of being benefited, while you benefit others.
75 The nature of the whole set out to make the universe. Now either everything that happens follows as a consequence, or even the most important things, those toward which the ruling center of the universe directs its own impulse, are without reason. Remembering this will make you calmer about many things.
Notes
1. In Greek, “member” or “limb” is melos and “part” is meros: the two words differ by one letter.
2. The Greek eudaimonia is made of eu, “good,” and daimōn, “spirit.”
3. Democritus. He meant nomisti, “by convention”; Marcus takes the word as “by law.” The last words of the chapter are uncertain.
4. Plato, Republic 6.486a.
5. Said by Antisthenes (Diogenes Laertius 6.3).
6. Chapters 38 to 42 are lines of verse: 38 from Euripides’ Bellerophon, 40 from his Hypsipyle, 41 from his Antiope, 42 from Aristophanes, Acharnians 661. The source of 39 is unknown.
7. 44 is from Plato, Apology 28b; 45 from Apology 28d; 46 from Gorgias 512d–e. The passage cited in 48 is not found in Plato’s surviving works.
8. Euripides, from the lost Chrysippus.
9. The first two lines are from Euripides, Suppliant Women 1110–1111; the others from an unknown tragedy. Part of the text is lost.
10. The text is damaged. Leopold prints diaphoron, “what matters”; it is read here as adiaphoron, “indifferent,” as the sense requires, and a phrase is supplied.
11. Plato, often quoted by Epictetus (Discourses 1.28.4).
12. Telauges was said to be the son of Pythagoras. The episode of Leon of Salamis is told in Plato, Apology 32c; “swaggered in the streets” is from Aristophanes, Clouds 362.