Book Eight

1 This too helps against vanity: that you can no longer have lived your whole life, or at least your life from youth on, as a philosopher; it has become plain to many others, and to yourself, that you are far from philosophy. You are in confusion, then, so that it is no longer easy for you to win the name of philosopher; and your station in life works against it as well. If, then, you have truly seen where the matter lies, let go of what you will seem to be, and be content if you can live the rest of your life, however long it is, as your nature wants. Consider, then, what it wants, and let nothing else distract you. For you have learned by experience how much you have wandered about without finding the good life anywhere: not in syllogisms, not in wealth, not in fame, not in enjoyment, nowhere. Where is it, then? In doing what man’s nature requires. How, then, will you do it? By having principles from which your impulses and actions spring. What principles? Principles about good and bad: that nothing is good for a man that does not make him just, self-controlled, brave, and free, and nothing bad that does not make him the opposite of these.

2 With every action ask yourself: How does this sit with me? Shall I regret it? A little while and I am dead, and all is gone. What more do I want, if what I am doing now is the work of a thinking and social being, under the same law as god?

3 Alexander and Gaius and Pompey, what are they beside Diogenes and Heraclitus and Socrates? These men saw into things, and their causes, and their matter, and their ruling centers were at one with what they saw. But as for the others, how many things they had to look after, and to how many they were slaves!

4 That they will go on doing the same things just the same, even if you burst.

5 First, do not be disturbed; for all things are according to the nature of the whole, and in a little while you will be no one, nowhere, like Hadrian and Augustus. Then look steadily at the matter and see it as it is, and remembering that you must be a good man, and what man’s nature demands, do it without turning aside, and say what seems to you most just; only say it kindly, modestly, and without pretense.

6 The nature of the whole has this work: to move what is here to there, to change it, to take it up from here and carry it there. All things are turnings, so that there is no need to fear anything new; all things are familiar; and the shares too are equal.

7 Every nature is content with itself when it goes on its way well; and a rational nature goes on its way well when it gives assent to no impression that is false or unclear, directs its impulses only to social acts, has desires and aversions only for things in our power, and welcomes everything allotted by the common nature. For it is a part of that nature, as the nature of a leaf is a part of the nature of the plant; except that the nature of the leaf is part of a nature that is without perception and without reason and can be hindered, while man’s nature is part of a nature that cannot be hindered, a thinking and just nature, since it gives to each thing an equal and fitting share of time, substance, cause, activity, and circumstance. But look, not whether you find one thing equal to one thing in every case, but whether all of this one taken together equals all of that one taken as a whole.

8 You cannot read. But you can check your insolence; you can rise above pleasures and pains; you can be above your little fame; you can keep from being angry with the stupid and ungrateful, and even care for them.

9 Let no one hear you any longer finding fault with life at court; and do not hear yourself.

10 Regret is a kind of reproach to oneself for having let something useful pass; and what is useful must be something good, and must be the concern of the truly good man. But no truly good man would regret having let a pleasure pass. So pleasure is neither useful nor good.

11 What is this thing in itself, in its own constitution? What is its substance and matter, what its cause? What does it do in the universe? How long does it last?

12 When you are reluctant to wake up, remind yourself that it is in keeping with your constitution and with human nature to perform social acts, whereas sleeping is shared with the animals that have no reason. And what is according to each one’s nature is more proper to it, more natural, and so more pleasing as well.

13 Constantly, and with every impression if possible, apply natural science, the study of the passions, and logic.

14 Whoever you meet, say to yourself at once: What principles does this man hold about good and bad? For if he holds such and such principles about pleasure and pain and what causes them, about fame and obscurity, death and life, it will not seem strange or surprising to me if he does such and such things; and I shall remember that he is compelled to act as he does.

15 Remember that just as it is shameful to be surprised that a fig tree bears figs, so it is to be surprised that the universe bears the things it bears. And it is shameful for a doctor to be surprised that a man has a fever, or for a helmsman that the wind is against him.

16 Remember that changing your mind and following someone who sets you right is just as much an act of freedom. For it is your own activity, carried out according to your own impulse and judgment, and indeed according to your own mind.

17 If it is in your power, why do you do it? If it is in another’s, whom do you blame? The atoms, or the gods? Both are madness. Blame no one. If you can, set him right; if you cannot, set the thing itself right; and if you cannot do that either, what is the use of blaming? For nothing should be done without a purpose.

18 What dies does not fall out of the universe. If it stays here, it also changes here and is dissolved into its own elements, which are the elements of the universe and yours. And these change too, and do not grumble.

19 Everything has come into being for some purpose, a horse, a vine. Why are you surprised? Even the Sun will say, “I came into being for some work,” and so will the rest of the gods. For what, then, did you? For pleasure? See whether the thought will hold.

20 Nature aims at the ending of each thing no less than at its beginning and its course, like a man throwing up a ball. What good is it to the ball to go up, or bad to come down, or even to have fallen? What good is it to the bubble to hold together, or bad to burst? The same with a lamp.

21 Turn it inside out and see what it is like; what it becomes when old, when sick, when debauched. Short-lived are both the one who praises and the one praised, the one who remembers and the one remembered. And all this in a corner of this region; and not even here do all agree, nor does anyone agree with himself; and the whole earth is a point.

22 Attend to what is before you, whether it is a thing or a principle or an action or a meaning. You deserve what you are suffering: you would rather become good tomorrow than be good today.

23 Am I doing something? I do it with reference to the good of men. Does something happen to me? I accept it with reference to the gods and to the source of all things, from which all that happens is woven together.

24 What bathing seems to you: oil, sweat, dirt, greasy water, all of it disgusting. Such is every part of life and every object in it.

25 Lucilla buried Verus, then Lucilla was buried; Secunda buried Maximus, then Secunda; Epitynchanus buried Diotimus, then Epitynchanus; Antoninus buried Faustina, then Antoninus.¹ So it goes with all. Celer buried Hadrian, then Celer. And those sharp-witted men, the prophets or the vain ones, where are they? Sharp-witted men such as Charax, and Demetrius the Platonist, and Eudaemon, and anyone like them. All short-lived, all long dead; some not remembered even for a short while, others turned into legends, others faded even from legend. Remember these things, then: that your little compound must either be scattered, or your little breath be put out, or move and be set somewhere else.

26 A man’s joy is to do what is proper to a man. And what is proper to a man is goodwill toward his own kind, disdain for the motions of the senses, discernment among plausible impressions, and contemplation of the nature of the whole and of what happens according to it.

27 Three relations: one to the vessel that surrounds you; one to the divine cause from which all things happen to all; one to those who live with you.

28 Pain is either bad for the body (then let the body say so), or for the soul. But the soul can keep its own clear sky and calm, and not judge that it is bad. For every judgment and impulse and desire and aversion is within, and nothing bad climbs up there.

29 Wipe out your impressions, saying constantly to yourself: Now it is in my power that there should be no wickedness in this soul, no desire, no disturbance of any kind; but seeing all things as they are, I use each according to its worth. Remember this power, which you have by nature.

30 Speak, in the senate or to anyone at all, with decorum, without affectation. Use sound speech.

31 The court of Augustus: wife, daughter, grandsons, stepsons, sister, Agrippa, kinsmen, intimates, friends, Areius, Maecenas,² doctors, priests: death of a whole court. Then go on to the others ⟨…⟩, not the death of one man, as of the Pompeys. And that inscription on the tombs, “The last of his line”: reflect how anxious those before him were to leave a successor, and then someone had to be the last; here again the death of a whole family.

32 You must build up your life action by action, and be content if each one achieves its end as far as it can; and no one can prevent it from achieving its end.—But something outside will stand in the way.—Nothing will stand in the way of acting justly, with self-control, and with good sense. Some other activity, perhaps, will be hindered; but by accepting the hindrance itself and by changing over sensibly to what is given, another action at once takes its place, one that will fit into the building of which we are speaking.

33 Receive without pride, let go without struggle.

34 If you have ever seen a hand cut off, or a foot, or a head severed, lying somewhere apart from the rest of the body: such does a man make himself, as far as he can, when he refuses to accept what happens and cuts himself off, or does something unsocial. You have thrown yourself out somewhere from the unity of nature; you were born a part, and now you have cut yourself off. But here is the beautiful thing: it is in your power to unite yourself again. God has allowed this to no other part, once it has been separated and cut off, to come together again. But consider the kindness with which he has honored man: he has put it in his power not to be broken off from the whole in the first place, and when he has been broken off, to come back and grow together again and take up once more his place as a part.

35 Just as the nature of rational beings has given each rational being nearly all its other powers, so we have received this power from it too:³ that as that nature turns round whatever stands in its way and opposes it, and puts it in its place in fate, and makes it a part of itself, so the rational being can make every hindrance material for itself, and use it for whatever it was aiming at.

36 Do not let the picture of your whole life overwhelm you. Do not think over all the troubles, of what kind and how many, that are likely to come, but in each present one ask yourself: What is there in this that is unbearable and beyond endurance? You will be ashamed to say. Then remind yourself that it is neither the future nor the past that weighs on you, but always the present; and the present shrinks, if you mark it off by itself and confront your mind, if it cannot hold out against this one thing on its own.

37 Do Pantheia or Pergamus still sit by the tomb of Verus?⁴ Or Chabrias or Diotimus by Hadrian’s? Absurd. And if they did sit there, would the dead know it? And if they knew, would they be pleased? And if they were pleased, would those mourners be immortal? Were they not fated, they too, first to become old women and old men, and then to die? And when the mourners were dead, what would their masters have done then? All this is stink and gore in a bag.

38 If you can see sharply, see, he says, and judge most wisely.

39 In the constitution of a rational being I see no virtue that rebels against justice; but against pleasure I see one: self-control.

40 If you take away your judgment about what seems to pain you, you yourself stand in perfect safety.—Who is “yourself”?—Reason.—But I am not reason.—So be it. Then let reason not pain itself; and if some other part of you is in a bad way, let it form its own judgment about itself.

41 Hindrance of sensation is bad for an animal nature; hindrance of impulse is likewise bad for an animal nature. And there is something else that likewise hinders and is bad for the constitution of a plant. So hindrance of the mind is bad for a thinking nature. Apply all this to yourself. Do pain or pleasure lay hold of you? Let sensation see to it. Has an obstacle come in the way of your impulse? If your impulse was without reservation, that is already bad for you as a rational being; but if you take the common view, you are not yet harmed or hindered. As for what is proper to the mind, no one else can hinder it; for neither fire, nor steel, nor a tyrant, nor slander, nor anything else touches it, when it has become “a sphere, round, rejoicing in its solitude.”⁵

42 I do not deserve to pain myself; for I have never willingly pained another.

43 Different things delight different people. What delights me is to keep my ruling center sound, not turning away from any man or from anything that happens to men, but looking at everything with kindly eyes, accepting it, and using each thing according to its worth.

44 See that you give yourself this present time. Those who would rather pursue fame after death do not reckon that the people then will be just like these who annoy them now; and they too will die. What is it to you, anyway, if those people echo with such voices, or hold such an opinion of you?

45 Take me up and throw me where you like. There too I shall have my spirit kindly, that is, content, if it is and acts in keeping with its own constitution. Is this worth it, that my soul should be in a bad way because of it, and be worse than itself, cringing, craving, shrinking, cowering? What will you find that is worth that?

46 Nothing can happen to any man that is not a human accident, nor to an ox that is not natural to an ox, nor to a vine that is not natural to a vine, nor to a stone that is not proper to a stone. If, then, what happens to each thing is what is usual and natural to it, why should you resent it? The common nature has brought you nothing you cannot bear.

47 If you are pained by something outside you, it is not that thing which troubles you but your own judgment of it; and it is in your power to wipe that judgment out at once. And if something in your own disposition pains you, who prevents you from correcting your principle? And in the same way, if you are pained that you are not doing something that seems sound to you, why not do it rather than be pained?—But something stronger stands in the way.—Then do not be pained; the cause of its not being done does not lie with you.—But it is not worth living if this is not done.—Then leave life, kindly, as one who dies while doing it, and at peace with the things that stand in the way.

48 Remember that the ruling center becomes invincible when it withdraws into itself and is content with itself, doing nothing it does not want to do, even if its stand is unreasonable. What then when it judges something with reason and after careful thought? That is why the mind free from passions is a citadel. Man has nothing stronger to which he can flee and be safe from capture ever after. The man who has not seen this is ignorant; the man who has seen it and does not flee to it is unfortunate.

49 Say nothing more to yourself than what the first impressions report. It has been reported that so-and-so speaks ill of you. That has been reported; but that you have been harmed has not been reported. I see that my child is sick. I see it; but that he is in danger, I do not see. So always stay with first impressions, and add nothing of your own from within, and nothing happens to you. Or rather, add something, as one who knows each of the things that happen in the universe.

50 A bitter cucumber? Throw it away. Brambles in the path? Step aside. That is enough. Do not add, “Why did these things come into the world at all?” For you will be laughed at by a student of nature, as you would be laughed at by a carpenter or a shoemaker if you found fault because you saw shavings and scraps from their work in the shop. And yet they have somewhere to throw them; but the nature of the whole has nothing outside itself. The wonder of her craft is that, having set her own bounds, she changes into herself everything within her that seems to be decaying and growing old and useless, and from these very things makes new ones again; so that she needs no substance from outside, and wants no place to throw out what is rotten. She is content with her own space, her own material, and her own craft.

51 Do not be sloppy in your actions, or muddled in your conversation, or adrift in your impressions; do not let your soul be wholly dragged down or sent leaping out of itself; and do not be so busy that you have no time for life. They kill you, they cut you up, they hound you with curses. What has that to do with your mind remaining pure, sane, self-controlled, just? It is as if someone stood by a clear, sweet spring and cursed it; it would not stop welling up with drinkable water; and if he threw mud in it, or dung, it would very quickly scatter them and wash them away and not be stained at all. How then will you have an ever-flowing spring and not a well? By guarding yourself every hour for freedom, with kindness, simplicity, and modesty.

52 He who does not know what the universe is does not know where he is. He who does not know what he was born for does not know who he is, or what the universe is. And he who has missed either of these could not even say what he himself was born for. What, then, do you think of the man who avoids or pursues the praise of those who applaud, who do not know where they are or who they are?

53 Do you want to be praised by a man who curses himself three times an hour? Do you want to please a man who does not please himself? Does a man please himself who regrets nearly everything he does?

54 Do not merely breathe in harmony with the air that surrounds you, but now think in harmony with the mind that surrounds all things. For the power of mind is poured out everywhere and pervades all things for anyone able to draw it in, no less than the air for anyone able to breathe.

55 Vice in general does no harm to the universe; and vice in the individual does no harm to another, but is harmful only to the one who has been given the power to be rid of it as soon as he chooses.

56 To my will, my neighbor’s will is as indifferent as his poor breath and his poor flesh. For however much we were made for one another, each of our ruling centers has its own authority. Otherwise my neighbor’s vice would be bad for me, which god did not see fit to allow, so that my misfortune should not depend on another.

57 The sun seems to be poured down, and it is indeed poured out everywhere, but not poured away. For this pouring is a stretching out; its beams are called aktines from their being stretched out, ekteinesthai.⁶ You can see what a beam is if you watch the sunlight entering a darkened room through a narrow opening. It stretches in a straight line, and as it were props itself against any solid object it meets that cuts off the air beyond; there it stops, and does not slip or fall. Such should be the pouring and spreading of the mind: never a pouring away, but a stretching out; and it should not strike violently or furiously against the obstacles it meets, nor fall down, but stand and light up what receives it. For what does not let the light through will deprive itself of its brightness.

58 He who fears death fears either the loss of all sensation or a different kind of sensation. But if you have no sensation any more, you will feel nothing bad; and if you acquire a different kind of sensation, you will be a different kind of living being, and will not cease to live.

59 Men have come into being for the sake of one another. So either teach them or bear with them.

60 An arrow moves one way, the mind another. Yet the mind, both when it is being cautious and when it is circling around some inquiry, is moving straight on none the less, toward its object.

61 Enter into the ruling center of each man; and let every other man enter into your own.

Notes

1. 1. Lucilla, Marcus’s mother, and Verus, her husband, Marcus’s father; Secunda, wife of Maximus (1.15); Faustina the Elder, wife of Antoninus Pius; Celer, a rhetorician and secretary to Hadrian. The others are unknown.

2. 2. Agrippa, Augustus’s son-in-law and right-hand man; Areius, his court philosopher; Maecenas, his friend and adviser. Part of the text is lost after “the others.”

3. 3. The opening of this chapter is damaged and lacks a verb; one is supplied from the sense.

4. 4. Lucius Verus, Marcus’s co-emperor, not the Verus of 8.25. Pantheia and Pergamus were of his circle; Chabrias and Diotimus, of Hadrian’s.

5. 5. Empedocles.

6. 6. Marcus derives the Greek word for “rays” from the verb “to stretch out.”