Book Nine

1 Whoever does wrong is impious. For since the nature of the whole has made rational beings for the sake of one another, to benefit each other according to their worth and in no way to harm, the man who goes against her will is clearly impious toward the eldest of the gods.¹ And the liar too is impious toward the same goddess. For the nature of the whole is the nature of the things that are; and the things that are have kinship with all that exists. She is also called truth, and is the first cause of all things that are true.

So the man who lies willingly is impious, in so far as by deceiving he does wrong; and the man who lies unwillingly, in so far as he is out of tune with the nature of the whole, and in so far as he brings disorder by fighting against the nature of the universe. For he fights against it who is carried, of himself, toward what is contrary to the truth; he had received from nature the starting points, and by neglecting them he is now unable to tell false from true. And further, the man who pursues pleasures as good and avoids pains as bad is impious. For such a man must often find fault with the common nature for assigning things to bad and good people against their deserts, since bad people are often in the midst of pleasures and own what produces them, while good people meet with pain and what produces it.

Further, the man who fears pains will sometimes fear what is going to happen in the universe, and that is already impious. And the man who pursues pleasures will not keep from wrongdoing, and that is plainly impious. Toward those things to which the common nature is indifferent (for she would not have made both if she were not indifferent to both), those who want to follow nature, being of one mind with her, should be indifferent too. Whoever, then, is not himself indifferent to pain and pleasure, or death and life, or fame and obscurity, which the nature of the whole makes use of indifferently, is clearly impious.

And when I say the common nature makes use of these indifferently, I mean that they happen indifferently, in due sequence, to the things that come into being and follow on them, by a certain original impulse of providence, by which, from a beginning, it set out to make this ordered world, gathering together certain principles of what was to be, and marking off the powers that generate substances and their changes and successions of this kind.

2 It would be the mark of a finer man to leave the world without having tasted lying, or pretense of any kind, or luxury, or vanity. But to breathe one’s last when one has had one’s fill of them is the next best course. Or have you chosen to sit down beside vice, and has not even experience yet persuaded you to flee from the plague? For corruption of the mind is a plague far worse than any such tainting and change of the air that surrounds us. That is a plague to animals as animals; this to men as men.

3 Do not despise death, but be content with it, as this too is one of the things nature wants. For as it is to be young and to grow old, to grow up and reach your prime, to get teeth and a beard and gray hair, to beget, to be pregnant, to give birth, and all the other natural works that the seasons of life bring, so too is dissolution. This, then, is what a reasoning man does: not to be careless or impatient or contemptuous toward death, but to wait for it as one of the works of nature; and as you now wait for the child to come out of your wife’s womb, so to await the hour when your little soul will fall out of this sheath. And if you want a plain rule that touches the heart, nothing will make you so ready for death as to consider the things you are about to leave, and the characters among whom your ⟨soul⟩ will no longer be entangled.² Not that you should take offense at them; you should care for them and bear with them gently; but remember that your release will not be from men who share your principles. That alone, if anything, could pull you back and hold you in life, if you were allowed to live with those who have made the same principles their own. But as it is, you see how wearing it is to live out of tune with those you live with, so that you say: “Come quickly, death, in case I too forget myself.”

4 He who does wrong does wrong to himself; he who acts unjustly acts unjustly to himself, making himself bad.

5 Often a man does wrong by not doing something, not only by doing something.

6 It is enough: your present judgment, if it grasps things clearly; your present action, if it is social; your present disposition, if it is content with all that happens from the cause outside you.

7 Wipe out the impression. Check the impulse. Quench the desire. Keep the ruling center in your own power.

8 Among the animals without reason one soul is divided; among the rational, one thinking soul is portioned out; just as there is one earth for all things earthy, and we see by one light and breathe one air, all of us who have sight and life.

9 All things that share in something common hasten toward their kind. Everything earthy tends toward earth; everything watery flows together; the airy likewise, so that barriers and force are needed to keep them apart. Fire moves upward because of the elemental fire, and is so ready to be kindled together with all fire here that all matter, if it is a little drier than usual, catches fire easily, because there is less mixed in it to prevent its burning. So too everything that shares in the common thinking nature hastens just as much toward what is akin to it, or even more. For the higher it is than the rest, the more ready it is to blend and mingle with what is its own. Thus among the creatures without reason we find at once swarms and herds, the rearing of young, and something like love; for there were souls in them already, and the force that draws things together was found heightened in the higher, as it was not in plants or in stones or wood. Among rational creatures there are states and friendships and households and assemblies, and in war, treaties and truces. And among things still higher, a kind of unity exists even among things set far apart, as among the stars. So the ascent to the higher can produce sympathy even among things that are far apart. See, then, what is happening now: only the thinking creatures have now forgotten their eagerness for one another and their tendency to come together; here alone the flowing together is not seen. And yet, though they flee, they are overtaken; for nature prevails. You will see what I mean if you watch: you would sooner find something earthy that touches nothing earthy than a man cut off from all men.

10 Man and god and the universe all bear fruit; each bears it in its own season. Custom has properly applied the word to the vine and things like it, but that is nothing. Reason too bears fruit, both for all and for itself, and from it come other things of the same kind as reason itself.

11 If you can, teach them better. If not, remember that kindness was given you for this. The gods too are kind to such people, and even help them in some things, to health, wealth, fame; so good are they. You can be so too; or tell me, who prevents you?

12 Work, not as one who is wretched, nor as one who wants to be pitied or admired; want one thing only: to move and to hold back as civic reason requires.

13 Today I escaped from all my troubles; or rather, I threw them out. For they were not outside, but within, in my judgments.

14 All these things are familiar by experience, short-lived in time, foul in their matter. All is now as it was in the days of those we have buried.

15 Things stand outside the door, by themselves, knowing nothing about themselves and declaring nothing. What, then, declares about them? The ruling center.

16 Not in being acted on, but in acting, lies the good and bad of a rational and civic being, as also his virtue and vice lie not in being acted on but in acting.

17 For a stone thrown into the air it is nothing bad to come down, nor anything good to have gone up.

18 Go through to their ruling centers, deep within, and you will see what judges you are afraid of, and what judges they are of themselves.

19 All things are in change. You yourself are in constant alteration, and in some respect decay; and so is the whole universe.

20 Another’s wrong you must leave where it is.

21 The ending of an activity, the cessation of an impulse or a judgment, is a kind of death; nothing bad. Now pass on to the ages of life, childhood, boyhood, youth, old age; for every change in these is a death too. Is it anything terrible? Now pass on to your life under your grandfather, then under your mother, then under your father; and finding many other deaths and changes and endings, ask yourself: Is it anything terrible? So neither is the ending and ceasing and change of your whole life.

22 Hurry to your own ruling center, and to that of the whole, and to that of this man. To your own, to make it a just mind; to that of the whole, to remember what you are a part of; to this man’s, to discern whether it is ignorance or design, and at the same time to reckon that it is akin to you.

23 As you yourself help to complete a civic system, so let every action of yours help to complete a civic life. Any action of yours, then, that does not refer, directly or remotely, to the social end, tears your life apart and does not let it be one, and is seditious, like a man in a commonwealth who for his part breaks away from its harmony.

24 Children’s tantrums and games, and “little souls carrying corpses”;³ so that the Visit to the Dead⁴ strikes one as more vivid.

25 Go to the quality of the cause, mark it off from the material, and look at it; then mark off also the time, the longest that this particular thing can by nature last.

26 You have put up with countless troubles because you were not content with your ruling center doing what it was made to do. Enough!

27 When another blames you or hates you, or people say such things of you, go to their little souls, go in, and see what kind of people they are. You will see that you need not strain yourself to make them think anything of you. But you must be kind to them; for by nature they are your friends. And the gods help them in all sorts of ways, by dreams, by oracles, to the very things they care about.

28 The cycles of the universe are the same, up and down, from age to age. And either the mind of the whole sets itself in motion for each thing (if so, accept what it sets in motion), or it set itself in motion once, and the rest follows as consequence; and why strain yourself? For in a way it is atoms or indivisible bits.⁵ In short: if god, all is well; if chance, do not you be governed by chance too. Soon the earth will cover us all; then the earth too will change, and the things that come from it will change to infinity, and those again to infinity. Anyone who thinks of the waves of change and alteration that follow one upon another, and how fast they come, will despise everything mortal.

29 The substance of the whole is a torrent; it carries everything along. How cheap, too, are these little men who busy themselves with public affairs and think they are acting like philosophers! Full of snot.—Man, what then? Do what nature asks now. Set to work, if it is given you, and do not look around to see if anyone will know. Do not hope for Plato’s republic, but be content if the smallest thing goes forward, and think of the outcome even of this as no small thing. For who will change their principles? And without a change of principles, what is there but the slavery of men who groan and pretend to obey? Go on, then, and tell me about Alexander and Philip and Demetrius of Phalerum.⁶ They will see whether they saw what the common nature wanted, and trained themselves accordingly. But if they played the tragic hero, no one has condemned me to imitate them. The work of philosophy is simple and modest. Do not lead me away into pompous vanity.

30 Look from above at the countless herds, the countless rites, voyages of every kind in storm and calm, the differences of things coming into being, being together, passing away. Think too of the life lived long ago by others, and the life that will be lived after you, and the life now lived among the barbarian peoples; and how many do not even know your name, and how many will very soon forget it, and how many who perhaps praise you now will very soon blame you; and that neither memory nor fame nor anything else at all is worth a word.

31 Calm in what happens from the cause outside you; justice in what you do from the cause within you: that is, impulse and action that end in this very thing, acting socially, since this is according to your nature.

32 You can strip away many superfluous troubles that lie wholly in your judgment, and you will at once make a great deal of room for yourself by taking in the whole universe in your thought, and considering eternity, and thinking of the swift change of each thing in particular: how short the time from birth to dissolution, how vast the gulf before birth, and equally infinite the time after dissolution.

33 All that you see will very soon perish, and those who have watched it perish will very soon perish themselves; and the man who dies in extreme old age will be brought to the same state as the one who died before his time.

34 What are their ruling centers like, what do they care about, and for what reasons do they love and honor? Imagine you see their little souls naked. When they think they harm you by their blame or help you by their praise, what conceit!

35 Loss is nothing but change. And in this the nature of the whole delights, by which all things come about well, have come about in the same way from eternity, and will be other things of the same kind to infinity. Why, then, do you say that all things came about badly and all things will always be bad, and that among so many gods no power was ever found to set them right, but the universe has been condemned to be held fast in endless evils?

36 The rottenness of the matter underlying each thing: water, dust, bits of bone, stink. Or again: marble, a callus of the earth; gold and silver, its dregs; clothing, bits of hair; purple, blood; and everything else the same. And the breath too is another such thing, changing from these into those.

37 Enough of this wretched life, this grumbling, this aping.—Why are you disturbed? What is new in this? What drives you out of yourself? The cause? Look at it. The matter? Look at it. Beyond these there is nothing. But toward the gods too, now at last, become simpler and better. It is the same to study these things for a hundred years as for three.

38 If he did wrong, the harm lies there. But perhaps he did not.

39 Either all things spring from one thinking source, as in one body, and the part should not find fault with what happens for the good of the whole; or there are atoms, and nothing but a stew and a scattering. Why, then, are you disturbed? Say to your ruling center: Are you dead, are you corrupted, have you turned into a beast, are you playing a part, are you one of the herd, are you grazing?

40 Either the gods have no power, or they have power. If they have no power, why do you pray? But if they have power, why not pray rather that they give you the power not to fear any of these things, or desire any of them, or be grieved at any of them, rather than that any of them should be there or not be there? For surely, if they can help men, they can help them in this too. But perhaps you will say: “The gods put these things in my power.” Then is it not better to use what is in your power as a free man than to strain after what is not in your power like a slave, and abjectly? And who told you that the gods do not help us even in what is in our power? Begin, at any rate, to pray about these things, and you will see. One man prays, “How may I sleep with that woman?” You: “How may I not desire to sleep with her?” Another: “How may I be rid of that man?” You: “How may I not want to be rid of him?” Another: “How may I not lose my little child?” You: “How may I not be afraid of losing him?” In short, turn your prayers this way, and see what happens.

41 Epicurus says: “In my illness my conversations were not about the sufferings of my poor body, nor did I talk of such things,” he says, “to those who came to see me; but I went on discussing the chief points of natural philosophy, and dwelling on this very question: how the mind, while sharing in such movements of the flesh, remains undisturbed and keeps its own good. Nor did I give the doctors a chance,” he says, “to put on airs as if they were doing something great, but my life went on well and happily.”⁷ Do the same as he did, then, in illness, if you are ill, and in any other circumstance. For not to abandon philosophy in whatever befalls us, and not to join in the chatter of the uneducated and of those ignorant of nature, is a principle common to every school. Attend only to what you are doing now and to the instrument with which you are doing it.

42 When you are offended by someone’s shamelessness, ask yourself at once: Is it possible that there should be no shameless people in the world? It is not possible. Then do not ask for the impossible. This man too is one of those shameless people who must exist in the world. Have the same thought ready for the rogue, the faithless man, and every kind of wrongdoer. For as soon as you remember that it is impossible for the race of such people not to exist, you will be kinder toward each of them.

It is useful, too, to think at once what virtue nature has given man to meet this wrong. For she has given gentleness as an antidote against the unkind man, and some other power against another. And in any case you can teach the man who has gone astray; for every wrongdoer misses the mark he aims at, and has gone astray. And how have you been harmed? You will find that none of those you are angry with has done anything by which your mind was going to be made worse.

And it is there that what is bad and harmful for you has its whole existence. What is new or strange in an uneducated man acting like an uneducated man? See whether you should not rather blame yourself for not expecting him to do this wrong. For reason gave you the means to think that he was likely to do this wrong, and yet you forgot it, and you are surprised that he has done it.

Above all, when you complain of someone as faithless or ungrateful, turn to yourself. For the fault is plainly yours, if you trusted that a man of such a disposition would keep faith, or if, when you did a kindness, you did not do it as complete in itself, and in such a way as to have received at once, from the act itself, its whole fruit. What more do you want, when you have done a man good? Is it not enough that you have done something according to your nature, but you look for a reward for it? As if the eye asked for a return for seeing, or the feet for walking. For just as these were made for some purpose, and by working according to their own constitution have what is their own, so man, who is made by nature to do good, whenever he does some good, or otherwise helps in indifferent things, has done what he was made for, and has what is his own.

Notes

1. 1. Nature, the nature of the whole; the Greek word physis is feminine, hence “goddess.”

2. 2. There is a gap in the text; editors commonly supply “soul.”

3. 3. A saying of Epictetus, quoted in 4.41 with “little soul” for “little souls.”

4. 4. The Nekyia, Book Eleven of Homer’s Odyssey, in which Odysseus calls up the shades of the dead.

5. 5. The text of this sentence is damaged and its sense uncertain.

6. 6. Demetrius of Phalerum, an Athenian statesman and philosopher who governed Athens for ten years under Macedonian patronage at the end of the fourth century BC.

7. 7. Apparently from a letter of Epicurus.