Marcus Aurelius · a new plain-English translation from the original language
1. The man who does wrong acts impiously. For since the nature of the whole has made rational creatures for one another's sake, so that they should help one another according to merit and never harm one another, whoever transgresses her will is plainly impious toward the eldest of the gods. And the man who lies is likewise impious toward that same divine power; for the universal nature is the nature of things that are, and things that are stand in kinship with all things that exist. Moreover this nature bears the further name of truth, and stands as the original source of everything true. So the man who lies willingly is impious, insofar as by deceiving he does wrong; and the man who lies unwillingly is impious too, insofar as he falls out of harmony with the nature governing everything, and insofar as he disturbs the order by fighting against the nature of the world — for whoever is carried toward things opposed to the truth fights against himself, since he had already received the resources for it from nature, and by neglecting them he is no longer able now to distinguish the false from the true. And further, the man who pursues pleasures as goods and flees hardships as evils is impious; for such a man must inevitably, again and again, find fault with the common nature, as though it dealt out things unfairly to the worthless and to the good — since the worthless are often found among pleasures and possess the means to them, while the good fall into hardship and the things that produce it.
What's more, the man who fears hardships will sometimes come to fear things that are bound to happen in the world too, and that already is impious; and the man who chases after pleasures will not hold back from doing wrong, and that is plainly impious. But toward the things the common nature treats alike — for it would not do both unless it were disposed alike toward both — toward these, those who wish to follow nature must also be disposed alike, being of one mind with her. So whoever is not disposed alike toward hardship and pleasure, or death and life, or reputation and disrepute, all of which the nature of the whole employs alike, is clearly impious. And by the common nature's 'employing these alike' I mean that they befall alike, in due sequence, all things that come to be and come after, by a kind of ancient impulse of providence — the impulse by which, starting from some beginning, it set out toward this present ordering of the world, having conceived certain principles of things to come and marked out generative powers for such comings-into-being, changes, and successions.
2. It would belong to a more refined man to depart from among men having tasted no falsehood, no hypocrisy, no luxury, no arrogance. But to breathe your last after having had your fill of these is the second-best voyage. Or have you chosen to sit down beside vice, and does not even experience yet persuade you to flee the plague? For a plague is corruption of the mind, far more than any such distemper and shift of this surrounding air. That is a plague of animals, insofar as they are animals; this is a plague of human beings, insofar as they are human beings.
3. Do not despise death, but be well pleased with it, since this too is one of the things nature wills. For as it is to be young and to grow old, to increase and to reach one's prime, to cut new teeth, to sprout a beard, to turn gray, to father children and carry a child and bring it forth, and all the other natural workings that the seasons of life bring, such too is being dissolved. This, then, is the reasoning proper to a thoughtful man: not to hold himself toward death recklessly, nor violently, nor with contempt, but to wait for it as one of the natural operations — and just as you now wait for the hour when the infant will come out of your wife's womb, so await the hour in which your little soul will fall out of this husk. But if you want an ordinary rule that touches the heart directly, nothing will make you readier for death than attention to the very things from which you are about to be parted, and to the thought that you will no longer be entangled with their characters. You must not be offended at them at all — rather you must care for them and bear with them gently — remembering, however, that your release will not be from men who share your convictions. For this alone, if anything, would have pulled you back and held you fast in life: if it were granted to live together with those who held the same beliefs. But as it is, you see how great the weariness is in the discord of living together, so that you might say: 'Come quickly, death, lest I too forget myself.'
4. The one who does wrong, wrongs himself; the one who acts unjustly acts unjustly toward himself, making himself, himself, into a bad man.
5. Often the one who does not do something acts unjustly, not only the one who does.
6. It is enough that the present judgment be one of true grasp, the present action be for the common good, and the present disposition be one of contentment with everything that happens from an outside cause.
7. Erase the impression. Halt the impulse. Quench the desire. Keep the ruling faculty in your own control.
8. Among irrational animals a single soul has been divided out; among rational beings a single intelligent soul has been portioned out — just as there is one earth for all earthy things, and we all see by one light and breathe one air, all of us that have sight and life.
9. All things that share in something common press toward what is akin to them in kind. Everything earthy inclines toward earth; everything liquid flows together; everything airy does likewise, so much so that barriers and force are needed to keep them apart. Fire tends upward because of the elemental fire above, and every fire here below is so ready to kindle together with fire that any material a little drier than usual catches easily, because it has less in it to resist ignition. So too, everything that shares in the common intelligent nature presses toward its kin just as much, or even more; for the more superior a thing is compared to the rest, the readier it is to blend and merge with what is its own. So, right away, among irrational creatures we find swarms, herds, the rearing of young, and something like love; for souls were already present there, and the drawing-together force was found intensified in the superior kind, in a way that did not exist among plants or stones or wood. Among rational beings there are states, friendships, households, assemblies, and, even in wars, treaties and truces. And among beings still higher, a kind of unity arose even among things set apart from one another, as with the stars: so the ascent to a higher order was able to produce sympathy even among things standing apart. See, then, what happens now: only rational beings have now forgotten their eagerness for one another and their leaning together, and here alone the flowing-together is nowhere to be seen. And yet, even fleeing, they are overtaken all the same, for nature prevails. Watch closely and you will see what I mean: one could sooner find some earthy thing touching nothing earthy than find a man cut off from man.
10. Man bears fruit, and god, and the universe; each bears fruit in its own proper season. If common usage has narrowed the word strictly to the vine and things like it, that means nothing. Reason bears both a common fruit and a fruit of its own, and from it come other things of the same kind, of just the sort that reason itself is.
11. If you can, teach him better; if not, remember that goodwill was given to you for this very purpose. The gods too are well-disposed toward such people, and for some things they even work together with them, toward health, toward wealth, toward reputation. That is how good they are. And it is possible for you as well - or tell me, who is stopping you?
12. Do not labor as one wretched, nor wanting to be pitied or admired, but want only one thing: to move and to hold back, as the reason of the community requires.
13. Today I got out of every difficult circumstance - or rather, I threw out every difficult circumstance. For it was not outside, but within, in my judgments.
14. All these things are familiar from experience, short-lived in time, squalid in their material - all just as they are now among those we have already buried.
15. Things stand outside the door, each by itself, knowing nothing about itself and declaring nothing. What then declares about them? The ruling faculty.
16. The rational, social being's harm and benefit are found not in what is done to it but in what it does — and the same holds for its excellence and its failing: they too show up in action, not in what is merely suffered.
17. For the stone thrown upward, it is no evil to come back down, nor good to have gone up.
18. Go deep, deep within into their ruling faculties, and you will see what judges you fear - and what sort of judges they themselves are, even about themselves.
19. All things are in change - and you yourself are in constant alteration, and in some respect decay, and so is the whole universe.
20. Another's fault must be left where it lies.
21. Cessation of activity, a stopping of impulse and judgment, a kind of death - none of this is an evil. Go now to your ages of life: childhood, boyhood, youth, old age. Every change among these too is a death - is that anything terrible? Go now to the life under your grandfather, then the one under your mother, then the one under your father, and finding many other corruptions and changes and cessations, ask yourself: is that anything terrible? So too, then, is the ending and stopping and change of your whole life.
22. Run to your own ruling faculty, and to that of the whole, and to that of this man. To your own, so that you may make it a just mind; to that of the whole, so that you may remember what part of it you are; to that of this man, so that you may determine whether it is ignorance or judgment acting in him, and at the same time reckon that he is kin to you.
23. Just as you yourself are a piece that completes a political system, so too let every action of yours complete a political life. Whatever action of yours, then, has no reference - whether directly or at a distance - to the common end, that action tears your life apart and does not let it be one, and is seditious, like a man in a community who splits his own part away from such harmony.
24. Children's tantrums and games, and 'little spirits carrying corpses' - so that the scene from the Nekyia strikes more vividly.
25. Go to the quality of the cause, and having stripped it of its material, look at it; then also limit the time - how long, at most, this particular quality is by nature able to persist.
26. You have endured countless things because you were not content with your ruling faculty doing what it does, constituted as it is. But enough.
27. Whenever someone else blames you or hates you, or people cry out such things, go to their little souls, go inside, and see what sort of people they are. You will see that you need not strain yourself over whatever they happen to think about you. Still, you must be well-disposed toward them - for by nature they are friends, and the gods too help them in all sorts of ways, through dreams, through divinations, toward the very things they are at odds about.
28. The same are the cyclical revolutions of the universe, up and down, from age to age. Either the intelligence of the whole sets out anew toward each thing - and if that is so, accept what it sets in motion - or it set out once, and everything else follows in sequence, so why do you strain over it? For in a way things are atoms, or indivisible units. And the whole, if it is a god, is well disposed; if it is random chance, then do not you be random too. Soon earth will cover all of us; then it too will change, and those things will change into infinity, and again those into infinity. Whoever dwells on the successive waves of changes and alterations, and the speed of it all, will come to despise everything mortal.
29. A torrent is the substance of all things - it carries everything along. How trivial are these political affairs, and these little men who think themselves practicing philosophy - full of mucus! Man, what then? Do what nature now demands; set out, if it is given to you; and do not look around to see whether anyone will know. Do not hope for Plato's Republic, but be content if even the smallest thing goes forward, and consider the outcome of even this as no small matter. For who will change their opinions? And without a change of opinions, what else is there but slavery among people groaning and pretending to be persuaded? Go on now and tell me about Alexander and Philip and Demetrius of Phalerum. They will see, if they truly saw, what the common nature wanted, and trained themselves accordingly; but if they played the tragic hero, no one has sentenced me to imitate them. The work of philosophy is simple and modest - do not drag me off into solemn pretension.
30. Survey from above the countless herds, the countless rites, every kind of voyage through storms and calms, the differences among those being born, coming together, and passing away. Consider too the life once lived by others long ago, the life that will be lived after you, and the life now being lived among barbarian peoples; and how many do not even know your name, how many will forget it very soon, how many who now perhaps praise you will very soon blame you; and that being remembered, being renowned, or anything else of that sort, is worth nothing at all.
31. Freedom from disturbance regarding what happens from outside causes, and justice in the actions done from causes within yourself; that is, an impulse and an action that terminates in acting for the common good, since this is in accordance with your nature.
32. You can remove many of the superfluous things that trouble you, since they lie entirely in your own judgment, and you will thereby win for yourself a great deal of open space, by embracing the whole universe in your mind, by contemplating unending time, and by considering the swift change of each individual thing part by part — how brief is the interval from birth to dissolution, how vast the void before birth, and equally infinite the void after dissolution.
33. Everything you see will very soon perish, and those who watch it perishing will themselves very soon perish too, and the one who dies at the furthest old age will end up in the same state as the one who died before his time.
34. What are the ruling faculties of these people, what things they are earnest about, and for what reasons they love and honor — think of their little souls as laid bare naked before you. When they suppose they harm you by blaming, or benefit you by praising, what conceit that is!
35. Loss is nothing other than change. And in this the nature of the whole rejoices, in accordance with which everything happens well, and has been happening in the same way from eternity, and will go on happening in that same way without end. So why do you say that everything has always happened badly and always will happen badly, and that among so many gods no power was ever found to set these things right, but the universe has been condemned to be gripped in unceasing evils?
36. The rottenness of the matter that underlies each thing: water, dust, little bones, stench — or again: marbles are just calluses of the earth, gold and silver are sediment, clothing is hair, purple dye is blood, and all the rest is just the same. And the little breath of life is likewise another such thing, changing from one form into another.
37. Enough of this wretched life, this grumbling, this ape-like mimicry. Why are you disturbed? What in this is new? What is it that unsettles you? The cause? Look at it. Or is it the matter? Look at that. Beyond these two there is nothing else — so, toward the gods too, become at last simpler and better. It is the same thing to have examined these matters for a hundred years as for three.
38. If he did wrong, the harm is his own. But perhaps he did not do wrong.
39. Either all things flow from one intelligent source, converging as upon a single body, and the part ought not to complain about what happens for the sake of the whole; or else there are only atoms, and nothing but a jumble and a scattering. Why then are you disturbed? Say to your ruling faculty: you are dead, you are decayed, you have turned into a wild beast, you are play-acting, you herd with the flock, you graze like cattle.
40. Either the gods hold no power at all, or some power belongs to them. If they hold none, why bother praying? Yet suppose power truly is theirs — could you not instead beg for freedom from dread of these things, freedom from craving these things, freedom from grief over these things, rather than begging that some particular thing stay away or turn up? Surely, if the gods can act on our behalf at all, they can act on our behalf here too. Perhaps you will object: the gods left this matter for me to control myself. Then is it not better to exercise, as a free man, what has been placed in your control, than to grovel after what lies outside it, cramped and servile? Besides, who informed you that the gods give no help even within the sphere that is ours to govern? Try it, at least — start praying along these lines and see what follows. One person prays: let me get this woman into bed. You instead: let me feel no urge to bed her. Another prays: let this man be out of my way. You instead: let me not need him gone. A third prays: don't let my small child die. You instead: let me face his death without terror. In every case, redirect the prayer this way, and observe what comes of it.
41. Epicurus says: "In my illness my conversations were not about the sufferings of my poor body, nor," he says, "did I talk of any such things to those who came to visit me, but I went on discoursing about the fundamental facts of nature, and dwelt especially on this very point: how the mind, though sharing in such disturbances of the flesh, remains untroubled, guarding its own proper good. Nor did I give the doctors," he says, "any chance to strut about as if they were accomplishing something great, but my life went on well and rightly." Let the same, then, hold for you as for him — in illness, if you should be ill, and in any other circumstance whatever: for not to abandon philosophy amid whatever befalls, and not to babble along with the ignorant person untrained in nature, is common to every school of thought. Be intent only on what you are doing right now, and on the instrument by which you do it.
42. Whenever you are offended by someone's shamelessness, ask yourself at once: can there fail to be shameless people in the world? There cannot. So do not demand the impossible. This man is simply one of those shameless people who must exist in the world. Keep the same thought ready at hand for the rogue, the faithless man, and anyone who does wrong in any way at all — for the moment you remind yourself that this whole class of people cannot fail to exist, you will be gentler toward each of them individually. It is also useful to bring to mind at once what virtue nature has given man to counter this particular fault: for she has given, as an antidote, gentleness against the unreasonable man, and against another some other power — and in general it is possible for you to re-teach the one who has gone astray, for everyone who does wrong misses his true mark and has gone astray. And how have you really been harmed? You will find that none of these people, at whom you are provoked, has done anything that could actually make your mind worse — and it is there, and only there, that your harm and your evil have their whole existence. And what is strange or new about it, if the uneducated man does the things an uneducated man does? Look instead to whether it is not rather yourself you ought to blame, for not expecting that this man would commit this fault —
since you had the resources from reason to consider it likely that he would commit it, and yet you forgot, and now you are astonished that he has done wrong. But above all, when you blame someone as faithless or ungrateful, turn back upon yourself: for the fault is plainly your own, whether you trusted that a person of such a character would keep faith, or whether in granting the favor you did not give it unconditionally, nor in such a way as to have already reaped the whole fruit of it from the very act itself. What more do you want, after doing a man good? Is it not enough that you have done something in accordance with your own nature, but must you go seeking payment for it? As if the eye asked to be paid for its sight, or the feet claimed wages for their stride. For just as these limbs were fashioned toward a particular end, and in carrying out their own function according to their own makeup they gain what is rightfully theirs, so too man, being fashioned by nature to do good to others, whenever he does something beneficial or in some other way contributes to the common good, has done that for which he was constituted, and has what is properly his own.