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MEDITATIONS |
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Book 10 1. O soul of mine, will you never be good and sincere, all one, all open, visible to the beholder more clearly than even your encompassing body of flesh? Will you never taste the sweetness of a loving and affectionate heart? Will you never be titled full and unwanting; craving nothing, yearning for no creature or thing to minister to your pleasures, no prolongation of days to enjoy them, no place or country or pleasant clime or sweet human company? When will you be content with your present state, happy in all about you, persuaded that all things are yours, that all comes from the gods, and that all is and shall be well with you, so long as it is their good pleasure and ordained by them for the safety and welfare of that perfect living Whole--so good, so just, so beautiful--which gives life to all things, upholding and enfolding them, and at their dissolution gathering them into itself so that yet others of their kind may spring forth? Will you never be fit for such fellowship with gods and men as to have no syllable of complaint against them, and no syllable of reproach from them? 2. Pay heed to what your particular nature requires of you, like one who is wholly under great Nature's governance. Do it and accept it, provided always that it promise no harm to your physical nature. Yet pay heed also to the requirements of that physical nature, and give assent to them all, unless they in turn promise harm to the rational nature (and by the rational is directly implied the social as well). Observe these rules, without wasting pains on other things. 3. Whatever befalls, Nature has either prepared you to face it or she has not. If something untoward happens which is within your powers of endurance, do not resent it, but bear it as she has enabled you to do. Should it exceed those powers, still do not give way to resentment; for its victory over you will put an end to its own existence. Remember, however, that in fact Nature has given you the ability to bear anything which your own judgment succeeds in declaring bearable and endurable by regarding it as a point of self-interest and duty to do so. 4. If a man makes a slip, admonish him gently and show him his mistake. If you fail to convince him, blame yourself, or else blame nobody. 5. Whatever may happen to you was prepared for you in advance from the beginning of time. In the woven tapestry of causation, the thread of our being had been intertwined from all time with that particular incident. 6. No matter whether the universe is a confusion of atoms or a natural growth, let my first conviction be that I am part of a Whole which is under Nature's governance; and my second, that a bond of kinship exists between myself and all other similar parts. If I bear these two thoughts in mind, then in the first place, being a part, I shall not feel aggrieved by any dispensation assigned to me from the Whole; since nothing which is beneficial for any whole can ever be harmful to a part, and in this case there is nothing contained in this Whole which is not beneficial to itself. (The same, indeed, could be said of every natural organism; but the nature of the universe has the further distinction that there is no cause outside itself which could ever compel it to produce anything harmful to itself.) In the remembrance, then, that I am a part of such a Whole, I shall cheerfully accept whatever may be my lot. In the second place, inasmuch as there is this bond of kinship between myself and my fellow-parts, I shall do nothing that might injure their common welfare, but keep those kindred parts always purposefully in view, directing every impulse towards their good and away from anything that runs counter to it. Thus doing, I cannot but find the current of my life flowing smoothly; as smoothly as we may imagine that of some public man whose actions are consistently serviceable to his fellow-townsfolk, and who is ready to welcome whatever task his city may assign him. 7. All parts of the Whole--by which I mean everything naturally comprehended in the universe--must in time decay; or to speak accurately, must suffer a change of form. If by its nature this change, besides being inevitable, were to be a positive evil to them, the smooth working of the Whole could never go on; for its parts are always heading towards some change of form or other, and are all constitutionally liable to decay in their respective ways. Did Nature, then, deliberately mean to inflict injury on things which are parts of herself, making them not simply liable to evil but inescapably doomed to it; or can it be that such things happen without her knowledge? Neither supposition merits any credence. Even supposing we leave Nature herself out of account altogether, and explain all this in terms of the normal order of creation, it is still absurd to say that this mutability of the parts of the Whole is normal if at the same time we are to feel as astonished or resentful at it as though it were some unnatural occurrence; the more so, since all that the parts are doing is merely to dissolve back into the constituents of their original composition. For after all, if dissolution is not simply a mere dispersion of the elements of which I am compounded, it must be a change of the grosser particles into earth-form, and the spiritual into air-form, so that they can all be re-absorbed into the universal Reason (no matter whether this is to be periodically consumed in flames, or to keep on perpetually renewing itself through eternal cycles of change). Observe, however, that these particles, gross and spiritual, must not be imagined to be those which we received at birth; seeing that our entire present structure has derived its increment from meats eaten and air breathed no longer ago than yesterday or the day before. What will undergo these changes, therefore, is not something our mother bore originally, but something we have received since. (Even if we admit that birth does, in fact, implicate us in great measure with these intrinsically mutable particles, I do not think it affects what I have said.) 8. If you claim for yourself such epithets as good, modest, truthful, clear- minded, right-minded, high-minded, be careful not to belie them; and if you should happen to forfeit them, lose no time in recovering them again. But remember that 'clear-mindedness' ought to suggest to you a discriminating consideration of each separate detail and a watchful attention to it; 'right- mindedness' a willing acceptance of all that Nature allots you; and 'high- mindedness' an elevation of the intellect above the workings of the flesh, be they smooth or harsh, and above vainglory, death or any other such distractions. Live up to these designations--though without craving to have them applied to you by others--and you will be a different man and enter upon a different life. To go on in your present state, continuing to be torn and soiled by an existence like this, is the way of a fool and a faint-heart; it smacks of the swordsman who has been mangled by beasts in the arena and covered with blood and bruises, and yet still pleads to be kept till the morrow, when he will only be flung again, wounds and all, to the same teeth and claws. So step on board this little raft of attributes, and if you can contrive it, stay there as though transported to the Isles of the Blest. But if you feel yourself drifting and unable to hold your course, pluck up heart and make for some quiet haven where you will be able to hold your own; or even bid farewell to life altogether, not in a passion but simply, freely, and unassumingly, with at least this one success in life to your credit, a seemly departure from it. In order to keep those attributes ever in mind, it will help greatly not to forget the gods; to remember that what they desire is not to be flattered but that everything which has reason should become like themselves; and also to recollect that a fig-tree is that which does a fig-tree's work, a dog that which does a dog's, a bee a bee's--and a man a man's. 9. Day by day the buffoonery, quarrelling, timidity, slothfulness, and servility that surround you will conspire to efface from your mind those hallowed maxims it apprehends so unphilosophically and dismisses so carelessly. What duty requires of you is to observe each single thing and perform each action in such a manner that, while the practical demands of a situation are fully met, the powers of thought are at the same time fully exercised; and also to maintain (in reserve, but never lost to sight) the self- confidence of one who has mastered every relevant detail. Are you never going to attain to the happiness of a real integrity and dignity? Of an understanding which comprehends the inmost being of each thing, its place in the world-order, the term of its natural existence, the structure of its composition, and to whom it belongs or who has the power of bestowing or withdrawing it? 10. A spider is proud of catching a fly; so is one man of trapping a hare, or another of netting a sprat, or a third of capturing boars or bears or Sarmatians. [1] If you go into the question of principles, are these anything but robbers one and all? 11. Make a habit of regularly observing the universal process of change; be assiduous in your attention to it, and school yourself thoroughly in this branch of study; there is nothing more elevating to the mind. For when a man realizes that at any moment he may have to leave everything behind him and depart from the company of his fellows, he casts off the body and thenceforward dedicates himself wholly to the service of justice in his personal actions and compliance with Nature in all else. No thought is wasted on what others may say or think of him or practice against him; two things alone suffice him, justice in his daily doings and contentment with all fate's apportionings. Every care, every distraction is laid aside; his only ambition is to walk in the straight paths of law, and by so doing to become a follower of God. 12. What need for guesswork when the way of duty lies there before your eyes? If the road be clear to see, go forward with a good will and no turning back; if not, wait and take the best advice you can. Should further obstacles arise, advance discreetly to the limit of your resources, always following where justice seems to point the way. To achieve justice is the summit of success, since it is herein that failure most often occurs. 13. Begin the day by asking yourself, Can the just and right conduct of another make any difference in myself? It cannot. Men who are arrogantly ready with their praise or censure, remember, are the same in their private lives, in bed and at board; recall the things they do, the things they avoid or run after, and the thieveries and depredations they commit -- not indeed with hands and feet, but with that most precious of all their possessions, which, if a man but will it so, is the source of faith, modesty, truth, law, and the good estate of the divinity within him. !4. To Nature, whence all things come and whither all return, the cry of the humble and well-instructed heart is, 'Give as thou wilt, take back as thou wilt;' yet uttered with no heroics, but in pure obedience and goodwill. 15. Now your remaining years are few. Live them, then, as though on a mountaintop. Whether a man's lot be cast in this place or in that matters nothing, provided that in all places he views the world as a city and himself its citizen. Give men the chance to see and know a true man, living by Nature's law. If they cannot brook the sight, let them do away with him. Better so, than to live as they live. 16. Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one. 17. Let your mind constantly dwell on all Time and all Being, and thus learn that each separate thing is but as a grain of sand in comparison with Being, and as a single screw's-turn in comparison with Time. 18. Realize the nature of all things material, observing how each of them is even now undergoing dissolution and change, and is already in process of decay, or dispersion, or whatever other natural fate may be in store for it. 19. Eating, sleeping, copulating, excreting, and the like; what a crew they are! How pompous in their arrogance, how over-bearing and tyrannical, how superciliously censorious of others! A moment ago, how many feet they were licking -- and for such ends! -- a moment more, and they will be doing the same again. 20. For every man and every thing, that which Nature brings makes for their own good; moreover, makes for their good at the precise moment when it is brought. 21. 'Earth is in love with the showers from above, And the all-holy Heaven itself is in love' [2] -- that is, the universe is truly in love with its task of fashioning whatever is next to be; and to the universe, therefore, my response must be, 'As thou lovest, so I too love.' (Is not the same notion implied in the common saying that such-and-such a thing 'loves to happen'?) 22. Either you go on living here, to which custom has sufficiently seasoned you by now; or you remove elsewhere, which you do of your own free election; or you die, which means that your service is at an end. Other choice there can be none; so put a good face on it. 23. Let it be clear to you that the peace of green fields can always be yours, in this, that, or any other spot; and that nothing is any different here from what it would be either up in the hills, or down by the sea, or wherever else you will. You will find the same thought in Plato, where he speaks of living within the city walls 'as though milking his flocks in a mountain sheepfold'. [3] 24. What is my master-reason to me? What am I making of it at this moment? To what use am I putting it? Is it showing itself devoid of sense? Is it becoming divorced and dissevered from the ties of fellowship? Has it grown so involved and so identified with the flesh as to reflect that flesh's veerings and vacillations? 25. A servant who breaks loose from his master is a run-away. For us, our master is law; and consequently any law-breaker must be a runaway. But grief, anger, or fear are all of them rejections of something which, in the past or the present or the future, has been decreed by the power that directs the universe--in other words, by Law, which allots to every creature its due, [4] To give way to fear or grief or anger, therefore, is to be a runaway. 26. A man drops seed into the womb and passes on; thereafter another cause takes it up, sets to work, and brings to perfection a baby -- what a transformation! The same man puts food down his throat, and once more some other cause takes it over and converts it into sensation and motion and, in short, into life, vigor, and other products both many and various. Consider these processes, which are wrought out in such mysterious ways; and discern the power at work there, in the same way as we discern the forces which attract objects earthwards or upwards -- not with the eye, that is, and yet no less clearly. 27. Reflect often how all the life of today is a repetition of the past; and observe that it also presages what is to come. Review the many complete dramas and their settings, all so similar, which you have known in your own experience, or from bygone history: the whole court-circle of Hadrian, for example, or the court of Antoninus, or the courts of Philip, Alexander, and Croesus. The performance is always the same; it is only the actors who change. 28. When you see a man showing annoyance or resentment at anything, think of a pig kicking and squealing under the sacrificial knife. Another who takes to his couch in solitude, silently lamenting over our thraldom, is in no better case. Reasonable beings alone are granted the power of a willing conformity with circumstance; the bare conformity by itself stern necessity exacts from every created thing. 29. Whatever you take in hand, pause at every step to ask yourself, 'Is it the thought of forfeiting this that makes me dread death?' 30. When another's fault offends you, turn to yourself and consider what similar shortcomings are found in you. Do you, too, find your good in riches, pleasure, reputation, or such like? Think of this, and your anger will soon be forgotten in the reflection that he is only acting under pressure; what else could he do? Alternatively, if you are able, contrive his release from that pressure. 31. Let the sight of Satyron call up a vision of the dead Socraticus, or Eutyches, or Hymen; the sight of Euphrates bring to mind Eutychion or Silvanus; a look at Alciphron suggest the memory of Tropaeophorus; a glance at Severus, that of Crito or Xenophon; when you see yourself, think of the emperors who preceded you. Thus, with every man, imagine his counterpart; and then go on to the reflection, 'Where are they all now?' Nowhere -- or anywhere. In this way, you will grow accustomed to looking on all that is mortal as vapor and nothingness; and the more so, if you will also remember that things once changed are for ever past recall. Then why struggle and strain, instead of being content to live out your little span in seemly fashion? Think what materials and possibilities for good you are rejecting; since what are all your tribulations but exercises for the training of your reason, once it has learnt to see the truths of life in a proper philosophic light? Be patient, then, until you have made them familiar and natural to yourself, in the same way as a strong stomach can assimilate every kind of diet, or a bright fire turn anything that is cast upon it into heat and flame. 32. Let no one have the right to say truthfully of you that you are without integrity or goodness; should any think such thoughts, see that they are without foundation. This all depends upon yourself, for who else can hinder you from attaining goodness and integrity? If you cannot live so, you need only resolve to live no longer; for in that case not even reason itself could require your continuance. 33. What is the very best that can be said or done with the materials at your disposal? Be it what it may, you have the power to say it or do it; let there be no pretence that you are not a free agent. These repinings of yours will be endless until such time as the doing of a man's natural duty with whatever materials come to hand means as much to you as his pleasures mean to the voluptuary. (Indeed, every exercise of our proper natural instincts ought to be esteemed a form of pleasure; and the opportunities for this are everywhere present.) A roller, to be sure, has not always the privilege of moving at will, nor has water, nor fire, nor anything else that is under the governance of its own nature or of a soul without reason; for there are many factors which intervene to prevent it. But a mind and a reason can make their way through any obstacles, as their nature enables them and their will prompts them to do. Figure to yourself how reason finds a way past every barrier as effortlessly as fire mounts upward, or a stone falls, or a roller descends a slope; and be content to ask no more. Interferences, in any case, must either affect the body alone -- which is but an inanimate thing -- or else be impotent to crush or injure us unless assisted by our own preconceptions and the surrender of reason itself. If it were otherwise, their effect on the subject would be harmful; and though we know that throughout the rest of creation the occurrence of any mishap involves some worsening of its victim, yet in the case of a man we may even say that he becomes better and more praiseworthy by the right uses which he makes of adversity. In short, never forget that nothing can injure the true citizen if it does not injure the city itself, and nothing can injure the city unless it injures law. What we call mischances do no injury to law, and therefore cannot harm either city or citizen. 34. When true principles have once been etched into the mind, even the briefest commonplace will suffice to recall the futility of regrets or fears; such as, for example, 'What are the children of men, but as leaves that drop at the wind's breath?' [5] Just such leaves were those beloved children of yours; leaves, too, are the multitudes, those would-be-convincing voices that scream their plaudits, hurl their curses, or sneer and scoff in secret; leaves, again, are all they into whose hands your fame shall fall hereafter. One and all, they 'flower in the season of springtime', the gales lay them low, and anon the forest puts forth new verdure in their room. Impermanence is the badge of each and every one; and yet you chase after them, or flee from them, as though they were to endure for all eternity. A short time, and your eyes will close; and for the man who bears you to your grave, too, the tears will soon enough be falling. 35. The business of a healthy eye is to see everything that is visible, not to demand no color but green, for that merely marks a disordered vision. Likewise hearing and scent, if healthy, should be alert for all kinds of sounds and odors, and a healthy stomach for all manner of meats, like a mill which accepts whatever grist it was fashioned to grind. In the same way, then, a healthy mind ought to be prepared for anything that may befall. A mind crying 'O that my children may be spared,' or 'O that the world might ring with praises of my every act,' is an eye craving for greenery, or a tooth craving for softness. 36. No man is so fortunate but that some who stand beside his death-bed will be hailing the coming loss with delight. He was virtuous, let us say, and wise; even so, will there not be one at the end who murmurs under his breath, 'At last we can breathe freely again, without our master! To be sure, he was never harsh with any of us; but I always felt that he had a silent contempt for us'? Such is the fate of the virtuous; as for the rest of us, what a host of other good reasons there are to make not a few of our friends glad to be rid of us! Think of this when you come to die; it will ease your passing to reflect, 'I am leaving a world in which the very companions I have so toiled for, prayed for and thought for, themselves wish me gone, and hope to win some relief thereby; then how can any man cling to a lengthening of his days therein?' Yet do not on that account leave with any diminished kindness for them; maintain your own accustomed friendliness, good-will, and charity; and do not feel the departure to be a wrench, but let your leave-taking be like those painless deaths in which the soul glides easily forth from the body. Before, Nature had joined you to these men and made you one with them; now she looses the tie. I am loosed, then, as from my own kinsfolk; yet all unresisting, and all unforced; it is simply one more of Nature's ways. 37. At every action, no matter by whom performed, make it a practice to ask yourself, 'What is his object in doing this?' But begin with yourself; put this question to yourself first of all. 38. Remember, it is the secret force hidden deep within us that manipulates our strings; there lies the voice of persuasion, there the very life, there, we might even say, is the man himself. Never confuse it in your imagination with its surrounding case of flesh, or the organs adhering thereto, which save that they grow upon the body, are as much mere instruments as the carpenter's axe. Without the agency that prompts or restrains their motions, the parts themselves are of no more service than her shuttle to the weaver, his pen to the writer, or his whip to the wagoner. _______________ Notes: 1. A generic name for the tribesmen of the Danubian regions, with whom Marcus and his legions waged an almost continual warfare. 2. Euripides, Frag. 890. 3. Theaetetus, 174 D 4. The Greek word for law (nomos) was supposed to be derived from a verb meaning to allot (nemein). 5. Homer, Iliad, vi, 147.
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