BOOK FIVE

  IN THE morning when thou risest unwillingly, let this thought be

present- I am rising to the work of a human being. Why then am I

dissatisfied if I am going to do the things for which I exist and for

which I was brought into the world? Or have I been made for this, to

lie in the bed-clothes and keep myself warm?- But this is more

pleasant.- Dost thou exist then to take thy pleasure, and not at all

for action or exertion? Dost thou not see the little plants, the

little birds, the ants, the spiders, the bees working together to put

in order their several parts of the universe? And art thou unwilling

to do the work of a human being, and dost thou not make haste to do

that which is according to thy nature?- But it is necessary to take

rest also.- It is necessary: however nature has fixed bounds to this

too: she has fixed bounds both to eating and drinking, and yet thou

goest beyond these bounds, beyond what is sufficient; yet in thy acts

it is not so, but thou stoppest short of what thou canst do. So thou

lovest not thyself, for if thou didst, thou wouldst love thy nature

and her will. But those who love their several arts exhaust themselves

in working at them unwashed and without food; but thou valuest thy own

own nature less than the turner values the turning art, or the dancer

the dancing art, or the lover of money values his money, or the

vainglorious man his little glory. And such men, when they have a

violent affection to a thing, choose neither to eat nor to sleep

rather than to perfect the things which they care for. But are the

acts which concern society more vile in thy eyes and less worthy of

thy labour?

  How easy it is to repel and to wipe away every impression which is

troublesome or unsuitable, and immediately to be in all tranquility.

  Judge every word and deed which are according to nature to be fit

for thee; and be not diverted by the blame which follows from any

people nor by their words, but if a thing is good to be done or

said, do not consider it unworthy of thee. For those persons have

their peculiar leading principle and follow their peculiar movement;

which things do not thou regard, but go straight on, following thy own

nature and the common nature; and the way of both is one.

  I go through the things which happen according to nature until I

shall fall and rest, breathing out my breath into that element out

of which I daily draw it in, and falling upon that earth out of

which my father collected the seed, and my mother the blood, and my

nurse the milk; out of which during so many years I have been supplied

with food and drink; which bears me when I tread on it and abuse it

for so many purposes.

  Thou sayest, Men cannot admire the sharpness of thy wits.- Be it

so: but there are many other things of which thou canst not say, I

am not formed for them by nature. Show those qualities then which

are altogether in thy power, sincerity, gravity, endurance of

labour, aversion to pleasure, contentment with thy portion and with

few things, benevolence, frankness, no love of superfluity, freedom

from trifling magnanimity. Dost thou not see how many qualities thou

art immediately able to exhibit, in which there is no excuse of

natural incapacity and unfitness, and yet thou still remainest

voluntarily below the mark? Or art thou compelled through being

defectively furnished by nature to murmur, and to be stingy, and to

flatter, and to find fault with thy poor body, and to try to please

men, and to make great display, and to be so restless in thy mind? No,

by the gods: but thou mightest have been delivered from these things

long ago. Only if in truth thou canst be charged with being rather

slow and dull of comprehension, thou must exert thyself about this

also, not neglecting it nor yet taking pleasure in thy dulness.

  One man, when he has done a service to another, is ready to set it

down to his account as a favour conferred. Another is not ready to

do this, but still in his own mind he thinks of the man as his debtor,

and he knows what he has done. A third in a manner does not even

know what he has done, but he is like a vine which has produced

grapes, and seeks for nothing more after it has once produced its

proper fruit. As a horse when he has run, a dog when he has tracked

the game, a bee when it has made the honey, so a man when he has done

a good act, does not call out for others to come and see, but he goes

on to another act, as a vine goes on to produce again the grapes in

season.- Must a man then be one of these, who in a manner act thus

without observing it?- Yes.- But this very thing is necessary,

the observation of what a man is doing: for, it may be said, it is

characteristic of the social animal to perceive that he is working

in a social manner, and indeed to wish that his social partner also

should perceive it.- It is true what thou sayest, but thou dost not

rightly understand what is now said: and for this reason thou wilt

become one of those of whom I spoke before, for even they are misled

by a certain show of reason. But if thou wilt choose to understand the

meaning of what is said, do not fear that for this reason thou wilt

omit any social act.

  A prayer of the Athenians: Rain, rain, O dear Zeus, down on the

ploughed fields of the Athenians and on the plains.- In truth we

ought not to pray at all, or we ought to pray in this simple and noble

fashion.

  Just as we must understand when it is said, That Aesculapius

prescribed to this man horse-exercise, or bathing in cold water or

going without shoes; so we must understand it when it is said, That

the nature of the universe prescribed to this man disease or

mutilation or loss or anything else of the kind. For in the first case

Prescribed means something like this: he prescribed this for this

man as a thing adapted to procure health; and in the second case it

means: That which happens to (or, suits) every man is fixed in a

manner for him suitably to his destiny. For this is what we mean

when we say that things are suitable to us, as the workmen say of

squared stones in walls or the pyramids, that they are suitable,

when they fit them to one another in some kind of connexion. For there

is altogether one fitness, harmony. And as the universe is made up out

of all bodies to be such a body as it is, so out of all existing

causes necessity (destiny) is made up to be such a cause as it is. And

even those who are completely ignorant understand what I mean, for

they say, It (necessity, destiny) brought this to such a

person.- This then was brought and this was precribed to him. Let us

then receive these things, as well as those which Aesculapius

prescribes. Many as a matter of course even among his prescriptions

are disagreeable, but we accept them in the hope of health. Let the

perfecting and accomplishment of the things, which the common nature

judges to be good, be judged by thee to be of the same kind as thy

health. And so accept everything which happens, even if it seem

disagreeable, because it leads to this, to the health of the

universe and to the prosperity and felicity of Zeus (the universe).

For he would not have brought on any man what he has brought, if it

were not useful for the whole. Neither does the nature of anything,

whatever it may be, cause anything which is not suitable to that which

is directed by it. For two reasons then it is right to be content with

that which happens to thee; the one, because it was done for thee

and prescribed for thee, and in a manner had reference to thee,

originally from the most ancient causes spun with thy destiny; and the

other, because even that which comes severally to every man is to

the power which administers the universe a cause of felicity and

perfection, nay even of its very continuance. For the integrity of the

whole is mutilated, if thou cuttest off anything whatever from the

conjunction and the continuity either of the parts or of the causes.

And thou dost cut off, as far as it is in thy power, when thou art

dissatisfied, and in a manner triest to put anything out of the way.

  Be not disgusted, nor discouraged, nor dissatisfied, if thou dost

not succeed in doing everything according to right principles; but

when thou bast failed, return back again, and be content if the

greater part of what thou doest is consistent with man's nature, and

love this to which thou returnest; and do not return to philosophy

as if she were a master, but act like those who have sore eyes and

apply a bit of sponge and egg, or as another applies a plaster, or

drenching with water. For thus thou wilt not fail to obey reason,

and thou wilt repose in it. And remember that philosophy requires only

the things which thy nature requires; but thou wouldst have

something else which is not according to nature.- It may be objected,

Why what is more agreeable than this which I am doing?- But is not

this the very reason why pleasure deceives us? And consider if

magnanimity, freedom, simplicity, equanimity, piety, are not more

agreeable. For what is more agreeable than wisdom itself, when thou

thinkest of the security and the happy course of all things which

depend on the faculty of understanding and knowledge?

  Things are in such a kind of envelopment that they have seemed to

philosophers, not a few nor those common philosophers, altogether

unintelligible; nay even to the Stoics themselves they seem difficult

to understand. And all our assent is changeable; for where is the man

who never changes? Carry thy thoughts then to the objects themselves,

and consider how short-lived they are and worthless, and that they

may be in the possession of a filthy wretch or a whore or a robber.

Then turn to the morals of those who live with thee, and it is hardly

possible to endure even the most agreeable of them, to say nothing of

a man being hardly able to endure himself. In such darkness then and

dirt and in so constant a flux both of substance and of time, and of

motion and of things moved, what there is worth being highly prized

or even an object of serious pursuit, I cannot imagine. But on the

contrary it is a man's duty to comfort himself, and to wait for the

   natural dissolution and not to be vexed at the delay, but to rest in

these principles only: the one, that nothing will happen to me which

is not conformable to the nature of the universe; and the other, that

it is in my power never to act contrary to my god and daemon: for

there is no man who will compel me to this.

  About what am I now employing my own soul? On every occasion I

must ask myself this question, and inquire, what have I now in this

part of me which they call the ruling principle? And whose soul have I

now? That of a child, or of a young man, or of a feeble woman, or of a

tyrant, or of a domestic animal, or of a wild beast?

  What kind of things those are which appear good to the many, we

may learn even from this. For if any man should conceive certain

things as being really good, such as prudence, temperance, justice,

fortitude, he would not after having first conceived these endure to

listen to anything which should not be in harmony with what is

really good. But if a man has first conceived as good the things which

appear to the many to be good, he will listen and readily receive as

very applicable that which was said by the comic writer. Thus even the

many perceive the difference. For were it not so, this saying would

not offend and would not be rejected in the first case, while we

receive it when it is said of wealth, and of the means which further

luxury and fame, as said fitly and wittily. Go on then and ask if we

should value and think those things to be good, to which after their

first conception in the mind the words of the comic writer might be

aptly applied- that he who has them, through pure abundance has not a

place to ease himself in.

  I am composed of the formal and the material; and neither of them

will perish into non-existence, as neither of them came into existence

out of non-existence. Every part of me then will be reduced by

change into some part of the universe, and that again will change into

another part of the universe, and so on for ever. And by consequence

of such a change I too exist, and those who begot me, and so on for

ever in the other direction. For nothing hinders us from saying so,

even if the universe is administered according to definite periods

of revolution.

  Reason and the reasoning art (philosophy) are powers which are

sufficient for themselves and for their own works. They move then from

a first principle which is their own, and they make their way to the

end which is proposed to them; and this is the reason why such acts

are named catorthoseis or right acts, which word signifies that they

proceed by the right road.

  None of these things ought to be called a man's, which do not belong

to a man, as man. They are not required of a man, nor does man's

nature promise them, nor are they the means of man's nature

attaining its end. Neither then does the end of man lie in these

things, nor yet that which aids to the accomplishment of this end, and

that which aids towards this end is that which is good. Besides, if

any of these things did belong to man, it would not be right for a man

to despise them and to set himself against them; nor would a man be

worthy of praise who showed that he did not want these things, nor

would he who stinted himself in any of them be good, if indeed these

things were good. But now the more of these things a man deprives

himself of, or of other things like them, or even when he is

deprived of any of them, the more patiently he endures the loss,

just in the same degree he is a better man.

  Such as are thy habitual thoughts, such also will be the character

of thy mind; for the soul is dyed by the thoughts. Dye it then with

a continuous series of such thoughts as these: for instance, that

where a man can live, there he can also live well. But he must live in

a palace;- well then, he can also live well in a palace. And again,

consider that for whatever purpose each thing has been constituted,

for this it has been constituted, and towards this it is carried;

and its end is in that towards which it is carried; and where the

end is, there also is the advantage and the good of each thing. Now

the good for the reasonable animal is society; for that we are made

for society has been shown above. Is it not plain that the inferior

exist for the sake of the superior? But the things which have life are

superior to those which have not life, and of those which have life

the superior are those which have reason.

  To seek what is impossible is madness: and it is impossible that the

bad should not do something of this kind.

  Nothing happens to any man which he is not formed by nature to bear.

The same things happen to another, and either because he does not

see that they have happened or because he would show a great spirit he

is firm and remains unharmed. It is a shame then that ignorance and

conceit should be stronger than wisdom.

  Things themselves touch not the soul, not in the least degree; nor

have they admission to the soul, nor can they turn or move the soul:

but the soul turns and moves itself alone, and whatever judgements

it may think proper to make, such it makes for itself the things which

present themselves to it.

  In one respect man is the nearest thing to me, so far as I must do

good to men and endure them. But so far as some men make themselves

obstacles to my proper acts, man becomes to me one of the things which

are indifferent, no less than the sun or wind or a wild beast. Now

it is true that these may impede my action, but they are no

impediments to my affects and disposition, which have the power of

acting conditionally and changing: for the mind converts and changes

every hindrance to its activity into an aid; and so that which is a

hindrance is made a furtherance to an act; and that which is an

obstacle on the road helps us on this road.

  Reverence that which is best in the universe; and this is that which

makes use of all things and directs all things. And in like manner

also reverence that which is best in thyself; and this is of the

same kind as that. For in thyself also, that which makes use of

everything else, is this, and thy life is directed by this.

  That which does no harm to the state, does no harm to the citizen.

In the case of every appearance of harm apply this rule: if the

state is not harmed by this, neither am I harmed. But if the state

is harmed, thou must not be angry with him who does harm to the state.

Show him where his error is.

  Often think of the rapidity with which things pass by and disappear,

both the things which are and the things which are produced. For

substance is like a river in a continual flow, and the activities of

things are in constant change, and the causes work in infinite

varieties; and there is hardly anything which stands still. And

consider this which is near to thee, this boundless abyss of the

past and of the future in which all things disappear. How then is he

not a fool who is puffed up with such things or plagued about them and

makes himself miserable? for they vex him only for a time, and a short

time.

  Think of the universal substance, of which thou hast a very small

portion; and of universal time, of which a short and indivisible

interval has been assigned to thee; and of that which is fixed by

destiny, and how small a part of it thou art.

  Does another do me wrong? Let him look to it. He has his own

disposition, his own activity. I now have what the universal nature

wills me to have; and I do what my nature now wills me to do.

  Let the part of thy soul which leads and governs be undisturbed by

the movements in the flesh, whether of pleasure or of pain; and let it

not unite with them, but let it circumscribe itself and limit those

affects to their parts. But when these affects rise up to the mind

by virtue of that other sympathy that naturally exists in a body which

is all one, then thou must not strive to resist the sensation, for

it is natural: but let not the ruling part of itself add to the

sensation the opinion that it is either good or bad.

  Live with the gods. And he does live with the gods who constantly

shows to them, his own soul is satisfied with that which is assigned

to him, and that it does all that the daemon wishes, which Zeus hath

given to every man for his guardian and guide, a portion of himself.

And this is every man's understanding and reason.

  Art thou angry with him whose armpits stink? Art thou angry with him

whose mouth smells foul? What good will this danger do thee? He has

such a mouth, he has such arm-pits: it is necessary that such an

emanation must come from such things- but the man has reason, it will

be said, and he is able, if he takes pain, to discover wherein he

offends- I wish thee well of thy discovery. Well then, and thou hast

reason: by thy rational faculty stir up his rational faculty; show him

his error, admonish him. For if he listens, thou wilt cure him, and

there is no need of anger. Neither tragic actor nor whore...

  As thou intendest to live when thou art gone out,...so it is in

thy power to live here. But if men do not permit thee, then get away

out of life, yet so as if thou wert suffering no harm. The house is

smoky, and I quit it. Why dost thou think that this is any trouble?

But so long as nothing of the kind drives me out, I remain, am free,

and no man shall hinder me from doing what I choose; and I choose to

do what is according to the nature of the rational and social animal.

  The intelligence of the universe is social. Accordingly it has

made the inferior things for the sake of the superior, and it has

fitted the superior to one another. Thou seest how it has

subordinated, co-ordinated and assigned to everything its proper

portion, and has brought together into concord with one another the

things which are the best.

  How hast thou behaved hitherto to the gods, thy parents, brethren,

children, teachers, to those who looked after thy infancy, to thy

friends, kinsfolk, to thy slaves? Consider if thou hast hitherto

behaved to all in such a way that this may be said of thee:

    Never has wronged a man in deed or word.

And call to recollection both how many things thou hast passed

through, and how many things thou hast been able to endure: and that

the history of thy life is now complete and thy service is ended:

and how many beautiful things thou hast seen: and how many pleasures

and pains thou hast despised; and how many things called honourable

thou hast spurned; and to how many ill-minded folks thou hast shown

a kind disposition.

  Why do unskilled and ignorant souls disturb him who has skill and

knowledge? What soul then has skill and knowledge? That which knows

beginning and end, and knows the reason which pervades all substance

and through all time by fixed periods (revolutions) administers the

universe.

  Soon, very soon, thou wilt be ashes, or a skeleton, and either a

name or not even a name; but name is sound and echo. And the things

which are much valued in life are empty and rotten and trifling, and

like little dogs biting one another, and little children

quarrelling, laughing, and then straightway weeping. But fidelity

and modesty and justice and truth are fled

    Up to Olympus from the wide-spread earth.

What then is there which still detains thee here? If the objects of

sense are easily changed and never stand still, and the organs of

perception are dull and easily receive false impressions; and the poor

soul itself is an exhalation from blood. But to have good repute

amidst such a world as this is an empty thing. Why then dost thou

not wait in tranquility for thy end, whether it is extinction or

removal to another state? And until that time comes, what is

sufficient? Why, what else than to venerate the gods and bless them,

and to do good to men, and to practise tolerance and self-restraint;

but as to everything which is beyond the limits of the poor flesh

and breath, to remember that this is neither thine nor in thy power.

  Thou canst pass thy life in an equable flow of happiness, if thou

canst go by the right way, and think and act in the right way. These

two things are common both to the soul of God and to the soul of

man, and to the soul of every rational being, not to be hindered by

another; and to hold good to consist in the disposition to justice and

the practice of it, and in this to let thy desire find its

termination.

  If this is neither my own badness, nor an effect of my own

badness, and the common weal is not injured, why am I troubled about

it? And what is the harm to the common weal?

  Do not be carried along inconsiderately by the appearance of things,

but give help to all according to thy ability and their fitness; and

if they should have sustained loss in matters which are indifferent,

do not imagine this to be a damage. For it is a bad habit. But as

the old man, when he went away, asked back his foster-child's top,

remembering that it was a top, so do thou in this case also.

  When thou art calling out on the Rostra, hast thou forgotten, man,

what these things are?- Yes; but they are objects of great concern to

these people- wilt thou too then be made a fool for these things?- I

was once a fortunate man, but I lost it, I know not how.- But

fortunate means that a man has assigned to himself a good fortune:

and a good fortune is good disposition of the soul, good emotions,

good actions.