Book 9 - 42-2

And what harm have you suffered? You will find that none of these who excite your anger has done anything capable of affecting your mind for the worse: and its only in your mind that damage or harm can be done to you - they have no other existence.

BOOK 9 - 42

Whenever you are offended at someone at someone's lack of shame, you should immediately ask yourself: 'So is it possible for there to be no shameless people in the world?' It is not possible. Do not then ask for the impossible. This person is just one of the shameless inevitably existing in the world. Have the same thought ready for the rogue, the traitor, every sort of offender. The recognition that this class of people must necessarily exist will immediately make you kinder to them as individuals. Another useful thought of direct application is the particular virtue nature has given us to counter a particular wrong. Gentleness is given as the antidote to cruelty, and other qualities to meet other offenses. In general, you can always re-educate one who lost his way: and anyone who does wrong has missed his proper aim and gone astray.

BOOK 9 -41

Epicurus says: 'In my illness my conversations were not about the sufferings of my poor body, and I did not prattle on to my visitors in this vein, but I continued to discuss the cardinal principles of natural philosophy, with particular reference to this very point, how the mind shares in such disturbances of the flesh while still preserving its calm and pursuing its own good.' He goes on: 'I did not allow the doctors either to preen themselves on any great achievement, but my life continued fine and proper.' An example, then, for you in sickness, if you are sick, and in any other circumstance. All schools agree that you should not abandon philosophy in any eventualities of life, nor join the ignorant chatter of the uneducated layman. Concentrate only on the work of the moment, and the instrument you use for doing it.

BOOK 9 -40-2

But you might say: 'The gods have put these things in my own power.' Is it not better to use your own power in freedom rather than show a servile and supine concern for what you cannot control? And who told you that the gods do not help us even to the ends which lie within your own power ? At any rate, pray abut these things, and you will see. One man prays: 'How can I sleep with that woman?' Your prayer is: 'How can I lose the desire to sleep with her?' Another prays: 'How can I be rid of that man?'  You pray: How can I stop wanting to be rid of him? Another: 'how can I save my little child?' You: 'How can I learn not to fear his loss?' And so on. Give all your prayers this turn, and observe what happens.              

BOOK 9 -40

Either the gods have power or they do not. Now, if they have no power, why pray? If they do have power why not pray for their gift of freedom from all worldly fear, desire, or regret, rather than for the presence or absence of this or that? Certainly, if the gods can cooperate with men, they can cooperate to those ends.

BOOK 9 -39

Either all things flow from our intelligent source and supervene as in one coordinated body, so the part should not complain at what happens in the interest of the whole - or all is atoms, and nothing more than present stew and future dispersal. Why then are you troubled? Say to your directing mind: "Are you dead, are you decayed, have you turned into an animal, are you pretending, are you herding with the rest and sharing their feed?

BOOK 9 -38

If he did wrong, the harm is to himself. But perhaps he did not do wrong.

BOOK 9 -37

Enough of this miserable way of life, enough of grumbling and aping! Why are you troubled? What is new in this? What is it that drives you mad? The cause? Then face it. Or rather the material? Then face that. Apart from cause and material there is nothing. But you should even now, late though it is, see to your relation to the gods also: make yourself simpler, and better. Three years is as good as a hundred in this quest.

BOOK 9 -36

The rotting of the base material of everything. Water, dust, bones, stench. Again: marble is a mere deposit in the earth, gold and silver mere sediments; your clothing is animal hair, your purple is fish blood; and so on with everything else. And the vital spirit is just the same, changing from this to that.

BOOK 9 -35

Loss is nothing more than change. Universal nature delights in change, and all that flows from nature happens for the good. Similar things have happened from time to time everlasting, and there will be more such to eternity. So why do you say that everything has always happened for the bad and always will, that all those gods between them have evidently never found any power to right this, so the world is condemned to the grip of perpetual misery?

BOOK 9 -34

What are the directing minds of these people? What are they set on, what governs their likes and values? Train yourself to look at their souls naked. When they think that their blame will hurt or praise advantage, what conceit that is!

BOOK 9 -33

All that you see will soon perish; those who witness this perishing will soon perish themselves. Die in extreme old age or die before your time - it will all be the same.

BOOK 9 -32

You can strip away many unnecessary troubles which lie wholly in your own judgement. And you will immediately make large and wide room for yourself by grasping the whole universe in your thought, contemplating the eternity of time, and reflecting on the rapid change of each thing in every part - how brief the gap from birth to dissolution, how vast the gulf of time before your birth, and an equal infinity after your dissolution.

BOOK 9 -31

Calm acceptance of what comes from a cause outside yourself, and justice in all activities of your own causation. In other words, impulse and action fulfilled in that social conduct which is an expression of your own nature.

BOOK 9- 30

Take a view from above - Look at the thousands of flocks and herds, the thousands of human ceremonies, every sort of voyage in storm or calm, the range of creation, combination, and extinction. Consider too, the lives once lived by others long before you, the lives that will be lived after you, the lives lived now among foreign tribes; and how many have never even heard your name, how many will very soon forget it, how many may praise you now but quickly turn to blame. Reflect that neither memory nor fame, nor anything else at all, has any importance worth thinking of.

BOOK 9 -29

The universal cause is a torrent, sweeping everything in its stream. So, a man, what does that mean for you? Do what nature requires at this moment. Start straight away, if that is in your power: don't look over your shoulder to see if people will know. Don't hope for Plato's utopian republic, but be content with the smallest step forward, and regard even that result as no mean achievement. How worthless are these men in the public eye who think their actions have anything to do with philosophy! They are full of snot. And who will change their views? Without a change of view what alternative is there to slavery - men groaning and going through the motions of compliance? Go on, then, talk to me now of Alexander and Philip and Demetrius of Phalerum. I shall follow them, if they saw the will of universal nature and took themselves to her school. But if they simply strutted a dramatic role, no one has condemned me to imitate them. The work of philosophy is simple and modest. Do not seduce me to pompous pride.

BOOK 9 -28

The recurrent cycles of the universe are the same, up and down, from eternity to eternity. And either the mind of the whole has a specific impulse for each individual case - if so , you should welcome the result - or it had a single original impulse, from which all else follows in consequence: and why should you be anxious about that? The Whole is either a good - then all is well: or if purposeless - some sort of random arrangement of atoms or molecules - you should not be without purpose yourself.

In a moment the earth will cover us all. Then the earth too will change, and further successive changes to infinity. One reflecting on these waves of change and transformation, and the speed of their flow, will hold all mortal things in contempt.

BOOK 9 -27

When another blames you or hates you, or people voice similar criticisms, go to their souls, penetrate inside and see what sort  of people they are. You will realize that there is no need to be racked with anxiety that they should hold any particular opinion about you. But you should still be kind to them. They are by nature your friends, and the gods too help them in various ways - dreams and divination - at least to the objects of their concern.

BOOK 9- 26

You have endured unnumerable trouble by not leaving your directing mind to do the work it was made for. But enough.

BOOK 9 -25

Go straight to the qualifying cause and examine it separately from the material element. Then establish the maximum time for which this individual thing thus qualified can by its nature subsist.

BOOK 9 -23

Children's tantrums and toys, 'tiny spirits carrying corpses' - the Underworld in the Odyssey strikes more real.

BOOK 9 -23

Just as you are a complimentary part of a social system, so too your every action should compliment a life of social principle. If any action of yours, then, does not have direct or indirect relation to the social end, it pulls your life apart and destroys its unity. It is a kind of sedition, like an individual in a democracy unilaterally resigning from the common harmony.

BOOK 9 -22

Hurry to your own directing mind, to the mind of the Whole, and to the mind of this particular man. To your own mind, to make its understanding just; to the mind of the Whole, to recall what you are part of; to this man's mind, to see whether there is ignorance or design - and at the same time to reflect that his is a kindred spirit.

BOOK 9 -21

The termination of an activity, the pause when an impulse or judgement is finished - this sort is a sort of death, but no harm in it. Turn now to the stages of your life - childhood, say adolescence, prime, old age. Here too each change a death: anything fearful in that? Turn now to your life with your grandfather, then your mother, then with your [adoptive] father. And as you find many other examples of dissolution, change, or termination, ask yourself : 'Was there anything to fear?' So too there is nothing to fear in the termination, the pause, and the change  of your your life.

BOOK 9 -20

You should leave another's wrong where it lies.

BOOK 9 -19

All things are in the process of change. You yourself are subject to constant alteration and gradual decay. So too is the whole universe.

BOOK 9 -18

Penetrate into their directing minds, and you will see what sort of critics you fear - and what poor critics they are of themselves.

BOOK 9 -17

A stone thrown in the air: nothing bad for it on the way down or good for it on the way up.

BOOK 9 -16

Good or ill for the rational social being lies not in feeling but in action: just as also his own virtue or vice shows not in what he feels, but in what he does.

BOOK 9 -15

Mere things stand isolated outside our doors, with no knowledge or report of themselves. What then reports on them? Our directing mind.

BOOK 9 -14

All things are the same: familiar in experience, transient in time, sordid in substance. Everything now is as it was in the days of those we have buried.

BOOK 9 -13

Today I escaped from all bothering circumstances - or rather I threw them out. They were nothing external, but inside me, just my own judgements.

BOOK 9 -12

Work. Don't work as a miserable drudge, or in any expectation of pity or admiration. One aim only: action or inaction as civic cause demands.

BOOK 9 -11

If you can , show them the better way. if you cannot, remember that this is why you have the gift of kindness. The gods too are kind to such people, and in their benevolence even help them achieve some ends - health, wealth, fame. You can do it too. Or tell me -who is stopping you?

BOOK 9 -10

Man, god, and the universe all bear fruit, each in its own due season. No matter if common use confines the strict sense of 'bearing fruit' to vines and the like. Reason too has its fruit, both universal and particular; other things grow from it which share its own nature.

BOOK 9 -9-4

Look then at what is happening right now. Only the intelligent creatures have now forgotten that urge to be unified with each other: only  here will you see no confluence. They may run from it, but nevertheless they are overtaken: such is the power of nature. Look carefully and you see what I mean. You are more likely to find earth not returning to earth than a man cut off from man.

BOOK 9 -9-3

So right from the beginning among the irrational creatures there could be seen hives, flocks,birds rearing their young, a sort of love: already there were animate souls at work there, and in the higher orders an increasingly strong collective bond which is not found in plants or stones or wood. And among the rational creatures there were civic communities, friendships, households, assemblies: and in war treaties  and truces. Among yet higher things there exists a sort of unity even at a distance, as with the stars. Thus the upper reaches of being can effect fellow-feeling even when the members are far apart.

BOOK 9 -9-2

So too everything which shares in a common intelligent nature tends equally, or yet more so, to its own kind. Proportionate to its superiority over the rest, it is that much readier to mix an blend with its family.

BOOK 9 -9

All things which share some common quality tend to their own kind. Everything earthy inclines to earth. Everything watery flows together, and the same with air, so they need physical obstacles to force a separation. Fire rises upwards because of the element fire, but is nevertheless so eager to help the ignition of any fire here below that any material which is a little too dry is easily ignited, for the lack of ingredients which hinder combustion.

BOOK 9 -8

Irrational creatures share in one animate soul, and rational creatures partake in one intelligent soul: just as is one earth for all the things of the earth, and one light to see by, one air to breath for all of us who have sight and life.

BOOK 9 -7

Erase the print of imagination, stop impulse, quench desire: keep your directing mind its own master.

BOOK 9 -6

These will suffice: the present certainty of judgement, the present social action, the present disposition well content with any effect of an external cause.

BOOK 9 -5-6

There can often be wrongs of omission as well commission.

BOOK 9 -5-5

The sinner sins against himself: the wrongdoer wrongs himself, by making himself morally bad.

BOOK 9 -5-4

If you want another criterion - unscientific but emotionally effective - you will find it quite easy to face death if you stop to consider the business you will be leaving and the sort of characters which will no longer contaminate your soul. You must not of course take offense at them, rather care for them and tolerate them kindly: but still remember that the deliverance death brings is not deliverance from the like-minded. This alone, if anything could, might pull you back and hold you to life - if you were allowed to live in the company of people who share your principles. But as things are you see how wearisome it is to live out of tune with your fellows, so that you say: 'Come quickly, death, or I too may forget myself.

BOOK 9 -5-3

Do not despise death: welcome it, rather, as one further part of nature's will. Our very dissolution is just like all the other natural processes which life's seasons bring - like youth and old age, growth and maturity, development  of teeth and beard and grey hair, insemination, pregnancy, and childbirth. In the dedicated attitude to death, then, there is nothing superficial or demanding or disdainful: simply awaiting it as one of the functions of nature. And just as you may now be waiting for the child your wife carries to come out of the womb, so you should look forward to the time when your soul will slip this bodily sheath.

BOOK 9 -5-2

A man of sense and sensitivity would depart the company of men without ever tasting falsehood, pretense of any kind, excess, or pomp. The next best course is at least to sicken of these things before your final breath. Or do you prefer to sit at table with wickedness? Has your experience not yet persuaded you to shun this plague? Because the corruption of the mind is much more a plague than any such contaminating change in the surrounding air we breathe. The latter infects animate creatures in their animate nature: the former infects human beings in their humanity.

BOOK 9 -5

By 'universal Nature treating these things indifferently' I mean that they happen impartially by cause and effect to all that comes into being and owes its being to the fulfillment of an original impulse of Providence. Under this impulse providence set out from a first premise to establish the present order of the universe: she had conceived certain principles of what was to be, and determined generative powers to create substances, transformations, and successive regeneration.

BOOK 9 -4

Further, anyone who fears pain will also at times be afraid of some future event in the world, and that is immediate sin. And a man who pursues pleasure will not hold back from injustice - an obvious sin. Those who wish to follow Nature and share her mind must themselves be indifferent to those pairs of opposites to which universal Nature is indifferent - she would not create these opposites if she were not indifferent either way. So anyone who is not himself indifferent to pain and pleasure, death and life, fame and obscurity - things which universal Nature treats indifferently - is clearly committing a sin.

BOOK 9 -3

Moreover, the pursuit of pleasure as a good and the avoidance of pain as an evil constitute sin. Someone like that must inevitably and frequently blame universal Nature for unfair distribution as between bad men and good, since bad men are often deep in pleasures and the possessions which make  for pleasure, while the good often meet with pain and the circumstances which cause pain.