Book IV

1. When the mind acts up to Nature, she is rightly disposed, and takes things as they come, and tacks about with her circumstances; as for fixing the condition of her activity, she is not at all solicitous about that. It is true, she is not perfectly indifferent; she moves forward with a preference in her choice; but if anything comes cross, she falls to work upon it, and like fire converts it into fuel; for like this element, when it is weak, it is easily put out, but when once well kindled it seizes upon what is heaped upon it, subdues it into its own nature, and increases by resistance.

2. Let every action tend to some point, and be perfect in its kind.

3. It is the custom of people to go to unfrequented places and country places and the sea-shore and the mountains for retirement; and this you often earnestly desired. But, after all, this is but a vulgar fancy, for it is in your power to withdraw into yourself whenever you desire. Now one's own mind is a place the most free from crowd and noise in the world, if a man's thoughts are such as to ensure him perfect tranquillity within, and this tranquillity consists in the good ordering of the mind. Your way is, therefore, to make frequent use of this retirement, and refresh your virtue in it. And to this end, be always provided with a few short, uncontested notions, to keep your understanding true, and send you back content with the business to which you return. For instance: What is it that troubles you? It is the wickedness of the world. If this be your case, out with your antidote, and consider that rational beings were made for mutual advantage, that forbearance is one part of justice, and that people misbehave themselves against their will. Consider, likewise, how many men have embroiled themselves, and spent their days in disputes, suspicion, and animosities; and now they are dead, and burnt to ashes. Be quiet, then, and disturb yourself no more. But, it may be, the distribution of the world does not please you. Recall the alternative, and argue thus: either Providence or atoms rule the universe. Besides, you may recall the proofs that the world is, as it were, one great city and corporation. But possibly the ill state of your health afflicts you. Pray reflect, your intellect is not affected by the roughness or smoothness of the currents of sensation, if she will retire and take a view of her own privilege and power. And when she has done this, recollect the philosophy about pleasure and pain, to which you have even now listened and assented. Well! it may be the concern of fame sits hard upon you. If you are pinched here, consider how quickly all things vanish, and are forgotten—what an immense chaos there stands on either side of eternity. Applause! consider the emptiness of the sound, the precarious tenure, the little judgment of those that give it us, and the narrow compass it is confined to; for the whole globe is but a point; and of this little, how small is your habitation, and how insignificant the number and quality of your admirers. Upon the whole, do not forget to retire into the little realm of your own. And, above all things, let there be no straining nor struggling in the case, but move freely, and contemplate matters like a human being, a citizen, and a mortal. And among the rest of your stock, let these two maxims be always ready: first, that things cannot disturb the soul, but remain motionless without, while disturbance springs from the opinion within the soul. The second is, to consider that the scene is just shifting and sliding off into nothing; and that you yourself have seen abundance of great alterations. In a word, the world is all transformation, and life is opinion.

4. If the faculty of understanding lies in common amongst us all, then reason, the cause of it, must be common too; and that other reason too which governs practice by commands and prohibitions. From whence we may conclude, that mankind are under one common law; and if so, they must be fellow-citizens, and belong to some body politic. From whence it will follow, that the whole world is but one commonwealth; for certainly there is no other society in which mankind can be incorporated. Now this common fund of understanding, reason, and law is a commodity of this same country, or which way do mortals light on it? For as the four distinctions in my body belong to some general head and species of matter; for instance, the earthy part in me comes from the division of earth; the watery belongs to another element; the airy particles flow from a third spring, and those of fire from one distinct from all the former (for nothing can no more produce something, than something can sink into nothing); thus it is evident that our understanding must proceed from some source or other.

5. Death and generation are both mysteries of nature, and somewhat resemble each other; for the first does but dissolve those elements the latter had combined. Now there is nothing that a man need be ashamed of in all this; nothing that is opposed to his nature as a rational being, and to the design of his constitution.

6. Practices and dispositions are generally of a piece; such usage from such sort of men is in a manner necessary. To be surprised at it, is in effect to wonder that the fig-tree yields juice. Pray consider that both you and your enemy are dropping off, and that ere long your very memories will be extinguished.

7. Do not suppose you are hurt, and your complaint ceases. Cease your complaint, and you are not hurt.

8. That which does not make a man worse, does not make his life worse; and by consequence he has no harm either within or without.

9. The nature of the general good was obliged to act in this manner.

10. Take notice that all events turn out justly, and that if you observe nicely, you will not only perceive a connection between causes and effects, but a sovereign distribution of justice, which presides in the administration, and gives everything its due. Observe, then, as you have begun, and let all your actions answer the character of a good man—I mean a good man in the strictness and notion of philosophy.

11. If a man affronts you, do not accept his opinion or think just as he would have you do. No, look upon things as reality presents them.

12. Be always provided with principles for these two purposes:—First, To engage in nothing but what reason dictates, what the sovereign and legislative part of you shall suggest, for the interest of mankind. Secondly, To be disposed to quit your opinion, and alter your measures, when a friend shall give you good grounds for so doing. But then the reasons of changing your mind ought to be drawn from some consideration regarding justice and public good, or some such generous motive, and not because it pleases your fancy, or promotes your reputation.

13. Have you any sense in your head? Yes. Why do you not make use of it then? For if this faculty does but do its part, I cannot see what more you need wish for.

14. At present your nature is distinct; but ere long you will vanish into the whole. Or, rather, you will be returned into that universal reason which gave you your being.

15. When frankincense is thrown upon the altar, one grain usually falls before another; but it makes no difference.

16. Do but return to the principles of wisdom, and those who take you now for a monkey or a wild beast, will make a god of you in a week's time.

17. Do not act as if you had ten thousand years to throw away. Death stands at your elbow. Be good for something, while you live and it is in your power.

18. What a great deal of time and ease that man gains who lets his neighbour's words, thoughts, and behaviour alone, confines his inspections to himself, and takes care that his own actions are honest and righteous. "Truly," as Agathon observes, "we should not wander thus, but run straight to the goal without rambling and impertinence."

19. He that is so very solicitous about being talked of when he is dead, and makes his memory his inclination, does not consider that all who knew him will quickly be gone. That his fame will grow less in the next generation, and flag upon the course; and handed from one to another by men who eagerly desire it themselves, and are quenched themselves, it will be quenched at last; but granting your memory and your men immortal, what is their panegyric to you? I do not say, when you are dead, but if you were living, what would commendation signify, unless for some reason of utility? To conclude; if you depend thus servilely upon the good word of other people, you will be unworthy of your nature.

20. Whatever is good has that quality from itself; it is finished by its own nature, and commendation is no part of it. Why, then, a thing is neither better nor worse for being praised. This holds concerning things which are called good in the common way of speaking, as the products of nature and art; what do you think, then, of that which deserves this character in the strictest propriety? It wants nothing foreign to complete the idea any more than law, truth, good nature, and sobriety. Do any of these virtues stand in need of a good word, or are they the worse for a bad one? I hope an emerald will shine nevertheless for a man's being silent about the worth of it. Neither is there any necessity of praising gold, ivory, purple, a lyre, a dagger, a little flower, or a shrub.

21. If human souls have a being after death, which way has the air made room for them from all eternity? Pray, how has the earth been capacious enough to receive all the bodies buried in it? The resolution of this latter question will satisfy the former. For as a corpse after some continuance by change and dissolution makes way for another, so when a man dies, and the spirit is let loose into the air, it holds out for some time, after which it is changed, diffused, and kindled in flame, or else absorbed into the generative principle of the universe. And thus they make room for succession. And this may serve for an answer upon the supposition of the soul's surviving the body. Besides, we are not only to consider the vast number of bodies disposed of in the manner above mentioned; but what an infinite number are every day devoured by mankind, and other living creatures, and as it were buried in their bodies. And yet by the transmutation of the food into blood, or into fire and air, there is space enough. And now which way can a man investigate the truth? Why, in order to this, he must divide the thing in question into the causal and material elements.

22. Do not run riot; keep your intentions honest, and your convictions sure.

23. Whatever is agreeable to you, O Universe, is so to me too. Nothing is early or late for me that is seasonable for you. Everything is fruit for me which your seasons bring, oh Nature. From you all things proceed, subsist in you, and return to you. And if the poet said, "Dear City of Cecrops," may we not also say, "Dear City of God"?

24. "If you would live at your ease," says Democritus, "manage but a few things." I think it had been better if he had said, "Do nothing but what is necessary; and what becomes the reason of a social being, and in the order too it prescribes it." For by this rule a man has the double pleasure of making his actions good and few into the bargain. For the greater part of what we say and do, being unnecessary, if this were but once retrenched, we should have both more leisure and less disturbance. And therefore before a man sets forward he should ask himself this question, "Am I not upon the verge of something unnecessary?" Farther, we should apply this hint to what we think, as well as to what we do. For imperfection of thought draws unnecessary action after it.

25. Make an experiment upon yourself, and examine your proficiency in a life of virtue. Try how you can acquiesce in your fate, and whether your own honesty and good nature will content you.

26. Have you seen this side? Pray view the other too. Never be disturbed, but let your purpose be single. Is any man guilty of a fault? It is to himself then. Has any advantage happened to you? It is the bounty of fate. It was all of it preordained you by the universal cause, and woven in your destiny from the beginning. On the whole, life is but short, therefore be just and prudent, and make the most of it. And when you divert yourself, be always upon your guard.

27. The world is either the effect of contrivance or chance; if the latter, it is a world for all that, that is to say, it is a regular and beautiful structure. Now can any man discover symmetry in his own shape, and yet take the universe for a heap of disorder? I say the universe, in which the very discord and confusion of the elements settles into harmony and order.

28. A black character, an effeminate character, an obstinate character, brutish, savage, childish, silly, false, scurrilous, mercenary, tyrannical.

29. Not to know what is in the world, and not to know what is done in the world, comes much to the same thing, and a man is one way no less a stranger than the other. He is no better than a deserter that flies from public law. He is a blind man that shuts the eyes of his understanding; and he is a beggar that is not furnished at home, but wants the assistance. of another. He that frets himself because things do not happen just as he would have them, and secedes and separates himself from the law of universal nature, is but a sort of an ulcer of the world, never considering that the same cause which produced the displeasing accident made him too. And lastly, he that is selfish, and cuts off his own soul from the universal soul of all rational beings, is a kind of voluntary outlaw.

30. This philosopher has never a tunic to his coat, the other never a book to read, and a third is half naked, and yet they are none of them discouraged. One learned man says, "I have no bread, yet I abide by reason." Another, "I have no profit of my learning, yet I too abide by reason."

31. Be satisfied with your business, and learn to love what you were bred to; and as to the remainder of your life, be entirely resigned, and let the gods do their pleasure with your body and your soul. And when this is done, be neither slave nor tyrant to anybody.

32. To begin somewhere, consider how the world went in Vespasian's time; consider this, I say, and you will find mankind just at the same pass they are now: some marrying and some concerned in education, some sick and some dying, some fighting and some feasting, some drudging at the plough and some upon the exchange; some too affable and some overgrown with conceit; one full of jealousy and the other of knavery. Here you might find a group wishing for the lealth of their friends, and there a seditious club complaining of the times. Some were lovers and some misers, some grasped at the consulship and some at the sceptre. Well! all is over with that generation long since. Come forward then to the reign of Trajan. Now here you will find the same thing, but they are all gone too. Go on with the contemplation, and carry it to other times and countries, and here you will see abundance of people very busy with their projects, who are quickly resolved into their elements. More particularly recollect those within your own memory, who have been hurried on in these vain pursuits; how they have overlooked the dignity of their nature, and neglected to hold fast to that, and be satisfied with it. And here you must remember to proportion your concern to the weight and importance of each action. Thus, if you refrain from trifling, you may part with amusements without regret.

33. Those words which were formerly current are now become obsolete. Alas! this is not all; fame tarnishes in time too, and men grow out of fashion as well as language. Those celebrated names of Camillus, Cæso, Volesus, and Leonnatus are antiquated. Those of Scipio, Cato, and Augustus will soon have the same fortune, and those of Hadrian and Antoninus must follow. All these things are transitory, and quickly become as a tale that is told, and are swallowed up in oblivion. I speak this of those who have been the wonder of their age and who shone with unusual lustre. But as for the rest, they are no sooner dead than forgotten. And after all, what does fame everlasting mean? Mere vanity. What then is it that is worth one's while to be concerned for? Why nothing but this: to bear an honest mind, to act for the good of society, to deceive nobody, to welcome everything that happens as necessary and familiar, and flowing from a like source.

34. Put yourself frankly into the hands of fate, and let her spin you out what fortune she pleases.

35. He that does a memorable action, and those that report it, are all but short-lived things.

36. Accustom yourself to consider that whatever is produced, is produced by alteration; that nature loves nothing so much as changing existing things, and producing new ones like them. For that which exists at present is, as it were, the seed of what shall spring from it. But if you take seed in the common notion, and confine it to the field or the womb, you have a dull fancy.

37. You are just taking leave of the world, and yet you have not done with unnecessary desires. Are you not yet above disturbance and suspicion, and fully convinced that nothing without can hurt you? You have not yet learned to be friends with everybody, and that to be an honest man is the only way to be a wise one.

38. To understand the true quality of people, you must look into their minds, and examine their pursuits and aversions.

39. Your pain cannot originate in another man's mind, nor in any change or transformation of your corporeal covering. Where then does it lie? Why, in that part of you that forms judgments about things evil. Do not imagine you are hurt, and you are impregnable. Suppose then your flesh was hacked, burnt, putrified, or mortified, yet let that part that judges keep quiet; that is, do not conclude that what is common to good or ill men can be good or evil in itself. For that which may be everybody's lot, must in its own nature be indifferent.

40. You ought frequently to consider that the world is an animal, consisting of one soul and body, that an universal sense runs through the whole mass of matter. You should likewise reflect how nature acts by a joint effort, and how everything contributes to the being of everything: and lastly, what connection and subordination there is between causes and effects.

41. Epictetus will tell you that you are a living soul, that drags a corpse about with her.

42. Things that subsist upon change, and owe their being to instability, can neither be considerably good nor bad.

43. Time is like a rapid river, and a rushing torrent of all that comes and passes. A thing is no sooner well come, but it is past; and then another is borne after it, and this too will be carried away.

44. Whatever happens is as common and well known as a rose in the spring, or an apple in autumn. Of this kind are diseases and death, calumny and trickery, and every other thing which raises and depresses the spirits of unthinking people.

45. Antecedents and consequents are dexterously tied together in the world. Things are not carelessly thrown on a heap, and joined more by number than nature, but, as it were, rationally connected with each other. And as the things that exist are harmoniously connected, so those that become exhibit no mere succession, but an harmonious relationship.

46. Do not forget the saying of Heraclitus, "That the earth dies into water, water into air, air into fire, and so backward." Remember likewise the story of the man that travelled on without knowing to what place the way would bring him; and that many people quarrel with that reason that governs the world, and with which they are daily conversant, and seem perfectly unacquainted with those things which occur daily. Farther, we must not nod over business—for even in sleep we seem to act,—neither are we to be wholly governed by tradition; for that is like children, who believe anything their parents tell them.

47. Put the case, some god should acquaint you you were to die to-morrow, or next day at farthest. Under this warning, you would be a very poor wretch if you should strongly solicit for the longest time. For, alas! how inconsiderable is the difference? In like manner, if you would reason right, you would not be much concerned whether your life was to end to-morrow or a thousand years hence.

48. Consider how many physicians are dead that used to knit their brows over their patients; how many astrologers who thought themselves great men by foretelling the death of others; how many philosophers have gone the way of all flesh, after all their learned disputes about dying and immortality; how many warriors, who had knocked so many men's brains out; how many tyrants, who managed the power of life and death with as much insolence, as if themselves had been immortal; how many cities, if I may say so, have given up the ghost: for instance, Helice in Greece, Pompei and Herculaneum in Italy; not to mention many besides. Do but recollect your acquaintance, and here you will find one man closing another's eyes, then he himself is laid out, and this one by another. And all within a small compass of time. In short, mankind are poor transitory things! They are one day in the rudiments of life, and almost the next turned to mummy or ashes. Your way is therefore to manage this minute in harmony with nature, and part with it cheerfully; and like a ripe olive when you drop, be sure to speak well of the mother that bare you, and make your acknowledgments to the tree that produced you.

49. Stand firm like a rock, against which though the waves batter, yet it stands unmoved, and they fall to rest at last. How unfortunate has this accident made me, cries such an one! Not at all! He should rather say, What a happy mortal am I for being unconcerned upon this occasion! for being neither crushed by the present, nor afraid of what is to come. The thing might have happened to any other man as well as myself; but for all that, everybody would not have been so easy under it. Why then is not the good fortune of the bearing more considerable than the ill fortune of the happening? Or, to speak properly, how can that be a misfortune to a man which does not frustrate his nature? And how can that cross upon a man's nature which is not opposed to the intention and design of it? Now what that intention is, you know. To apply this reasoning: does the present accident hinder your being just, magnanimous, temperate and modest, judicious, truthful, reverent, and unservile? Now, when a man is furnished with these good qualities, his nature has what she would have. Farther, when anything grows troublesome, recollect this maxim: This accident is not a misfortune, but bearing it well turns it to an advantage.

50. To consider those old people that resigned life so unwillingly, is a common yet not unserviceable aid in facing death. For what are these long-lived mortals more than those that went off in their infancy? What has become of Cadicianus, Fabius, Julianus, and Lepidus, and others like them? They buried a great many, but came at last to it themselves. Upon the whole, the difference between long and short life is insignificant, especially if you consider the accidents, the company, and the body you must go through with. Therefore do not let a thought of this kind affect you. Do but look upon the astonishing notion of time and eternity; what an immense deal has run out already, and how infinite it is still in the future. Do but consider this, and you will find three days and three ages of life come much to the same thing.

51. Always go the shortest way to work. Now, the nearest road to your business is the road of nature. Let it be your constant method, then, to be sound in word and in deed, and by this means you need not grow fatigued, you need not quarrel, flourish, and dissemble like other people.

Notes

27. The Greek word for Universe and Order is the same, κόσμος. Thus the "universe," or "universal order," is contrasted with chaos or disorder.
34. Clotho was one of the Fates. They were three sisters—Clotho, the spinning fate; Lachesis, the one who assigns to man his fate; and Atropos, the sister who cut the thread when a man's destiny was accomplished.