Rise to human work

In the morning when you get up unwillingly, keep this thought ready: I am rising to do the work of a human being. Why am I still resentful, if I'm going to do the very things I exist for, the things I was brought into the world to do? Or was I made to lie under the covers and keep myself warm instead?—But this is more pleasant.—So did you come to exist for pleasure, and not for action or effort of any kind? Don't you see the little plants, the little birds, the ants, the spiders, the bees, all doing their part to set the universe in order? And are you unwilling to do the work of a human being? Won't you hurry to do what is according to your nature?—But rest is also necessary.—It is necessary. Yet nature has set limits to that too, just as it has set limits to eating and drinking; and you overstep those limits, going beyond what's enough. But in your actions it's the opposite: there you stop short of what you're capable of. So you don't love yourself—for if you did, you would love your nature and its will. People who love their crafts wear themselves out working at them, unwashed and without food; but you value your own nature less than the metalworker values his craft, or the dancer values dancing, or the money-lover values his money, or the vain man his little glory. And such people, when they're gripped by a passion for something, would rather go without eating or sleeping than fail to perfect what they care about. But are the actions that serve the common good really cheaper in your eyes, less worth your effort?

How easy it is to push away and wipe clean every impression that is troubling or unfitting, and at once to be in complete calm.

Judge every word and deed that accord with nature to be fitting for you, and don't let yourself be turned aside by the blame that follows from other people, or by their talk. But if something is good to do or say, don't consider it beneath you. Those others have their own ruling faculty and follow their own impulse; don't pay attention to that, but go straight on, following your own nature and the common nature—for the path of both is one.

I pass through whatever happens according to nature until I fall and come to rest. I will breathe my breath back into the element from which I draw it each day. I will fall upon the earth from which my father gathered his seed, my mother her blood, and my nurse her milk. For so many years the earth has fed and watered me, borne me as I walk, and endured the many uses—and abuses—I make of it.

You say, People can't admire the sharpness of my wits.—Fine: but there are many other things of which you cannot say, I'm not fitted for these by nature. Show, then, the qualities that are entirely within your power: sincerity, seriousness, endurance of hard work, indifference to pleasure, contentment with your lot and with little, kindness, frankness, freedom from love of excess, freedom from pettiness, greatness of spirit. Don't you see how many qualities you're able to show right now, qualities for which there's no excuse of natural incapacity or unfitness—and yet you still remain voluntarily below the mark? Or are you forced by some defect in your natural equipment to grumble, to be stingy, to flatter, to run down your poor body, to try to please people, to make a great show of yourself, to be so restless in your mind? No, by the gods—you could have been rid of all this long ago. Only, if you really must be charged with being somewhat slow and dull in understanding, you must work at that too, not neglecting it, and certainly not taking pleasure in your dullness.

One man, when he has done another a service, is quick to enter it in his account as a favor he's owed. Another is not so quick to do this, but still, in his own mind, thinks of the man as his debtor and knows well what he's done. A third, in a way, doesn't even know what he's done—he's like a vine that has produced grapes and looks for nothing further once it has borne its proper fruit. As a horse runs, or a dog tracks the game, or a bee makes honey, so a person who has done a good deed doesn't call out for others to come and see, but goes straight on to another act, just as the vine goes on to bear its grapes again in season.—Must a person, then, be one of those who act this way without even noticing it?—Yes.—But this very thing—noticing what one is doing—is it not necessary? For it's characteristic, one might say, of the social animal to perceive that it's acting socially, and even to want its social partner to perceive it too.—What you say is true, but you don't rightly grasp what's being said here; and for that reason you'll turn into one of those I mentioned before, since even they are misled by a certain show of reasoning. But if you're willing to grasp the meaning of what's said, don't be afraid that on this account you'll leave out any social act.

A prayer of the Athenians: Rain, rain, dear Zeus, on the plowed fields of the Athenians and on the plains.—Truly, we ought either not to pray at all, or to pray in just this plain and noble way.

Just as we understand it when we say that Aesculapius prescribed for this man horseback riding, or cold baths, or going barefoot, so we should understand it when we say that the nature of the universe prescribed for this man disease, or mutilation, or loss, or something else of that kind. In the first case, prescribed means something like this: he ordered this for this man as something suited to bring about health; in the second, it means: what happens to each person is fixed for him in a way suited to his destiny. This is what we mean when we say things are suited to us—the way builders speak of squared stones fitted into walls or pyramids as suited, when they join them to one another in some connection. For there is, altogether, one fitness. And just as the universe is made up out of all bodies to be the kind of body it is, so out of all existing causes, necessity is made up to be the kind of cause it is. Even people who understand nothing at all grasp what I mean, for they say, It brought this to him. This, then, was brought to him, and this was prescribed for him. Let us accept these things, then, just as we accept what Aesculapius prescribes. Many of his prescriptions, of course, are unpleasant, but we accept them in hope of health. Let the completion and fulfillment of what the common nature judges good be, in your judgment, of the same kind as your own health. And so accept everything that happens, even if it seems unpleasant, because it leads to this: to the health of the universe and to the prosperity and well-being of Zeus—that is, of the universe. For he would not have brought this on any man if it were not useful to the whole. Nor does the nature of any given thing cause anything that isn't suited to what it directs. For two reasons, then, it's right to be content with what happens to you: first, because it was done for you, prescribed for you, and in a way bore on you, spun from the most ancient causes together with your destiny; and second, because what comes to each person individually is, for the power that administers the universe, a cause of its well-being, its completeness—indeed of its very continuance. For the wholeness of the whole is mutilated if you cut off anything at all from the connection and continuity either of its parts or of its causes. And you do cut off, as far as it's in your power, when you're dissatisfied and try, in effect, to remove something from its place.