The social act

Man and God and the universe all produce fruit; each produces it in its proper season. And if custom has fixed this word especially to the vine and things like it, that means nothing. Reason produces fruit both for all and for itself, and from it are produced other things of the same kind as reason itself.

If you can, correct by teaching those who do wrong; but if you can't, remember that patience was given to you for this very purpose. And the gods, too, are patient with such people; indeed for certain purposes they even help them get health, wealth, reputation—so kind are they. This lies in your power too; or tell me, who is stopping you?

Labor not like a man who is miserable, nor like one who wants to be pitied or admired; instead, direct your will to one thing only: to set yourself in motion and to restrain yourself, as the social reason requires.

Today I got out of all trouble—or rather, I cast out all trouble, for it was not outside me, but within, in my own opinions.

All things are the same: familiar in experience, fleeting in time, worthless in their matter. Everything now is just as it was in the days of those we have buried.

Things stand outside us, each by itself, knowing nothing of themselves and pronouncing no judgment. What, then, judges about them? The ruling faculty.

Not in passivity but in activity lie the evil and the good of the rational, social being—just as his virtue and his vice lie not in passivity but in activity.

For the stone that has been thrown up, it is no evil to fall back down, nor indeed any good to have been thrown up.

Penetrate inward into men's ruling faculties, and you will see what sort of judges you are afraid of, and how they judge themselves.

All things are changing; you yourself are in continuous transformation and, in a way, continuous decay—and so is the whole universe.

It is your duty to leave another man's wrongful act right where it lies.

The ending of activity, the ceasing of movement and opinion, and in a sense their death, is no evil. Turn your thoughts now to your life—your life as a child, as a youth, your manhood, your old age—for in these too every change was a kind of death. Is this anything to fear? Turn your thoughts now to your life under your grandfather, then your life under your mother, then your life under your father; and as you find many other differences and changes and endings, ask yourself: Is this anything to fear? In the same way, then, neither is the ending and ceasing and change of your whole life anything to fear.

Hasten to examine your own ruling faculty, and that of the universe, and that of your neighbor: your own, so that you may make it just; that of the universe, so that you may remember what you are a part of; and that of your neighbor, so that you may know whether he acted in ignorance or with knowledge—and so that you may also bear in mind that his ruling faculty is akin to yours.

Just as you yourself are a component part of a social system, so let every act of yours be a component part of social life. Whatever act of yours, then, has no reference either directly or indirectly to a social end, tears your life apart and keeps it from being whole, and is a kind of mutiny—just as when, in a popular assembly, a man acting on his own stands apart from the general agreement.

Quarrels of little children and their games, and "poor spirits carrying about dead bodies"—such is everything; and so what is displayed in the representations of the mansions of the dead strikes our eyes more vividly.

Examine the quality of the defining form of an object, strip it entirely from its material part, and then contemplate it; then reckon the longest span of time that a thing of this particular form is naturally suited to last.

You have endured endless troubles by not being content with your ruling faculty when it does what it is constituted by nature to do. But enough of this.

When another blames you or hates you, or when men say something injurious about you, go to their poor souls, penetrate within, and see what sort of men they are. You will find there is no need to take any trouble over what opinion these men may hold about you. Still, you must be well disposed toward them, for by nature they are your friends. And the gods, too, aid them in every way—through dreams, through signs—toward the things they set value on.

The periodic movements of the universe are the same, up and down, from age to age. And either the universal intelligence sets itself in motion for each separate effect—and if so, be content with what results from its activity—or it sets itself in motion once, and everything else follows in a kind of sequence; or indivisible elements are the origin of everything. In a word: if there is a god, all is well; and if chance rules, don't you also be ruled by it. Soon the earth will cover us all; then the earth, too, will change; and the things that result from that change will go on changing forever, and those again forever. For whoever reflects on these waves of change and transformation following one another, and their speed, will look down on everything perishable.

The universal cause is like a winter torrent: it sweeps everything along with it. But how worthless are all these poor people busy with political affairs, imagining, as they suppose, that they are playing the philosopher! Utter drivelers. Well then, man: do what nature now requires. Set yourself in motion, if it's in your power, and don't look around to see whether anyone will notice; and don't expect Plato's Republic, but be content if the smallest thing goes well, and count even that no small matter. For who can change men's opinions? And without a change of opinions, what is there but the slavery of men who groan while pretending to obey? Go on, then, tell me about Alexander and Philip and Demetrius of Phalerum. Let them judge for themselves whether they grasped what the common nature required and trained themselves accordingly. But if they were merely playing the tragic hero, no one has sentenced me to imitate them. The work of philosophy is plain and modest. Don't draw me aside into arrogance and pride.

Look down from above on the countless herds of men and their countless ceremonies, and the endlessly varied voyaging through storms and calms, and the differences among those being born, living together, and dying. Consider too the life once lived by others long ago, and the life of those who will live after you, and the life now lived among foreign peoples, and how many don't even know your name, and how many will soon forget it, and how those who perhaps now praise you will very soon blame you—and that neither a name after death, nor reputation, nor anything else, is worth anything.

Let there be freedom from disturbance regarding things that come from an external cause; and let there be justice in what is done by an internal cause—that is, let impulse and action terminate in this: in acts for the common good, for this is in accordance with your nature.

You can remove from your path many useless things that disturb you, since they lie entirely in your own judgment; and you will then win for yourself ample room by embracing the whole universe in your thought, by contemplating the eternity of time, and by observing the swift change in every single thing—how short the span from birth to dissolution, and how vast the time before birth, and equally vast the time after dissolution!