Nature’s transformations

Mimes, war, terror, numbness, servitude—these will daily erase those sacred principles of yours. How many things do you picture to yourself without studying their nature, and how many do you neglect? Yet it is your duty to look at and do everything in such a way that your capacity to deal with circumstances is perfected at the same time as your contemplative faculty is exercised, and the confidence that comes from knowledge of each particular thing is preserved—without being paraded, yet without being hidden either. For when will you enjoy simplicity, when seriousness, and when the knowledge of each particular thing—what it is in substance, what place it holds in the universe, how long it is formed to exist, what it's made of, to whom it can belong, and who has the power both to give it and to take it away?

A spider is proud when it has caught a fly, and another when he has caught a poor hare, and another when he has netted a small fish, and another when he has taken wild boars, and another when he has taken bears, and another when he has taken Sarmatians. Are these not all robbers, if you examine their principles?

Acquire the contemplative habit of seeing how all things change into one another, and attend to this constantly, and train yourself in this branch of philosophy. For nothing is so well suited to produce greatness of soul. Such a man has put off the body, and knowing that he must, no one knows how soon, depart from among men and leave everything here behind, he gives himself over entirely to acting justly in everything he does, and in all else that happens he surrenders himself to the universal nature. As for what anyone may say or think about him, or do against him, he doesn't give it a thought, content with these two things alone: acting justly in his present action, and being satisfied with what is presently assigned to him. He sets aside all distracting and busy concerns, and wants nothing else than to complete the straight course through the law, and, by completing the straight course, to follow God.

What need is there for suspicious fear, when it lies in your power to ask what ought to be done? And if you see clearly, go that way content, without turning back; but if you don't see clearly, stop and take the best advice available. But if other things stand in your way, proceed according to your powers, with due care, holding to what appears just. For it is best to reach that goal, and if you fail, let your failure be in this attempt. Whoever follows reason in everything is both tranquil and active at once, both cheerful and composed.

Ask yourself, as soon as you wake from sleep, whether it will make any difference to you if another person does what is just and right. It will make no difference. You haven't forgotten, I suppose, that those who put on arrogant airs in praising or blaming others are the very same people in bed and at table, and you haven't forgotten what they do and what they avoid, what they chase after, and how they steal and rob—not with hands and feet, but with their most valuable part, the one by which, whenever a person chooses, fidelity, modesty, truth, law, and happiness—the good guiding spirit—are produced.

To her who gives and takes back everything—to nature—the instructed and modest man says: Give what you will, take back what you will. And he says this not defiantly, but obediently, and well pleased with her.

Short is what remains to you of life. Live as though on a mountain. It makes no difference whether a man lives here or there, if he lives everywhere in the world as in a political community. Let men see, let them recognize a genuine man living according to nature. If they cannot endure him, let them kill him—that would be better than living as they do.

No longer talk about what kind of man a good man ought to be—just be one.

Constantly contemplate the whole of time and the whole of substance, and consider that every individual thing, as to substance, is a mere grain from a fig, and as to time, the turn of a gimlet.

Look at everything that exists, and notice that it is already dissolving and changing—as it were, rotting away or scattering—or that everything is by nature constituted so as to die.

Consider what men are like when they're eating, sleeping, mating, relieving themselves, and so on. Then consider what kind of men they are when they're imperious and arrogant, or angry and scolding from some elevated position. Yet only a short time ago they were slaves to how many things, and for what ends—and after a little while, consider what condition they will be in.

What is good for each thing is whatever the universal nature brings to it—and it is good for it at the very time nature brings it.

"The earth loves the shower," and "the solemn sky loves"—and the universe loves to bring about whatever is about to come into being. I say to the universe, then: I love as you love. And isn't this also said, that "this or that loves to come into being"?

Either you live here and have already grown used to it, or you are going away and this was your own choice, or you are dying and have discharged your duty. Besides these, there is nothing. So be of good cheer.

Let this always be clear to you: this piece of land is like any other, and everything here is the same as it would be on a mountaintop, or on a seashore, or wherever else you might choose to be. You will find exactly what Plato says holds true: dwelling within the walls of a city as in a shepherd's fold on a mountain.

What is my ruling faculty to me now? What am I now making it into? For what purpose am I now using it? Is it empty of understanding? Is it loosened and torn away from social life? Has it melted into and merged with this poor flesh, so as to move along with it?

He who flees from his master is a runaway. But the law is master, and whoever breaks the law is a runaway. And so is anyone who grieves, or is angry, or afraid—he is dissatisfied that something has been, or is, or will be, among the things ordained by the one who rules all things, who is Law and assigns to every man what is fitting. So whoever fears, or grieves, or is angry, is a runaway.

A man deposits seed in a womb and goes away; then another cause takes it up, labors on it, and produces a child. What a thing from such material! Again, the child sends food down through its throat, and then another cause takes it up and produces sensation and motion, and in the end, life and strength and everything else—so many things, and so strange. Observe, then, the things produced in this hidden way, and perceive the power at work—just as we perceive the power that carries things downward and upward, not with our eyes, but no less plainly for that.

Constantly consider that all things as they now are, existed also in time past, and consider that they will exist again in just the same way. Set before your eyes entire dramas and scenes of the same pattern, drawn from your own experience or from earlier history—for example, the whole court of Hadrian, the whole court of Antoninus, the whole court of Philip, Alexander, Croesus. All of those were dramas just like the ones we see now, only with different actors.

Picture everyone who is grieved or discontented over anything as being like a pig being sacrificed, kicking and squealing. The man who silently laments the bonds we're all held by, alone on his bed, is just like that pig. And consider that only the rational animal is granted the ability to follow willingly what happens to it; mere following, without choice, is a necessity imposed on all.

On the occasion of everything you do, pause and ask yourself whether death is a dreadful thing simply because it would deprive you of this.