The final shore

When you're offended by someone's fault, turn at once to yourself and consider in what similar way you yourself go wrong—for instance, in thinking that money is a good thing, or pleasure, or a bit of reputation, and so on. Attending to this will quickly make you forget your anger, especially if you add this thought: that he is compelled to act this way—what else could he do? Or, if you're able, remove the compulsion from him.

When you have seen Satyron the Socratic, think of either Eutyches or Hymen; and when you have seen Euphrates, think of Eutychion or Silvanus; and when you have seen Alciphron, think of Tropaeophorus; and when you have seen Xenophon, think of Crito or Severus; and when you have looked upon yourself, think of some other Caesar—and do likewise in every case. Then let this thought settle in your mind: Where are those men now? Nowhere—or nobody knows where. In this way you will constantly view human affairs as smoke, as nothing at all—especially if you also reflect that what has once changed will never exist again in the infinite stretch of time. And you—in how brief a span of time does your existence lie? Why aren't you content to pass through this short time in an orderly way? What matter, what opportunity for action, are you avoiding? For what are all these things except exercises for reason, once it has carefully examined and studied the nature of what happens in life? Persist, then, until you've made these things your own, as a strengthened stomach makes all food its own, as a blazing fire turns whatever is thrown into it into flame and brightness.

Don't let it be within anyone's power to say truly of you that you are not simple or not good; let whoever thinks anything of that kind about you be a liar. This is entirely within your power. Who is there to prevent you from being good and simple? Just resolve not to go on living unless you are such a person. For reason itself does not allow you to live, if you are not.

What, given this material—your life—can be done or said in the way most in keeping with reason? Whatever that may be, it lies within your power to do it or say it—don't make excuses that you're being hindered. You won't stop groaning until your mind reaches the point where what luxury is to lovers of pleasure, that is what, for you, the doing of things in keeping with man's constitution will be, in whatever matter is set before you and given to you. For a man ought to count as enjoyment everything it lies in his power to do according to his own nature—and it lies in his power everywhere. A cylinder is not granted the power to move everywhere by its own motion, nor water, nor fire, nor anything else governed by nature or an irrational soul, since many things check and obstruct them. But intelligence and reason are able to pass through everything that opposes them, in whatever way they are formed by nature and choose to go. Set before your eyes this ease with which reason will be carried through all things—as fire moves upward, as a stone falls downward, as a cylinder rolls down a slope—and seek nothing further. For all other obstacles either affect the body alone, which is a dead thing, or else—apart from opinion and the yielding of reason itself—they cannot crush or harm in any way; if they could, whoever felt it would immediately become bad. Now with all things that have a fixed constitution, whatever harm befalls any of them makes the thing so affected worse. But in a like case, a man becomes better, if one may say so, and more worthy of praise, by making right use of what happens to him. And finally, remember that nothing harms someone who is truly a citizen, which does not harm the state; and nothing harms the state, which does not harm law itself. And of the things called misfortunes, not one harms the law. So what does not harm the law does not harm either the state or the citizen.

For someone thoroughly penetrated by true principles, even the briefest saying is enough—any ordinary maxim will do—to remind him that he should be free of grief and fear. For example: "Leaves, some the wind scatters on the ground—so is the race of men." Your children, too, are leaves. And leaves are those who cry out as though worthy of belief and hand out their praise, or curse instead, or secretly blame and sneer. And leaves, in the same way, are those who will receive and pass on a man's fame to later generations. All such things, as the poet says, "are born in the season of spring"; then the wind casts them down; then the forest grows other leaves in their place. A brief existence is common to all things, yet you avoid some and chase after others as though they would last forever. A little while, and you will close your eyes; and the one who carried you to your grave will soon be mourned by another.

The healthy eye ought to see all visible things, not say, 'I want only green things'—that is the mark of a diseased eye. Healthy hearing and smell ought to be ready to perceive everything that can be heard or smelled. And the healthy stomach ought to relate to all food just as a mill relates to everything it is built to grind. So too the healthy mind ought to be ready for everything that happens; but the mind that says, 'Let my dear children live,' and 'let everyone praise whatever I do,' is an eye seeking only green things, or teeth seeking only soft things.

No man is so fortunate that, when he is dying, there won't be someone standing by pleased at what is about to happen. Suppose he was a good and wise man—won't there be, at the end, someone saying to himself, Let us finally breathe freely, relieved of this schoolmaster? True, he was harsh to none of us, but I could sense that he silently judged us. That's what gets said of a good man. In our own case, think how many other things there are that make plenty of people wish to be rid of us. So when you're dying, keep this in mind, and you'll depart more content, reflecting: I am leaving a life in which even my own companions, for whom I've struggled so much, prayed, and cared, themselves want me gone—hoping, perhaps, to gain some small advantage by it. Why, then, should anyone want to cling to a longer stay here? But don't, for this reason, leave any less kindly disposed toward them—keep your own character, friendly, well-meaning, and gentle, and don't act as though you were being torn away; rather, as when a man dies peacefully, the soul slips easily from the body, so too should your departure from among men be, since nature joined you to them and bound you together. But does she now dissolve that bond? Well then, I am parted from them as from kinsmen—not dragged off resisting, but without any need for force; for this, too, is one of the things according to nature.

Get into the habit, as much as you can, whenever anyone does anything, of asking yourself: For what purpose is this man doing this? But begin with yourself, and examine yourself first.

Remember that what pulls the strings is the thing hidden within—this is the power to persuade, this is life, this, if we may say so, is the man himself. Never, in contemplating yourself, include the vessel that surrounds you and the instruments attached around it. They are like an axe, differing only in that they've grown onto the body. Indeed, these parts are no more useful without the cause that moves and stops them than the weaver's shuttle is without the weaver, the writer's pen without the writer, or the driver's whip without the driver.