Forgiveness and the human bond

[If anyone has wronged you, consider first]: What is my relation to other people? We exist for one another. In another respect I was made to stand over them, as a ram over a flock or a bull over a herd. Begin from first principles: if all things are not mere atoms, nature orders everything. If so, lesser things exist for the sake of greater things, and greater things for one another. Second, consider what sort of people they are at table, in bed, and elsewhere. Consider especially the compulsions of opinion under which they act, and the pride with which they do what they do. Third, if people are doing right, we should not be displeased. If they are not doing right, it is clear that they act unwillingly and in ignorance. Just as every soul is deprived of truth against its will, so it is deprived against its will of the ability to treat each person as he deserves. That is why people feel the sting when they are called unjust, ungrateful, greedy—in a word, wrongdoers toward their neighbors. Fourth, remember that you too do many things wrong and are a person like everyone else. Even if you hold back from certain faults, you still have the disposition to commit them. Cowardice, concern for reputation, or some other mean motive may be what keeps you from acting. Fifth, you do not even know for certain whether people are doing wrong. Many things are done with reference to particular circumstances, and a person must learn a great deal before passing a correct judgment on another's acts. Sixth, when you are greatly vexed or grieved, remember that a human life lasts only a moment. Soon we will all lie dead. Seventh, it is not people's actions that disturb us. Those actions arise from their own ruling faculties; our own opinions are what disturb us. Take away those opinions. Resolve to drop your judgment that the act is something terrible, and your anger is gone. How do you take the opinions away? Reflect that another person's wrongful act brings no shame on you. Unless what is shameful is the only bad thing, you too must necessarily do many wrongs and become a robber or anything else besides. Eighth, consider how much more pain is caused by our anger and vexation than by the acts that provoke them. Ninth, a genuinely good disposition is unconquerable if it is real, not a put-on smile or playacting. What can the most violent person do to you if you remain kindly disposed toward him? When the opportunity comes, gently point out his error and calmly correct him at the very moment he is trying to harm you. Say: "No, my child. We are made by nature for something else. I will not be harmed, but you are harming yourself." Show him gently and from general principles that this is so, and that not even bees or other social creatures behave as he does. Do it without double meaning or reproach, affectionately and without bitterness—not as though lecturing him or trying to impress a bystander, but privately if possible … [Remember these nine rules] as gifts from the Muses, and begin at last, while you are alive, to be a human being. Avoid flattering people just as much as being irritated with them; both are unsocial and lead to harm. In moments of anger, keep this truth before you: being carried away by passion is not manly. Mildness and gentleness are more in keeping with human nature, and therefore more manly. The person who possesses them has strength, sinew, and courage—not the person given to fits of temper and discontent. The nearer a mind comes to freedom from passion, the nearer it comes to strength. Pain is a mark of weakness, and so is anger. The person who gives in to either is wounded and has surrendered. If you like, take a tenth gift from Apollo, leader of the Muses: expecting bad people not to do wrong is madness, because it asks for the impossible. But allowing them to behave that way toward others while expecting them never to wrong you is unreasonable and tyrannical.

There are four principal derangements of the ruling faculty that you must constantly guard against, and whenever you catch one, wipe it out and say, each time: This thought is not necessary; this tends to undo social union; this thing you are about to say does not come from your real thoughts—for you should count it among the most absurd things for a person not to speak from his real thoughts. And the fourth is when you reproach yourself for something, since this is evidence that the more divine part in you has been overpowered and has given way to the less honorable, perishable part—the body—and its coarse pleasures.

Your airy part and all the fiery parts mixed into you, though by nature inclined upward, still, in obedience to the arrangement of the universe, are held down here in the compound mass, the body. And likewise the whole earthy part in you, and the watery part, though their tendency is downward, are nevertheless raised up and made to occupy a position that is not natural to them. In this way the elemental parts obey the universal order, for once fixed in some place, they stay there by compulsion until the universal order sounds the signal for dissolution again. Is it not strange, then, that only your intelligent part should be disobedient and dissatisfied with its own place? And yet no force is imposed on it—only what is in keeping with its nature—yet it will not submit, but is carried the opposite way. For the movement toward injustice, intemperance, anger, grief, and fear is nothing other than the act of someone who deviates from nature. And also, when the ruling faculty is dissatisfied with anything that happens, it likewise deserts its post—for it is constituted for piety and reverence toward the gods no less than for justice. These qualities too are included under the broad heading of contentment with the constitution of things, and indeed they come before acts of justice.

Whoever does not have one single, unchanging object in life cannot remain one and the same throughout life. But what I've said isn't enough unless it's added what this object ought to be. For just as there isn't one single opinion about all the things the majority somehow consider good, but only about certain ones—those that concern the common interest—so we too ought to set before ourselves an object that is social and political in kind. For the man who directs all his own efforts to this object will make all his actions alike, and so will always remain the same.

Think of the country mouse and the town mouse, and the alarm and fright of the town mouse.

Socrates used to call the opinions of the many by the name of Lamiae—bugbears to frighten children.

At their public spectacles the Lacedaemonians used to set out seats in the shade for foreigners, while they themselves sat down anywhere.

Socrates excused himself to Perdiccas for not visiting him, saying: It is because I would not perish by the worst of all endings—that is, I would not receive a favor and then be unable to return it.

In the writings of the Ephesians there was this precept: constantly think of some one of the men of former times who practiced virtue.

The Pythagoreans tell us to look up at the heavens in the morning, so as to be reminded of those bodies that continually do the same things in the same way as they carry out their work, and also to be reminded of their purity and their nakedness. For there is no veil over a star.

Consider what kind of man Socrates was when he wrapped himself in a hide, after Xanthippe had taken his cloak and gone out, and what Socrates said to the friends who were ashamed of him and drew back when they saw him dressed like that.

Neither in writing nor in reading will you be able to lay down rules for others before you have first learned to obey rules yourself. Much more is this true in life.

You are a slave: free speech is not for you.

And my heart laughed within. Odyssey, IX. 413.

And virtue they will curse, speaking harsh words. Hesiod, Works and Days, 184.

To look for the fig in winter is a madman's act: so is looking for your child when it is no longer permitted.

When a man kisses his child, Epictetus said, he should whisper to himself, "Tomorrow perhaps you will die."—But those are words of bad omen.—"No word is a word of bad omen," Epictetus said, "that names some work of nature; or if it is, then it is equally a word of bad omen to speak of ears of corn being reaped."

The unripe grape, the ripe bunch, the raisin—all are changes, not into nothing, but into something that does not yet exist.

No one can rob us of our free will.

Epictetus also said that a person must discover an art, or set of rules, for giving assent. His impulses must suit the circumstances, serve social interests, and respect the worth of their object. He should keep away from sensual desire altogether. And he should not direct aversion toward anything outside his power.

The dispute, then, he said, is not about some ordinary matter, but about whether one is sane or mad.

Socrates used to say: What do you want—souls of rational men, or of irrational ones? Souls of rational men. Of what rational men—sound ones, or unsound? Sound ones. Then why don't you seek them? Because we already have them. Then why do you fight and quarrel?