The last rules

Everything you hope to reach by a roundabout road you could have now, if you don't withhold it from yourself. Let go of the whole past, entrust the future to providence, and direct the present toward piety and justice. Toward piety: be content with the portion assigned to you, since nature designed it for you and you for it. Toward justice: speak the truth freely and without disguise, and do what's lawful and fitting to the worth of each thing. Do not let another person's wickedness stop you, nor opinion, talk, or the sensations of the poor flesh grown around you. Let the passive part see to that. When your departure draws near, set everything else aside and honor only your ruling faculty and the divinity within you. Fear not that you must someday stop living, but that you might never have begun to live according to nature. Then you will be worthy of the universe that produced you. You will stop being a stranger in your own homeland, stop being startled by daily events as though they were unexpected, and stop hanging on this or that.

God sees the ruling minds of all men stripped bare of their material coverings, husks, and impurities. With his intellectual part alone he touches only the intelligence that has flowed and been drawn from himself into these bodies. If you also make it your habit to do this, you'll rid yourself of a great deal of trouble. For someone who pays no attention to the poor flesh wrapped around him surely won't trouble himself over clothing, housing, reputation, and all such external show.

You're made of three things: a small body, a small breath of life, and intelligence. The first two are yours only in the sense that it's your job to care for them. Only intelligence is properly your own. So separate from your understanding whatever other people do or say, whatever you yourself have done or said, and whatever future events trouble you because they may happen. Separate also whatever clings to you apart from your will in the body wrapped around you or in the life-breath naturally joined to it, and whatever the external whirl of circumstance spins around you. Let your intellectual power stand free from fate's workings, pure and independent, doing what is just, accepting what happens, and speaking the truth. Separate from the ruling faculty everything attached by sense-impressions and everything belonging to past or future time. Make yourself like Empedocles' sphere, 'rounded, rejoicing in its circling stillness.' Strive to live only what is truly your life: the present. Then you can pass what remains of life until death free of disturbance, nobly, and obedient to your own guiding spirit—the god within you.

I've often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all other men, yet values his own opinion of himself less than the opinion others hold of him. If a god, or some wise teacher, appeared and told a man that he must think nothing and plan nothing that he wouldn't say aloud the instant he conceived it, he couldn't bear it for even a single day. So much more weight do we give to what our neighbors will think of us than to what we ourselves think of ourselves.

How can it be that the gods, having arranged everything well and benevolently for mankind, have overlooked just this one thing—that some men, and very good men, men who have had, we might say, the closest communion with the divine, and through pious acts and religious devotion have grown most intimate with it, once they die should never exist again but be utterly extinguished? But if this is so, be sure that if it ought to have been otherwise, the gods would have made it so. If it were just, it would also be possible; and if it were according to nature, nature would have brought it about. Because it is not so—if in fact it is not so—be convinced that it ought not to have been so. You see for yourself that in raising this question you're arguing with the Deity; and we wouldn't argue with the gods this way unless they were supremely good and supremely just—but if that's what they are, they wouldn't have allowed anything in the ordering of the universe to be neglected unjustly or irrationally.

Train yourself even in the things you despair of accomplishing. Even the left hand, useless for most tasks for lack of practice, grips the rein more firmly than the right—because it has been trained to that.

Consider the condition, in body and soul, a man ought to be in when death overtakes him; consider the shortness of life, the bottomless gulf of time past and future, the feebleness of all matter.

Study the forming principles of things stripped of their coverings; the aims behind actions; consider what pain is, what pleasure is, and death, and fame; who is to himself the cause of his own unease; how no man is hindered by another; how everything is opinion.

In applying your principles, be like the all-round fighter, not like the gladiator. The gladiator drops the sword he's using and is killed; the other always has his hand ready and needs nothing but to use it.

See things as they are in themselves, dividing each into matter, form, and purpose.

What power a man has to do nothing except what God will approve, and to accept all that God gives him.

As for what happens in accordance with nature, we should blame neither the gods, for they do nothing wrong either willingly or unwillingly, nor men, for they do nothing wrong except unwillingly. So we should blame no one.

How ridiculous, and what a stranger he is, who is surprised at anything that happens in life.

Either there is a fated necessity and an invincible order, or a kindly providence, or a purposeless confusion without a director. If there is invincible necessity, why resist it? If there is a providence that lets itself be won over, make yourself worthy of the god's help. But if there's a directionless confusion, be glad that in such a storm you have within you a governing intelligence. And even if the storm sweeps you away, let it sweep away the poor flesh, the poor breath, everything else—it will not sweep away the intelligence.

Does the light of a lamp shine on without losing its brightness until it's put out—and yet the truth in you, and justice, and self-control, should be put out before your death?

When someone appears to have done wrong, ask: how do I really know this is wrongdoing? And even if he has done wrong, how do I know he hasn't already condemned himself for it—which would be like tearing his own face. Understand that wanting the bad man not to do wrong is like wanting the fig tree not to yield sap in its figs, or infants not to cry, or the horse not to neigh—or anything else that must necessarily be. Given the character he has, what else can such a man do? If it galls you, cure his disposition.

If it isn't right, don't do it. If it isn't true, don't say it. Let your efforts be—

In every case, always notice what it is that produces an impression for you, and take it apart by dividing it into form, matter, purpose, and the span of time within which it must end.

Recognize at last that you have in you something better and more divine than the things that stir up your feelings and, so to speak, jerk you about like a puppet on strings. What is in my mind right now—fear? suspicion? desire? something of that kind?

First: do nothing carelessly, nothing without a purpose. Second: let your actions aim at nothing other than a social end.