Smoke, fame, and change

How much trouble he avoids who doesn't look to what his neighbor says or does or thinks, but only to what he himself does, that it may be just and pure—or, as Agathon says, not to look around at the corrupt characters of others, but to run straight along the course without straying from it.

He who has a burning desire for fame after death doesn't consider that every one of those who remember him will himself also die very soon; and then again those who succeed them, until the whole memory has been extinguished as it passes down through people who foolishly admire and then perish in turn. But suppose that those who will remember are even immortal, and the memory itself immortal—what is that to you? And I don't mean, what is it to the dead, but what is it to the living? What is praise, except perhaps insofar as it has some practical use? For you are now rejecting, out of season, nature's own gift, clinging instead to something else…

Whatever is in any way beautiful is beautiful in itself and complete in itself; praise is no part of it. Nothing is made worse or better by being praised. I say this too of things the crowd calls beautiful—material things, works of art. What is truly beautiful needs nothing beyond itself—no more than law does, no more than truth, no more than kindness or modesty. Which of these is beautiful because it is praised, or ruined by being blamed? Is an emerald made worse than it was if no one praises it? Or gold, ivory, purple, a lyre, a small knife, a flower, a shrub?

If souls continue to exist, how does the air hold them from eternity? But then how does the earth hold the bodies of those buried since time immemorial? Just as here, after a certain span, however long, the transformation of these bodies and their dissolution makes room for other dead bodies, so souls that pass into the air, after existing for some time, are transmuted and diffused, taking on a fiery nature as they are absorbed into the generative intelligence of the universe—and in this way make room for the newly arriving souls to dwell there. That is the answer one might give on the assumption that souls continue to exist. But we must think not only of the sheer number of bodies buried this way, but also of the number of animals eaten daily by us and by other animals. What a number is consumed, and thus in a sense buried in the bodies of those who feed on them! And yet the earth accommodates them all the same, through their transformation into blood, and their further change into the airy or fiery element. What is the way to investigate the truth here? The division between the material and that which is the cause of form.

Don't let yourself be spun around—in every motion, have regard for justice, and on every occasion of impression, hold fast to the faculty of clear understanding.

Everything is in harmony with me that is in harmony with you, O Universe. Nothing is too early or too late for me that comes in due time for you. Everything is fruit to me that your seasons bring, O Nature. From you come all things, in you are all things, to you all things return. The poet says, "Dear city of Cecrops"; will you not say, "Dear city of Zeus"?

"Occupy yourself with few things," says the philosopher, "if you would be at peace." But consider whether it might be better to say: do what is necessary, and whatever the reason of a naturally social being requires, and in the way it requires. For this brings not only the peace that comes from acting well, but also the peace that comes from acting on few things. Since most of what we say and do is unnecessary, if a man removes it he will have more leisure and less unease. So on every occasion a man should ask himself: is this one of the unnecessary things? And he should cut away not only unnecessary acts but unnecessary thoughts, for then superfluous acts won't follow either.

Try how the life of the good man suits you—the life of one who is content with his portion out of the whole, and content with his own just actions and kindly disposition.

Have you seen those things? Then look at these too. Don't trouble yourself. Make yourself all simplicity. Does someone do wrong? It is to himself that he does the wrong. Has something happened to you? Good: from the beginning, everything that happens has been allotted to you and spun together with you out of the universe. In a word, your life is short. You must turn the present to profit by means of reason and justice. Be sober even in your relaxation.

Either it is a well-ordered universe, or a chaotic jumble—yet still a universe. But can a certain order exist in you while disorder exists in the Whole? And this when all things are so distinct from each other and yet diffused and in sympathy with one another.

A dark character, a womanish character, a stubborn character, bestial, childish, animal, dull-witted, counterfeit, coarse, fraudulent, tyrannical.

If a man is a stranger to the universe who doesn't know what is in it, he is no less a stranger who doesn't know what is going on in it. He is a runaway who flees from social reason; he is blind who shuts the eyes of understanding; he is poor who needs another and doesn't have from himself everything useful for life. He is an abscess on the universe who withdraws and cuts himself off from the reason of our common nature by being displeased with what happens—for the same nature that produced these things produced him too. He is a piece torn from the community who tears his own soul away from that of rational beings, which is one.

One is a philosopher without a tunic, another without a book; here's a third, half naked: "I have no bread," he says, "yet I hold fast to reason." "And I don't earn my living from my learning—yet I hold fast to it."

Love the craft you have learned, however modest it is, and be content with it; and spend the rest of your life like someone who has entrusted to the gods, with his whole soul, everything he has—making yourself neither tyrant nor slave to anyone.

Consider, for instance, the age of Vespasian. You'll see the same things—people marrying, raising children, falling sick, dying, waging war, feasting, doing business, farming, flattering, arrogant in their stubbornness, suspecting, scheming, wishing for someone's death, grumbling about the present, falling in love, hoarding wealth, craving a consulship, craving kingly power. Well, that life of theirs no longer exists at all. Move on again to the age of Trajan—again, all the same. Their life too is gone. Look in the same way at other ages, whole nations, and see how many, after great striving, soon fell and dissolved back into the elements. Above all you should think of those you have known yourself, wearing themselves out over trivial things, neglecting to do what was in keeping with their own proper constitution, to hold firmly to that and be satisfied with it. And here it's necessary to remember that the attention given to anything should match its true worth and proportion. In this way you won't be dissatisfied, if you give yourself to smaller matters no further than is fitting.

Words once in common use are now archaic; likewise the names of men once famous are now, in a way, archaic—Camillus, Caeso, Volesus, Leonnatus, and a little later Scipio and Cato too, then Augustus, then Hadrian and Antoninus as well. Everything soon passes and turns into mere legend, and complete forgetting quickly buries it all. And I say this of those who shone in some remarkable way. As for the rest, the moment they breathe their last, they are gone, and no one speaks of them. And to sum it up, what is even an everlasting remembrance? A mere nothing. What, then, is worth serious effort? This alone: just thoughts, actions for the common good, words that never lie, and a disposition that welcomes whatever happens as necessary, as familiar, as flowing from a source and origin of the same kind.