Meditations: With Selected Correspondence by Marcus Aurelius & Robin Hard & Christopher Gill

Author:Marcus Aurelius & Robin Hard & Christopher Gill [Aurelius, Marcus & Hard, Robin & Gill, Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Philosophy, Ancient Rome
ISBN: 9780199573202
Amazon: 0199573204
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2011-09-24T23:00:00+00:00

BOOK 10

1. Will there ever come a day, my soul, when you are good, and simple, and at one, and naked, and clearer to see than the body which envelops you?* Some day, will you enjoy a loving and affectionate disposition? Some day, will you be satisfied and want for nothing, yearning for nothing, and desiring nothing, animate or inanimate, to cater to your pleasures? And not wish for more time to enjoy them for longer, or a more pleasing place or country or climate, or more agreeable company? Or will you be contented instead with your present circumstances and delighted with everything around you, and convince yourself that all you have comes to you from the gods, and that all that is pleasing to them is well for you and will be well, and that they will give you what is needed to protect the perfect living being, the good and the just and the beautiful, which generates, upholds, and embraces all things, and takes them into itself when they are dissolved to allow others of like nature to come into being? Will there ever come a day when you are so much a member of the community of gods and human beings as neither to bring any complaint against them nor to incur their condemnation?

2. Observe what your nature requires of you, in so far as you are merely governed by physical nature, and then do it and accede willingly, if your nature as a living creature will suffer no damage. Next you must observe what your nature as a living creature requires of you, and accept that fully, if your nature as a rational living creature will suffer no damage. Now every rational being, by virtue of its rationality, is also a social being. So apply these rules, and trouble yourself no further.

3. Everything that happens either happens in such a way that you are fitted by nature to bear it or in such a way that you are not. If, then, it comes about in such a way that you are fitted by nature to bear it, make no complaint, but bear it as your nature enables you to do; but if it comes about in such a way that you are not fitted by nature to bear it, again you should make no complaint, for it will soon be the end of you. Remember, however, that you are fitted by nature to bear everything that you can render bearable and endurable through the exercise of your judgement, by suggesting the idea to yourself that your interest or your duty demands it.

4. If he goes wrong, instruct him in a kindly manner, show him what he failed to see: but if you are unable to, blame only yourself, or not even yourself.

5. Whatever happens to you was preordained for you from time everlasting, and from eternity the web of causation was weaving together your own existence and this that happens to you.

6. Whether there are merely

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