BOOK IX
mixed up.[1] For while it is very far from right to be disgusted with them,[2] but rather even to befriend and deal gently with them,[3].yet it is well to remember that not from men of like principles with thine will thy release be. For this alone, if anything, could draw us back and bind us to life, if it were but permitted us to live with those who have possessed themselves of the same principles as ours. But now thou seest how thou art driven by sheer weariness at the jarring discord of thy life with them to say: Tarry not, O Death, lest peradventure I too forget myself.[4]
4. He that does wrong, does wrong to himself.[5] The unjust man is unjust to himself, for he makes himself bad.[6]
5. There is often an injustice of omission as well as of commission.
6. The present assumption rightly apprehended, the present act socially enacted, the present disposition satisfied with all that befalls it from the Cause external to it—these will suffice.
7. Efface imagination.[7] Restrain impulse. Quench desire. Keep the ruling Reason in thine own power.
8. Among irrational creatures one life is distributed, and among the rational one intellectual soul has been parcelled out. Just as also there is one earth for all the things that are of the earth; and
- ↑ x. 36; Plato, Phaed. 66 B.
- ↑ As Marcus himself often was. cp. v. 10; vi. 12; viii. 8.
- ↑ x. 4.
- ↑ cp. the despairing echo of these words by General Gordon, who was a reader of Marcus, from Khartum: "There is nothing left for me to prevent me speaking evil of everyone and distrusting my dear Lord but death."
- ↑ iv. 26; ix. 38. Epict. ii. 10, § 26.
- ↑ Or, does himself harm. Plutarch (Stoic. Contrad. 12) shews that Chrysippus contradicts himself on this point. Justin (Apol. i. 3), speaking of persecution to Pius and Marcus, turns the tables on the latter, saying that in injuring innocent Christians they injured themselves. Epict. iv. 5. 10.
- ↑ vii. 29; viii. 29, 49; xii. 25.
