Page:Marcus Aurelius (Haines 1916).djvu/73

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BOOK II

8. Not easily is a man found to be unhappy by reason of his not regarding what is going on in another man's soul; but those who do not attend closely to the motions of their own souls must inevitably be unhappy.

9. This must always be borne in mind, what is the Nature of the whole Universe, and what mine, and how this stands in relation to that, being too what sort of a part of what sort of a whole; and that no one can prevent thee from doing and saying always what is in keeping with the Nature of which thou art a part.

10. Theophrastus in his comparison of wrong-doings—for, speaking in a somewhat popular way, such comparison may be made—says in the true philosophical spirit that the offences which are due to lust are more heinous than those which are due to anger.[1] For the man who is moved with anger seems to turn his back upon reason with some pain and unconscious compunction[2]; but he that does wrong from lust, being mastered by pleasure, seems in some sort to be more incontinent and more unmanly in his wrong-doing. Rightly then, and not unworthily of a philosopher, he said that the wrongdoing which is allied with pleasure calls for a severer condemnation than that which is allied with pain; and, speaking generally, that the one wrong-doer is more like a man, who, being sinned against first, has been driven by pain to be angry, while the other, being led by lust to do some act, has of his own motion been impelled to do evil.

11. Let thine every deed and word and thought be those of a man who can depart from life this moment.[3] But to go away from among men, if

  1. Here Marcus deviates from the strict Stoic doctrine, which allowed no degrees in faults.
  2. For συστολή cp. Diog. Laert. (Zeno) 63, ἔλεος εἶναι πάθος καὶ συστολὴν ἄλογον.
  3. above, § 5.
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