The Good Book (24 page)

18. Do not regret having lived, but while yet living live in a way that allows you to think that you were not born in vain.

19. And do not regret that you must die: it is what all who are wise must wish, to have life end at its proper time.

20. For nature puts a limit to living as to everything else,

21. And we are the sons and daughters of nature, and for us therefore the sleep of nature is nature’s final kindness.

Chapter 23:
Of poverty

  1. There are those who fear poverty even worse than death,

  2. Even though it has been well said that poverty, brought into conformity with the law of nature, is great wealth.

  3. The minimum that the law of nature ordains for us is to avert hunger, thirst and cold. 

  4. In order to banish hunger and thirst, it is not necessary to pay court at the doors of the purse-proud,

  5. Or to submit to the stern frown, or to the kindness that humiliates;

  6. Nor is it necessary for us to scour the seas, or go campaigning; nature’s needs are easily satisfied in anyone of temperate mind and habit.

  7. It is the superfluous things for which men sweat, the superfluous things that weary our days,

  8. That force us to labour for uncertain rewards, that make us risk our happiness.

  9. There is a noble ambition which is not aimed at having superfluity,

10. There is a noble ambition not aimed at emulation of those we think richer and therefore happier than ourselves.

11. This is the ambition to do something genuinely worthwhile,

12. To foster those abilities we have both for the joy of exercising them to the utmost, and for offering their fruits to our fellows.

13. Thus the musician, painter, poet and statesman, the scientist and the inquirer,

14. Work with pleasure because they work at what they must and what they love;

15. For them the weariness at the day’s end is sweet,

16. And whether or not they have the acclaim of others, they themselves know if they have done well.

17. To work with what one has, to make and to do, to fulfil what is within,

18. To tend the orchard of one’s capacities, is to make one’s life a good thing to live.

19. And if the harvest benefits others, adding to the store of good,

20. The justification for one’s hour on earth is complete.

Chapter 24:
On the consolation of wisdom regarding death

  1. Hasten to be wise, for then you can enjoy for longer the pleasures of an improved mind which is at peace with itself.

  2. You remember the joy you felt when you laid aside the garments of childhood and donned adult clothing, and took your place among adults;

  3. Now you may look for an even greater joy when you have laid aside the mind of youth, and wisdom has enrolled you among those who are mature.

  4. For it is not childhood that stays with us, but something worse: childishness.  

  5. And this condition is the more serious because we possess the authority of adulthood, yet we still have some of the follies of youth, even the follies of infancy.  

  6. Infants fear trifles, children fear shadows, many adults fear both.

  7. Yet all you need do is to advance; you will thus understand that some things are less to be dreaded, precisely because they inspire us with great fear.  

  8. No evil is great which is the last evil of all. Death arrives; it would be a thing to dread, if it could remain with you. 

  9. But death must either not come at all, or else must come and immediately pass away to nothingness.

10. ‘It is difficult,’ you say, ‘to bring the mind to a point where it can scorn death.’ But do you not see what trifling reasons sometimes impel people to scorn life instead?  

11. One hangs himself because he has been rejected by a lover; another hurls himself from the house-top to escape the disgrace of debt;

12. A third, to be saved from arrest after running away, cuts his veins with a knife.

13. Do you not agree that virtue can be as efficacious as excessive fear?

14. No person will have a peaceful life who thinks too much about lengthening it, or believes that gaining higher office or making more money is a great blessing.  

15. Repeat this thought to yourself every day, so that you may be able to depart from life contentedly;

16. For many people clutch and cling to life, even as those who are carried down a rushing stream clutch and cling to briars and sharp rocks.  

17. Most people are jostled in wretchedness between the fear of death and the hardships of life; they are unwilling to live, and yet they do not know how to die.  

18. For this reason, make life as a whole agreeable to yourself by banishing all worry about death;

19. It will come, and so long as the process of dying is itself easy, it has no more terror than dreamless sleep.

20. No good thing renders its possessor happy, unless his mind is reconciled to the possibility of its loss;

21. Nothing, however, is lost with less discomfort than that which, when lost, cannot be missed.  

22. Therefore, encourage and toughen your mind against the mishaps that afflict even the most powerful and the most successful,

23. For accident and illness can in a moment take away all that was built over many years.  

24. So I declare to you: he is lord of your life that scorns his own. Be the lord of your own life therefore, by not fearing to lose it.

25. Since the day we were born we are being led towards the day we die: in the interim let us be courageous, and do good things.

Chapter 25

  1. You write to tell me that you are anxious about the outcome of a lawsuit, which an angry opponent is threatening you with;

  2. And you ask me to advise you to picture to yourself a happier outcome, and to rest in the allurements of hope.  

  3. Why, indeed, is it necessary to summon trouble, which must be endured soon enough when it arrives;

  4. Or to anticipate trouble, and ruin the present through fear of the future?  

  5. It is foolish to be unhappy now because you may be unhappy at some future time.  

  6. Think of how much keener a brave man is to lay hold of danger than a cruel man is to inflict it.

  7. ‘Oh,’ you will say, ‘spare me any lectures “On Despising Death” and the like; you will soon be repeating the story of Cato.’

  8. But why should I not repeat the story of Cato, how he read Plato on that last glorious night, with a sword laid at his pillow?  

  9. He had provided these two requisites for his last moments: the first, that he might have the will to die, and the second, that he might have the means.  

10. So he put his affairs in order, as well as one could put in order that which was ruined and near its end,

11. And thought that he ought to see to it that no one should have the power to slay Cato, or the good fortune to save him.  

12. Drawing the sword, which he had kept unstained from all bloodshed against the final day, he cried: ‘I have fought, till now, for my country’s freedom, and not for my own;

13. ‘I did not strive so doggedly to be free, but only to live among the free.  

14. ‘Now, since the affairs of mankind are beyond hope, let Cato be withdrawn to safety.’ So saying, he inflicted a mortal wound upon his body.  

15. I am reminding you of this for the purpose of encouraging you to face anything that might happen,

16. By knowing how to face that which is thought to be the most terrible thing that can happen: which fools think is death.

17. By which I mean that death is so little to be feared that through its good offices nothing is to be feared.  

18. Therefore, when problems threaten, listen unconcernedly. Meet them with the best of your life; or end them by overcoming life.

19. Remember to strip things of all that disturbs and confuses, and to see what each is at bottom;

20. You will then comprehend that they contain nothing fearful except the actual fear. 

21. We should strip the mask, not only from men, but from things, and restore to each object its own aspect.

22. Do not drown your mind in petty anxieties; if you do, your mind will be dulled, with too little vigour left when the time comes for it to stand up and do its work bravely.

23. Say to yourself that our petty bodies are mortal and frail; pain can reach them from other sources than from wrong or the might of the stronger.  

24. Our pleasures themselves become torments: banquets bring indigestion, carousal exhausts us, overindulgence makes us ill.      

25. Say: ‘I may become poor; I shall then be one among many. I may be exiled; I shall then regard myself as born in the place I have been sent to.  

26. ‘They may put me in chains. What then? Am I free from bonds when I do not have chains about me?’  

27. To die is to shed those chains, because it is to cease to run the risk of sickness and death.

28. I remember one day you were discussing the well-known saying that many do not suddenly fall on death, but advance towards it by slight degrees, dying a little every day.  

29. And this, for many, is true: every day a little of our life is taken from us; even when we are growing, our life is on the wane.  

30. We lose our childhood, then our youth. Counting even yesterday, all past time is lost time;

31. The very day which we are now spending is shared between ourselves and death.  

32. It is not the last drop that empties the water-clock, but all that which previously has flowed out;

33. Similarly, the final hour when we cease to exist does not of itself bring death; it merely of itself completes the death-process.

34. We reach death at that moment, but we have been a long time on the way. Epicurus upbraids those who desire, as much as those who shrink from, death:  

35. ‘It is absurd,’ he says, ‘to run towards death because you are tired of life, when it is your manner of life that has made you run towards death.’

36. And again he says: ‘What is so absurd as to seek death, when it is through fear of death that you have robbed your life of peace?’

37. And you may add this: ‘People are so thoughtless, nay, so mad, that some, through fear of death, force themselves to die.’      

38. Whichever of these ideas you ponder, you will strengthen your mind for the endurance alike of death and of life.  

39. And remember: there is an end to nothing; all things are connected in a circle; they flee and they are pursued;  

40. Night is close at the heels of day, day at the heels of night; summer ends in autumn, winter rushes after autumn, and winter softens into spring.

41. All nature in this way passes, only to return, what has gone before coming back in different or renewed form,

42. So that what was a human being might in time be in the trees and clouds, for ever different.

Chapter 26:
The consolation of the end

  1. I was lately telling you that I was within sight of old age. I am now afraid that I have left old age behind.  

  2. For some other word would now apply to my years, or at any rate to my body; you may rate me in the class of those who are nearing the end.      

  3. Nevertheless, I offer thanks to myself, with you as witness; for I feel that age has done no damage to my mind, though I feel its effects on my constitution.  

  4. Only my vices, and the outward aids to these vices, have reached senility; my mind is strong and rejoices that it has but slight reliance on the body.  

  5. It has laid aside the greater part of its load. It is alert; it takes issue with me on the subject of old age; it declares that old age is its time of bloom.  

  6. Let me take it at its word, and let it make the most of the advantages it possesses.  

  7. My mind bids me do some thinking and consider how much of this peace of mind and moderation of character I owe to wisdom and how much to my time of life;

  8. It bids me distinguish carefully what I cannot do and what I do not want to do.

  9. For why should one complain or regard it as a disadvantage, if powers which ought to come to an end have failed?

10. ‘But,’ you say, ‘it is the greatest possible disadvantage to be worn out and to die off, or rather, if I may speak literally, to melt away!  

11. ‘For we are not suddenly smitten and laid low; we are worn away, and every day reduces our powers to a certain extent.’ 

12. But is there any better end to it all than to glide off to one’s proper haven, when nature slips the cable?  

13. Not that there is anything painful in a shock and a sudden departure from existence; it is merely because this other way of departure is easy; a gradual withdrawal.