Overall
I met Stoic philosophy again, having only stumbled across it back when I was studying for the college entrance exam. The core Stoic ideas this book emphasises repeatedly are these:
- My life is a single instant in the eternity of the universe. We all die.
- Everything is nothing more than opinion, and that opinion is up to me.
- Always see the whole, and consider its cause, its matter, and its purpose.
- Put the good of the community first.
These ideas recur continually from different angles and in different rhetorical forms, and they seeped into me as I read. Early in the book those cores were not visible and I treated each passage independently, as if reading a book of aphorisms; toward the end they began to come into view as a whole. It strikes me as a book to read several times.
Notes
Book 1
In him I saw a man who counted his own experience and his gift for teaching as the least of his talents, and who was never impatient when instructing others.
I learned that one must not neglect the duties owed in one’s relationships with the people one lives among on the excuse that something urgent has come up.
Book 2
They came to have these faults because they do not know what is good and what is bad.
If you want to die not complaining but meeting death cheerfully, truthfully, and with gratitude to the gods, abandon your thirst for books!
Do not cling to a craving for knowledge; practise what you have already learned. Do not flee even from death on the excuse that you want to learn more. I learned the Stoic view of reading here. More important than reading a great deal is applying what you have learned to your life. Academic curiosity and an attachment to knowledge can actually scatter the mind and obstruct the attitude that meets death in peace.
Since time is limited, you must know that if you do not spend it attaining peace of mind, your time and you yourself will vanish, and that such an opportunity will never come again.
A fault that springs from desire is graver than a fault that springs from anger.
Do, say, and think everything as one who might depart this world at any moment. If the gods exist, leaving the company of people is nothing to fear.
This connects to the Stoic view of reading learned earlier. Practice comes first.
There is no being more pitiable than one who fails to realise that keeping close to the divinity within and serving it sincerely is enough.
Book 3
Unless it concerns the good of the community, do not waste the rest of your life thinking about others. Wondering what this person or that is doing, why they do it, what they say and think and are after — these are things you cannot observe closely with your own governing reason, and thinking about them stops you doing the other things you ought to do.
At a time when I am excessively conscious of how others see me, this passage rings loudly. It was exactly a period in which I thought far too often about what they were “after”. That is waste.
You must cultivate the habit of thinking only about the things to which, if someone suddenly asked “what are you thinking about now?”, you could answer “this and this” without hesitation. … Your answer would immediately reveal that you are indifferent to pleasure, indulgence, rivalry, envy, suspicion — everything you would blush to confess you had in mind.
Do not dress up your thoughts in finery
Wander no longer. You will have no time to read your little notebooks, or the deeds of the ancient Romans and Greeks, or the excerpts of their writings you set aside to read in old age. So hurry toward your goal. Abandon empty hope, and if you care about yourself, help yourself while you still can.
Book 4
[Seeking a retreat for yourself] is the most foolish thing of all. You can retreat into yourself whenever you wish. There is no retreat quieter or more secluded for a person than their own soul.
Your principles should be short and fundamental, so that merely calling them to mind chases away every worry at once and sends you back without complaint to the things you must return to.
Consider that once the soul is separated and knows its own power, it does not mix with the breath, whether that breath is gentle or rough.
The whole earth is no more than a point; how small, then, is the corner of it you live in. So however many people here send you praise, how many can they be, and what sort of people are they?
Look at things as a creature bound to die.
Anxiety comes only from the opinion within us. Everything you see will change in an instant and no longer exist. Always keep in mind how many changes you have already been through. “The whole universe is change, and life is opinion.”
Do not try to understand a thing as the person who insulted you judges it, or as someone wants you to judge it. See the thing as it is.
Do not act as if you will live ten thousand years. Death is close at hand. While you live, while you can, be good.
Nine times out of ten what we say and do is unnecessary, so discarding it will give you spare time and reduce your agitation. So in everything you should ask yourself whether this too is one of the unnecessary things.
Gain something from the present through careful, right action. Keep your mind clear but not tense.
Love the few skills you have learned and entrust yourself to them at ease.
Whatever you do, the zeal you pour into it should be proportional to its worth. Do that and you will not become excessively absorbed in trivial matters, and so you will not give up out of weariness.
Book 5
… nature has set a limit even to rest. … But you exceed that limit, the sufficient amount. In action, however, you fall short of it and short of your own capacity. You do not love yourself.
Do not be dragged off course by others’ criticism or their words, and if there is something right to do or say, do not judge yourself unworthy of doing it. They have their own governing reason and follow their own impulses. Do not look around at such things; walk straight on according to your own nature and universal nature.
Your mind will take the shape of what you frequently hold in thought, for the soul is coloured by such impressions.
The mind advances its own plans by turning the direction of everything that obstructs its activity. So what meant to obstruct that activity comes to assist it, and what meant to block the road opens it.
I tend to get enormously stressed when things do not proceed in the direction my mind wants. I related strongly to the passage about the mind affecting the direction of everything, and the part about the obstruction being able to help that mind is some consolation. Whether it actually turns out that way, though, I am not sure.
Before long, in an instant, you will be ash or bones, and only a name will remain — or not even a name. … But until that time comes, what would satisfy you? What is there besides honouring and praising the gods, doing good to people, and either ‘bearing with’ people or ‘keeping away from’ them? But keep in mind that nothing within the realm of this wretched flesh and breath is yours or up to you.
Book 6
When a thing looks too trustworthy, strip it bare, see through to its worthlessness, and take away the halo it puts on.
What then should you pursue? The very act of resolving to do it.
Make a habit of listening carefully to what others say and, as far as possible, putting yourself in the speaker’s place.
How many of the people born into the world alongside you have already left it.
Book 7
Do not fret over things you do not have as though you already had them. Rather, pick the most valuable of the things you do have and consider how much you would have longed for it if you did not have it.
If you live each day as though it were your last, without excitement, without sloth, without hypocrisy, that is the perfection of character.
Not getting excited about an event, good or bad, is very hard for me. Not getting excited feels harder than governing sloth. I am not sure it is even possible while alive to live every day as your last and not get excited.
Book 8
You have room enough not to be angry at the insensible and ungrateful — indeed, you can even look after them.
Watching colleagues who were unhappy about my unexpected promotion, this makes me reflect on how my own feelings changed.
What then do you exist for? For pleasure? Could your intellect accept such a thought?
Have you ever been obstructed when you felt some impulse? If you insist on satisfying your impulse unconditionally, that is an evil for you as a rational being. But if you accept that obstruction as something ordinary, you are neither harmed nor obstructed.
Cling to an impulse and everything that obstructs it becomes evil. But the moment you regard the obstruction itself as ordinary, it is no longer evil. The stress that comes from not being able to act on an impulse may not be a matter of temperament but of my own attachment to the impulse.
If you suffer because of some external thing, what torments you is not that external thing but your judgement about it.
Do not be sluggish in action, do not jumble your words in conversation, do not wander in thought. … Do not be so busy that you cannot enjoy some ease in life.
Book 9
If your judgement at each moment is sound, your action at each moment aims at the community, and your disposition at each moment is content with everything that arises from natural causes, that is enough.
Wipe out imagination. Restrain impulse. Extinguish desire. Make your governing reason your own.
Act as much as you can, and do not look around to see whether anyone is watching.
Book 10
The gods do not want flattery; they want every rational being to become like them …
Why hesitate when you can see what must be done now? If you can see it, go toward it gladly without looking back. But if you cannot, stop and ask the best adviser you have.
One who follows reason in all things has ease of mind while being active, bright-faced and composed.
Book 11
People despise each other while flattering each other, and wish to surpass each other while bowing to each other.
What torments us is not people’s actions, since their actions rest on their own governing reason. What torments us is our opinion about their actions.
Book 12
Only by following justice can you speak the truth freely and honestly and do what accords with the law and the worth of things. So do not let another’s wickedness, or your own judgement, or another’s words, or the sensations of the flesh grown up around you obstruct you. Let the flesh that is affected by such things take care of them.
The Stoic view that rigorously separates soul from body comes through clearly. Actually living that way would not be easy, but it seems usable as one attitude to adopt when the mind is in disorder.
Practise even the things you think you could never manage. The left hand, slow at other tasks from lack of use, holds the reins more firmly than the right, because it has learned this one.
How ridiculous and out of touch to be surprised by what happens in life!
Do not do it if it is not appropriate; do not say it if it is not true. Your desires are up to you.
I think a person does, at every moment, what they consider appropriate. But whether it is also socially appropriate is a separate question. “Do not do it if it is not appropriate” does not land for me, because whatever “I” do will — short of breaking the law — be what “I” consider appropriate.
… make only what benefits the community the aim of your action.
Could I really put the community ahead of my own private desires? Along with the sceptical thought “is what benefits the community also what benefits me?”, I also find myself wanting to take that attitude as a goal.