Page:Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Antoninus - Volume 1 - Farquharson 1944.pdf/231

 by action which moves on an easy path and according to your constitution, there is no injury to suspect.

54. Everywhere and continually it is in your power to be reverently content with your present circumstance, to behave to men who are present with you according to right and to handle skilfully the present impression, that nothing you have not mastered may cross the threshold of the mind.

55. Do not look round to the governing selves of men different from yourself, but keep looking straight forward to the goal to which Nature is leading you, Universal Nature through what befalls you, and your own nature by what has to be done by yourself. Now each must do what follows from its constitution, and while the other creatures are constituted for the sake of the reasonable (just as in all else the inferior are for the sake of the superior), the reasonable are for one another's sake. Thus the principal end in man's constitution is the social; and the second, to resist the passions of the body; for it is a property of reasonable and intelligent movement to limit itself and never to be worsted by movements of sense or impulse; for each of those belong to the animal in us, but the movement of intelligence resolves to be sovereign and not to be mastered by those movements outside itself. And rightly so, for that is constituted by Nature to make use of them. The third end in a reasonable constitution is to avoid rash judgement and not to be deceived. Let the governing self, therefore, hold fast to these, and progress on a straight path, and it possesses what is its own.

56. As though you were now dead and have not lived your life up to the present moment, use the balance remaining to live henceforward according to Nature.

57. Love only what falls to your lot and is destined for you; what is more suited to you than that?

58. On each occurrence keep before your eyes those to whom the same happened, and then they were sorry, were surprised, complained. And now where are they? Nowhere. Very well, do you, too, desire what they desired? Will you not leave the moods of others to those who shift their moods and are shifted, and yourself be 139