Page:Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Antoninus - Volume 1 - Farquharson 1944.pdf/327

 'nothing that means an act of Nature is of evil omen, or it would be a bad omen to say that the corn has been reaped.'

35. The unripe grape, the ripe bunch, the dried raisin, all are changes; not to nothing, but to what at this moment is nothing.

36. 'There is no robber of the will,' as Epictetus says.

37. He said too: 'you must find out an art of assent, and keep your attention fixed in the sphere of the impulses, that they may be controlled by reservation, be social, and in proportion to value; and you must wholly abstain from desire and employ aversion in regard to nothing that is not in our own control.

38. 'So we are contending,' he said, 'for no ordinary prize, but for whether we are to be sane or insane.'

39. Socrates used to say: 'What do you want? To have souls of rational or irrational beings?' 'Rational.' 'What rational beings, sound or inferior?' 'Sound.' 'Why don't you seek them?' 'Because we have them.' 'Why then do you fight and disagree?'

1. It is in your power to secure at once all the objects which you dream of reaching by a roundabout path, if you will be fair to yourself: that is, if you will leave all the past behind, commit the future to Providence, and direct the present, and that alone, to Holiness and Justice. Holiness, to love your dispensation—for Nature brought it to you and you to it; Justice, freely and without circumlocution both to speak the truth and to do the things that are according to law and according to worth. And be not hampered by another's evil, his judgement, or his words, much less by the sensation of the flesh that has 235