Meditations II.11
Let thine every deed and word and thought be those of a man who can depart from life this moment.16 But to go away from among men, if there are Gods, is nothing dreadful; for they would not involve thee in evil. But if indeed there are no Gods, or if they do not concern themselves with the affairs of men, what boots it for me to live in a Universe where there are no Gods, where Providence is not? Nay, but there are Gods, and they do concern themselves with human things;17 and they have put it wholly in man’s power not to fall into evils that are truly such. And had there been any evil in what lies beyond, for this too would they have made provision, that it should be in every man’s power not to fall into it. But how can that make a man’s life worse which does not make the man worse?18 Yet the Nature of the Whole could not have been guilty of an oversight from ignorance or, while cognizant of these things, through lack of power to guard against or amend them; nor could it have gone so far amiss either from inability or unskilfulness, as to allow good and evil to fall without any discrimination alike upon the evil and the good. Still it is a fact that death and life, honour and dishonour, pain and pleasure, riches and penury, do among men one and all betide the Good and the Evil alike, being in themselves neither honourable nor shameful. Consequently they are neither good nor evil.
- 16.above, § 5.
- 17.Compare Fronto’s On the Loss of a Grandson (Naber’s edition p. 233).
On the Loss of a Grandson is Fronto’s letter to Marcus on the death of his grandson, written near the end of Fronto’s life.
- 18.See iv. 8.