Meditations II.5
Every hour make up thy mind sturdily as a Roman and a man to do what thou hast in hand with scrupulous and unaffected dignity and love of thy kind and independence and justice; and to give thyself rest from all other impressions. And thou wilt give thyself this, if thou dost execute every act of thy life as though it were thy last,10 divesting thyself of all aimlessness11 and all passionate antipathy to the convictions of reason, and all hypocrisy and self-love and dissatisfaction with thy allotted share. Thou seest how few are the things, by mastering which a man may lead a life of tranquillity and godlikeness; for the Gods also will ask no more from him who keeps these precepts.
- 10.§ 11; vii. 69; Seneca’s Epistles xii.
The Epistles are Seneca’s 124 letters to his friend Lucilius on Stoic ethics. The twelfth, on old age, urges that each day be ordered as though it were the last.
- 11.See §§ 16, 17; iv. 2.