Meditations IV.3

Men seek out retreats for themselves in the country, by the seaside, on the mountains, and thou too art wont to long intensely for such things.⁵ But all this is unphilosophical to the last degree, when thou canst at a moment’s notice retire into thyself.⁶ For nowhere can a man find a retreat more full of peace or more free from care than his own soul—above all if he have that within him, a steadfast look⁷ at which and he is at once in all good ease, and by good ease I mean nothing other than good order. Make use then of this retirement continually and regenerate thyself. Let thy axioms be short and elemental, such as, when set before thee, will at once rid thee of all trouble, and send thee away with no discontent at those things to which thou art returning.

For with what art thou discontented? The wickedness of men? Take this conclusion to heart, that rational creatures have been made for one another; that forbearance is part of justice; that wrong-doing is involuntary;⁸ and think how many ere now, after passing their lives in implacable enmity, suspicion, hatred, and at daggers drawn with one another, have been laid out and burnt to ashes—think of this, I say, and at last stay thy fretting. But art thou discontented with thy share in the whole? Recall the alternative: Either Providence or Atoms!⁹ and the abundant proofs there are that the Universe is as it were a state.¹⁰ But is it the affections of the body that shall still lay hold on thee? Bethink thee that the Intelligence, when it has once abstracted itself and learnt its own power,¹¹ has nothing to do with the motions smooth or rough of the vital breath. Bethink thee too of all that thou hast heard and subscribed to about pleasure and pain.

But will that paltry thing, Fame, pluck thee aside? Look at the swift approach of complete forgetfulness, and the void of infinite time on this side of us and on that, and the empty echo of acclamation, and the fickleness and uncritical judgment of those who claim to speak well of us, and the narrowness of the arena to which all this is confined. For the whole earth is but a point, and how tiny a corner¹² of it is this the place of our sojourning! and how many therein and of what sort are the men who shall praise thee!

From now therefore bethink thee of the retreat into this little plot that is thyself. Above all distract not thyself, be not too eager, but be thine own master, and look upon life as a man, as a human being, as a citizen, as a mortal creature. But among the principles readiest to thine hand, upon which thou shalt pore, let there be these two. One, that objective things do not lay hold of the soul, but stand quiescent without; while disturbances are but the outcome of that opinion which is within us. A second, that all this visible world changes in a moment, and will be no more; and continually bethink thee to the changes of how many things thou hast already been a witness. ‘The Universe—mutation: Life—opinion.’¹³

• 5.For example, Lorium, Lanuvium, Alsium, Centumcellae, Praeneste, Baiae, Caieta, all holiday resorts of Marcus; see especially Fronto’s On the Holidays at Alsium, Naber’s edition p. 223 ff. Compare x. 15, 23.

  The places are villas and resorts in central Italy: Lorium, Antoninus Pius’s estate on the Via Aurelia west of Rome; Lanuvium, in the Alban Hills, Pius’s birthplace; Alsium, on the Etruscan coast; Centumcellae, the modern Civitavecchia; Praeneste, the modern Palestrina; Baiae, on the Bay of Naples; and Caieta, the modern Gaeta. Fronto’s On the Holidays at Alsium is a set of letters urging Marcus to rest from work while on holiday there.

• 6.Compare Arethas on Dio Chrysostom’s Orations xx. 8: μὴ οὖν βελτίστη καὶ λυσιτελεστάτη πασῶν ἡ εἰς αὑτὸν ἀναχώρησις. See below iv. 3, § 4; vii. 28.

  Dio Chrysostom’s twentieth oration is On Retirement. Arethas’s note on it echoes this passage; in translation: “is not withdrawal into oneself the best and most profitable of all?”

• 7.For ἐγκύψας compare St. James, Epistle i. 25: παρακύψας.

  Marcus’s enkypsas and James’s parakypsas both picture stooping to look closely into something; James 1:25 has “whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty” (King James).

• 8.See vii. 22, 63; xi. 18, § 3.
• 9.See viii. 17; ix. 28, 39.

  The alternative sets the Stoic view, that the universe is governed by a providential reason, against the Epicurean view, that it is a chance concourse of atoms. At IX.28, one of the passages cited, Marcus states what follows for conduct: “if God—all is well; if haphazard—be not thou also haphazard.”

• 10.ii. 16, near the end; iv. 4; x. 15; xii. 36. St. Paul, Philippians iii. 20.

  Paul’s word in Philippians 3:20 is politeuma, “citizenship” or “commonwealth,” which the King James renders “conversation”: “our conversation is in heaven.”

• 11.See v. 14.
• 12.See iii. 10; viii. 21.
• 13.ii. 15; iv. 7; xii. 22. A maxim of Democrates, a Pythagorean; compare Shakespeare’s Hamlet ii. 2. 256, “There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so”; Tennyson: “All things are, as they seem, to all.” Some have been found to say that even matter has no objective existence.

  The maxims transmitted under the name “Democrates” are often assigned to Democritus, though their authenticity is disputed. Hamlet’s line comes in his exchange with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, after he calls Denmark a prison.