Meditations V.1

At daybreak,¹ when loth to rise,² have this thought ready in thy mind: I am rising for a man’s work. Am I then still peevish that I am going to do that for which I was born and for the sake of which I came into the world? Or was I made for this, that I should nuzzle under the bed-clothes and keep myself warm? But this is pleasanter. Hast thou been made then for pleasure, in a word, I ask thee, to be acted upon or to act? Consider each little plant, each tiny bird, the ant, the spider, the bee, how they go about their own work and do each his part for the building up of an orderly Universe. Dost thou then refuse to do the work of a man? Dost thou not hasten to do what Nature bids thee. But some rest, too, is necessary. I do not deny it. Howbeit Nature has set limits to this, and no less so to eating and drinking. Yet thou exceedest these limits and exceedest sufficiency. But in acts it is no longer so; there thou comest short of the possibility.

For thou lovest not thyself, else surely hadst thou loved thy nature also and to do her will. But others who love their own art wear themselves to a shadow with their labours over it, forgetting to wash or take food.³ But thou holdest thine own nature in less honour than the chaser of metal his art of chasing, than the dancer his dancing, than the miser his money-bags, than the popularity-hunter his little applause. And these, when they are exceptionally in earnest, are ready to forgo food and sleep, so that they forward the things in which they are interested. But dost thou deem the acts of a social being of less worth and less deserving of attention?

• 1.See ii. 1.
• 2.Marcus in younger days was an early riser, getting up even at 3 o’clock (Fronto’s letter to Marcus as Caesar, iv. 5) or 5 o’clock (the same, iv. 6). He admits sleepiness of habit (the same, i. 4; v. 59), but says it is so cold in his bedroom that he can scarcely put his hands outside his bedclothes. Fronto constantly urges him to take more sleep (the same, ii. 5; v. 1, 2; On the Holidays at Alsium 2, Naber’s edition p. 227): sleep as much as a free man should! At the last he suffered dreadfully from insomnia, see Galen, Kühn’s edition, volume 14 page 3; Dio’s Roman History 71. 24, § 4.

  Galen is cited by volume and page in Karl Gottlob Kühn’s 19th-century edition of his collected works.

• 3.Compare, of Marcus himself, καμάτοις καὶ φροντίσι τετρυχωμένος (Herodian i. 3, § 1) and Julian’s The Caesars 407. See Plutarch’s story of Nikias the painter (Whether an Old Man Should Engage in Public Affairs 4; That It Is Not Possible to Live Pleasantly According to Epicurus 11).

  Herodian’s Greek, in translation: “worn out with labours and cares.” Plutarch tells of the painter Nicias, so absorbed in his work that he would ask his servants whether he had yet bathed or eaten.