At our birth...

we received the mingled seeds of every experience and for that reason lead lives that are very uneven. The sensible man prays for good things, but expects the contrary, and makes the most of either, avoiding too much of anything. For we may not only admire but imitate the attitude of Anaxagoras, which made him exclaim at the death of his son, I knew I had begotten a mortal. We may apply it too to every contingency. I know that my wealth is ephemeral and insecure. I know that those who gave me my office can take it away. I know that my wife is good but still a woman, and that my friend is only a man.

An animal is by its nature changeable, as Plato said [Letters]. For such a prepared frame of mind, if anything desirable happens, it is not unexpected. It does not meet trouble with I would not have thought it! or I was looking for something different! or This I was not expecting! It stops the throbbings and palpitations of the heart, and puts a prompt quietus on anything frantic or hysterical.

Carneades [the founder of the New Academy at Athens] suggests that in time of great calamities the thing that produces shock and despair is wholly and entirely the unexpected. The poet [Homer, Odyssey] has shown us graphically how powerful may be something unexpected. For Odysseus broke into tears when his old dog wagged his tail, but was nothing so moved when he sat by his weeping wife, for to her he had come with his emotions under control of his reason and fully prepared, whereas he had not expected the dog and came on him suddenly, without looking for him.

As for the things which seem to pain us by their very nature, such as sickness, anxieties, and the deaths of friends and children, there is that line of Euripides,

Alas--yet why alas? We but suffer what comest to mortals. [Bellerophon]

And no reasoning is of such help, when sorrow suddenly descends on us, as that which reminds uf of the common and natural neccesity to which man through his body is exposed. But that is the only handle he gives to fate, since in the chief and most important things he stands secure. For fortune can afflict us with disease, take away our money, caluminate us to the people of the tyrant, but it cannot make a good and brave and high-souled man bad and cowardly and ignoble and malicious, nor deprive him of the disposition which, as long as he keeps it, is of more value to him in the conduct of his life than is a pilot to a ship at sea. For a pilot cannot calm the wild wind and wave, nor can he in his need find a harbor wherever he wants it, nor can he await events boldly, without trembling, though as long as he has not despaired, he uses his skill,

Scudding on with his great sail lowered to the shorter mast,
Above a sea as dark as Erebus.
[Homer, Odyssey]

and while it still rises above the billows, he sits there shivering and quaking, But a wise man's mind keeps him calm, for the most part, even in the face of bodily ailments, for he cuts out the causes of disease by his temperance and sober living and labor in moderation, and if some trouble starts to appear from outside, he sails around it as though it were a rock. Prompt to act he passes by it with nimble helm, as Asclepiades puts it. And if some unexpected and tremendous gale sweeps down on him and proves too much for him, the harbor is near, and he can swim away from his body, as from a leaky boat.

For it is fear of death, and not desire of life, that makes the foolish man hang on to his body, clinging to it, as Odysseus did to the fig-tree in terror of Charybdis that lay below.

Where the wind neither let him stay nor sail on,

and he was indignant at one, and afraid of the other. But a man who has some understanding of the nature of the soul, and who reflects that the change it undergoes at death is either to something better or at least to nothing worse, has in his fearlessness of death a great help to peace of mind in life.

He who said, I have anticipated you, O fortune, and shut off every way by which you can creep in on me, was not trusting to bolts or keys or walls, but to convictions and reasons which are within grasp of all who want them. Nor should we despair or disbelieve those who tell us these things, but admire and emulate them and be inspired by them, and observe and test ourselves in trivial matters with a view to those that are serious. We should not avoid or refuse that self-examination, or try to evade it by saying, Nothing probably can be more difficult. An unexercised inertia and softness are the results of that spirit of self-indulgence which occupies itself always with the easier task, and sheers away from the disagreeable to what is pleasant. But the soul that is compelled by reason to train itself to face steadily sickness and grief and exile will find in what appears hard and dreadful much that is deceitful and empty and hollow, as reason will show in each case.

Yet many may shudder at that line of Menander,

No man can say, "I shall not suffer that,"

for anyone can say, I will not do that. I will not lie. I will not be a sluggard. I will not cheat. I will not be a schemer. And that which is in our power is not a small but a great aid to peace of mind. So, on the contrary,

The consciousness that I have done terrible deeds,

is like a sore in the flesh, leaves in the mind a regret which is forever wounding and piercing it. Neither a costly house, nor a heap of gold, nor pride of race, nor high office, nor charm nor eloquence of speech, make life so peaceful and serene as a soul pure of evil acts and desires, having as its spring of life a nature steadfast and undefiled. From it flow noble deeds, bringing with them an inspired and joyful energy, together with loftiness of thought and a memory sweeter and more lasting than the hope which Pindar says is the support of age.

I am much taken with Diogenes' remark to the stranger whom he saw at Sparta dressing himself ostentatiously for a feast, Does not a good man think of every day as a feast? And a very splendid feast, if we see it rightly. For the world is a most holy and divinely beautiful a temple, into which man is introduced at his birth, not to behold motionless images made by hands, but things which the minds of the gods have prepared as visible copies of things of the mind, as Plato says, and which have innate in them the principle of life and motion--sun, moon, and stars, and rivers gushing fresh waters, and the earth the sustainer of plants and animals. Life is an initiation into all these things, and as the most revealing of initiations it should be full of peacefulness and delight.

But men shame the festivals which the gods have provided for us and the mysteries to which they lead us and pass their time chiefly in lamentation and heaviness of heart and carking cares. They will not listen when other men call on them with reasoning that would enable them to endure the present without repining, remember the past with gratitude, and go forward to the future fearlessly and without suspicion, in glad and radiant hope.

--Translated from the Greek by Louise Ropes Loomis