The Practicing Stoic: A Philosophical User's Manual

by Ward Farnsworth

Right from the start, then, practice saying to every harsh appearance, “You are just an appearance, and not at all what you appear.” Then examine it, and test it by those rules you have – and by this first one especially, whether it has to do with things that are up to us or things that are not up to us. And if it has to do with something not up to us, let the thought be close at hand that “It is nothing to me.” Epictetus, Enchiridion 1.5

It is difficult to combine and bring together those things – the carefulness of one devoted to material things, and the steadiness of one who is indifferent to them – but it is not impossible; otherwise happiness would be impossible. It is like planning a sea voyage. What can I do? I can choose the captain, the sailors, the day, the right moment. Then a storm comes upon us. At this point, what concern is it of mine? My part is done. The problem belongs to another – the captain. Epictetus, Discourses 2.5.9

Material things are indifferent; how we use them is not. How then may a man maintain not only steadiness and calm, but also the state of mind that is careful and neither reckless nor negligent? He can act like people playing a board game. The game pieces are neither good nor bad, nor are the dice. How can I know what the next throw of the dice will be? But to use the throw carefully and skillfully, this belongs to me. In life, too, then, the principal task is this: to distinguish and separate things, and say: “Externals are outside my power: my choices are within my power. Where shall I seek the good and the bad? Within, in the things that are my own.” But in what depends on others, call nothing either good or bad, benefit or harm, or anything else of the kind. “What then? Does this

mean we shouldn’t care how we use them?” By no means. That would be a wrongful use of our faculty of choice, and so contrary to nature. External things should be used with care, because their use can be good or bad. But at the same time you should keep your composure and your calm, because the things themselves are neither good nor bad. Epictetus, Discourses 2.5.1–7

Human life the Stoics appear to have considered as a game of great skill; in which, however, there was a mixture of chance, or of what is vulgarly understood to be chance…. If we placed our happiness in winning the stake, we placed it in what depended upon causes beyond our power, and out of our direction. We necessarily exposed ourselves to perpetual fear and uneasiness, and frequently to grievous and mortifying disappointments. If we placed it in playing well, in playing fairly, in playing wisely and skillfully; in the propriety of our own conduct in short; we placed it in what, by proper discipline, education, and attention, might be altogether in our own power, and under our own direction. Our happiness was perfectly secure, and beyond the reach of fortune. Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)

These are the two ideas you should keep at the very front of your mind and think about. One is that things in the world do not touch your spirit, but stand quietly external to it; that which disturbs us comes only from the opinions within us. Second, everything you see changes in a moment and will soon be gone. Keep in mind always how many of these changes you have already seen. The world is constant change; your life lies in your opinion. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.3.4

Imagine the vast abyss of time, and think of the entire universe; then compare what we call a human lifetime to that immensity. You will see how tiny a thing it is that we wish for and seek to prolong. Seneca, Epistles 99.10

We live for an instant, even less than an instant. But nature adds mockery to even this trivial span by giving it an appearance of longer extent – making one part infancy, another childhood, another youth, another the gradual slope (so to speak) from youth to old age, another old age itself. How many steps for so short a climb! Seneca, Epistles 49.3

Asia and Europe are corners of the universe; the whole of the sea is a drop in the universe; Athos, a tiny clod of dirt in the universe; all the present time is one point in eternity. Everything is small, easily changing, disappearing. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 6.36

Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised, the rememberer and the remembered. And all this in just one corner of this continent – and yet even here we are not in accord with each other, nor with ourselves; and the whole of the earth, too, is a speck. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 8.21

This earth with its cities and peoples, its rivers and encircling sea, if measured by the universe, we may regard as a mere dot. Our life occupies a portion smaller than a dot, if it is compared with all of time, because the measure of eternity is greater than that of the world; the world recreates itself over and over within the bounds of time. Seneca, Consolation to Marcia 21.2

Consider that as the heaps of sand piled on one another hide the former sands, so in life the events which go before are soon covered by those which come after. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 7.34

Soon the earth will cover us all. Then the earth itself will be changed; and whatever comes next will continue to be changed endlessly; then those things again, to infinity. Someone who contemplates these successive waves of change and alteration, and their speed, will look down upon all mortal things. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 9.28

But this one thing I know: all works of mortals are doomed to mortality. We live in the midst of things destined to die. Seneca, Epistles 91.11–12

Expressions that used to be familiar now require explanation. In the same way, the names of people who used to be heroes now need some explanation – Camillus, Cæso, Volesus, Leonnatus, a little later Scipio and Cato too, then also Augustus, then also Hadrian and Antoninus. For all things fade and become mere tales, and are buried soon thereafter in complete oblivion. And I’m speaking just of those who have shone in some way with great brilliance. As for the rest, they are gone and forgotten when they take their last breath. And what, after all, is even an everlasting remembrance? Completely empty. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.28

It is a simple but still useful help toward contempt of death to call to mind those who have clung tenaciously to life. What did they gain beyond those who died early? Regardless, they were all buried somewhere eventually – Cadicianus, Fabius, Julianus, Lepidus, anyone like that. They carried out many to be buried, then were carried out themselves. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.50

“Do you think that a mind habituated to thoughts of grandeur and the contemplation of all time and all existence can deem this life of man a thing of great concern?” “Impossible,” said he. “Hence such a man will not suppose death to be terrible?” “Least of all.” Plato, Republic Book VI (486a–b)

Aristotle tells us of little creatures on the river Hypanis that live for only a day. One that dies at eight in the morning dies young; one that dies at five in the evening dies of old age. Who would not laugh to see the difference between such momentary lifespans counted as happiness or unhappiness? Yet calling our own lives long or short, when they are compared with eternity, or even to the spans of mountains, rivers, stars, trees, and certain other animals, seems no less absurd. Montaigne, That to Study Philosophy is to Learn to Die (1580)

up: do not overlook how short are the lives of all mortal things, and how insignificant – yesterday a little blob of mucus, tomorrow a mummy or ashes. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.48

Carefully consider the past – the countless changes of political regimes. You can also see future events in advance; they will be of entirely the same kind, for it is impossible to depart from the pattern of what is happening now. It follows that to have observed human life for forty years is the same as for ten thousand. For what more are you going to see? Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 7.49

When a steadfast mind knows that there is no difference between a day and an age, whatever the days or events that may come, then it can look out from the heights and laugh as it reflects on the succession of the ages. Seneca, Epistles 101.9

This is a fine saying of Plato—that a person who is going to discuss human affairs should examine earthly things as if looking down from somewhere above: groups of men, armies, tilled fields, marriages, divorces, births, deaths, the noise of the law courts, the deserts, the patchwork of foreign peoples, festivals, mournings, markets, the whole mixture and the orderly arrangement of opposites. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 7.48

Look down from above on the countless gatherings and countless ceremonies, and every sort of voyage in storm and calm, and the disputes between those being born, living together, and dying. Think also of the life that was lived by others long ago, and that will be lived after you, and that is being lived now in other countries; think of how many don’t know your name at all, how many will quickly forget it, how many who – perhaps praising you now – will soon be finding fault. Realize that being remembered has no value, nor does your reputation, nor anything else at all. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 9.30

We believe these affairs of ours are great because we are small.

The things highly valued in life are empty and rotten and trivial; we are little dogs biting each other, quarrelsome children laughing and then crying…. Reputation, in such a world, is meaningless. What then? You graciously wait for death – for extinction, or for passage to another state. And until the time for that has arrived, what is enough? What else but to venerate and praise the gods, to do good to others, and to treat them with tolerance and restraint; and as for what is within the bounds of your body and your breath, to remember that it is neither yours nor up to you. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 5.33

Neither death nor pain is to be feared, but the fear of pain or death…. Confidence should therefore be our attitude toward death, and caution should be our attitude toward the fear of it. But now we have the opposite: toward death, avoidance; toward our opinions about it, carelessness, indifference, and neglect. Epictetus, Discourses 2.1.13–14

“What then should he study?” That which is helpful against all weapons, against every kind of foe – contempt for death. Seneca, Epistles 36.8

He who has learned to die has unlearned slavery. He is above any power, and certainly beyond it. What terrors have prisons and bonds and bars for him? Seneca, Epistles 26.10

Make life as a whole agreeable to yourself, then, by banishing all worry about it. No good thing makes its possessor happy unless his mind is prepared for its loss; and nothing is easier to let go of than that which, once gone, cannot be missed. Seneca, Epistles 4.5–6

We must make ready for death before we make ready for life. Seneca, Epistles 61.4

A correct understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not by adding to life a limitless time, but by taking away the yearning after immortality. For life has no terrors for him who has thoroughly understood that there are no terrors for him in ceasing to live. Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus

He who fears death fears either the loss of sensation or a different kind of sensation. But if you will have no sensation, you will feel nothing bad; and if you have a different kind of sensation, then you will be a different kind of living being and will not have ceased to live. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 8.58

Accustom yourself to thinking that death is nothing to us, since every good and evil lies in perception, while death is the deprivation of perception…. Something that causes no trouble when it is present causes pain to no purpose when it is merely expected. Death, the most horrible of evils, is therefore nothing to us – since so long as we exist, death is not present, and when death is present, we do not exist. Epicurus, Letter to Menœceus

Do not despise death, but be content with it, since this too is one of those things nature wills. For what it is to be young and grow old, and to increase and reach maturity, and to have teeth and beard and grey hair, and to father children, and to be pregnant and to give birth, and all the other natural operations the seasons of your life bring – so also is dissolution. This, then, is the way of one who is reflective: to be neither careless nor impatient nor arrogant with respect to death, but to wait for it as one of the operations of nature. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 9.3

That which has died does not fall out of the universe. If it stays here, it also changes here, and is dissolved into its proper parts, which are elements of the universe and of your self. And these change, too, and they do not complain. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 8.18

So I won’t exist anymore? No, you won’t – but something else will, which the universe now needs. For you also came into existence not when you chose, but when the world had need of you. Epictetus, Discourses 3.24.94

From the essence of the universe, as if it were wax, nature molds now a little horse; and when it has broken this up, it uses the material for a little tree, then for a little man, then for something else; and each of these things exists for a very short time. But it is no hardship for a box to be broken up, just as there was none in its being fastened together. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 7.23

“What?” I say to myself; “does death so often test me? Let it do so; I myself have for a long time tested death.” “When?” you ask. Before I was born…. Unless I am mistaken, my dear Lucilius, we go astray in thinking that death follows, when it has both preceded and will follow. Whatever condition existed before our birth, was death. For what does it matter whether you do not begin at all, or whether you end, when the result in either case is non-existence? Seneca, Epistles 54.4–5

Those who have died return to the same state in which they were before they were born. Just as there was nothing either good or bad for us before we were born, so neither will there be after the end. And just as things before us were nothing to us, so neither will things after us be anything to us. Plutarch, Consolation to Apollonius 15 (109e–109f)

How ridiculous to worry about passing into freedom from all worry! Just as our birth brought us the birth of all things, so will our death be the death of them all. And so to be sorry we will not be alive a hundred years from now is as foolish as to be sorry we were not alive a hundred years ago. Montaigne, That to Study Philosophy is to Learn to Die (1580)

the value of mortality. Marcus Aurelius’s view of humanity gave him a reason not to fear death: the human race, seen accurately, is not the sort of company one should be too sorry to leave behind.

Deny, now, if you can, that Nature is very generous in making death inevitable. Seneca, Epistles 101.14

Just imagine how much less bearable and more painful an immortal life would be for mankind than the life I have given you. If you did not have death, you would curse me forever for depriving you of it. Indeed, I have deliberately mixed death with a little bitterness to prevent the advantages of it from causing you to embrace it too quickly or too rashly. To keep you in the moderate state that I wish, not fleeing either from life or from death, I have tempered each of those states with pleasure and with pain.

Who can you show me that places any value on their time, who knows the worth of each day, who understands that they are dying daily? For we are mistaken when we see death ahead of us; the greater part of it has happened already. Whatever of our life is behind us is in death’s hands. Seneca, Epistles 1.2

Why fear your last day? It does no more to advance you toward death than any other day did. The last step does not cause your fatigue; it reveals your fatigue. Every day is a step toward death. The last one arrives there. Montaigne, That to Study Philosophy is to Learn to Die (1580)

The best thing eternal law ever ordained was one entrance into life but many exits. Must I await the cruelty either of disease or of man, when I can depart in the midst of torture and shake off my troubles? This is the one reason why we cannot complain of life; it keeps none of us against our will. Humanity is well situated, in that none are unhappy except by their own fault. Live, if it suits you; if not, you can go back where you came from. Seneca, Epistles 70.14–15

Here are the words of the law on this subject: If chance delivers some great misfortune that you cannot remedy, a haven is always nearby. You can swim away from your body as you would from a leaking boat. Only fools are attached to their bodies by a fear of death rather than a love of life. Montaigne, An Apology for Raymond Sebond (1580)

Men do not care how nobly they live, but only how long, although it is within the reach of every man to live nobly, but within no man’s power to live long. Seneca, Epistles 22.17

What matters is not how long you live, but how well; and often living well means that you cannot live long. Seneca, Epistles 101.15

A journey will be incomplete if you stop halfway, or anywhere on this side of your destination; but a life is not incomplete if it is honorable. Wherever you leave off, provided you leave off nobly, your life is a whole. Often, it is true, one must leave off bravely, and not necessarily for momentous reasons; for neither are the reasons momentous that hold us here. Seneca, Epistles 77.4