Marcus Aurelius Antoninus to Himself - College of Stoic Philosophers

io8 MARCUS ANTONINUS BOOK
as are Hadrian and Augustus. Secondly, face
facts open-eyed, bearing in mind that it is your
duty to be a man and to be good ; what man's
nature demands, that do without swerving ; so
speak, as seems to you most just ; only
considerately, modestly, and with sincerity.
be it
It is Nature's work to shift and to transpose, to
remove thence and to carry thither. All is change ;
yet need we not fear any novelty ; all is the
wonted round ; nay even the apportionments equal.
Every nature finds content in pursuing the
tenor of its way :
and the reasoning nature
moves on its own way, when in impressions it
yields assent to nothing false or insecure ; when
it directs impulse towards social action only ;
when it confines inclination and avoidance to
things within our power ; and when it welcomes
every apportionment
of universal nature. For of
this it is a part, as the nature of the leaf is part
of the nature of the plant ; only
that leaf-nature
is part of nature without sense or reason and
liable to contravention, while man-nature is part
of nature that is above contravention, possessed
of mind, and just ; seeing that it apportions to
successive men, equally and by scale of worth,