The Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius - College of Stoic Philosophers

200 THE THOUGHTS OF xi
passion is not manly, but that mildness and gentleness,
as they are more agreeable to human nature, so also are
they more manly; and he who possesses these qualities
possesses strength, nerves and courage, and not the man
who is subject to fits of passion and discontent. For in
the same degree in which a man s mind is nearer to
freedom from all passion, in the same degree
nearer to strength and as the sense of pain
is a charac
:
also is it
teristic of weakness, so also is anger. For he who yields
to pain and he who yields to anger, both are wounded
and both submit.
But if thou wilt, receive also a tenth present from the
leader of the Muses [Apollo], and it is this that to expect
bad men not to do wrong is madness, for he who expects
this desires an impossibility. But to allow men to behave
so to others, and to expect them not to do thee any wrong,
is irrational and tyrannical.
19. There are four principal aberrations of the superior
faculty against which thou shouldst be constantly on thy
guard, and when thou hast detected them, thou shouldst
wipe them out and say on each occasion thus : this
thought is not necessary : this tends to destroy social
union : this which thou art going to say comes not from
the real thoughts for thou shouldst consider it
among
;
the most absurd of things for a man not to speak from his
real thoughts. But the fourth is when thou shalt reproach
thyself for anything, for this is an evidence of the diviner
part within thee being overpowered and yielding to the
less honourable and to the perishable part, the body, and
to its gross pleasures (iv, 24 ; n, 16).
20. Thy aerial part and all the fiery parts which are
mingled in thee, though by nature they have an upward
tendency, still in obedience to the disposition of the uni
verse they are overpowered here in the compound mass
[the body]. And also the whole of the earthy part in thee
and the watery, though their tendency is downward, still