Michael Sugrue on Marcus Aurelius

Absolutely the best lecture I’ve ever heard on the subject! WATCHING THIS IS MANDATORY!

On what is really valuable in life

There is little valuable, either in perspiring, like vegetables; or breathing, as cattle, and wild beasts do; or in having sensible impressions made upon the imagination; or in being moved like puppets, by our several passions and appetites; or in mere herding together; or in being nourished. There is nothing in this superior to the discharging again what is superfluous of the food we have taken in. What, then, is valuable? To be received with claps of applause? Not at all. Nor is the applause of tongues more valuable. The praises of the vulgar are nothing but the noise of tongues. If you have, then, quit the pursuit of this trifling sort of glory, what remains as valuable? This one thing, I imagine, to move, or stop yourself, in all desires or pursuits, according to the proper fabric or structure of your nature: For, this is what all design and art is tending to; this is all its aim, that the thing formed by art, should be adapted to the work it is designed for. This, the planter, and the vine-dresser, the horse-rider, and the breeder of the hound, are in quest of. At what does all education and instruction aim? In this, therefore, is placed all that is valuable. If you succeed well in this, you need not be solicitous to acquire any thing further. Won’t you, then, cease to value other things? If you don’t, you’ll never attain to freedom, self-contentment, independency, or tranquillity: for, you must be enviously and suspiciously vying with those who can deprive you of such things as you highly value; laying snares for those who possess them; and pining with vexation, when you want them; and even accusing the Gods. But, the reverencing and honouring your own intellectual part, will make you agreeable to yourself, harmonious with your fellows, and in a perfect concord with the Gods; praising whatsoever they distribute or appoint to men.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book VI, Aphorism 16.

On human nature

The natures of things are so covered up from us, that, to many philosophers, and these no mean ones, all things seem uncertain and incomprehensible. The Stoics themselves own it to be very difficult to comprehend any thing certainly. All our Judgments are fallible. Where is the infallible man, who never changes his opinion? Consider the objects of our knowledge; how transitory are they, and how mean! how often are they in the possession of the most effeminately flagitious, or of a whore, or a robber! Review again the manners of your contemporaries, they are scarce tolerable to the most courteous and meek disposition; not to mention that few can well comport with their own manners, but are often angry with themselves. Amidst such darkness and filth, and this perpetual flux of substance, of time, of motions, and of the things moved, I see nothing worthy of our esteem or solicitude. On the contrary, the hopes of our natural dissolution should be our consolation, and make us bear with patience the time of our sojourning among them: refreshing ourselves with these thoughts; first, that nothing can befall us but what is according to the nature of the whole: and then, that it is always in our power, never to counteract the Deity or Genius within us: to this no force can compell us.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book V, Aphorism 10.