Marcus opens Book VII with a blunt question: what is wickedness? The answer is whatever you have already seen many times in towns, houses, ancient stories, and fresh gossip. There is nothing new under the sun; all things are usual and brief. When trouble arrives, let that memento return before shock owns you. Your dogmata stay alive only while you refresh the thoughts that feed them; you can conceive what is right and true about whatever has happened, and what lies outside your understanding does not properly concern you. You may grant yourself what most men beg the gods for after death: to see the world again as public shows, pomp, herds, conflicts, hungry curs, frightened mice, and puppets on wires, and still stand steadfast without indignation. Conceive every word and every action separately and ask its true use.
If your reason suffices for the work, use it without ostentation; if not, accept help without shame when the common good requires it, as a soldier proposes scaling a wall and takes a comrade's boost rather than quitting from pride. Future troubles need not preoccupy you; all things knit into one sacred order. Material dissolves to the whole; memory is swallowed by time. Love men as members of one reasonable body, not detached parts chasing convenience. The understanding troubles itself only by false opinion; happiness is a good spirit, and intrusive opinion must be sent away. Change is as natural as heating bath water or digesting food. When someone trespasses, ask what he supposed good or evil in that moment; pity follows. Wax becomes horse, tree, man; dissolution is no worse than assembly. Like emerald or gold, keep your colour whatever others do. No soul willingly leaves truth behind. Love those who transgress against you, remembering they are kin, sin through ignorance, and will soon be gone; anger is against reason even when passion seems quenched.
Wipe opinion, circumscribe the present, examine what happened, love mankind, obey God. Life is wrestler, not dancer: ready for whatever falls upon you. From Plato's height, armies, markets, marriages, and deaths shrink to one restless, marvelous scene. Do not fancy the future; weigh present gifts you would miss without overprizing them. Look within; the fountain of good is there. Judge Socrates by his soul toward men and gods, not frost, street theatre, or posthumous praise. Pain need not shame the governing mind; Epicurus says it is neither intolerable nor eternal. Spend each day as if it were your last without frenzy or numbness. Work the rest of your life as virtuous overplus on accidents that once grieved others who are now dead. You may run out your time in cheerfulness though men exclaim or beasts tear flesh, because mind judges what befalls it by true nature. Gods bear sinners patiently for ages; restrain vice in yourself before hunting it in others. When you do well and another benefits, do not hunt a third reward such as applause. Providence over particulars, often remembered, steadies the mind toward tranquillity.
Coming Up in Chapter 8
Book Eight strips vanity bare: Marcus admits he has often lived contrary to the philosophic life and tells himself to stop chasing credit. True good is justice, temperance, courage, and liberality; every action should flow from dogmata that say so.
