Meditations

As with Book 2, Book 3 begins with a prescript identifying where Marcus composed his entries: “Written in Carnuntum,” where he was campaigning (16). The book is especially concerned with the characteristics of a good life and good man.

Marcus writes that it is necessary to “have a sense of urgency” since life is brief and the capacity for attention and understanding “will fade before we do” (16). He cites prominent figures as examples of the body’s fragility and mutability: Despite their famed works, Hippocrates, Alexander, Pompey, Julius Caesar, Heraclitus, Democritus, and Socrates all had to face death, but “nothing is empty of the gods” (17). Observing Nature as a Whole allows one to appreciate what may seem unattractive in isolation. He exhorts himself not to waste time thinking of anything other than bringing his work “to fulfillment,” making it excellent, and in a way that promotes what is good, bearing in mind “the kinship of all rational beings” (18).

Marcus’s prescriptions for living a virtuous life include allowing the god that dwells within him to “be the champion of the being you are” (18). He discusses the importance of scrutinizing the world around him and, with sound judgment, choosing only what is good. Nothing that causes him to sacrifice his integrity or be suspicious and hateful towards others is beneficial. His prime focus must be “his own mind and divinity,” which protects him from making “a drama of his life” and enables him to fulfill his purpose, with forethought, in harmony with others, and with "obedience to the gods” (20). He reminds himself to live "in the present moment,” since the past is irretrievable and the future unknown (20).

To achieve true understanding, Marcus exhorts himself to create a sketch of what he experiences so that he can strip it down to “its essential nature” and subject it “to methodical and truthful examination” (20-21). He lists questions he can ask of whatever he subjects to examination, in order to determine the proper course of action in accordance with his divinity. A virtuous person is defined by his willingness “to love and embrace whatever happens to him along his thread of fate” (22) and to safeguard the purity and favor of the divinity within him. If others mistrust his way of living, he must neither quarrel over it nor allow himself to be distracted from his proper path.