The Good Book_ A Secular Bible - A. C. Grayling [69]
14. When man’s natural frame is resolved into its elements by death, it is clearly seen whither each of the other elements departs:
15. For they all go to the place from which they came.
16. As to the personality and intelligence which the living frame supports, and which vanishes when it returns to nature among the trees and stars whence all natural things come,
17. All that need be said is that nothing is so like death as sleep.
18. Do not regret having lived, but while yet living live in a way that allows you to think that you were not born in vain.
19. And do not regret that you must die: it is what all who are wise must wish, to have life end at its proper time.
20. For nature puts a limit to living as to everything else,
21. And we are the sons and daughters of nature, and for us therefore the sleep of nature is nature’s final kindness.
Chapter 23: Of poverty
1. There are those who fear poverty even worse than death,
2. Even though it has been well said that poverty, brought into conformity with the law of nature, is great wealth.
3. The minimum that the law of nature ordains for us is to avert hunger, thirst and cold.
4. In order to banish hunger and thirst, it is not necessary to pay court at the doors of the purse-proud,
5. Or to submit to the stern frown, or to the kindness that humiliates;
6. Nor is it necessary for us to scour the seas, or go campaigning; nature’s needs are easily satisfied in anyone of temperate mind and habit.
7. It is the superfluous things for which men sweat, the superfluous things that weary our days,
8. That force us to labour for uncertain rewards, that make us risk our happiness.
9. There is a noble ambition which is not aimed at having superfluity,
10. There is a noble ambition not aimed at emulation of those we think richer and therefore happier than ourselves.
11. This is the ambition to do something genuinely worthwhile,
12. To foster those abilities we have both for the joy of exercising them to the utmost, and for offering their fruits to our fellows.
13. Thus the musician, painter, poet and statesman, the scientist and the inquirer,
14. Work with pleasure because they work at what they must and what they love;
15. For them the weariness at the day’s end is sweet,
16. And whether or not they have the acclaim of others, they themselves know if they have done well.
17. To work with what one has, to make and to do, to fulfil what is within,
18. To tend the orchard of one’s capacities, is to make one’s life a good thing to live.
19. And if the harvest benefits others, adding to the store of good,
20. The justification for one’s hour on earth is complete.
Chapter 24: On the consolation of wisdom regarding death
1. Hasten to be wise, for then you can enjoy for longer the pleasures of an improved mind which is at peace with itself.
2. You remember the joy you felt when you laid aside the garments of childhood and donned adult clothing, and took your place among adults;
3. Now you may look for an even greater joy when you have laid aside the mind of youth, and wisdom has enrolled you among those who are mature.
4. For it is not childhood that stays with us, but something worse: childishness.
5. And this condition is the more serious because we possess the authority of adulthood, yet we still have some of the follies of youth, even the follies of infancy.
6. Infants fear trifles, children fear shadows, many adults fear both.
7. Yet all you need do is to advance; you will thus understand that some things are less to be dreaded, precisely because they inspire us with great fear.
8. No evil is great which is the last evil of all. Death arrives; it would be a thing to dread, if it could remain with you.
9. But death must either not come at all, or else must come and immediately pass away to nothingness.
10. ‘It is difficult,’ you say, ‘to bring the mind to a point where it can scorn death.’ But do you not see what trifling reasons sometimes impel people to scorn life instead?
11. One hangs himself because he has been rejected