Where Evil Has No Footing
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Ἐν ἀλλοτρίῳ ἡγεμονικῷ κακὸν σὸν οὐχ ὑφίσταται οὐδὲ μὴν ἔν τινι τροπῇ καὶ ἑτεροιώσει τοῦ περιέχοντος. ποῦ οὖν; ὅπου τὸ περὶ κακῶν ὑπολαμβάνον σοί ἐστι. τοῦτο οὖν μὴ ὑπολαμβανέτω καὶ πάντα εὖ ἔχει. κἂν τὸ ἐγγυτάτω αὐτοῦ, τὸ σωμάτιον, τέμνηται, καίηται, διαπυίσκηται, σήπηται, ὅμως τὸ ὑπολαμβάνον περὶ τούτων μόριον ἡσυχαζέτω· τουτέστι, κρινέτω μήτε κακόν τι εἶναι μήτε ἀγαθόν, ὃ ἐπίσης δύναται κακῷ ἀνδρὶ καὶ ἀγαθῷ συμβαίνειν. ὃ γὰρ καὶ τῷ παρὰ φύσιν καὶ τῷ κατὰ φύσιν βιοῦντι ἐπίσης συμβαίνει, τοῦτο οὔτε κατὰ φύσιν ἐστὶν οὔτε παρὰ φύσιν.
In another’s ruling faculty no evil of yours has any footing, nor indeed in any turning or alteration of your surroundings. Where, then? Where the part in you that forms opinions about evils is. So let this not form such an opinion, and all is well. And even if what is nearest to it, the poor body, is cut, burned, festers, rots — still let the part that opines about these things keep quiet; that is, let it judge nothing to be either evil or good that can befall equally a bad man and a good one. For what befalls equally the man living against nature and the man living according to nature is neither according to nature nor against it.
A tight Stoic argument: your evil cannot lodge in someone else’s mind, nor in any change in your circumstances — only in your own opinion about evils. So silence that faculty, and even if the body is cut, burned, or rotting, judge nothing good or evil that can happen alike to good and bad men.
Marcus conducts a small piece of Stoic detective-work, hunting for the location of "your evil." It cannot lodge in someone else’s ἡγεμονικόν — another person’s bad ruling faculty is his affair, not a harm to you. Nor can it lodge in any τροπὴ καὶ ἑτεροίωσις τοῦ περιέχοντος, any shift or change in your external circumstances, since those are mere matter, morally neutral. Having eliminated the outside world, only one place is left: ὅπου τὸ περὶ κακῶν ὑπολαμβάνον σοί ἐστι — "where your opining-about-evils faculty is," namely, in your own judgment. Evil has exactly one address, and it is inside you. Hence the astonishing conclusion: τοῦτο μὴ ὑπολαμβανέτω καὶ πάντα εὖ ἔχει — "let this not pass such a verdict, and all is well." Withhold the judgment "this is bad," and the badness has nowhere to be.
He then pushes the doctrine to its hardest case with a run of surgical, unflinching verbs: even if the body nearest that faculty is τέμνηται, καίηται, διαπυίσκηται, σήπηται — cut, cauterized, suppurating, putrefying — the "opining part" is to stay silent (ἡσυχαζέτω). The body is only the σωμάτιον, the "poor little body," and its ruin is not the mind’s ruin unless the mind consents to call it evil. Marcus grounds this in a clean criterion of what counts as good or evil at all: nothing can be truly good or evil if it can happen ἐπίσης, equally, to a bad man and a good one. Since disease and pain strike the virtuous and the vicious alike, they are neither "according to nature" nor "against nature" in the morally loaded sense — they are simply indifferents. The whole chapter is the Stoic theory of value compressed into a therapy for pain: locate evil in judgment, refuse the judgment, and even the surgeon’s knife loses its power to make your life go badly.
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Meditations 4.39 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/meditations-greek/4.39/