Meditations - Marcus Aurelius (Emperor of Rome) [64]
Book 11
1. Characteristics of the rational soul:
Self-perception, self-examination, and the power to make of itself whatever it wants.
It reaps its own harvest, unlike plants (and, in a different way, animals), whose yield is gathered in by others.
It reaches its intended goal, no matter where the limit of its life is set. Not like dancing and theater and things like that, where the performance is incomplete if it’s broken off in the middle, but at any point—no matter which one you pick—it has fulfilled its mission, done its work completely. So that it can say, “I have what I came for.”
It surveys the world and the empty space around it, and the way it’s put together. It delves into the endlessness of time to extend its grasp and comprehension of the periodic births and rebirths that the world goes through. It knows that those who come after us will see nothing different, that those who came before us saw no more than we do, and that anyone with forty years behind him and eyes in his head has seen both past and future—both alike.
Also characteristic of the rational soul:
Affection for its neighbors. Truthfulness. Humility. Not to place anything above itself—which is characteristic of law as well. No difference here between the logos of rationality and that of justice.
2. To acquire indifference to pretty singing, to dancing, to the martial arts: Analyze the melody into the notes that form it, and as you hear each one, ask yourself whether you’re powerless against that. That should be enough to deter you.
The same with dancing: individual movements and tableaux. And the same with the martial arts.
And with everything—except virtue and what springs from it. Look at the individual parts and move from analysis to indifference.
Apply this to life as a whole.
3. The resolute soul:
Resolute in separation from the body. And then in dissolution or fragmentation—or continuity.
But the resolution has to be the result of its own decision, not just in response to outside forces [like the Christians]. It has to be considered and serious, persuasive to other people. Without dramatics.
4. Have I done something for the common good? Then I share in the benefits.
To stay centered on that. Not to give up.
5. “And your profession?” “Goodness.” (And how is that to be achieved, except by thought—about the world, about the nature of people?)
6. First, tragedies. To remind us of what can happen, and that it happens inevitably—and if something gives you pleasure on that stage, it shouldn’t cause you anger on this one. You realize that these are things we all have to go through, and that even those who cry aloud “o Mount Cithaeron!” have to endure them. And some excellent lines as well. These, for example:
If I and my two children cannot move the gods
The gods must have their reasons
Or:
And why should we feel anger at the world?
And:
To harvest life like standing stalks of grain
and a good many others.
Then, after tragedy, Old Comedy: instructive in its frankness, its plain speaking designed to puncture pretensions. (Diogenes used the same tactic for similar ends.)
Then consider the Middle (and later the New) Comedy and what it aimed at—gradually degenerating into mere realism and empty technique. There are undeniably good passages, even in those writers, but what was the point of it all—the script and staging alike?
7. It stares you in the face. No role is so well suited to philosophy as the one you happen to be in right now.
8. A branch cut away from the branch beside it is simultaneously cut away from the whole tree. So too a human being separated from another is cut loose from the whole community.
The branch is cut off by someone else. But people cut themselves off—through hatred, through rejection—and don’t realize that they’re cutting themselves off from the whole civic enterprise.
Except that we also have a gift, given us by Zeus, who founded this community of ours. We can reattach ourselves and become