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Page 51
47. Look round at the courses of the stars, as if thou wert going along
with them; and constantly consider the changes of the elements into one
another, for such thoughts purge away the filth of the terrene life.
48. This is a fine saying of Plato:[B] That he who is discoursing about
men should look also at earthly things as if he viewed them from some
higher place; should look at them in their assemblies, armies,
agricultural labors, marriages, treaties, births, deaths, noise of the
courts of justice, desert places, various nations of barbarians, feasts,
lamentations, markets, a mixture of all things and an orderly
combination of contraries.
[A] Plato, Gorgias, c. 68 (512). In this passage the text of
Antoninus has [Greek: eateon], which is perhaps right; but
there is a difficulty in the words [Greek: m� gar touto men,
to z�n hoposond� chronon tonge h�s al�thos andra eateon esti, kai
ou] &C. The conjecture [Greek: eukteon] for [Greek: eateon]
does not mend the matter.
[B] It is said that this is not in the extant writings of
Plato.
49. Consider the past,--such great changes of political supremacies;
thou mayest foresee also the things which will be. For they will
certainly be of like form, and it is not possible that they should
deviate from the order of the things which take place now; accordingly
to have contemplated human life for forty years is the same as to have
contemplated it for ten thousand years. For what more wilt thou see?
50. That which has grown from the earth to the earth,
But that which has sprung from heavenly seed,
Back to the heavenly realms returns.[A]
This is either a dissolution of the mutual involution of the atoms, or a
similar dispersion of the unsentient elements.
51. With food and drinks and cunning magic arts
Turning the channel's course to 'scape from death.[B]
The breeze which heaven has sent
We must endure, and toil without complaining.
[A] From the Chrysippus of Euripides.
[B] The first two lines are from the Supplices of Euripides, v.
1110.
52. Another may be more expert in casting his opponent; but he is not
more social, nor more modest, nor better disciplined to meet all that
happens, nor more considerate with respect to the faults of his
neighbors.
53. Where any work can be done conformably to the reason which is common
to gods and men, there we have nothing to fear; for where we are able
to get profit by means of the activity which is successful and proceeds
according to our constitution, there no harm is to be suspected.
54. Everywhere and at all times it is in thy power piously to acquiesce
in thy present condition, and to behave, justly to those who are about
thee, and to exert thy skill upon thy present thoughts, that nothing
shall steal into them without being well examined.
55. Do not look around thee to discover other men's ruling principles,
but look straight to this, to what nature leads thee, both the universal
nature through the things which happen to thee, and thy own nature
through the acts which must be done by thee. But every being ought to do
that which is according to its constitution; and all other things have
been constituted for the sake of rational beings, just as among
irrational things the inferior for the sake of the superior, but the
rational for the sake of one another.
The prime principle then in man's constitution is the social. And the
second is not to yield to the persuasions of the body,--for it is the
peculiar office of the rational and intelligent motion to circumscribe
itself, and never to be overpowered either by the motion of the senses
or of the appetites, for both are animal: but the intelligent motion
claims superiority, and does not permit itself to be overpowered by the
others. And with good reason, for it is formed by nature to use all of
them. The third thing in the rational constitution is freedom from error
and from deception. Let then the ruling principle holding fast to these
things go straight on, and it has what is its own.
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