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Page 80
[A] iv. 40.
31. What dost thou wish--to continue to exist? Well, dost thou wish to
have sensation, movement, growth, and then again to cease to grow, to
use thy speech, to think? What is there of all these things which seems
to thee worth desiring? But if it is easy to set little value on all
these things, turn to that which remains, which is to follow reason and
God. But it is inconsistent with honoring reason and God to be troubled
because by death a man will be deprived of the other things.
32. How small a part of the boundless and unfathomable time is assigned
to every man, for it is very soon swallowed up in the eternal! And how
small a part of the whole substance; and how small a part of the
universal soul; and on what a small clod of the whole earth thou
creepest! Reflecting on all this, consider nothing to be great, except
to act as thy nature leads thee, and to endure that which the common
nature brings.
33. How does the ruling faculty make use of itself? for all lies in
this. But everything else, whether it is in the power of thy will or
not, is only lifeless ashes and smoke.
34. This reflection is most adapted to move us to contempt of death,
that even those who think pleasure to be a good and pain an evil still
have despised it.
35. The man to whom that only is good which comes in due season, and to
whom it is the same thing whether he has done more or fewer acts
conformable to right reason, and to whom it makes no difference whether
he contemplates the world for a longer or a shorter time--for this man
neither is death a terrible thing (iii. 7; vi. 23; x. 20; xii. 23).
36. Man, thou hast been a citizen in this great state [the world];[A]
what difference does it make to thee whether for five years [or three]?
for that which is conformable to the laws is just for all. Where is the
hardship then, if no tyrant nor yet an unjust judge sends thee away
from the state, but nature, who brought thee into it? the same as if a
praetor who has employed an actor dismisses him from the stage.[B]--"But
I have not finished the five acts, but only three of them."--Thou sayest
well, but in life the three acts are the whole drama; for what shall be
a complete drama is determined by him who was once the cause of its
composition, and now of its dissolution: but thou art the cause of
neither. Depart then satisfied, for he also who releases thee is
satisfied.
[A] ii. 16; iii. 11; iv. 29.
[B] iii. 8; xi. 1.
INDEXES.
INDEX OF TERMS.
[Greek: adiaphora] (indifferentia, Cicero, Seneca, Epp. 82); things
indifferent, neither good nor bad; the same as [Greek: mesa].
[Greek: aischros] (turpis, Cic.), ugly; morally ugly.
[Greek: aitia], cause.
[Greek: aiti�des], [Greek: aition], [Greek: to], the formal or formative
principle, the cause.
[Greek: akoin�n�tos], unsocial.
[Greek: anaphora], reference, relation to a purpose.
[Greek: anypexairet�s], unconditionally.
[Greek: aporroia], efflux.
[Greek: aproaireta], [Greek: ta], the things which are not in our will
or power.
[Greek: arch�], a first principle.
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