Marcus Aurelius Antoninus to Himself - College of Stoic Philosophers

v MARCUS AURELIUS ANTONINUS cvii
But there remain passages in which other possibilities
are broached, and which some have interpreted as a
wavering back on hope, inconsistent with his philosophic
creed. This mistakes the writer's attitude. Just as the
devout Christian will in his self-communings face the
moral corollaries consequent on a denial of the resurrec-
tion or of a future life, so too Marcus will entertain and
test the consequences of postulates to which he himself
gives no assent. The inferences, set down as alternative \
hypotheses only, will be found to leave the moral issue,
which is under consideration, strengthened or unaffectedly
1 '
In two passages loss of sensation '
trasted with '
at death is con-
sensation changed in kind and experiencing
another life.' His own belief is that death ends sensation,
but even on the other (the Platonic or the Pythagorean)
assumption, the fear of death is groundless. Next in a
series of parallel passages the alternative of '
dispersion ' 2
is put forward as one account of death ; the term is
'
connected with the Atomic '
regularly theory of life,
held by the Epicurean school, and in every instance
Marcus is consciously quoting the view and terminology
as he contrasts the Cosmic
of adverse thinkers. Just
interpretation of the world with the Atomic not because
conviction wavers, but because candour must not burke
the alternative so, too, side by side with that reabsorption
which follows from his own monistic system, he
must set the corollary of '
dispersion '
which follows from
atomic materialism ; in either case, life is small and
x. 7.
1
iii. 3 viii. ; 58.
2