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Marcus Aurelius Antoninus to Himself - College of Stoic Philosophers

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ii TO HIMSELF 19<br />

life than that which he now lives, or live another<br />

than that which he now loses. The longest and<br />

the shortest come <strong>to</strong> the same thing.<br />

The present<br />

is the same for all (even though the loss be not<br />

the same) ; what you lose or win, is just the<br />

flying moment. A man cannot be losing either<br />

past or future how can he be deprived<br />

<strong>of</strong> that<br />

which is not his ? Remember then two things<br />

first, that all things from all eternity are <strong>of</strong> one<br />

and the same recurrent form, and that it makes<br />

no difference whether a man watches the same<br />

show for a hundred years, or for two hundred, or<br />

for an infinity ; secondly, that the loss <strong>of</strong> the<br />

longest -lived and the shortest is one and the<br />

same. It is the present only <strong>of</strong> which a man can<br />

be deprived, that and that only being his, and<br />

what is not his he cannot lose.<br />

The view taken is everything. The objections 15<br />

urged against Monimus the Cynic are obvious ;<br />

but so <strong>to</strong>o is the value <strong>of</strong> the dictum, if one<br />

accepts the gist <strong>of</strong> it, so far as it is true.<br />

Man's soul does violence <strong>to</strong> itself, first and 16<br />

foremost when it makes itself, so far as it can, a<br />

kind <strong>of</strong> tumour and excrescence on the universe ;<br />

any chafing against the order <strong>of</strong> things<br />

is a

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