Marcus Aurelius Antoninus to Himself - College of Stoic Philosophers

xii TO HIMSELF 187
combines with it, and the instinct of community
declines disunion.
Why
hanker for continuous existence? is it 31
for sensation, desire, growth ? or again, for speech,
utterance, thought?
which of these seems worth
the craving? If each and all of these are of
small regard, address yourself to the final quest,
the following of reason and of god. Reverence
for them cannot be reconciled with repining at the
losses death entails.
What a jot of infinite unfathomable time is 32
assigned to any
one of us ! In a moment it
vanishes into eternity. What a morsel of the
sum of being ! or of the sum of soul ! on what a
grain of the whole earth you
crawl ! Mindful of
all this, regard one thing only as of moment, to
do what your own nature directs, to bear what
universal nature brings.
How goes it with your Inner Self? that is 33
everything. All else, in your control or out of it,
is dust of the dead and smoke.
The best quickener to contempt
of death is 34
this that even those who account pleasure good
and pain evil, contemn it notwithstanding.
For the man, to whom good means solely that 35