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Marcus Aurelius Antoninus to Himself - College of Stoic Philosophers

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Ixii INTRODUCTION SECT.<br />

observances <strong>of</strong> countless tribes <strong>of</strong> men these all con-<br />

firmed and ratified the instinctive intuition that all<br />

world-life was one. Even man's organic frame repro-<br />

duced on the small scale the giant organism <strong>of</strong> the<br />

Universe. Man's soul, located at the heart, fed with<br />

inner warmth, receiving, emitting, and directing thence<br />

the multifarious currents <strong>of</strong> vital energy and conscious-<br />

ness, was but the microcosmic counterpart <strong>of</strong> the<br />

central Sun, 1 whose life and light-giving beams irradiated<br />

and interpenetrated every part and pore <strong>of</strong> the cosmic<br />

whole. The soul <strong>of</strong> man was consubstantial with the<br />

soul <strong>of</strong> all things, and in human consciousness realised<br />

itself as no blind, a<strong>to</strong>mic, isolated force, but as a<br />

conscious immanent directive energy <strong>of</strong> life.<br />

Such then was the main synthesis that <strong>to</strong>ok<br />

possession <strong>of</strong> the S<strong>to</strong>ic mind the World a complete<br />

and living whole, 2 informed and controlled by one all-<br />

pervasive energy, which 'knew itself' 3 in the conscious-<br />

ness <strong>of</strong> man the microcosm, and declared all nature<br />

one, coherent, rational. The processes by which this one<br />

immanent world-soul attained phenomenal differentiation,<br />

the law <strong>of</strong> its cosmic evolution, the goal <strong>of</strong> its endeavour,<br />

the meaning and the relations <strong>of</strong> part <strong>to</strong> part and part<br />

<strong>to</strong> whole, were only gradually discerned; and before<br />

1 Hence the fanciful seriousness, with which both Epictetus and<br />

M. <strong>Aurelius</strong> draw moral lessons from the sun. Cf. vi. 43 ; viii.<br />

57 ; ix. 8 ; xii. 30. The world-soul receives explicit mention, vi.<br />

36 and vii. 75 ; for comparison with man's soul see v. 21 ;<br />

ix. 22.<br />

2 iv. 40 ; v. 8 ; vi. 9, 38 ; vii. 9 ; ix. i, 9 ; x. I.<br />

3 xi. i.

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