The Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius - College of Stoic Philosophers

vi MARCUS AURELIUS 125
way ought we to act all through life, and where there are
things \vhich appear most worthy of our approbation,
we ought to lay them bare and look at their worthlessness
and strip them of all the words by which they are exalted.
For outward show is a wonderful perverter of the reason,
and when thou art most sure that thou art employed about
tilings worth thy pains, it is then that is cheats thee most.
Consider then what Crates says of Xenocrates himself.
14. Most of the tlungs which the multitude admire
are referred to objects of the most general kind, those
W 7 hich are held together by cohesion or natural organization,
such as stones, wood, fig-trees, vines, olives. But those
which are admired by men, who are a little more reasonable,
are referred to the things w r hich are held together by a
living principle, as flocks, herds. Those which are admired
by men who are still more instructed are the things which
are held together by a rational soul, not however
a universal soul, but rational so far as it is a soul
skilled in some art, or expert in some other way,
or simply rational so far as the possessing a number
of slaves. But he who values a rational soul, a soul
universal and fitted for political life, regards nothing else
except this ;
and above all things he keeps his soul in a
condition and in an activity conformable to reason and
social life, and he co-operates to this end with those who
are of the same kind as himself.
15. Some things are hurrying into existence and others
are hurrying out of it ; and of that which is
coming into
existence part
is
already extinguished. Motions and
changes are continually renewing the world, just as the
uninterrupted course of time is always renewing the infinite
duration of ages. In this flowing stream then, on which
there is no abiding, what is there of the things which hurry
by on which a man would set a high price ? It would be
just as if a man should fall in love with one of the sparrows
which fly by, but it has already past out of sight. Some-