Page:Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Antoninus - Volume 1 - Farquharson 1944.pdf/423

 the Cyrenaic hedonist, who, after suffering shipwreck, said that he had not lost anything to matter, for what really mattered to him was his easy adaptable character, and that he had not lost. Galen tells a story of Diogenes the Cynic, who rudely spat in his wealthy host's face as the least valuable thing in a room full of 'goods'. The proverb is from a passage lately recovered in a papyrus fragment of Menander's Ghost; a slave is frankly lecturing his young master, and apologizes for quoting the proverb:

A vulgar proverb's just occurred to me, (Asking your pardon, if I make too free): With all your goods, young sir, it comes to this: You've not a corner left in which to.

There are two points, the difference between real goods and material possessions, and the fact that even the vulgar, like Menander's slave, see the difference, but, perhaps through a corruption in the text, the second point is obscured.

'''Ch. 13.''' The distinction in ch. 12, between real and material goods, to which he returns in ch. 15, leads him to reflect on the formal and material in his own composition (iv. 21). Though the one (the spiritual) is superior to the matter which it informs, both are subject to the law of continuity and change. This suggests a reflection (v. 32; x. 7. 2; xi. 1) on the doctrine held by many Stoics, and perhaps by Heraclitus before them, that the Universe, at the end of one world-process, is reabsorbed into the primitive condition of Fiery Matter. Then the process is repeated so that exactly the same series is repeated, and so on. The speculation resembles one which was common in the nineteenth century, popularly stated in the form: 'Is the world running down?' Marcus keeps an open mind, as the question does not affect our finite lives.

'''Chs. 14–15.''' What does concern us is that the formal principle in us, what he here calls Logos, should realize itself in right acts. But we must not demand of a man what does not belong to him. His end and his good cannot lie in those material goods which he properly disdains, and which he is commended for forgoing.

'''Chs. 16–18.''' Marcus here states, first, a psychological truth, hat the effect of repetition, of dwelling upon an image, is to confirm the impression in the consciousness. The psychical self Rh