Page:The Emperor Marcus Antoninus - His Conversation with Himself.djvu/237

 Rh ment, be your Misfortune. Nay farther, the Declension of your Health, or the Accidents in your Carcass need not affect you. Where then are you Passive and Vulnerable? Why in that Part of you that forms Judgments and Opinions of Things. Don't imagine you are hurt, and you are Impregnable: Suppose then your Flesh was Hack'd, Sear'd, or Putrified ; for your Life, let your Fancy lie still: That is, don't conclude what is common to Good, or Ill Men, can be Good, or Evil in its self. For that which may be every bodys Lot, must in its own Nature be Indifferent.

XL. You ought frequently to consider that the World is an Animal, consisting of one Soul and Body; that an Universal Sense runs through the whole Mass of Matter. You should likewise reflect how Nature Acts by a Joynt Effort, and as it were altogether; And how every thing contributes to the Being of every thing: And lastly, what Connexion and Subordination there is, between Causes, and Effects.

XLI. Would you know what you are? Epictetus will tell you that you are a Living Soul, that drags a Carcass about with her.

XLII. Things that subsist upon Change, and owe their Being to Instability, can Rh