t has become of all great and famous men, and all
they desired, and all they loved? They are "smoke, and ash, and a tale,
or not even a tale." After all their rages and envyings, men are
stretched out quiet and dead at last. Soon thou wilt have forgotten all,
and soon all will have forgotten thee. But here, again, after such
thoughts, the same moral is always introduced again:--"Pass then through
the little space of time conformably to nature, and end the journey in
content, _just as an olive falls off when it is ripe, blessing nature
who produced it, and thanking the tree on which it grew_" "One thing
only troubles me, lest I should do something which the constitution of
man does not allow, or in the way which it does not allow, or what it
does not allow now."

To quote the thoughts of Marcus Aurelius is to me a fascinating task. But
I have already let him speak so largely for himself that by this time
the reader will have some conception of his leading motives. It only
remains to adduce a few more of the weighty and golden sentences in
which he lays down his rule of life.

"To say all in a word, everything which belongs to the body is a stream,
and what belongs to the soul is a dream and vapour; and life is a
warfare, and a stranger's sojourn, and after fame is oblivion. What,
then, is that which is able to enrich a man? One thing, and only
one--philosophy. But this consists in keeping the guardian spirit within
a man free from violence and unharmed, superior to pains and pleasures,
_doing nothing without a purpose, nor yet falsely, and with
hypocrisy_... _accepting all that happens and all that is
allotted_ ... _and finally waiting for death with a cheerful
mind_" (ii. 17.)

"If thou findest in human life anything better than justice, truth,
temperance, fortitude, and, in a word, than thine own soul's
satisfaction in the things which it enables thee to do according to
right reason, and In the condition that is assigned to thee without thy
own choice; if, I say, thou seest anything better than this, turn to it
with all thy soul, and enjoy that which thou hast found to be the best.
But ... if thou findest everything else smaller and of less value than
this, give place to nothing else.... Simply and freely choose the
better, and hold to it." (iii. 6.)

"Body, soul, intelligence: to the body belong sensations, to the soul
appetites, to the intelligence principles." To be impressed by the
senses is peculiar to animal