Meditations XI.1
The properties of the Rational Soul are these: it sees itself, dissects itself, moulds itself to its own will,1 itself reaps its own fruits2—whereas the fruits of the vegetable kingdom and the corresponding produce of animals are reaped by others,—it wins to its own goal wherever the bounds of life be set. In dancing and acting and such-like arts, if any break occurs, the whole action is rendered imperfect; but the rational soul in every part and wheresoever taken3 shews the work set before it fulfilled and all-sufficient for itself, so that it can say: I have to the full what is my own.
More than this, it goeth about the whole Universe and the void surrounding it and traces its plan, and stretches forth into the infinitude of Time, and comprehends the cyclical Regeneration4 of all things, and takes stock of it, and discerns that our children will see nothing fresh,5 just as our fathers too never saw anything more than we.6 So that in a manner the man of forty years, if he have a grain of sense, in view of this sameness has seen all that has been and shall be. Again a property of the Rational Soul is the love of our neighbour, and truthfulness, and modesty, and to prize nothing above itself7—a characteristic also of Law. In this way then the Reason that is right reason and the Reason that is justice are one.
- 1.i. 8; viii. 35. Compare Epictetus’s Discourses i. 17, § 1.
- 2.Compare Epictetus’s Discourses i. 19, § 11: γέγονε τὸ ζῷον ὥστε αὑτοῦ ἕνεκα πάντα ποιεῖν.
Epictetus’s Greek, in translation: “the living creature is so made as to do everything for its own sake.”
- 3.See xii. 36.
- 4.See v. 13, 32; x. 7, § 2.
- 5.See vi. 37; vii. 1 etc.
- 6.Compare Lucretius ii. 978: eadem sunt omnia semper; Florio’s Montaigne, i. 19: “If you have lived one day you have seene all.”
Lucretius’s Latin, in translation: “all things are always the same.”
- 7.St. Mark viii. 36.
Mark 8:36 has “what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (King James).