Meditations XI.10

‘Nature in no case cometh short of art.’ For indeed the arts are copiers of various natures. If this be so, the most consummate and comprehensive Nature of all cannot be outdone by the inventive skill of art. And in every art the lower things are done for the sake of the higher²⁷; and this must hold good of the Universal Nature also. Aye and thence is the origin of Justice, and in justice all the other virtues have their root,²⁸ since justice will not be maintained if we either put a value on things indifferent, or are easily duped and prone to slip and prone to change.

• 27.See v. 16, 30; vii. 55.
• 28.iv. 37; v. 34. Compare Theognis 147: ἐν δὲ δικαιοσύνῃ συλλήβδην πᾶσ᾽ ἀρετή ‘στιν.

  Theognis of Megara was an archaic Greek elegiac poet; the Greek, in translation: “in justice all virtue is summed up.”