Meditations XI.2

Thou wilt think but meanly of charming songs and dances and the pancratium,⁸ if thou analyze the melodious utterance into its several notes and in the case of each ask thyself: Has this the mastery over me? For thou wilt recoil from such a confession.⁹ So too with the dance, if thou do the like for each movement and posture. The same holds good of the pancratium. In fine, virtue and its sphere of action excepted, remember to turn to the component parts,¹⁰ and by analyzing them come to despise them. Bring the same practice to bear on the whole of life also.

• 8.A rather brutal combination of boxing and wrestling.
• 9.See viii. 36.
• 10.See iii. 11.