Meditations IV.46
Always bear in mind what Heraclitus72 said: The death of earth is to pass into water, and the death of water to pass into air, and of air to pass into fire, and so back again. Bear in mind too: the wayfarer who forgets the trend of his way, and that men are at variance with the one thing with which they are in the most unbroken communion, the Reason that administers the whole Universe; and that what they encounter every day, this they deem strange; and that we must not act and speak like men asleep,73—for in fact even in sleep we seem to act and speak;—and that there should be nothing of the children from parents style, that is, no mere perfunctory what our Fathers have told us.
- 72.A favourite with Marcus, see Index II.
Heraclitus of Ephesus was known in antiquity for a compressed, riddling style. The section sets several of his sayings side by side with little connecting explanation: the cycle of earth, water, air, and fire; “the wayfarer who forgets the trend of his way”; men “at variance with the one thing with which they are in the most unbroken communion”; and acting and speaking “like men asleep.” Haines’s “Index II” is his Index of Proper Names and Quotations.
- 73.See vi. 42.