Meditations V.16
The character of thy mind will be such as is the character of thy frequent thoughts,34 for the soul takes its dye from the thoughts. Dye her then with a continuous succession of such thoughts as these: Where life is possible, there it is possible also to live well.—But the life is life in a Court.35 Well, in a Court too it is possible to live well. And again: A thing is drawn towards that for the sake of which it has been made, and its end lies in that towards which it is drawn and, where its end lies, there lie also its interest and its good. The Good, then, for a rational creature is fellowship with others.36 For it has been made clear long ago37 that we were constituted for fellowship. Or was it not obvious that the lower were for the sake of the higher38 and the higher for the sake of one another? And living things are higher than lifeless,39 and those that have reason than those that have life only.
- 34.vii. 3; Seneca’s Epistles 95.
- 35.viii. 9. Compare Seneca’s Epistles 28.
Seneca’s twenty-eighth letter argues that travel cannot cure a troubled mind, since a man takes himself wherever he goes.
- 36.See ii. 1; iii. 4, § 1.
- 37.See ii. 1.
- 38.vii. 55; xi. 18, § 1; Seneca’s Epistles 65, near the end.
- 39.Compare Chrysippus: τὸ ζῷον τοῦ μὴ ζῴου κρεῖττον.
Chrysippus succeeded Cleanthes as head of the Stoic school and was its chief systematizer. The Greek, in translation: “the living is better than the non-living.”