The Text
Meditations V.23
Think often on the swiftness with which the things that exist and that are coming into existence are swept past us and carried out of sight. For all substance51 is as a river in ceaseless flow,52 its activities ever changing and its causes subject to countless variations, and scarcely anything stable; and ever beside us is this infinity of the past and yawning abyss of the future, wherein all things are disappearing.53 Is he not senseless who in such an environment puffs himself up, or is distracted, or frets as over a trouble lasting and far-reaching?
- 51.Or, Being.
- 52.See iv. 43; vii. 19.
- 53.See xii. 32.