Meditations VI.38

Meditate often on the intimate union and mutual interdependence of all things in the Universe. For in a manner all things are mutually intertwined, and thus all things have a liking for one another. For these things are consequent one on another by reason of their contracting and expanding⁴⁶ motion, the sympathy⁴⁷ that breathes through them, and the unity of all substance.

• 46.τονικήν; see Index III.

  Tonikē, from tonos, “tension”: in Stoic physics, the motion of pneuma by which bodies are held together.

• 47.Compare Diogenes Laertius, Life of Zeno 70: τὴν τῶν οὐρανίων πρὸς τὰ ἐπίγεια σύμπνοιαν καὶ συντονίαν.

  The Greek, in translation: “the sympathy and common tension of the heavenly with the earthly.” Sympnoia, literally “breathing together,” and syntonia, “common tension,” express the interconnection of all parts of the universe.