BOOK III
1. We ought not to think only upon the fact that our life each day is waning away, what is left of it being ever less, but this also should be a subject for thought, that even if life be prolonged, yet is it uncertain whether the mind will remain equally fitted in the future for the understanding of facts and for that contemplation which strains after the knowledge of things divine and human. For if a man has entered upon his dotage, there will still be his the power of breathing,[1] and digestion, and thought, and desire, and all such-like faculties; but the full use of himself,[2] the accurate appreciation of the items[3] of duty, the nice discrimination of what presents itself to the senses, and a clear judgment on the question whether it is time for him to end his own life,[4] and all such decisions, as above all require well-trained powers of reasoning—these are already flickering out in him. It needs, then, that we should press onwards, not only because
- ↑ vi. 16. Arist. Probl. i. 21 ὅπερ ἐν τῷ θώρακι αναπνοή, τοῦτο ἐν τῷ σώματι διαπνοὴ διὰ τῶν ἀρτηριών (arterial breathing).
- ↑ cp. Sen. Ep. 60 vivit is qui se utitur.
- ↑ vi. 26.
- ↑ x. 8, § 3. The right of suicide was part of the Stoic creed (Zeno and Cleanthes both took their own lives). Marcus allows it when circumstances make it impossible for a man to live his true life (v. 29; viii. 47; x. 8. cp. Epict i. 24, § 20; i. 25, § 18). Hadrian (Digest 28. 3. 6, § 7) enumerates as causes of suicide taedium vitae, valetudinis adversae impatientia, iactatio (in the case of certain philosophers). Marcus himself, if Dio (71. 30, § 2) is to be trusted, threatened, in a letter to the Senate, to commit suicide, and according to Capitolinus (xxviii. 3) actually hastened his own death by abstaining from food.
