Page:Marcus Aurelius (Haines 1916).djvu/333

BOOK XI

1. The properties of the Rational Soul are these: it sees itself, dissects itself, moulds itself to its own will,^[1] itself reaps its own fruits^[2]—whereas the fruits of the vegetable kingdom and the corresponding produce of animals are reaped by others,—it wins to its own goal wherever the bounds of life be set. In dancing and acting and such-like arts, if any break oceurs, the whole action is rendered imperfect; but the rational soul in every part and wheresoever taken^[3] shews the work set before it fulfilled and all-sufficient for itself, so that it can say: I have to the full what is my own.

More than this, it goeth about the whole Universe and the void surrounding it and traces its plan, and stretches forth into the infinitude of Time, and comprehends the cyclical Regeneration^[4] of all things, and takes stock of it, and discerns that our children will see nothing fresh,^[5] just as our fathers too never saw anything more than we.^[6] So that in a manner the man of forty years, if he have a grain of sense, in view of this sameness has seen all that has been

1. i. 8; viii. 35. cp. Epict. i. 17, § 1.
2. cp. Epict. i. 19, § 11: γέγονε τὸ ζῷον ὥστε αὑτοῦ ἕνεκα πάντα ποιεῖν.
3. xii. 36.
4. v. 13, 32; x. 7, § 2.
5. vi. 37; vii. 1 etc.
6. cp. Lucr. ii. 978: eadem sunt omnia semper; Florio's Montaigne, i. 19: "If you have lived one day you have seene all."

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