Page:Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Antoninus - Volume 1 - Farquharson 1944.pdf/323

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BOOK XI

towards wrath and sorrow and fear, is nothing else but a movement of severance from Nature. Moreover, when the governing self is discontented with any circumstance, then, too, it deserts its proper station, for it is constituted for holiness and the service of God no less than for just dealing with man. For these relations belong in kind to good fellowship, or rather are even more to be reverenced than just dealings.

21. 'He who has not one and the same aim in life is unable to remain one and the same through all his life.' The saying is incomplete unless you add what sort of aim it should be. For as the conception of all the variety of goods which the majority of men fancy in any way to be good is not the same, but only the conception of certain of the kinds of goods, namely the general goods, so the aim to be set before oneself must be the social aim, that is the aim of the Commonwealth. For he who directs every private impulse to this will make all his actions uniform and because of this will always be the same man.

22. The mountain mouse and the town mouse, and the fright and scurry of the latter.

23. Socrates used to call the opinions of the multitude like other things: 'Bogies', things to frighten children.

24. The Spartans used to put seats for visitors at their entertainments in the shade, and to seat themselves wherever they found room.

25. Socrates' message to Perdiccas to excuse a visit to his court: 'to avoid', he said, 'coming to a most unfortunate

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