Page:The Emperor Marcus Antoninus - His Conversation with Himself.djvu/253

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Meditations, &c.
73

significancy can there be in these things, when a Poet's Jest will take Place upon them? And that comical Droll may be patly applied to the Owner; He is so fluff'd, says the Play, with Wealth and Finery, that he has no room for his Close Stool.

XIII. My Being consists of Matter and Form, that is, of Soul and Body ; Annihilation will reach neither of them; For as they were never produced out of Nothing, so they will always remain Something: The consequence is, that every part of me will serve to make something in the World ; and thus I shall be toss'd from one Figure to another, through an infinite succession of Change. And what wonder of all this? This constant method of alteration gave me my Being, and my Father before me, and so on to Eternity backward ; For I think I may speak thus, though the World is confin'd within a certain determinate period. [1]

XIV. Reason needs no foreign Assistance, but is sufficient for its own purposes. This Faculty moves within it self, and makes directly for the Point in view. For to take the matter rightly, Honesty is always the nearest way to success.

XV. Those things don't belong to a Man, which don't belong to him as a Man, or under the definition of his Species. This

Notion
  1. See Book 10. Sect. 7. Book 11. Sect. 1.