Marcus Aurelius Antoninus to Himself - College of Stoic Philosophers

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY
ON
STOICISM AND THE LAST OF THE STOICS
THE aim of this Introduction is not to give a complete
or balanced exposition of Stoicism as a whole, but to
consider so much of it as remains implicit or explicit in
the words of Marcus Antoninus, so that the reader of
the Thoughts, in approaching the '
dogmas '
and the
formulas which they contain, may have in mind their
origin, their meaning, their development, and their
eventual content for Marcus and his contemporaries.
For this end portions of Stoic doctrine may be ignored,
or touched but lightly : Stoic developments of logic
and of grammar may pass unheeded ; physics and
physiology will concern us only
in their ethical con-
nexions j and some sides of epistemology may be dis-
regarded. Upon the other hand special factors, which
asserted or reasserted themselves in the Roman phase
of Stoicism, will receive consideration in excess of their
real importance to philosophy at large, or even to
Stoicism as a system. In physics the revival of Hera-
clitean formulas, in ethics of Socratic aphorisms is
b