Marcus Aurelius Antoninus to Himself - College of Stoic Philosophers

130 MARCUS ANTONINUS BOOK
irrational animals, bees swarm, cattle herd, birds
nest together, all owning forms of love. For at
this stage soul is present, and on this higher
plane of being a mutual attraction asserts itself,
which is not present in plants or stones or sticks.
Again among rational beings there are societies
and friendships, homes and communities, and in
war compacts and armistices. In the still higher
orders of being, even among
distant bodies there
exists unity of a kind, as among the stars ; so
that ascent in the scale of being induces sympathetic
action in spite of distance. See what we
come to then. None but things possessed of mind
ignore the mutual impulse of attraction ;
here only
does the natural gravitation disappear. Yes, but
even in the act of evasion, men are caught and over-
taken ; nature prevails. Watch, and you will see :
sooner will you find some particle of earth detached
from other earth, than man isolated from man.
10 Man bears fruit, so does god, so does the
world, all in their own season. That custom has
appropriated the term to the vine or the like,
matters not. Reason too bears fruit, alike for
the world and for itself ; and from it spring fruits
of like kind with reason itself.