Marcus Aurelius Antoninus to Himself - College of Stoic Philosophers

146 MARCUS ANTONINUS BOOK
ment as though at some unnatural procedure, while
all the time dissolution is merely into the original
elements of composition. For dissolution means
either dispersion of the elements of which I was
compounded, or else a change from solid into earthy
and from pneumatic into aerial, this being the
mode of re-assumption into the universal reason,
whether its destiny be cyclic conflagration or alter-
nations of eternal renovation. And do not regard
the solid or the pneumatic elements as a natal
part of being ; they are but accretions of yesterday
or the day before, derived from food and respira-
tion. The change affects that which is received
from without, not the original offspring of the
mother's womb. But even admitting that you are
intimately bound up with that by your individuality,
that does not affect the present argument.
You claim for yourself the attributes good,
modest, true, open-minded, even-minded, high-
minded : take care not to belie them. And should
you forfeit them, make haste to reclaim them. The
open mind, remember, should import discriminating
observation and attention ; the even mind un-
forced acceptance of the apportionments of Nature ;
the high mind sovereignty of the intelligence over