Marcus Aurelius Antoninus to Himself - College of Stoic Philosophers

liv INTRODUCTION SECT.
and the like, was of convenient breadth, and just as the
central Reason at large formed the basis and principle
of all phenomenal life, and was literally the reason that
accounted for and defined its being, so these seminal
principles and outputs
of Reason were the basis of
individual forms of life, and determined the quality and
mode of their existence. Marcus Aurelius describes
them in the clearest language at his command as '
germs
of future existences, through which nature operated the
visible cosmic order, assigning to them productive
capacities of realisation, change, and phenomenal
succession.' l In man '
the seminal reason '
is not
exactly the Ego, but that which determines the quality
and character of the Ego, and which at death is re-
assumed into the central Reason, a portion of whose
energy it expressed
individual man. 2
for a season in the form of an
In clearness of conception a marked advance was
secured by the doctrine of strain or Tension (roVos),
which Cleanthes and his successors applied to almost
every domain of psychical or physical activity. As the
source of phenomenal being, the name usually ascribed
to the originative power is Pneuma? This Pneuma,
under certain conditions of spontaneous activity, was
supposed to experience a Tension, as the result of which
1 ix. I.
2 iv. 4 and vi. 24, with which compare the precisely parallel
vii. 10 and x. 7.
3 In the translation, I have retained pneuma or pneumatic in iv. 3,
ix. 36, and x. 7 ; but in ii. 2, xii. 30, and uniformly for
render 'breath.' In ix. 2 I have preferred 'atmosphere.'