Marcus Aurelius. Meditations 4.22

If souls continue to exist, how does the air contain them from eternity?

But how does the earth contain the bodies of those who have been buried from time so remote? For as here the mutation of these bodies after a certain continuance, whatever it may be, and their dissolution make room for other dead bodies, so the souls which are removed into the air after subsisting for some time are transmuted and diffused, and assume a fiery nature by being received into the seminal Intelligence of the Universe, and in this way make room for the fresh souls that come to dwell there.

And this is the answer that a man might give on the hypothesis of souls continuing to exist.

But we must not only think of the number of bodies which are thus buried, but also of the number of animals which are daily eaten by us and the other animals. For what a number is consumed, and thus in a manner are buried in the bodies of those who feed on them.

And nevertheless this earth receives them by reason of the changes of these bodies into blood, and the transformations into the aerial or the fiery element.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 4 (tr Long)

I very much enjoy considering passages that particularly address Stoic physics and cosmology, and I am especially interested in how these accounts of the greater order of the Universe relate back to the questions of ethics in everyday life.

At the same time, I can find myself feeling frustrated with them, not because of what the Stoics themselves have to say, but because of the disagreements that can arise from our contemporary reading of them. I suggest that we are often too quick to reject what seems unfamiliar to our modern sensibilities, and we are tempted to point only to differences, and not first to what is shared in common.

In particular I have often been told, from the perspective of secular materialism, that Stoic physics is outdated, and has apparently been refuted by modern science. I have also been told, from the perspective of traditional spirituality, that Stoic thought is too quick to reject the immortality of the soul. I find that reflecting on this passage by Marcus Aurelius can give me some insight on both concerns.

When the Stoics, or other Classical sources, speak of the four elements, we can recognize this as a way of describing different states of matter, and the awareness that matter constantly changes its form through an ordered causality, by the balanced tension of opposing forces. What is passing returns back into its source, and it proceeds to be transformed into something new.

Things do not randomly come to be, or cease to be, but they are varied emanations and modifications of existence. When a body dies, it does not simply disappear. It will break down into other forms, and eventually be subsumed into the bodies of other living things. Or when one living thing consumes another, it can be said that there is a direct continuity from one life to another.

Now just as bodies, which the Stoics associated with the more condensed matter of earth, move on into other states, so too souls, which the Stoics associated with the more rarefied matter of air and fire, will surely move on into other states. Like all things, each of them according to their own qualities, they return back to their Divine source. I should not think that my consciousness just ceases, but rather that it becomes quite a different form of consciousness.

I try not to assume that one manner of explaining the physical Universe necessarily contradicts another, just as I try not to assume that one manner of explaining the permanence of mind necessarily contradicts another. I maintain that the Stoic, the modern physicists, and the traditional Christian can get along, and can learn from one another.

Written in 9/2005

Image: Cole Thomas, Catskill Mountain House, The Four Elements (c. 1844)