Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 6.13

When we have meat and other such eatables before us we receive the impression, that this is the dead body of a fish, and this is the dead body of a bird, or of a pig.

And again, that this Falernian wine is only a little grape juice, and this purple robe is some sheep's wool dyed with the blood of a shellfish.

Such then are these impressions, and they reach the things themselves and penetrate them, and so we see what kind of things they are.

Just in the same way ought we to act all through life, and where there are things that appear most worthy of our approbation, we ought to lay them bare and look at their worthlessness, and strip them of all the words by which they are exalted.

For outward show is a wonderful perverter of the reason, and when you are most sure that you are employed about things worth your pains, it is then that it cheats you most. Consider then what Crates says of Xenocrates himself.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6 (tr Long)

We may be craving a fine rack of lamb, but may be disgusted when we are told that we are eating a youngster’s corpse. I once turned off a friend from a fancy bottle of wine by suggesting that we were paying quite a handsome sum to consume yeast droppings. An old Austrian joke has it that a man at a restaurant was told that the special for the day was beef tongue. “That’s terrible!” he cried out. “Why would I eat something that’s been in a cow’s mouth? Make me some eggs instead.”

This extends to all aspects of life. We are easily impressed by people’s charm and influence, but sadly disappointed when we discover they are frail, flawed, and broken creatures just like ourselves. We venerate celebrities, and treat them as if they were gods, only to find that they are quite often more like beasts. We worship the power of money, forgetting that running after little pieces of paper, metal, or plastic to acquire more useless trinkets is a rather base affair. We will go to most any ends to have sexual gratification, until we recognize we have been glorifying our own folly.

The outward appearance of something can be quite deceptive. I must seek out an impression of what it really is, down into its constitutive parts, the humble elements out of which it has been arranged. Our vanity has built up how we want it to look, but breaking it down again reveals its true nature.

If I can do this, I need not be consumed by desire, or paralyzed by fear, or riled up in anger. It won’t appear so enticing, threatening, or dangerous if I look at it closely and carefully. Most often, I will find that I am making far more of something than it really is, and attributing far too much value and importance to it. We may give it a prestigious name or title, but the nature is quite commonplace.

We are too easily deceived by illusions, and we harm ourselves greatly when we succumb to the trickery of image and show. Understanding that seeks to grasp the essence on the inside is diverted by the lure of appearances on the outside. I must, so to speak, strip away everything that has been falsely assumed or hastily imagined. I find that this has something in common with the Hindu concept of maya.

Though I suspect it may be about the Greek Cynic and Platonist philosophers respectively, I have never found an explanation of the reference to Crates and Xenocrates. It is quite fittingly Stoic, however, that a phrase Marcus Aurelius seems to assume is well known in his time has now been lost to history. Everything passes.

Written in 1/2007