In
contemplating yourself never include the vessel that surrounds you and these
instruments that are attached about it. For they are like to an axe, differing
only in this, that they grow to the body.
For
indeed there is no more use in these parts without the cause that moves and
checks them than in the weaver's shuttle, and the writer's pen, and the
driver's whip.
—Marcus
Aurelius, Meditations, Book 10.38 (tr
Long)
In stressing the unity and
connectedness of things, Stoicism avoids many of the trappings of philosophical
dualism. There is no need to divide the world into two metaphysical realms, one
of spirit and one of matter, or to view life as a constant moral opposition
between the soul and the body. All things are aspects and expressions of one.
Yet I am still be able to
distinguish between these aspects and expressions, and to understand how and
why they are joined together, and to appreciate how what is lesser serves what
is greater.
When I consider myself, for example,
I should see only one person, not two, but I should also see that there is a
difference between the outside of me and the inside of me, between what I share
with many other sort of creatures and what is distinctly my own as human.
I always appreciated a phrase
attributed to George MacDonald: “You are
a soul; you have a body.” Now this
does not need to imply that the two are hopelessly separated, because both are still
of me. Nor does it necessarily assume
that one of these is immortal and the other corruptible. Rather, it seeks to
define the core of the self, that around which other qualities revolve.
A stone, a tree, a dog, and a man
are all composed of matter; in this, they are all quite the same. Now the stone
has no life to itself, and the tree further has a life of nutrition and growth,
and the dog even further has a life of sensation and appetite.
What makes the particular life of a
person so different from the others? It is the power of reason and of will;
this is what is uniquely a person, what makes
the man, what informs everything else that he possesses about himself.
As Marcus Aurelius points out, it is
the mind that is the measure of human life, that which pulls the strings. All
the rest, from the body, to pleasures, to possessions, to power and reputation,
will only be as good for us as how the mind makes use of them. In this sense
yes, they are all like tools, only becoming human by how they are employed.
A pen will have no purpose if it
does not write, and it will not write if a hand does not guide it. A hand will
have no purpose if it does not move, and it will not move if it does not have sense
to guide it. Sense will have no purpose if it does not discern, and it will not
discern if it does not have judgment to guide it.
What remains the very foundation of
the human self, and what gives meaning to every other part of the self, is the
ability to know true from false, to choose right from wrong.
I have long been fascinated by the
prints of M.C. Escher, and I have a special fondness for Drawing Hands. It makes me scratch my head, pondering how the first
hand draws the second, and the second draws the first. How is this possible? It
only becomes possible when I consider the mind of the artist behind it, and the
mind of the viewer in front of it.
Written in 3/2009
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