Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 11.20

Your aerial part, and all the fiery parts that are mingled in you, though by nature they have an upward tendency, still in obedience to the disposition of the Universe they are overpowered here in the compound mass of the body.

And also the whole of the earthy part in you, and the watery, though their tendency is downward, still are raised up and occupy a position that is not their natural one.

In this manner, then, the elemental parts obey the Universal; for when they have been fixed in any place, perforce they remain there until again the Universal shall sound the signal for dissolution.

Is it not then strange that your intelligent part only should be disobedient and discontented with its own place? And yet no force is imposed on it, but only those things that are conformable to its nature. Still it does not submit, but is carried in the opposite direction.

For the movement towards injustice and intemperance and to anger and grief and fear is nothing else than the act of one who deviates from Nature. And also when the ruling faculty is discontented with anything that happens, then too it deserts its post; for it is constituted for piety and reverence towards the gods no less than for justice.

For these qualities also are comprehended under the generic term of contentment with the constitution of things, and indeed they are prior to acts of justice.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 11.20 (tr Long)

This is the sort of passage that elicits dismissive gestures from many, those who insist that the ancients have nothing to offer us about understanding the natural world, and that modern science makes such accounts quite obsolete. I do see the temptation of throwing out the old in favor of the new, but at the same time I try to remind myself that we can use very different language, and very different models to describe and explain, while still approaching the very same truths.

Speaking in terms of the four elements, of earth, water, air and fire, may seem quite naïve, given what we say we now know about chemistry and physics, yet the root principles really remain much the same. We see that different types of matter behave in different ways, and will act upon one another in different ways when brought together. Describe these as you will, though the Greeks and Romans worked with immediately sensible qualities like light or heavy, hot or cold, wet or dry.

When all of these constitutive parts, however we may wish to speak of them, are joined into one thing, we must observe that the composition of the whole will rule the tendencies of these parts. The elements “wish” to go one way, while the binding form will redirect them to quite another.

Individually, and left only to themselves, all the components of my body would do one thing, and disperse according to their own natures. United for a single purpose, however, they exist in a harmony. This is true not only of any creature, but for the whole Universe itself.

As usual, Marcus Aurelius works from this observation to make a deeper point about our own moral worth. All other things will automatically defer to the power of a higher order, yet the mind of man will so readily resist and reject its place within the whole.

Why should this be so? For the very reason that it is our very nature to reason, and therefore also to freely choose. We have it within ourselves to judge and act with or against other things. My own happiness or misery hinge upon that freedom.

When my intellect and will decide to act contrary to who I am, to my place as a part of the whole, they also act contrary to the order of Providence. Hence a vice of any sort is both a denial of my own humanity, and a denial of the design and harmony of the Universe.

When I treat my neighbor with disrespect, I am removing his good from my own. When I am selfish and lustful, I make everything else subject to only my own desires. When I am angry, I refuse to accept things as they are, and wish them only to be as I am. When I am despondent, I expect only to receive, and never to give. When I am terrified, I reject the fact that everything happens for a perfectly good reason.

My poor character is a denial of my responsibility to live in balance and cooperation. It is no longer about me with the world, but me against the world. I cannot be a just man if I live in conflict with my neighbor, and I cannot be a pious man if I am in opposition to what is Divine.

Let me learn to be happy by accepting that circumstances are precisely as they should be, at this particular moment, in this particular way. To abandon my own post would be as if earth refused to work together with water, or air turned its back upon fire. Just because I can be stubborn, hateful, and resentful hardly means that I should be so.

Written in 6/2009