The Death of Marcus Aurelius

The Death of Marcus Aurelius

Wednesday, June 18, 2025

Epictetus, Discourses 2.8.3


“What do you mean? Are not they too God's works?” 
 
They are, but not His principal works, nor parts of the Divine. But you are a principal work, a fragment of God Himself, you have in yourself a part of Him. 
 
Why then are you ignorant of your high birth? Why do you not know whence you have come? Will you not remember, when you eat, who you are that eat, and whom you are feeding, and the same in your relations with women? When you take part in society, or training, or conversation, do you not know that it is God you are nourishing and training? 
 
You bear God about with you, poor wretch, and know it not. Do you think I speak of some external god of silver or gold? No, you bear Him about within you and are unaware that you are defiling Him with unclean thoughts and foul actions. 
 
If an image of God were present, you would not dare to do any of the things you do; yet when God Himself is present within you and sees and hears all things, you are not ashamed of thinking and acting thus: O slow to understand your nature, and estranged from God! 

—from Epictetus, Discourses 2.8 
 
The higher and the lower, the more and the less self-sufficient, are made to be in harmony with one another, not to be in conflict. I should recognize this when I look at my own powers, at the ordering of a community, or at the arrangement of Nature as a whole: one will come as another goes, one will lead as another follows, and one will fulfill its role over here as another fulfills its role over there. 
 
Wherever there is matter devoid of mind, that matter is under the authority of more perfect mind, as the passive is moved by the active. Though the animal lacks its own awareness, it has its necessary part to play in the causality of Providence, a plan in which we can freely participate. That the means are subordinate to the end, the unconscious to the conscious, hardly makes the donkey or the goat insignificant. 
 
Without becoming too puffed up, we must remember that, for all the weakness in the flesh, we contain within us a finite portion of the infinite Divine. The simple proof of this is in the presence of reason, the ability to govern ourselves through our own judgments. It is precisely because wisdom and virtue are inviolable that we can still remain serene in the face of hardships like poverty, disease, or scorn. 
 
To lose sight of this is to abandon the very core of our humanity, and thereby to become bitter about every obstacle and cynical about the prospect of happiness. When food, sex, or education are just vehicles for lust, gluttony, or pride, we have forgotten the God within us. When we worship money, which is only a means, we are neglectful of the proper end, which is to live in understanding and in love. 
 
Give the name of anything that is best, and you are speaking of nothing less than the Absolute. 
 
What is now often called “Modern” Stoicism has little place for piety, because, like so much contemporary philosophy, it sadly begins and ends with the promotion of the self. Passages such as this are glossed over or described as obsolete, and yet Stoic thinking is woefully incomplete without its “physics”, without the context of Nature. Without God, man is nothing, and with God, man is everything. 
 
This is not a matter of religious posturing or of tribal loyalties, for it is in the unity of beings with Being, of creatures with the Creator, that all things are perfected. This is the pedigree of our noble birth. 

—Reflection written in 7/2001 

IMAGE: Jacob Jordaens, Jupiter (c. 1650) 



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