Marcus Aurelius · 121–180 CE
Meditations 7.23 — Marcus Aurelius
Translation by George Long (1862)
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 7.23
The universal nature out of the universal substance, as if it were wax, now moulds a horse, and when it has broken this up, it uses the material for a tree, then for a man, then for something else; and each of these things subsists for a very short time. But it is no hardship for the vessel to be broken up, just as there was none in its being fastened together.
Cite this passage
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 7.23, tr. George Long (1862)
https://whatwouldstoicsdo.com/passage/meditations/7.23
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, tr. George Long (1862). Text: Standard Ebooks (CC0). Sources and licences
In plain English
AI-written notesNature keeps remoulding the same raw material into a horse, then a tree, then a person, and each shape lasts only briefly. Being broken down is no more of a hardship for the thing than being put together was.
Older wording
- “subsists”
- — continues to exist
- “vessel”
- — a container, here any made thing such as a body
Themes and situations
- Change and impermanence
- Death and mortality
- Acceptance and fate
- Nature and the cosmos
- Fear of death
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