December 7
Companions of the Way (Evening)Thy Hands have made me and fashioned me.
IN man's life, time is but a moment; being, a flux; sense is dim; the material frame corruptible; soul, an eddy of breath; destiny hard to divine, and fame ill at appraise. . . . What, then, can direct our goings? One thing, and one alone, philosophy; which is, to keep the deity within inviolate and free from scathe, superior to pleasures and to pains, doing nothing at random, nothing falsely or disingenuously, and lacking for naught, whatever others do or leave undone; accepting the apportioned lot, as coming from the same source as man himself; and finally, in all serenity awaiting death, the natural dissolution of the elements of which each creature is compounded. And if the component elements have nought to fear in the continuous change from form to form, why should one look askance at the change and dissolution of the whole? It is of Nature, and Nature knows no evil.
MARCUS AURELIUS ANTON- INUS, trans. by G. H. Rendall
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