Meditations

Book 2 opens with the prescript, “Written among the Quadi on the River Gran,” and offers advice and exhortations addressed to himself (10).

Marcus begins with an imperative to tell himself every morning that he will interact with people who exhibit various bad behaviors because they are ignorant of “true good and evil” (10) those being right and wrong respectively. Since “the same fragment of divinity” (10) is within all, then others’ bad behavior cannot harm or infect him. Anger and hate would both be the wrong responses since humans were “born for cooperation” (10), as are hands, feet, and upper and lower teeth. To be angry or hateful would be to act in opposition rather than cooperation.

Of the “flesh, breath, and directing mind” (10) that his being is composed of, only the mind is of consequence. He orders himself to “[q]uit books,” since his gifts lie elsewhere, and to arrive at an understanding of the nature of the universe as a “Whole" of which he is a part (10-11). His body must give way to his mind, as passion must give way to reason. Providence, which is full of the gods’ works, spins threads, weaving them together.