Tempus edax rerum. Marcus Aurelius 2.17
Marcus
ends his second book with a meditation on time, death, and
philosophy. As we live, time shows us mortality: the fact that we and
other life must die. Philosophy can help us make peace with this,
preparing us to release life happily when our time comes, and to be
grateful meanwhile for all the gifts of fortune, even those that seem
evil. <Greek>.
Τοῦ
ἀνθρωπίνου βίου ὁ μὲν χρόνος στιγμή,
ἡ δὲ οὐσία ῥέουσα, ἡ δὲ αἴσθησις
ἀμυδρά, ἡ δὲ ὅλου τοῦ σώματος σύγκρισις
εὔσηπτος, ἡ δὲ ψυχὴ ῥόμβος, ἡ δὲ τύχη
δυστέκμαρτον, ἡ δὲ φήμη ἄκριτον·
συνελόντι δὲ εἰπεῖν, πάντα τὰ μὲν τοῦ
σώματος ποταμός, τὰ δὲ τῆς ψυχῆς
ὄνειρος καὶ τῦφος, ὁ δὲ βίος πόλεμος
καὶ ξένου ἐπιδημία, ἡ δὲ ὑστεροφημία
λήθη. τί οὖν τὸ παραπέμψαι δυνάμενον;
ἓν καὶ μόνον φιλοσοφία· τοῦτο δὲ ἐν
τῷ τηρεῖν τὸν ἔνδον δαίμονα ἀνύβριστον
καὶ ἀσινῆ, ἡδονῶν καὶ πόνων κρείσσονα,
μηδὲν εἰκῇ ποιοῦντα μηδὲ διεψευσμένως
καὶ μεθ̓ ὑποκρίσεως, ἀνενδεῆ τοῦ
ἄλλον ποιῆσαί τι ἢ μὴ ποιῆσαι· ἔτι
δὲ τὰ συμβαίνοντα καὶ ἀπονεμόμενα
δεχόμενον ὡς ἐκεῖθέν ποθεν ἐρχόμενα,
ὅθεν αὐτὸς ἦλθεν· ἐπὶ πᾶσι δὲ τὸν
θάνατον ἵλεῳ τῇ γνώμῃ περιμένοντα ὡς
οὐδὲν ἄλλο ἢ λύσιν τῶν στοιχείων, ἐξ
ὧν ἕκαστον ζῷον συγκρίνεται. εἰ δὲ
αὐτοῖς τοῖς στοιχείοις μηδὲν δεινὸν
ἐν τῷ ἕκαστον διηνεκῶς εἰς ἕτερον
μεταβάλλειν, διὰ τί ὑπίδηταί τις τὴν
πάντων μεταβολὴν καὶ διάλυσιν; κατὰ
φύσιν γάρ· οὐδὲν δὲ κακὸν κατὰ φύσιν.
Time
punctuates human life. Wealth flows with the tides. Powers of
perception go dim. Sinews well-knit are quick to rot. The soul is a
spinning rhombus, roaring as it whirls (†). Fortune remains hard to
read, and the spoken word lies ever in doubt. To put it briefly: all
the goods of the body are a river, flowing swiftly past, while those
of the soul are a dream that lies. Life is war, and foreign exile;
and the fame we hand down to posterity is forgetfulness. What is
there capable of escorting us to the grave? Only one thing:
philosophy. We find philosophy by watching our inner spirit, keeping
it immune to outrage and injury, making it mightier than pleasures
and toils—until it does nothing at random or under false pretenses,
and has no need to do anything other than what it does. Then it will
accept all events, receiving all its fate as kin unto itself, since
they come from the same origins. In every circumstance it will await
death with calm resolve, recognizing its mortality as nothing but the
dissolution of material elements from which every living thing is
made. As there is nothing terrible in the fact that these elements
are changing constantly, each turning into the other over time (‡),
why should anyone look askance at the evolution and dissolution of
the entire world? This is simply the nature of things, and there is
nothing evil by nature.
---
(†)
The musical instrument known to Greeks as the
rhombus
(ῥόμβος)
is very ancient, appearing all over the world in primitive cultures
(cf. Alfred Haddon,
The
Study of Man,
ch. 10; Otto Zerries,
Das
Schwirrholz;
Alan Dundes, "A Psychoanalytic Study of the Bullroarer" in
Man
11.2).
There are even Paleolithic exemplars extant (cf. Harding, "The
Bullroarer in History and in Antiquity" in
African
Music
5.3).
The basic form of the instrument is a carved blade, usually stone or
bone or wood, pierced with a hole through which a cord is strung. The
instrument is
played
by
first twisting the cord, then spinning it in great circles, causing
the blade to
roar
as
it cuts through the air. Besides the Greek name, which we inherit as
part of Euclidean geometry (its blade is often rhomboid), the
instrument has others: bullroarer (British), thunderspell (British),
brummer
(Scandinavian),
Waldteufel
(German),
turndun
(Australian),
purerehua
(Maori),
tsin
ndi'ni'
(Navajo),
tzi-ditindi
(Apache),
matapu
(Mehinaku),
and many more.
(‡)
Marcus
refers here to the ancient observation that
our
world
is made up of material elements that change form over time, becoming
each other in a series of transformations that continue as long as
worlds endure. Ancient elements, unlike modern, are defined
intuitively,
in
terms
that admit many different chemicals and processes as notionally the
same. Thus,
earth
produces
a dead tree. Lightning from the
air
strikes
it, causing it to catch
fire,
which
transforms
the
earth
into
smoke.
Smoke ascends
as
air
into
the
clouds,
which come down upon us as
water,
which feeds the
earth
to
make new trees and start the cycle over. Marcus avoids committing
himself closely to any of the various different cosmologies
elucidating this common outlook because what he cares about is
mortality, not physical science.
Because
of this, his reflections are still up to date. Though the narrative
of
science
has
changed, mortality has not. We still exist as living beings in
ecosystems that transform themselves and us via natural processes
punctuated by death.
Marcus
would not be surprised to hear
Bret
Weinstein
explain
that cellular life finds itself lethally caught between cancer and
the Hayflick limit.