How we engage the world. Marcus Aurelius 6.14

Our lives are series of events. These exist & persist for us, in our minds at least, as we perceive them & find ways to remember what we have perceived. Material events without any animal motivation that we see become expressions of nature or divinity, which gives birth to myriad physical compounds that lack overt animal intelligence. Events with clear animal motivation appear different: Marcus says that they involve soul. The rational soul, a soul like ours, conceives events in its life as occasions for deploying skill and logic together, drawing on practice and inference from what it has learned in times past. Note that Marcus makes every rational skill something social: we develop & deploy it in concert with other people.

Τὰ πλεῖστα, ὧν ἡ πληθὺς θαυμάζει, εἰς γενικώτατα ἀνάγεται τὰ ὑπὸ ἕξεως ἢ φύσεως συνεχόμενα, λίθους, ξύλα, συκᾶς, ἀμπέλους, ἐλαίας· τὰ δὲ ὑπὸ τῶν ὀλίγῳ μετριωτέρων εἰς τὰ ὑπὸ ψυχῆς, οἷον ποίμνας, ἀγέλας ἢ κατὰ ψιλὸν τὸ πλῆθος ἀνδραπόδων κεκτῆσθαι. τὰ δὲ ὑπὸ τῶν ἔτι χαριεστέρων εἰς τὰ ὑπὸ λογικῆς ψυχῆς, οὐ μέντοι καθὸ λογική, ἀλλὰ καθὸ τεχνικὴ ἢ ἄλλως πως ἐντρεχής. ὁ δὲ ψυχὴν λογικὴν καὶ πολιτικὴν τιμῶν οὐδὲν ἔτι τῶν ἄλλων ἐπιστρέφεται, πρὸ ἁπάντων δὲ τὴν ἑαυτοῦ ψυχὴν λογικῶς καὶ κοινωνικῶς ἔχουσαν καὶ κινουμένην διασῴζει καὶ τῷ ὁμογενεῖ εἰς τοῦτο συνεργεῖ.

Things that inspire awe in the multitude are generally reduced to whatever is most familiar. Common sense takes events caused by a persistent condition, or by nature, and turns them into material objects that amaze folk: rocks, sticks, figs, vines, olives. Things whose origin lies with something more conscious or discerning than inert matter become animal flocks, herds, or the power one ruler can wield over a mass of slaves. Finally, the things or events whose issue is from elegance, grace, or skill become decisions of a rational soul—not a soul merely or simply logical, in the strictest sense, but one endowed with art or skill that anticipates some end. The man who pays proper honor to such a soul keeps it ever in good form within him, refusing to turn aside no matter what he confronts: by his soul's likeness to reason and society, he turns every action that he shares into an expression of rational association.