Gataker, whose notes are a wonderful collection of learning, and all of it sound and good, quotes a passage of Calvin which is founded on St. Paul’s language (Rom. i. v. 20):  “God by creating the universe [or world, mundum], being himself invisible, has presented himself to our eyes conspicuously in a certain visible form.”  He also quotes Seneca (De Benef. iv. c. 8):  “Quocunque te flexeris, ibi illum videbis occurrentem tibi:  nihil ab illo vacat, opus suum ipse implet.”  Compare also Cicero, De Senectute (c. 22), Xenophon’s Cyropaedia (viii. 7), and Mem. iv. 3; also Epictetus, i. 6, de Providentia.  I think that my interpretation of Antoninus is right.

29.  The safety of life is this, to examine everything all through, what it is itself, that is its material, what the formal part; with all thy soul to do justice and to say the truth.  What remains, except to enjoy life by joining one good thing to another so as not to leave even the smallest intervals between?

30.  There is one light of the sun, though it is interrupted by walls, mountains, and other things infinite.  There is one common substance,[A] though it is distributed among countless bodies which have their several qualities.  There is one soul, though it is distributed among infinite natures and individual circumscriptions [or individuals].  There is one intelligent soul, though it seems to be divided.  Now in the things which have been mentioned, all the other parts, such as those which are air and matter, are without sensation and have no fellowship:  and yet even these parts the intelligent principle holds together and the gravitation towards the same.  But intellect in a peculiar manner tends to that which is of the same kin, and combines with it, and the feeling for communion is not interrupted.

    [A] iv. 40.

31.  What dost thou wish—­to continue to exist?  Well, dost thou wish to have sensation, movement, growth, and then again to cease to grow, to use thy speech, to think?  What is there of all these things which seems to thee worth desiring?  But if it is easy to set little value on all these things, turn to that which remains, which is to follow reason and God.  But it is inconsistent with honoring reason and God to be troubled because by death a man will be deprived of the other things.

32.  How small a part of the boundless and unfathomable time is assigned to every man, for it is very soon swallowed up in the eternal!  And how small a part of the whole substance; and how small a part of the universal soul; and on what a small clod of the whole earth thou creepest!  Reflecting on all this, consider nothing to be great, except to act as thy nature leads thee, and to endure that which the common nature brings.

33.  How does the ruling faculty make use of itself? for all lies in this.  But everything else, whether it is in the power of thy will or not, is only lifeless ashes and smoke.