Yes.
16. The human soul degrades itself:
Duration: momentary. Nature: changeable. Perception: dim. Condition of Body: decaying. Soul: spinning around. Fortune: unpredictable. Lasting fame: uncertain. Sum up: The body and its parts are a river, the soul a dream and mist, life is warfare and a journey far from home, lasting reputation is oblivion.
(Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, Book Two: On the River Gran, Among the Quadi.)
- Above all, when it does its best to become an abcess, a kind of detached growth on the world. To be disgruntled at anything that happens is a kind of secassion from Nature, which comprises the nature of all things.
- When it turns its back on another person or sets out to do it harm, as the souls of the angry do.
- When it is overpowered by pleasure or pain.
- When it puts on a mask and does or says something artificial or false.
- When it allows its action and impulse to be without a purspose, to be random and disconnected: even the smallest things out to be directed toward a goal. But the goal of rational beings is to follow the rule and law of the most ancient of communities and states.
Duration: momentary. Nature: changeable. Perception: dim. Condition of Body: decaying. Soul: spinning around. Fortune: unpredictable. Lasting fame: uncertain. Sum up: The body and its parts are a river, the soul a dream and mist, life is warfare and a journey far from home, lasting reputation is oblivion.
(Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, Book Two: On the River Gran, Among the Quadi.)
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