On What Quickly Vanishes
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Πῶς πάντα ταχέως ἐναφανίζεται, τῷ μὲν κόσμῳ αὐτὰ τὰ σώματα, τῷ δὲ αἰῶνι αἱ μνῆμαι αὐτῶν. οἶά ἐστι τὰ αἰσθητὰ πάντα καὶ μάλιστα τὰ ἡδονῇ δελεάζοντα ἢ τῷ πόνῳ φοβοῦντα ἢ τῷ τύφῳ διαβεβοημένα· πῶς εὐτελῆ καὶ εὐκαταφρόνητα καὶ ῥυπαρὰ καὶ εὔφθαρτα καὶ νεκρά, νοερᾶς δυνάμεως ἐφιστάναι. τί εἰσιν οὗτοι, ὧν αἱ ὑπολήψεις καὶ αἱ φωναὶ τὴν εὐδοξίαν παρέχουσι. τί ἐστι τὸ ἀποθανεῖν, καὶ ὅτι, ἐάν τις αὐτὸ μόνον ἴδῃ καὶ τῷ μερισμῷ τῆς ἐννοίας διαλύσῃ τὰ ἐμφανταζόμενα αὐτῷ, οὐκέτι ἄλλο τι ὑπολήψεται αὐτὸ εἶναι ἢ φύσεως ἔργον· φύσεως δὲ ἔργον εἴ τις φοβεῖται, παιδίον ἐστί· τοῦτο μέντοι οὐ μόνον φύσεως ἔργον ἐστίν, ἀλλὰ καὶ συμφέρον αὐτῇ. πῶς ἅπτεται θεοῦ ἄνθρωπος καὶ κατὰ τί ἑαυτοῦ μέρος καὶ ὅταν πῶς διακέηται τὸ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου τοῦτο μόριον.
How quickly everything vanishes — in the universe, the bodies themselves; in time, the memory of them. Consider what all objects of sense are, especially those that lure with pleasure, or frighten with pain, or are trumpeted about through vanity: how cheap, contemptible, squalid, perishable, and dead they are — that is what the mind's own power must fix upon. And who are these people whose opinions and voices confer good repute? And what is death? If one looks at it in itself alone, and by analysis of thought strips away the images that attend it, one will no longer suppose it anything but a work of nature. And if anyone fears a work of nature, he is a child. Yet this is not only a work of nature, but also serves nature's own good. Consider, too, how a human being makes contact with god, by what part of himself, and in what state that part of him must be when he does.
Marcus catalogues how bodies, memories, pleasures, pains, and reputations all dissolve away almost at once, reduces death itself to a mere work of nature, and closes by asking how and where a human being makes contact with god.
This unit runs the dissolution-exercise Marcus reaches for throughout Book 2: bodies dissolve into the κόσμος, memories dissolve into αἰών, and the three baits that normally hold the mind captive — pleasure, pain, and τῦφος (the smoke of reputation) — are marched through a chain of unflattering adjectives (εὐτελῆ, εὐκαταφρόνητα, ῥυπαρά, εὔφθαρτα, νεκρά) until nothing is left to admire. The instrument for doing this is named explicitly: the νοερὰ δύναμις, the mind's own faculty of understanding, must be the thing that "fixes upon" (ἐφιστάναι) these objects rather than the untrained impression of them. Marcus does not claim the objects are illusions; he claims that a mind willing to look plainly will see how little they weigh.
The passage's real center is death, and the method Marcus uses on it is the same one he used on pleasure and pain: μερισμός, division into parts, to strip a φαντασία down to its bare ἔργον φύσεως, a work of nature — and, in a sharper move than usual, he adds that it is also συμφέρον αὐτῇ, of benefit to nature itself, since nothing in the Stoic economy of the Whole goes to waste (a thought he develops at length in Book 4 and Book 12). To fear a mere work of nature, he says without softening it, is to be a παιδίον, a child. The closing question, how and by what part a human being ἅπτεται θεοῦ — touches or attains to god — is left open rather than answered, gesturing toward the ἡγεμονικόν as the point of contact between the human and the divine without claiming to settle what that contact is.
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Meditations 2.12 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/meditations-greek/2.12/