The Material and the Causal
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χρὴ δὲ μὴ μόνον ἐνθυμεῖσθαι τὸ πλῆθος τῶν θαπτομένων οὑτωσὶ σωμάτων, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸ τῶν ἑκάστης ἡμέρας ἐσθιομένων ζῴων ὑφ̓ ἡμῶν τε καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ζῴων. ὅσος γὰρ ἀριθμὸς καταναλίσκεται καὶ οὑτωσί πως θάπτεται ἐν τοῖς τῶν τρεφομένων σώμασι, καὶ ὅμως δέχεται ἡ χώρα αὐτὰ διὰ τὰς ἐξαιματώσεις, διὰ τὰς εἰς τὸ ἀερῶδες ἢ πυρῶδες ἀλλοιώσεις. Τίς ἐπὶ τούτου ἡ ἱστορία τῆς ἀληθείας; διαίρεσις εἰς τὸ ὑλικὸν καὶ εἰς τὸ αἰτιῶδες.
And one ought to consider not only the multitude of bodies buried in this way, but also of the animals eaten every day by us and by the other animals. For how great a number is consumed and, in a manner, buried in the bodies of those who feed on them — and yet the space receives them all, through their being turned into blood, through their alterations into the airy or the fiery. What is the inquiry into the truth of this? A division into the material and the causal.
Extending the thought: reckon not just the buried but the countless animals eaten daily, all "buried" in the bodies that feed on them and yet absorbed by turning to blood, air, and fire. And the whole true method here reduces to one analysis — dividing everything into matter and cause.
Marcus presses the point of the previous section with a startling and deliberately unlovely example. Do not think only of human burials; think of the sheer number of animals devoured every day, by us and by other animals. Each is "buried" not in the ground but in the body of whatever eats it, and yet the world never runs out of room, because the eaten flesh is continually transformed — ἐξαιματώσεις, turned into blood, and then altered further into the airy and fiery elements. Matter is not stored; it is recycled without remainder. The grimness is the point: to see that consumption and decay are simply the universe processing its own substance.
The closing line is a piece of pure Stoic method, stated almost as a formula. When you want the ἱστορία τῆς ἀληθείας — the true account of any such phenomenon — the whole analysis comes down to a διαίρεσις εἰς τὸ ὑλικὸν καὶ εἰς τὸ αἰτιῶδες, a division into the material and the causal. Everything that exists is resolvable into matter (what it is made of) and cause (the active reason, the λόγος, that shapes it). This pair, the passive and active principles of Stoic physics, is Marcus’s standing tool for cutting any object down to its bare truth and stripping away the dread that clings to it. Even the spectacle of universal eating and dying becomes, under that analysis, nothing but matter changing form under the direction of reason.
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