Citizens of the World
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Εἰ τὸ νοερὸν ἡμῖν κοινόν, καὶ ὁ λόγος, καθʼ ὃν λογικοί ἐσμεν, κοινός· εἰ τοῦτο, καὶ ὁ προστακτικὸς τῶν ποιητέων ἢ μὴ λόγος κοινός· εἰ τοῦτο, καὶ ὁ νόμος κοινός· εἰ τοῦτο, πολῖταί ἐσμεν· εἰ τοῦτο, πολιτεύματός τινος μετέχομεν· εἰ τοῦτο, ὁ κόσμος ὡσανεὶ πόλις ἐστί· τίνος γὰρ ἄλλου φήσει τις τὸ τῶν ἀνθρώπων πᾶν γένος κοινοῦ πολιτεύματος μετέχειν; ἐκεῖθεν δέ, ἐκ τῆς κοινῆς ταύτης πόλεως, καὶ αὐτὸ τὸ νοερὸν καὶ λογικὸν καὶ νομικὸν ἡμῖν ἢ πόθεν; ὥσπερ γὰρ τὸ γεῶδές μοι ἀπό τινος γῆς ἀπομεμέρισται καὶ τὸ ὑγρὸν ἀφʼ ἑτέρου στοιχείου καὶ τὸ πνευματικὸν ἀπὸ πηγῆς τινος καὶ τὸ θερμὸν καὶ πυρῶδες ἔκ τινος ἰδίας πηγῆς ( οὐδὲν γὰρ ἐκ τοῦ μηδενὸς ἔρχεται, ὥσπερ μηδʼ εἰς τὸ οὐκ ὂν ἀπέρχεται), οὕτω δὴ καὶ τὸ νοερὸν ἥκει ποθέν.
If the power of thought is common to us, then so is the reason by which we are rational beings; if that, then the reason too that prescribes what to do and not to do is common; if that, then law is common; if that, we are fellow-citizens; if that, we share in some commonwealth; if that, the world is, as it were, a city — for of what other single commonwealth could anyone say that the whole race of mankind shares in it? And it is from there, from this common city, that the very power of thought and reason and law within us comes — or from where else? For just as the earthy part in me has been apportioned off from some earth, and the moist from another element, and the airy from some source, and the hot and fiery from its own source (for nothing comes from what is not, just as nothing departs into non-being), so too the power of thought has come from somewhere.
A step-by-step argument for cosmopolitanism: if reason is shared, then law is shared, and we are fellow-citizens of one commonwealth — the world itself; and our reasoning power, like the elements of our body, must have come from that larger city.
This is Marcus’s clearest statement of the Stoic doctrine of cosmopolitanism, built as a chain of conditionals in which each "if this, then that" (εἰ τοῦτο) draws out the next consequence. The starting point is that reason, τὸ νοερόν, is not private property but κοινόν, common to all who have it. From shared reason follows a shared prescriptive reason — a common sense of what ought and ought not to be done — and from that a common νόμος, law. Beings under one law are fellow-citizens; fellow-citizens belong to one πολίτευμα, one commonwealth; and the only commonwealth large enough to hold "the whole race of mankind" is the κόσμος itself. Hence the famous conclusion: the world is a city, and every rational being a citizen of it.
The second half grounds the claim in physics. Marcus reasons by analogy from the body: its earthy, watery, airy, and fiery parts were each drawn off from the corresponding element in the wider world, on the Stoic principle (which he states as a parenthesis) that nothing comes from nothing and nothing passes into nonexistence. If the material of the body is on loan from the cosmic elements, then the mind, τὸ νοερόν, must likewise be a portion drawn from a cosmic source of reason — the divine λόγος that pervades the whole. The undercurrent is consoling and unifying at once: the individual is neither self-made nor alone but a temporary concentration of what belongs to the universe, mind included.
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