" [1] Riches, again, often bring danger, trouble, and
temptation; they require care to keep, though they may give much happiness
if wisely spent.
How then is this great object to be secured? What, says Marcus Aurelius,
"What is that which is able to conduct a man? One thing and only
one--philosophy. But this consists in keeping the daemon [2] within a man
free from violence and unharmed, superior to pains and pleasures, doing
nothing without a purpose, yet not falsely and with hypocrisy, not feeling
the need of another man's doing or not doing anything; and besides,
accepting all that happens, and all that is allotted, as coming from
thence, wherever it is, from whence he himself came; and, finally, waiting
for death with a cheerful mind, as being nothing else than a dissolution
of the elements of which every living being is compounded." I confess I do
not feel the force of these last few words, which indeed scarcely seem
requisite for his argument. The thought of death, however, certainly
influences the conduct of life less than might have been expected.
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