ENGLISH COMMENTARY
the vast concatenation of the threads held in the hands of Providence, her purposeful dispensation. Here he is referring to a view that events which we do not understand and so ascribe to the goddess Fortune are the after-effects of an original creative impulse, which works according to a chain of causes and effects. If this be accepted, 'all flows from that other world'. Behind the constant changes of experience lies the supreme and all-pervading Reason, the divine Logos. The word 'flows' introduces the thought, adopted by Zeno from Heraclitus, that the world is the scene of unceasing changes, of eternal coming to be and passing away, behind which lies the unchanging law of Reason.
Next he takes Necessity, the Stoic word for what we call Natural Law and equates it to the benefit of the Whole, that which preserves the Universe. The Universe (the Greek word means 'ordered scheme') is preserved by the continual changes of the Elements and of the compounds into which they enter. In this way, as Marcus often says later, the whole is kept ever young.
This is your viaticum; you need only these doctrines to enable you to live and die with heartfelt gratitude to the gods.
The chapter is an example of the simplicity and yet extreme difficulty of the writer. He is simple because he states with conviction a conclusion which has sunk into the common consciousness of religious men and women; difficult because of his deep knowledge of a system every tenet of which had been discussed and criticized, and because of his parsimony of words, his reference to suppressed arguments.
Observe the exact care in verbal choice, the alliteration and assonance, the way in which he begins with 'the gods' and closes with the same word. The effect corresponds with the energy and concentration of thought, the simplicity and conviction of the writer.
Chs. 4–5. The first edition opens the second Book with ch. 4, and the Vatican MS. here begins a new folio. The connexion, however, of these two chapters with what went before is marked by the words 'from the gods', which take up the closing words of ch. 3 and by the repetition of 'the gods' at the end of ch. 5.
He has too long neglected the days of grace; before it is too late he must perceive the nature of the whole of which he is an
