Page:The Emperor Marcus Antoninus - His Conversation with Himself.djvu/414

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Marcus Antoninus's

plentifully stock'd with Inhabitants.[1] And that if you mounted never so often, you'd have the old Prospect; Alass! Things are generally of the same Complexion, and of the same short Continuance too, and yet how strangely we are Conceited of them.

XXV. Discharge Opinion, [2] and you are safe; And pray who can hinder you from doing it?

XXVI. When you are uneasy upon any Account, you seem to forget that all Things fall out according to the Good Pleasure of Providence, and that another Man's Fault, is no Concern of yours; that what you reckon Grievances, is nothing but the Old Way of the World, and will come over again, when you are dead, and gone, and are now to be met with in a thousand Places: You have forgotten that all Mankind are of Kin; for tho' they may be unallied in Flesh and Blood, their Understandings are all of the same Family; You don't remember that every Man's Soul is a Portion of the Deity, and derived from thence; that we have nothing properly our own, but that our Children, our Bodies, and our Breath, are all borrow'd from Heaven, that Opinion governs all, and things are only as you think them; and that 'tis not possible for anyBody

  1. 'Twas the Opinion of the Platonists and Stoicks, that the Air, and Sky was inhabited by Spirits, suitable to give the respective Regions.
  2. Opinion is a Common, but false Notion of Things.