HKB
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Often appears with: the fear of death · the passions and the emotions · reason and the intellect · pleasure, pain, and the good life · will, choice, and freedom · virtue and death · universal time · unity of all things · the problem of evil and theodicy · stoic perspective · smallness of human life · prudence and practical wisdom
Usually: exhortation (4) · argument (3) · confronting death (3) · detachment (3) · commentary or gloss (1) · reflection (1) · crisis of belief (1) · curiosity (1) · reverence (1)
“A repulse was a sure defeat; and a defeat was most commonly total destruction.” Edward Gibbon, History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire · observation
“In the morning when thou risest unwillingly, let this thought be present,—I am rising to the work of a human being.” Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius · precept
“Man, thou hast been a citizen in this great state [the world]; what difference does it make to thee whether for five years [or three]?” Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius · observation
Gibbon credits bards with supplying the priests’ promised immortality, explaining how heroic songs and battle feasts fueled German martial ardor, fame-seeking, and contempt for death.
Roman rites, of which the nuptial songs formed a part. Adelung, p. 382.—G. Charlemagne is said to have collected the national songs of the ancient Germans. Eginhard, Vit. Car. Mag.—M.] Such was the situation, and such were the manners of the ancient Germans. Their climate, their want of learning, of arts, and of laws, their notions of honor, of gallantry, and of religion, their sense of freedom, im…
He claims virtue’s greatest benefit is contempt for death, because death alone is inevitable and otherwise life’s troubles would erase pleasure; without this, all other pleasures vanish.
part of, and consubstantial with, the effect. The felicity and beatitude that glitters in Virtue, shines throughout all her appurtenances and avenues, even to the first entry and utmost limits. Now, of all the benefits that virtue confers upon us, the contempt of death is one of the greatest, as the means that accommodates human life with a soft and easy tranquillity, and gives us a pure and pleasant taste of living…
He teaches that reflection on those who clung to life shows death claims everyone, and that life’s interval is brief compared with past and future; therefore do not treat life as the highest good.
1. In the morning when thou risest unwillingly, let this thought be present,—I am rising to the work of a human being. Why then am I dissatisfied if I am going to do the things for which I exist and for which I was brought into the world? Or have I been made for this, to lie in the bed-clothes and keep myself warm?—But this is more pleasant.—Dost thou exist then to take thy pleasure, and not at all for action or exer…
The text develops Stoic unity—one substance and one intelligent soul—then questions what is truly worth desiring, urges living according to reason and God, and teaches reflection on time, earth, and death.
faculty make use of itself? for all lies in this. But everything else, whether it is in the power of thy will or not, is only lifeless ashes and smoke. 34. This reflection is most adapted to move us to contempt of death, that even those who think pleasure to be a good and pain an evil still have despised it. 35. The man to whom that only is good which comes in due season, and to whom it is the same thing whether he…
Meditations XXIV–XXVII teaches to prefer living according to God and reason over bodily pleasures, dwell on eternity’s smallness and one’s limited portion, and detach from what lies beyond one’s will, including contempt for death.
then remaineth but to enjoy thy life in a course and coherence of good actions, one upon another immediately succeeding, and never interrupted, though for never so little a while? XXIII. There is but one light of the sun, though it be intercepted by walls and mountains, and other thousand objects. There is but one common substance of the whole world, though it be concluded and restrained into several different bodie…