《沉思录·卷五·天未亮就起身》第10条
Things are in such a kind of envelopment that they have seemed to philosophers, not a few nor those common philosophers, altogether unintelligible; nay even to the Stoics themselves they seem difficult to understand. And all our assent is changeable; for where is the man who never changes? Carry thy thoughts then to the objects themselves, and consider how short-lived they are and worthless, and that they may be in the possession of a filthy wretch or a whore or a robber. Then turn to the morals of those who live with thee, and it is hardly possible to endure even the most agreeable of them, to say nothing of a man being hardly able to endure himself. In such darkness then and dirt, and in so constant a flux both of substance and of time, and of motion and of things moved, what there is worth being highly prized, or even an object of serious pursuit, I cannot imagine. But on the contrary it is a man's duty to comfort himself, and to wait for the natural dissolution, and not to be vexed at the delay, but to rest in these principles only: the one, that nothing will happen to me which is not conformable to the nature of the universe; and the other, that it is in my power never to act contrary to my god and daemon: for there is no man who will compel me to this.
注释摘要
这一段开始的口气很不同。奥勒留说，事物的本性是这么被包裹遮蔽，以至于相当多的哲学家，甚至不是那些平庸之辈，都认为它们根本不可知。这是个很有分量的坦白。斯多葛派通常极其信赖人的理性可以透过表象把握宇宙秩序，但在这里，连奥勒留自己也承认，即使对斯多葛派来说，理解事物也是困难的。他紧接着补了一句关键的话：我们的一切赞同都是变动不居的，哪里有一个从不改变的人呢。这…