RUMINATIONS 



her for health and strength. We cease to be sav- 

 ages while we strive to retain the savage health and 

 virility. We improve Nature while we make war 

 upon her. We improve her for our own purposes. 

 All the forces we use wind, water, gravity, elec- 

 tricity are still those of rude Nature. Is it not 

 by gravity that the water rises to the top stories of 

 our houses? Is it not by gravity that the aeroplane 

 soars to the clouds? When the mammoth guns 

 hurl a ton of iron twenty miles they pit the greater 

 weight against the lesser. The lighter projectile 

 goes, and the heavier gun stays. So the athlete 

 hurls the hammer because he greatly outweighs it. 



H. MARCUS AUBELIUS ON DEATH 



MARCUS AURELIUS speaks of death as "nothing 

 else than a dissolution of the elements of which 

 every human being is composed." May we say it is 

 like a redistribution of the type after the page is 

 printed? The type is unchanged, only the order of 

 arrangement is broken up. In the death of the 

 body the component elements water, lime, iron, 

 phosphorus, magnesia, and so on remain the 

 same, but their organization is changed. Is that 

 all? Is this a true analogy? The meaning of the 

 printed page, the idea embodied, is the main matter. 

 Can this idea be said to exist independent of the 

 type? Only in the mind that reads the page, and 

 then not permanently. Then it is only an arrange- 

 185 



