For the one is intelligence and deity; the other is earth and corruption.
Notes on Meditations 3.3
Book 3 continues.
3.3
Hippocrates after curing many diseases himself fell sick and died.
The Chaldaei foretold the deaths of many, and then fate caught them too.
Alexander, and Pompeius, and Caius Caesar, after so often completely destroying whole cities, and in battle cutting to pieces many ten thousands of cavalry and infantry, themselves too at last departed from life.
Heraclitus, after so many speculations on the conflagration of the universe, was filled with water internally and died smeared all over with mud.
And lice destroyed Democritus; and other lice killed Socrates.
What means all this?
You have embarked, you have made the voyage, you are come to shore; get out.
If indeed to another life, there is no want of gods, not even there.
But if to a state without sensation, you will cease to be held by pains and pleasures, and to be a slave to the vessel, which is as much inferior as that which serves it is superior: for the one is intelligence and deity; the other is earth and corruption.
