Marcus Aurelius didn’t waste space, just as he aimed to never waste time.
Meditations serves as a form of philosophical practice, by rehearsing and keeping philosophical principles in constant view. These principles, if we let them fully seep into our minds, can transform who we are. In this way, the practice is a spiritual one, focusing on changing our spirit. Anything that fails to transform our spirit is frivolous. Marcus Aurelius’s commitment to that is evident in the Meditations. We don’t see him jot down anything half-hearted or trivial.
Meditations 2.11 contains the principles meant to seriously shape a life.
2.11
Since it is possible that you may depart from life at this very moment, regulate every act and thought accordingly.
But to go away from among men, if there are gods, is not a thing to be afraid of, for the gods will not involve you in evil; but if they do not exist, or if they do not care about human affairs, what is it to me to live in a universe empty of gods or empty of Providence?
But in truth they do exist, and they do care for human things, and they have put all the means in man’s power to enable him not to fall into real evils.
If death included any evil, they would have accounted for this also, that it should be altogether in a man’s power not to fall into it.
Now that which does not make a man’s character worse, how can it make a man’s life worse?
But neither through ignorance, nor having knowledge, but not the power to guard against or correct these things, is it possible that the nature of the universe has overlooked them; nor is it possible that it has made so great a mistake, either through want of power or want of skill, that good and evil should happen indiscriminately to the good and the bad.
But death certainly, and life, honor and dishonor, pain and pleasure, all these things equally happen to good men and bad, being things which make us neither better nor worse.
Therefore, they are neither good nor evil.
Notes
The theme of each of these sections should be familiar to any reader of Stoicism:
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