What seemed to underlie that position was the desire to make the most of every experience that might come, outwardly or from within: to perpetuate, to display, what was so fleeting, in a kind of instinctive, pathetic protest against the imperial writer's own theory--that theory of the "perpetual flux" of all things--to Marius himself, so plausible from of old.
There was, besides, a special moral or doctrinal significance in the making of such conversation with one's self at all.

The Logos, the reasonable spark, in man, is common to him with the gods--koinos auto pros tous theous+--cum diis communis.

That might seem but the truism of a certain school of philosophy; but in Aurelius was clearly an original and lively apprehension.

There could be no inward conversation with one's self such as this, unless there were indeed some one else, aware of our actual thoughts and feelings, pleased or displeased at [48] one's disposition of one's self.

Cornelius Fronto too could enounce that theory of the reasonable community between men and God, in many different ways.