The torrent and the members. The first sentence fuses two of Marcus's constant images into a single picture: all bodies "sweep through the universal substance as through a torrent" (χείμαρρος — the flash "winter" torrent; a variation of the MOTIFriver of time of 4.43: "ποταμός τις ἐκ τῶν γινομένων ὁ αἰών"), and yet they are not debris in the water but DOGMA"connatural with the Whole" (συμφυῆ) and TERMcooperating with it (συνεργά), MOTIFas our members with one another (a direct echo of 7.13 and 2.1). The double status of every body: swept along — and still an organ. The torrent does not cancel belonging; belonging does not stop the torrent.

Chrysippuses in the plural. Then the most ironic roll-call of the dead in the corpus: "how many Chrysippuses, how many Socrateses, how many Epictetuses has eternity gulped down (καταπέπωκε)!" Three names — three summits: PERSONSocrates the source, PERSONChrysippus the systematizer of the Stoa ("had there been no Chrysippus, there would be no Stoa," DL VII 183), PERSONEpictetus — Marcus's own teacher (through the "notes," 1.7). The plural is the killing stroke: not "Chrysippus died" but "Chrysippuses" — even the greatest mind is an instance of a recurring type, which the torrent stamps out and swallows in series (cf. recurrence and 6.47 — the muster of the dead "by whole clans"). The special irony: swallowed too is the very man who described the cosmic cycles.

The instruction. The closing imperative turns the contemplation into an EXERCISEexercise: "let the same thought fall upon you (προσπιπτέτω — the same verb of impact as in 7.14) about every person and every thing whatsoever." Every encounter — with a person, a reputation, a thing — must pass through this filter: this too is a Chrysippus in the plural. The discipline is desire: the quenching of clinging to persons and things — without cancelling (through the first sentence) their kinship with you in the one body of the Whole.