Meditations VIII

From Marcus Aurelius' "Meditations":

“For even the least things ought not to be done, without relation unto the end;”

I used this quote in an earlier post, talking about the philosophy of purpose, and interestingly, there was an editorial in the New York Times a couple weeks ago, by Richard Polt, that mentioned Aristotle's concept of the "final cause", meaning the goal or purpose of something. As we say in education, "Always start with the end in mind."

In fact, this was the secondary theme of my first day of class lecture at school: that we must always begin by identifying our purpose (which, obviously, in school is to learn), and then proceed from there. Thanks Marcus!