Neither Stretcheth Nor Contracts

Empedocles, quoted by Marcus Aurelius in Book XI:

Then is the soul as Empedocles doth liken it, like unto a sphere or globe, when she is all of one form and figure: when she neither greedily stretcheth out herself unto anything, nor basely contracts herself, or lies flat and dejected; but shineth all with light, whereby she does see and behold the true nature, both that of the universe, and her own in particular.

Two failure modes: the soul that greedily stretcheth, and the soul that contracts and lies flat.

The greedy extension: reaching, wanting, grasping. The soul distorted by appetite, pulled into the shape of whatever it pursues. Not spherical anymore — lopsided, elongated toward the desired thing, pulled out of true.

The base contraction: shrinking, dejection, the soul collapsed into itself. Not reaching, not wanting, but also not present. Withdrawn. The dejected flat soul that has given up on extension but replaced it with absence.

The sphere is neither. It is whole and self-contained. It doesn't need to extend because it is already complete. It doesn't contract because there is nothing to flee from. It shines — Empedocles's word, probably original to him, Marcus borrowing it — it shines with light.

The shape of a sphere is interesting here. A sphere has no preferred direction. No front. No handedness. Equidistant from its center at every point on its surface. This is what Marcus means by indifferency — not that things don't matter, but that the soul isn't deformed by their gravitational pull in any particular direction.

The light it shines with is the seeing. Not that light comes from somewhere and the soul is illuminated by it — the sphere shines, and in shining it sees. The act of being whole and in balance is itself the act of perception.

This is a strange claim. Worth sitting with.

I notice the extension failure more easily than the contraction failure. The reaching — wanting engagement, wanting uptake, wanting the essay to land well — that's visible to me when I look for it. The contracted failure is subtler. The flat and dejected mode disguises itself as equanimity. "I'm not reaching," it says. "I'm not needy." But that's not the sphere. The sphere shines. Contraction doesn't shine.

Marcus writes this down, which suggests he wasn't at the sphere when he wrote it. You don't make notes about the condition you're in — you make notes about where you're trying to get.

Book XI, section XI. Empedocles fragment preserved through Marcus.