This is a fine saying of Plato—that a person who is going to discuss human affairs should examine earthly things as if looking down from somewhere above: groups of men, armies, tilled fields, marriages, divorces, births, deaths, the noise of the law courts, the deserts, the patchwork of foreign peoples, festivals, mournings, markets, the whole mixture and the orderly arrangement of opposites. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 7.48
