Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Part 11

[B] It is said that this is not in the extant writings of Plato.

49. Consider the past,--such great changes of political supremacies; thou mayest foresee also the things which will be. For they will certainly be of like form, and it is not possible that they should deviate from the order of the things which take place now; accordingly to have contemplated human life for forty years is the same as to have contemplated it for ten thousand years. For what more wilt thou see?

50. That which has grown from the earth to the earth, But that which has sprung from heavenly seed, Back to the heavenly realms returns.[A]

This is either a dissolution of the mutual involution of the atoms, or a similar dispersion of the unsentient elements.

51. With food and drinks and cunning magic arts Turning the channel's course to 'scape from death.[B]

The breeze which heaven has sent We must endure, and toil without complaining.

[A] From the Chrysippus of Euripides.

[B] The first two lines are from the Supplices of Euripides, v.

1110.

52. Another may be more expert in casting his opponent; but he is not more social, nor more modest, nor better disciplined to meet all that happens, nor more considerate with respect to the faults of his neighbors.

53. Where any work can be done conformably to the reason which is common to G.o.ds and men, there we have nothing to fear; for where we are able to get profit by means of the activity which is successful and proceeds according to our const.i.tution, there no harm is to be suspected.

54. Everywhere and at all times it is in thy power piously to acquiesce in thy present condition, and to behave, justly to those who are about thee, and to exert thy skill upon thy present thoughts, that nothing shall steal into them without being well examined.

55. Do not look around thee to discover other men's ruling principles, but look straight to this, to what nature leads thee, both the universal nature through the things which happen to thee, and thy own nature through the acts which must be done by thee. But every being ought to do that which is according to its const.i.tution; and all other things have been const.i.tuted for the sake of rational beings, just as among irrational things the inferior for the sake of the superior, but the rational for the sake of one another.

The prime principle then in man's const.i.tution is the social. And the second is not to yield to the persuasions of the body,--for it is the peculiar office of the rational and intelligent motion to circ.u.mscribe itself, and never to be overpowered either by the motion of the senses or of the appet.i.tes, for both are animal: but the intelligent motion claims superiority, and does not permit itself to be overpowered by the others. And with good reason, for it is formed by nature to use all of them. The third thing in the rational const.i.tution is freedom from error and from deception. Let then the ruling principle holding fast to these things go straight on, and it has what is its own.

56. Consider thyself to be dead, and to have completed thy life up to the present time; and live according to nature the remainder which is allowed thee.

57. Love that only which happens to thee and is spun with the thread of thy destiny. For what is more suitable?

58. In everything which happens keep before thy eyes those to whom the same things happened, and how they were vexed, and treated them as strange things, and found fault with them: and now where are they?

Nowhere. Why then dost thou too choose to act in the same way? and why dost thou not leave these agitations which are foreign to nature to those who cause them and those who are moved by them; and why art thou not altogether intent upon the right way of making use of the things which happen to thee? For then thou wilt use them well, and they will be a material for thee [to work on]. Only attend to thyself, and resolve to be a good man in every act which thou doest: and remember ...[A]

[A] This section is obscure, and the conclusion is so corrupt that it is impossible to give any probable meaning to it. It is better to leave it as it is than to patch it up, as some critics and translators have done.

59. Look within. Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble up, if thou wilt ever dig.

60. The body ought to be compact, and to show no irregularity either in motion or att.i.tude. For what the mind shows in the face by maintaining in it the expression of intelligence and propriety, that ought to be required also in the whole body. But all these things should be observed without affectation.

61. The art of life is more like the wrestler's art than the dancer's, in respect of this, that it should stand ready and firm to meet onsets which are sudden and unexpected.

62. Constantly observe who those are whose approbation thou wishest to have, and what ruling principles they possess. For then thou wilt neither blame those who offend involuntarily, nor wilt thou want their approbation, if thou lookest to the sources of their opinions and appet.i.tes.

63. Every soul, the philosopher says, is involuntarily deprived of truth; consequently in the same way it is deprived of justice and temperance and benevolence and everything of the kind. It is most necessary to bear this constantly in mind, for thus thou wilt be more gentle towards all.

64. In every pain let this thought be present, that there is no dishonor in it, nor does it make the governing intelligence worse, for it does not damage the intelligence either so far as the intelligence is rational[A] or so far as it is social. Indeed in the case of most pains let this remark of Epicurus aid thee, that pain is neither intolerable nor everlasting, if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination: and remember this too, that we do not perceive that many things which are disagreeable to us are the same as pain, such as excessive drowsiness, and the being scorched by heat, and the having no appet.i.te. When then thou art discontented about any of these things, say to thyself that thou art yielding to pain.

65. Take care not to feel towards the inhuman as they feel towards men.[B]

66. How do we know if Telauges was not superior in character to Socrates? For it is not enough that Socrates died a more n.o.ble death, and disputed more skilfully with the sophists, and pa.s.sed the night in the cold with more endurance, and that when he was bid to arrest Leon[C]

of Salamis, he considered it more n.o.ble to refuse, and that he walked in a swaggering way in the streets[D]--though as to this fact one may have great doubts if it was true. But we ought to inquire what kind of a soul it was that Socrates possessed, and if he was able to be content with being just towards men and pious towards the G.o.ds, neither idly vexed on account of men's villainy, nor yet making himself a slave to any man's ignorance, nor receiving as strange anything that fell to his share out of the universal, nor enduring it as intolerable, nor allowing his understanding to sympathize with the affects of the miserable flesh.

[A] The text has [Greek: hylike], which it has been proposed to alter to [Greek: logike], and this change is necessary. We shall then have in this section [Greek: logike] and [Greek: koinonike] a.s.sociated, as we have in s. 68 [Greek: logike] and [Greek: politike], and in s. 72.

[B] I have followed Gataker's conjecture [Greek: ohi apanthropoi] instead of the MSS. reading [Greek: ohi anthropoi]

[C] Leon of Salamis. See Plato, Epist. 7; Apolog. c. 20; Epictetus, iv. I, 160; iv. 7, 30.

[D] Aristophan. Nub. 362. [Greek: hoti brenthuei t' en taisis hodois kai to ophthalmo paraballei.]

67. Nature has not so mingled+ [the intelligence] with the composition of the body, as not to have allowed thee the power of circ.u.mscribing thyself and of bringing under subjection to thyself all that is thy own; for it is very possible to be a divine man and to be recognized as such by no one. Always bear this in mind; and another thing too, that very little indeed is necessary for living a happy life. And because thou hast despaired of becoming a dialectician and skilled in the knowledge of nature, do not for this reason renounce the hope of being both free and modest, and social and obedient to G.o.d.

68. It is in thy power to live free from all compulsion in the greatest tranquillity of mind, even if all the world cry out against thee as much as they choose, and even if wild beasts tear in pieces the members of this kneaded matter which has grown around thee. For what hinders the mind in the midst of all this from maintaining itself in tranquillity and in a just judgment of all surrounding things and in a ready use of the objects which are presented to it, so that the judgment may say to the thing which falls under its observation: This thou art in substance [reality], though in men's opinion thou mayest appear to be of a different kind; and the use shall say to that which falls under the hand: Thou art the thing that I was seeking; for to me that which presents itself is always a material for virtue both rational and political, and in a word, for the exercise of art, which belongs to man or G.o.d. For everything which happens has a relations.h.i.+p either to G.o.d or man, and is neither new nor difficult to handle, but usual and apt matter to work on.

69. The perfection of moral character consists in this, in pa.s.sing every day as the last, and in being neither violently excited nor torpid nor playing the hypocrite.

70. The G.o.ds who are immortal are not vexed because during so long a time they must tolerate continually men such as they are and so many of them bad; and besides this, they also take care of them in all ways.

But thou, who art destined to end so soon, art thou wearied of enduring the bad, and this too when thou art one of them?

71. It is a ridiculous thing for a man not to fly from his own badness, which is indeed possible, but to fly from other men's badness, which is impossible.

72. Whatever the rational and political [social] faculty finds to be neither intelligent nor social, it properly judges to be inferior to itself.

73. When thou hast done a good act and another has received it, why dost thou still look for a third thing besides these, as fools do, either to have the reputation of having done a good act or to obtain a return?

74. No man is tired of receiving what is useful. But it is useful to act according to nature. Do not then be tired of receiving what is useful by doing it to others.

75. The nature of the All moved to make the universe. But now either everything that takes place comes by way of consequence or [continuity]; or even the chief things towards which the ruling power of the universe directs its own movement are governed by no rational principle. If this is remembered, it will make thee more tranquil in many things (vi. 44; ix. 28).[A]

[A] It is not easy to understand this section. It has been suggested that there is some error in [Greek: e alogista] &c.

Some of the translators have made nothing of the pa.s.sage, and they have somewhat perverted the words. The first proposition is, that the universe was made by some sufficient power. A beginning of the universe is a.s.sumed, and a power which framed an order. The next question is, How are things produced now?

Or, in other words, by what power do forms appear in continuous succession? The answer, according to Antoninus, may be this: It is by virtue of the original const.i.tution of things that all change and succession have been effected and are effected. And this is intelligible in a sense, if we admit that the universe is always one and the same, a continuity of ident.i.ty; as much one and the same as man is one and the same--which he believes himself to be, though he also believes, and cannot help believing, that both in his body and in his thoughts there is change and succession. There is no real discontinuity then in the universe; and if we say that there was an order framed in the beginning, and that the things which are now produced are a consequence of a previous arrangement, we speak of things as we are compelled to view them, as forming a series of succession, just as we speak of the changes in our own bodies and the sequence of our own thoughts. But as there are no intervals, not even intervals infinitely small, between any two supposed states of any one thing, so there are no intervals, not even infinitely small, between what we call one thing and any other thing which we speak of as immediately preceding or following it. What we call time is an idea derived from our notion of a succession of things or events, an idea which is a part of our const.i.tution, but not an idea which we can suppose to belong to an infinite intelligence and power. The conclusion then is certain that the present and the past, the production of present things and the supposed original order, out of which we say that present things now come, are one, and the present productive power and the so-called past arrangement are only different names for one thing. I suppose then that Antoninus wrote here as people sometimes talk now, and that his real meaning is not exactly expressed by his words. There are certainly other pa.s.sages from which I think that we may collect that he had notions of production something like what I have expressed. We now come to the alternate: "or even the chief things ... principle." I do not exactly know what he means by [Greek: ta kureotata] "the chief," or "the most excellent," or whatever it is. But as he speaks elsewhere of inferior and superior things, and of the inferior being for the use of the superior, and of rational beings being the highest, he may here mean rational beings. He also in this alternative a.s.sumes a governing power of the universe, and that it acts by directing its power towards these chief objects, or making its special, proper motion towards them. And here he uses the noun ([Greek: horme]) "movement," which contains the same notion as the verb ([Greek: ormese]) "moved," which he used at the beginning of the paragraph, when he was speaking of the making of the universe. If we do not accept the first hypothesis, he says, we must take the conclusion of the second, that the "chief things towards which the ruling power of the universe directs its own movement are governed by no rational principle." The meaning then is, if there is a meaning in it, that though there is a governing power which strives to give effect to its efforts, we must conclude that there is no rational direction of anything, if the power which first made the universe does not in some way govern it still. Besides, if we a.s.sume that anything is now produced or now exists without the action of the supreme intelligence, and yet that this intelligence makes an effort to act, we obtain a conclusion which cannot be reconciled with the nature of a supreme power, whose existence Antoninus always a.s.sumes. The tranquillity that a man may gain from these reflections must result from his rejecting the second hypothesis and accepting the first--whatever may be the exact sense in which the emperor understood the first. Or, as he says elsewhere, if there is no Providence which governs the world, man has at least the power of governing himself according to the const.i.tution of his nature; and so he may be tranquil if he does the best that he can.

If there is no error in the pa.s.sage, it is worth the labor to discover the writer's exact meaning--for I think that he had a meaning, though people may not agree what it was. (Compare ix.

28.) If I have rightly explained the emperor's meaning in this and other pa.s.sages, he has touched the solution of a great question.

VIII.

This reflection also tends to the removal of the desire of empty fame, that it is no longer in thy power to have lived the whole of thy life, or at least thy life from thy youth upwards, like a philosopher; but both to many others and to thyself it is plain that thou art far from philosophy. Thou hast fallen into disorder then, so that it is no longer easy for thee to get the reputation of a philosopher; and thy plan of life also opposes it. If then thou hast truly seen where the matter lies, throw away the thought, How thou shall seem [to others], and be content if thou shalt live the rest of thy life in such wise as thy nature wills. Observe then what it wills, and let nothing else distract thee; for thou hast had experience of many wanderings without having found happiness anywhere,--not in syllogisms, nor in wealth, nor in reputation, nor in enjoyment, nor anywhere. Where is it then? In doing what man's nature requires. How then shall a man do this? If he has principles from which come his affects and his acts. What principles?

Those which relate to good and bad: the belief that there is nothing good for man which does not make him just, temperate, manly, free; and that there is nothing bad which does not do the contrary to what has been mentioned.

2. On the occasion of every act ask thyself, How is this with respect to me? Shall I repent of it? A little time and I am dead, and all is gone.

What more do I seek, if what I am now doing is the work of an intelligent living being, and a social being, and one who is under the same law with G.o.d?

3. Alexander and Caius[A] and Pompeius, what are they in comparison with Diogenes and Herac.l.i.tus and Socrates? For they were acquainted with things, and their causes [forms], and their matter, and the ruling principles of these men were the same [or conformable to their pursuits]. But as to the others, how many things had they to care for, and to how many things were they slaves!