Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (good books to read .txt) 📕

that which is useful; and that is useful to every man which is

conformable to his own constitution and nature. But my nature is rational

and social; and my city and country, so far as I am Antoninus, is Rome;

but so far as I am a man, it is the world.”

It would be tedious, and it is not necessary to state the emperor’s

opinions on all the ways in which a man may profitably use his

understanding towards perfecting himself in practical virtue. The

passages to this purpose are in all parts of his book, but as they are in

no order or connection, a man must use the book a long time before he

will find out all that is in it. A few words may be added here. If we

analyze all other things, we find how insufficient they are for human

life, and how truly worthless many of them are. Virtue alone is

indivisible, one, and perfectly satisfying. The notion of Virtue cannot

be considered vague or unsettled, because a man may find it difficult to

explain the notion fully to himself, or to expound it to others in such a

way as to prevent cavilling. Virtue is a whole, and no more consists of

parts than man’s intelligence does; and yet we speak of various

intellectual faculties as a convenient way of expressing the various

powers which man’s intellect shows by his works. In the same way we may

speak of various virtues or parts of virtue, in a practical sense, for

the purpose of showing what particular virtues we ought to practise in

order to the exercise of the whole of virtue, that is, as much as man’s

nature is capable of.

The prime principle in man’s constitution is social. The next in order is

not to yield to the persuasions of the body, when they are not

conformable to the rational principle, which must govern. The third 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”

(VII. 53). The emperor selects justice as the virtue which is the basis

of all the rest (X. 11), and this had been said long before his time.

It is true that all people have some notion of what is meant by justice

as a disposition of the mind, and some notion about acting in conformity

to this disposition; but experience shows that men’s notions about

justice are as confused as their actions are inconsistent with the true

notion of justice. The emperor’s notion of justice is clear enough, but

not practical enough for all mankind. “Let there be freedom from

perturbations with respect to the things which come from the external

cause; and let there be justice in the things done by virtue of the

internal cause, that is, let there be movement and action terminating in

this, in social acts, for this is according to thy nature” (IX. 31). In

another place (IX. 1) he says that “he who acts unjustly acts impiously,”

which follows of course from all that he says in various places. He

insists on the practice of truth as a virtue and as a means to virtue,

which no doubt it is: for lying even in indifferent things weakens the

understanding; and lying maliciously is as great a moral offence as a man

can be guilty of, viewed both as showing an habitual disposition, and

viewed with respect to consequences. He couples the notion of justice

with action. A man must not pride himself on having some fine notion of

justice in his head, but he must exhibit his justice in act.

The Stoics, and Antoninus among them, call some things beautiful and some

ugly, and as they are beautiful so they are good, and as they are ugly so

they are evil, or bad (II. 1). All these things, good and evil, are in

our power, absolutely some of the stricter Stoics would say; in a manner

only, as those who would not depart altogether from common sense would

say; practically they are to a great degree in the power of some persons

and in some circumstances, but in a small degree only in other persons

and in other circumstances. The Stoics maintain man’s free will as to the

things which are in his power; for as to the things which are out of his

power, free will terminating in action is of course excluded by the very

terms of the expression. I hardly know if we can discover exactly

Antoninus’ notion of the free will of man, nor is the question worth the

inquiry. What he does mean and does say is intelligible. All the things

which are not in our power are indifferent: they are neither good nor

bad, morally. Such are life, health, wealth, power, disease, poverty, and

death. Life and death are all men’s portion. Health, wealth, power,

disease, and poverty happen to men, indifferently to the good and to the

bad; to those who live according to nature and to those who do not.

“Life,” says the emperor, “is a warfare and a stranger’s sojourn, and

after fame is oblivion” (II. 17). After speaking of those men who have

disturbed the world and then died, and of the death of philosophers such

as Heraclitus, and Democritus, who was destroyed by lice, and of Socrates

whom other lice (his enemies) destroyed, he says: “What means all this?

Thou hast embarked, thou hast made the voyage, thou art come to shore;

get out. If indeed to another life, there is no want of gods, not even

there. But if to a state without sensation, thou wilt cease to be held by

pains and pleasures, and to be a slave to the vessel which is as much

inferior as that which serves it is superior: for the one is intelligence

and Deity; the other is earth and corruption” (III. 3). It is not death

that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live

according to nature (XII. 1). Every man should live in such a way as to

discharge his duty, and to trouble himself about nothing else. He should

live such a life that he shall always be ready for death, and shall

depart content when the summons comes. For what is death? “A cessation of

the impressions through the senses, and of the pulling of the strings

which move the appetites, and of the discursive movements of the

thoughts, and of the service to the flesh” (VI. 28). Death is such as

generation is, a mystery of nature (IV. 5). In another passage (IX. 3),

the exact meaning of which is perhaps doubtful, he speaks of the child

which leaves the womb, and so he says the soul at death leaves its

envelope.

Antoninus’ opinion of a future life is nowhere clearly expressed. His

doctrine of the nature of the soul of necessity implies that it does not

perish absolutely, for a portion of the divinity cannot perish. The

opinion is at least as old as the time of Epicharmus and Euripides; what

comes from earth goes back to earth, and what comes from heaven, the

divinity, returns to him who gave it. But I find nothing clear in

Antoninus as to the notion of the man existing after death so as to be

conscious of his sameness with that soul which occupied his vessel of

clay. He seems to be perplexed on this matter, and finally to have rested

in this, that God or the gods will do whatever is best, and consistent

with the university of things.

Nor, I think, does he speak conclusively on another Stoic doctrine, which

some Stoics practiced,—the anticipating the regular course of nature by

a man’s own act. The reader will find some passages in which this is

touched on, and he may make of them what he can. But there are passages

in which the emperor encourages himself to wait for the end patiently and

with tranquillity; and certainly it is consistent with all his best

teaching that a man should bear all that falls to his lot and do useful

acts as long as he lives. He should not therefore abridge the time of his

usefulness by his own act.

Happiness was not the direct object of a Stoic’s life. There is no rule

of life contained in the precept that a man should pursue his own

happiness. Many men think that they are seeking happiness when they are

only seeking the gratification of some particular passion, the strongest

that they have. The end of a man is, as already explained, to live

conformably to nature, and he will thus obtain happiness, tranquillity of

mind, and contentment (III. 12; VIII 2). As a means of living conformably

to nature he must study the four chief virtues, each of which has its

proper sphere: wisdom, or the knowledge of good and evil; justice, or the

giving to every man his due; fortitude, or the enduring of labor and

pain; and temperance, which is moderation in all things. By thus living

conformably to nature the Stoic obtained all that he wished or expected.

His reward was in his virtuous life, and he was satisfied with that.

Epictetus and Antoninus both by precept and example labored to improve

themselves and others; and if we discover imperfections in their

teaching, we must still honor these great men who attempted to show that

there is in man’s nature and in the constitution of things sufficient

reason for living a virtuous life. It is difficult enough to live as we

ought to live, difficult even for any man to live in such a way as to

satisfy himself, if he exercises only in a moderate degree the power of

reflecting upon and reviewing his own conduct; and if all men cannot be

brought to the same opinions in morals and religion, it is at least worth

while to give them good reasons for as much as they can be persuaded to

accept.

FOOTNOTES:

1: This passage is corrupt, and the exact meaning is uncertain.

2: Lorium was a villa on the coast north of Rome, and there Antoninus was

brought up, and he died there. This also is corrupt.

3: This is corrupt.

4: Antoninus here uses the word [Greek: kosmos] both in the sense of the

Universe and of Order; and it is difficult to express his meaning.

5: This is corrupt.

6: It appears that there is a defect in the text here.

7: The story is told by Horace in his Satires and by others since, but

not better.

8: “Seen even with the eyes.” It is supposed that this may be explained

by the Stoic doctrine, that the universe is a god or living being (IV.

40), and that the celestial bodies are gods (VIII. 19). But the emperor

may mean that we know that the gods exist, as he afterwards states it,

because we see what they do; as we know that man has intellectual powers,

because we see what he does, and in no other way do we know it.

9: The Stoics made three divisions of philosophy,—Physic, Ethic, and

Logic (VIII. 13). This division, we are told by Diogenes, was made by

Zeno of Citium, the founder of the Stoic sect, and by Chrysippus; but

these philosophers placed the three divisions in the following order,—

Logic, Physic, Ethic. It appears, however, that this division was made

before Zeno’s time, and acknowledged by Plato, as Cicero remarks. Logic

is not synonymous with our term Logic in the narrower sense of that word.

Cleanthes, a Stoic, subdivided the three divisions, and made six,—

Dialectic and Rhetoric, comprised in Logic; Ethic and Politic;