Part 3 (1/2)
”Nunquam aliud Natura aliud Sapientia dicit.”
Man must also live conformably to the universal nature, conformably to the nature of all things of which he is one; and as a citizen of a political community he must direct his life and actions with reference to those among whom, among other purposes, he lives.[A] A man must not retire into solitude and cut himself off from his fellow-men. He must be ever active to do his part in the great whole. All men are his kin, not only in blood, but still more by partic.i.p.ating in the same intelligence and by being a portion of the same divinity. A man cannot really be injured by his brethren, for no act of theirs can make him bad, and he must not be angry with them nor hate them: ”For we are made for co-operation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth. To act against one another then is contrary to nature; and it is acting against one another to be vexed and to turn away” (ii. 1).
[A] See viii. 52; and Persius iii. 66
Further he says: ”Take pleasure in one thing and rest in it in pa.s.sing from one social act to another social act, thinking of G.o.d” (vi. 7).
Again: ”Love mankind. Follow G.o.d” (vii. 31). It is the characteristic of the rational soul for a man to love his neighbor (xi. 1). Antoninus teaches in various pa.s.sages the forgiveness of injuries, and we know that he also practised what he taught. Bishop Butler remarks that ”this divine precept to forgive injuries and to love our enemies, though to be met with in Gentile moralists, yet is in a peculiar sense a precept of Christianity, as our Saviour has insisted more upon it than on any other single virtue.” The practice of this precept is the most difficult of all virtues. Antoninus often enforces it and gives us aid towards following it. When we are injured, we feel anger and resentment, and the feeling is natural, just, and useful for the conservation of society. It is useful that wrong-doers should feel the natural consequences of their actions, among which is the disapprobation of society and the resentment of him who is wronged. But revenge, in the proper sense of that word, must not be practised. ”The best way of avenging thyself,” says the emperor, ”is not to become like the wrong-doer.” It is plain by this that he does not mean that we should in any case practise revenge; but he says to those who talk of revenging wrongs, Be not like him who has done the wrong. Socrates in the Crito (c. 10) says the same in other words, and St. Paul (Ep. to the Romans, xii. 17). ”When a man has done thee any wrong, immediately consider with what opinion about good or evil he has done wrong. For when thou hast seen this, thou wilt pity him and wilt neither wonder nor be angry” (vii. 26). Antoninus would not deny that wrong naturally produces the feeling of anger and resentment, for this is implied in the recommendation to reflect on the nature of the man's mind who has done the wrong, and then you will have pity instead of resentment; and so it comes to the same as St. Paul's advice to be angry and sin not; which, as Butler well explains it, is not a recommendation to be angry, which n.o.body needs, for anger is a natural pa.s.sion, but it is a warning against allowing anger to lead us into sin.
In short the emperor's doctrine about wrongful acts is this: wrong-doers do not know what good and bad are: they offend out of ignorance, and in the sense of the Stoics this is true. Though this kind of ignorance will never be admitted as a legal excuse, and ought not to be admitted as a full excuse in any way by society, there may be grievous injuries, such as it is in a man's power to forgive without harm to society; and if he forgives because he sees that his enemies know not what they do, he is acting in the spirit of the sublime prayer, ”Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
The emperor's moral philosophy was not a feeble, narrow system, which teaches a man to look directly to his own happiness, though a man's happiness or tranquillity is indirectly promoted by living as he ought to do. A man must live conformably to the universal nature, which means, as the emperor explains it in many pa.s.sages, that a man's actions must be conformable to his true relations to all other human beings, both as a citizen of a political community and as a member of the whole human family. This implies, and he often expresses it in the most forcible language, that a man's words and actions, so far as they affect others, must be measured by a fixed rule, which is their consistency with the conservation and the interests of the particular society of which he is a member, and of the whole human race. To live conformably to such a rule, a man must use his rational faculties in order to discern clearly the consequences and full effect of all his actions and of the actions of others: he must not live a life of contemplation and reflection only, though he must often retire within himself to calm and purify his soul by thought,[A] but he must mingle in the work of man and be a fellow laborer for the general good.
[A] Ut nemo in sese tentat descendere, nemo.--_Persius_, iv.
21.
A man should have an object or purpose in life, that he may direct all his energies to it; of course a good object (ii. 7). He who has not one object or purpose of life, cannot be one and the same all through his life (xi. 21). Bacon has a remark to the same effect, on the best means of ”reducing of the mind unto virtue and good estate; which is, the electing and propounding unto a man's self good and virtuous ends of his life, such as may be in a reasonable sort within his compa.s.s to attain.”
He is a happy man who has been wise enough to do this when he was young and has had the opportunities; but the emperor seeing well that a man cannot always be so wise in his youth, encourages himself to do it when he can, and not to let life slip away before he has begun. He who can propose to himself good and virtuous ends of life, and be true to them, cannot fail to live conformably to his own interest and the universal interest, for in the nature of things they are one. If a thing is not good for the hive, it is not good for the bee (vi. 54).
One pa.s.sage may end this matter. ”If the G.o.ds have determined about me and about the things which must happen to me, they have determined well, for it is not easy even to imagine a deity without forethought; and as to doing me harm, why should they have any desire towards that? For what advantage would result to them from this or to the whole, which is the special object of their providence? But if they have not determined about me individually, they have certainly determined about the whole at least; and the things which happen by way of sequence in this general arrangement I ought to accept with pleasure and to be content with them.
But if they determine about nothing--which it is wicked to believe, or if we do believe it, let us neither sacrifice nor pray nor swear by them, nor do anything else which we do as if the G.o.ds were present and lived with us; but if however the G.o.ds determine about none of the things which concern us, I am able to determine about myself, and I can inquire about that which is useful: and that is useful to every man which is conformable to his own const.i.tution ([Greek: kataskeue]) 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. The things then which are useful to these cities are alone useful to me” (vi. 44).
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 pa.s.sages 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 a.n.a.lyze 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 practice in order to the exercise of the whole of virtue, that is, as man's nature is capable of.
The prime principle in man's const.i.tution 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. 55). 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 offense 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, like St. James' notion of faith. But this is enough.
The Stoics, and Antoninus among them, call some things beautiful ([Greek: kala]) and some ugly ([Greek: aischra]), 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 circ.u.mstances, but in a small degree only in other persons and in other circ.u.mstances. 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 ([Greek: aproaireta]) 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.[A]
”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 Herac.l.i.tus 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 sh.o.r.e; get out. If indeed to another life, there is no want of G.o.ds, 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 appet.i.tes, 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 pa.s.sage, the exact meaning of which is perhaps doubtful (ix. 3), he speaks of the child which leaves the womb, and so he says the soul at death leaves its envelope. As the child is born or comes into life by leaving the womb, so the soul may on leaving the body pa.s.s into another existence which is perfect. I am not sure if this is the emperor's meaning. Butler compares it with a pa.s.sage in Strabo (p. 713) about the Brachmans' notion of death being the birth into real life and a happy life, to those who have philosophized; and he thinks Antoninus may allude to this opinion.[B]
[A] ”All events come alike to all: there is one event to the righteous and to the wicked: to the good and to the clean and to the unclean,” &c. (Ecclesiastes, ix. v. 2); and (v. 3), ”This is an evil among all things that are done under the sun, that there is one event unto all.” In what sense ”evil” is meant here seems rather doubtful. There is no doubt about the emperor's meaning. Compare Epictetus, Enchiridion, c. i., &c.; and the doctrine of the Brachmans (Strabo p. 713, ed. Cas.): [Greek: agathon de e kakon meden einai ton sumbainonton anthropois].
[B] Seneca (Ep. 102) has the same, whether an expression of his own opinion, or merely a fine saying of others employed to embellish his writings, I know not. After speaking of the child being prepared in the womb to live this life, he adds, ”Sic per hoc spatium, quod ab infantia patet in senectutem, in alium naturae sumimur partum. Alia origo nos expectat, alius rerum status.” See Ecclesiastes, xii. 7; and Lucan, i. 457:--
”Longae, canitis si cognita, vitae Mors media est.”
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 G.o.d or the G.o.ds 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 practised,--the antic.i.p.ating the regular course of nature by a man's own act. The reader will find some pa.s.sages in which this is touched on, and he may make of them what he can. But there are pa.s.sages 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 he lives. He should not therefore abridge the time of his usefulness by his own act. Whether he contemplates any possible cases in which a man should die by his own hand, I cannot tell; and the matter is not worth a curious inquiry, for I believe it would not lead to any certain result as to his opinion on this point. I do not think that Antoninus, who never mentions Seneca, though he must have known all about him, would have agreed with Seneca when he gives as a reason for suicide, that the eternal law, whatever he means, has made nothing better for us than this, that it has given us only one way of entering into life and many ways of going out of it. The ways of going out indeed are many, and that is a good reason for a man taking care of himself.[A]
[A] See Plinius H.N. ii., c. 7; Seneca, De Provid. c. 6; and Ep. 70: ”Nihil melius aeterna lex,” &c.