Part 8 (2/2)
And once more:--
”Look down from above on the countless herds of men, and their countless solemnities, and the infinitely varied voyagings in storms and calms, and the differences among those who are born, who live together and die. And consider too the life lived by others in olden time, and the life now lived among barbarous nations, and how many know not even thy name, and how many will soon forget it, and how they who perhaps now are praising thee will very soon blame thee, and that neither a posthumous name is of any value, nor reputation, nor anything else.”
He recognized, indeed, that (to use his own words) ”the prime principle in man's const.i.tution is the social”; and he labored sincerely to make, not only his acts toward his fellow men, but his thoughts also, suitable to this conviction.
”When thou wishest to delight thyself, think of the virtue of those who live with thee: for instance, the activity of one, and the modesty of another, and the liberality of a third, and some other good quality of a fourth.”
Still, it is hard for a pure and thoughtful man to live in a state of rapture at the spectacle afforded to him by his fellow creatures; above all it is hard, when such a man is placed as Marcus Aurelius was placed, and has had the meanness and perversity of his fellow creatures thrust, in no common measure, upon his notice--has had, time after time, to experience how ”within ten days thou wilt seem a G.o.d to those to whom thou art now a beast and an ape.” His true strain of thought as to his relations with his fellow men is rather the following. He has been enumerating the higher consolations which may support a man at the approach of death, and he goes on:--
”But if thou requirest also a vulgar kind of comfort which shall reach thy heart, thou wilt be made best reconciled to death by observing the objects from which thou art going to be removed, and the morals of those with whom thy soul will no longer be mingled. For it is no way right to be offended with men, but it is thy duty to care for them and to bear with them gently; and yet to remember that thy departure will not be from men who have the same principles as thyself. For this is the only thing, if there be any, which could draw us the contrary way and attach us to life--to be permitted to live with those who have the same principles as ourselves.
But now thou seest how great is the distress caused by the difference of those who live together, so that thou mayest say: 'Come quick, O death, lest perchance I too should forget myself.'”
_O faithless and perverse generation! how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you?_ Sometimes this strain rises even to pa.s.sion:--
”Short is the little which remains to thee of life. Live as on a mountain.
Let men see, let them know, a real man, who lives as he was meant to live.
If they cannot endure him, let them kill him. For that is better than to live as men do.”
It is remarkable how little of a merely local and temporary character, how little of those _scoriae_ which a reader has to clear away before he gets to the precious ore, how little that even admits of doubt or question, the morality of Marcus Aurelius exhibits. In general, the action he prescribes is action which every sound nature must recognize as right, and the motives he a.s.signs are motives which every clear reason must recognize as valid. And so he remains the especial friend and comforter of scrupulous and difficult, yet pure-hearted and upward-striving souls, in those ages most especially that walk by sight, not by faith, but yet have no open vision; he cannot give such souls, perhaps, all they yearn for, but he gives them much; and what he gives them, they can receive.
Yet no, it is not for what he thus gives them that such souls love him most! it is rather because of the emotion which gives to his voice so touching an accent, it is because he too yearns as they do for something unattained by him. What an affinity for Christianity had this persecutor of the Christians! The effusion of Christianity, its relieving tears, its happy self-sacrifice, were the very element, one feels, for which his soul longed; they were near him, they brushed him, he touched them, he pa.s.sed them by. One feels, too, that the Marcus Aurelius one knows must still have remained, even had they presented themselves to him, in a great measure himself; he would have been no Justin. But how would they have affected him? in what measure would it have changed him? Granted that he might have found, like the _Alogi_ of modern times, in the most beautiful of the Gospels, the Gospel which has leavened Christendom most powerfully,--the Gospel of St. John,--too much Greek metaphysics, too much _gnosis_; granted that this Gospel might have looked too like what he knew already to be a total surprise to him: what, then, would he have said to the Sermon on the Mount, to the twenty-sixth chapter of St. Matthew? What would have become of his notion of the _exitiabilis superst.i.tio_, of the ”obstinacy of the Christians”? Vain question! yet the greatest charm of Marcus Aurelius is that he makes us ask it. We see him wise, just, self-governed, tender, thankful, blameless; yet, with all this, agitated, stretching out his arms for something beyond--_tendentemque ma.n.u.s ripae ulterioris amore_.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
DOVER BEACH
The sea is calm to-night, The tide is full, the moon lies fair Upon the straits;--on the French coast the light Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray Where the sea meets the moon-blanch'd land, Listen! you hear the grating roar Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, At their return, up the high strand, Begin, and cease, and then again begin, With tremulous cadence slow, and bring The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago Heard it on the aegaean, and it brought Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow Of human misery; we Find also in the sound a thought, Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The Sea of Faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's sh.o.r.e Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.
But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Retreating, to the breath Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear And naked s.h.i.+ngles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor cert.i.tude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night.
MORALITY
We cannot kindle when we will The fire that in the heart resides; The spirit bloweth and is still, In mystery our soul abides; But tasks in hours of insight will'd Can be through hours of gloom fulfill'd.
With aching hands and bleeding feet We dig and heap, lay stone on stone; We bear the burden and the heat Of the long day, and wish 'twere done.
Not till the hours of light return, All we have built do we discern.
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