Part 13 (1/2)
31. What dost thou wish,--to continue to exist? Well, dost thou wish to have sensation, movement, growth, and then again to cease to grow, to use thy speech, to think? What is there of all these things which seems to thee worth desiring? But if it is easy to set little value on all these things, turn to that which remains, which is to follow reason and G.o.d.
But it is inconsistent with honoring reason and G.o.d to be troubled because by death a man will be deprived of the other things.
32. How small a part of the boundless and unfathomable time is a.s.signed to every man, for it is very soon swallowed up in the eternal! And how small a part of the whole substance; and how small a part of the universal soul; and on what a small clod of the whole earth thou creepest! Reflecting on all this, consider nothing to be great, except to act as thy nature leads thee, and to endure that which the common nature brings.
33. How does the ruling faculty make use of itself? for all lies in this.
But everything else, whether it is in the power of thy will or not, is only lifeless ashes and smoke.
34. This reflection is most adapted to move us to contempt of death, that even those who think pleasure to be a good and pain an evil still have despised it.
35. The man to whom that only is good which comes in due season, and to whom it is the same thing whether he has done more or fewer acts conformable to right reason, and to whom it makes no difference whether he contemplates the world for a longer or a shorter time,--for this man neither is death a terrible thing (II. 7; VI. 23; X. 20; XII. 23).
36. Man, thou hast been a citizen in this great state [the world]; what difference does it make to thee whether for five years [or three]? for that which is conformable to the laws is just for all. Where is the hards.h.i.+p then, if no tyrant nor yet an unjust judge sends thee away from the state, but nature, who brought thee into it? the same as if a praetor who has employed an actor dismisses him from the stage.--”But I have not finished the five acts, but only three of them.”--Thou sayest well, but in life the three acts are the whole drama; for what shall be a complete drama is determined by him who was once the cause of its composition, and now of its dissolution: but thou art the cause of neither. Depart then satisfied, for he also who releases thee is satisfied.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF MARCUS AURELIUS ANTONINUS.
It has been said that the Stoic philosophy first showed its real value when it pa.s.sed from Greece to Rome. The doctrines of Zeno and his successors were well suited to the gravity and practical good sense of the Romans; and even in the Republican period we have an example of a man, M. Cato Uticensis, who lived the life of a Stoic and died consistently with the opinions which he professed. He was a man, says Cicero, who embraced the Stoic philosophy from conviction; not for the purpose of vain discussion, as most did, but in order to make his life conformable to the Stoic precepts. In the wretched times from the death of Augustus to the murder of Domitian, there was nothing but the Stoic philosophy which could console and support the followers of the old religion under imperial tyranny and amidst universal corruption. There were even then n.o.ble minds that could dare and endure, sustained by a good conscience and an elevated idea of the purposes of man's existence.
Such were Paetus Thrasca, Helvidius Priscus, Cornutus, C. Musonius Rufus, and the poets Persius and Juvenal, whose energetic language and manly thoughts may be as instructive to us now as they might have been to their contemporaries. Persius died under Nero's b.l.o.o.d.y reign; but Juvenal had the good fortune to survive the tyrant Domitian and to see the better times of Nerva, Trajan, and Hadrian. His best precepts are derived from the Stoic school, and they are enforced in his finest verses by the unrivalled vigor of the Latin language.
The best two expounders of the later Stoical philosophy were a Greek slave and a Roman emperor. Epictetus, a Phrygian Greek, was brought to Rome, we know not how, but he was there the slave and afterwards the freedman of his unworthy master, Epaphroditus. Like other great teachers he wrote nothing, and we are indebted to his grateful pupil Arrian for what we have of Epictetus' discourses. Arrian wrote eight books of the discourses of Epictetus, of which only four remain and some fragments. We have also from Arrian's hand the small Enchiridion or Manual of the chief precepts of Epictetus. There is a valuable commentary on the Enchiridion by Simplicius, who lived in the time of the emperor Justinian.
Antoninus in his first book (I. 7), in which he gratefully commemorates his obligations to his teachers, says that he was made acquainted by Junius Rusticus with the discourses of Epictetus, whom he mentions also in other pa.s.sages (IV. 41; XI 34, 36). Indeed, the doctrines of Epictetus and Antoninus are the same, and Epictetus is the best authority for the explanation of the philosophical language of Antoninus and the exposition of his opinions. But the method of the two philosophers is entirely different. Epictetus addressed himself to his hearers in a continuous discourse and in a familiar and simple manner. Antoninus wrote down his reflections for his own use only, in short, unconnected paragraphs, which are often obscure. [Footnote: 9]
The want of arrangement in the original and of connection among the numerous paragraphs, the corruption of the text, the obscurity of the language and the style, and sometimes perhaps the confusion in the writer's own ideas,--besides all this, there is occasionally an apparent contradiction in the emperor's thoughts, as if his principles were sometimes unsettled, as if doubt sometimes clouded his mind. A man who leads a life of tranquillity and reflection, who is not disturbed at home and meddles not with the affairs of the world, may keep his mind at ease and his thoughts in one even course. But such a man has not been tried.
All his Ethical philosophy and his pa.s.sive virtue might turn out to be idle words, if he were once exposed to the rude realities of human existence. Fine thoughts and moral dissertations from men who have not worked and suffered may be read, but they will be forgotten. No religion, no Ethical philosophy is worth anything, if the teacher has not lived the ”life of an apostle,” and been ready to die ”the death of a martyr.” ”Not in pa.s.sivity (the pa.s.sive affects) but in activity lie the evil and the good of the rational social animal, just as his virtue and his vice lie not in pa.s.sivity, but in activity” (IX. 16). The emperor Antoninus was a practical moralist. From his youth he followed a laborious discipline, and though his high station placed him above all want or the fear of it, he lived as frugally and temperately as the poorest philosopher.
Epictetus wanted little, and it seems that he always had the little that he wanted and he was content with it, as he had been with his servile station. But Antoninus after his accession to the empire sat on an uneasy seat. He had the administration of an empire which extended from the Euphrates to the Atlantic, from the cold mountains of Scotland to the hot sands of Africa; and we may imagine, though we cannot know it by experience, what must be the trials, the troubles, the anxiety, and the sorrows of him who has the world's business on his hands, with the wish to do the best that he can, and the certain knowledge that he can do very little of the good which he wishes.
In the midst of war, pestilence, conspiracy, general corruption, and with the weight of so unwieldy an empire upon him, we may easily comprehend that Antoninus often had need of all his fort.i.tude to support him. The best and the bravest men have moments of doubt and of weakness; but if they are the best and the bravest, they rise again from their depression by recurring to first principles, as Antoninus does. The emperor says that life is smoke, a vapor, and St. James in his Epistle is of the same mind; that the world is full of envious, jealous, malignant people, and a man might be well content to get out of it. He has doubts perhaps sometimes even about that to which he holds most firmly. There are only a few pa.s.sages of this kind, but they are evidence of the struggles which even the n.o.blest of the sons of men had to maintain against the hard realities of his daily life. A poor remark it is which I have seen somewhere, and made in a disparaging way, that the emperor's reflections show that he had need of consolation and comfort in life, and even to prepare him to meet his death. True that he did need comfort and support, and we see how he found it. He constantly recurs to his fundamental principle that the universe is wisely ordered, that every man is a part of it and must conform to that order which he cannot change, that whatever the Deity has done is good, that all mankind are a man's brethren, that he must love and cherish them and try to make them better, even those who would do him harm. This is his conclusion (II. 17): ”What then is that which is able to conduct a man? One thing and only one, Philosophy. But this consists in keeping the divinity within a man free from violence and unharmed, superior to pains and pleasures, doing nothing without a purpose nor yet falsely and with hypocrisy, not feeling the need of another man's doing or not doing anything; and besides, accepting all that happens and all that is allotted, as coming from thence, wherever it is, from whence he himself came; and finally waiting for death with a cheerful mind as being nothing else than a dissolution of the elements of which every living being is compounded. But if there is no harm to the elements themselves in each continually changing into another, why should a man have any apprehension about the change and dissolution of all the elements [himself]? for it is according to nature; and nothing is evil that is according to nature.”
The Physic of Antoninus is the knowledge of the Nature of the Universe, of its government, and of the relation of man's nature to both. He names the universe (VI. 1), ”the universal substance,” and he adds that ”reason” governs the universe. He also (VI. 9) uses the terms ”universal nature” or ”nature of the universe.” He (VI. 25) calls the universe ”the one and all, which we name Cosmos or Order.” If he ever seems to use these general terms as significant of the All, of all that man can in any way conceive to exist, he still on other occasions plainly distinguishes between Matter, Material things, and Cause, Origin, Reason. This is conformable to Zeno's doctrine that there are two original principles of all things, that which acts and that which is acted upon. That which is acted on is the formless matter: that which acts is the reason, G.o.d, who is eternal and operates through all matter, and produces all things. So Antoninus (V. 32) speaks of the reason which pervades all substance, and through all time by fixed periods (revolutions) administers the universe.
G.o.d is eternal, and Matter is eternal. It is G.o.d who gives form to matter, but he is not said to have created matter. According to this view, which is as old as Anaxagoras, G.o.d and matter exist independently, but G.o.d governs matter. This doctrine is simply the expression of the fact of the existence both of matter and of G.o.d. The Stoics did not perplex themselves with the insoluble question of the origin and nature of matter. Antoninus also a.s.sumes a beginning of things, as we now know them; but his language is sometimes very obscure.
Matter consists of elemental parts of which all material objects are made. But nothing is permanent in form. The nature of the universe, according to Antoninus' expression (IV. 36), ”loves nothing so much as to change the things which are, and to make new things like them. For everything that exists is in a manner the seed of that which will be. But thou art thinking only of seeds which are cast into the earth or into a womb: but this is a very vulgar notion.” All things then are in a constant flux and change: some things are dissolved into the elements, others come in their places; and so the ”whole universe continues ever young and perfect.”
When we look at the motions of the planets, the action of what we call gravitation, the elemental combination of unorganized bodies and their resolution, the production of plants and of living bodies, their generation, growth, and their dissolution, which we call their death, we observe a regular sequence of phenomena, which within the limits of experience present and past, so far as we know the past, is fixed and invariable. But if this is not so, if the order and sequence of phenomena, as known to us, are subject to change in the course of an infinite progression,--and such change is conceivable,--we have not discovered, nor shall we ever discover, the whole of the order and sequence of phenomena, in which sequence there may be involved according to its very nature, that is, according to its fixed order, some variation of what we now call the Order or Nature of Things. It is also conceivable that such changes have taken place,--changes in the order of things, as we are compelled by the imperfection of language to call them, but which are no changes; and further it is certain that our knowledge of the true sequence of all actual phenomena, as for instance the phenomena of generation, growth, and dissolution, is and ever must be imperfect.
We do not fare much better when we speak of Causes and Effects than when we speak of Nature. For the practical purposes of life we may use the terms cause and effect conveniently, and we may fix a distinct meaning to them, distinct enough at least to prevent all misunderstanding. But the case is different when we speak of causes and effects as of Things. All that we know is phenomena, as the Greeks called them, or appearances which follow one another in a regular order, as we conceive it, so that if some one phenomenon should fail in the series, we conceive that there must either be an interruption of the series, or that something else will appear after the phenomenon which has failed to appear, and will occupy the vacant place; and so the series in its progression may be modified or totally changed. Cause and effect then mean nothing in the sequence of natural phenomena beyond what I have said; and the real cause, or the transcendent cause, as some would call it, of each successive phenomenon is in that which is the cause of all things which are, which have been, and which will be forever. Thus the word Creation may have a real sense if we consider it as the first, if we can conceive a first, in the present order of natural phenomena; but in the vulgar sense a creation of all things at a certain time, followed by a quiescence of the first cause, and an abandonment of all sequences of Phenomena to the laws of Nature, or to the other words that people may use, is absolutely absurd.
Man being conscious that he is a spiritual power or an intellectual power, or that he has such a power, in whatever way he conceives that he has it,--for I wish simply to state a fact,--from this power which he has in himself, he is led, as Antoninus says, to believe that there is a greater power, which, as the old Stoics tell us, pervades the whole universe as the intellect pervades man.
G.o.d exists then, but what do we know of his nature? Antoninus says that the soul of man is an efflux from the divinity. We have bodies like animals, but we have reason, intelligence, as the G.o.ds. Animals have life and what we call instincts or natural principles of action: but the rational animal man alone has a rational, intelligent soul. Antoninus insists on this continually: G.o.d is in man, and so we must constantly attend to the divinity within us, for it is only in this way that we can have any knowledge of the nature of G.o.d. The human soul is in a sense a portion of the divinity, and the soul alone has any communication with the Deity; for as he says (XII. 2): ”With his intellectual part alone G.o.d touches the intelligence only which has flowed and been derived from himself into these bodies.” In fact he says that which is hidden within a man is life, that is the man himself. All the rest is vesture, covering, organs, instrument, which the living man, the real man, uses for the purpose of his present existence. The air is universally diffused for him who is able to respire; and so for him who is willing to partake of it the intelligent power, which holds within it all things, is diffused as wide and free as the air (VIII. 54). It is by living a divine life that man approaches to a knowledge of the divinity. It is by following the divinity within, as Antoninus calls it, that man comes nearest to the Deity, the supreme good; for man can never attain to perfect agreement with his internal guide. ”Live with the G.o.ds. And he does live with the G.o.ds who constantly shows to them that his own soul is satisfied with that which is a.s.signed to him, and that it does all the daemon wishes, which Zeus hath given to every man for his guardian and guide, and a portion of himself. And this daemon is every man's understanding and reason” (V. 27).
There is in man, that is in the reason, the intelligence, a superior faculty which if it is exercised rules all the rest. A man must reverence only his ruling faculty and the divinity within him. As we must reverence that which is supreme in the universe, so we must reverence that which is supreme in ourselves; and this is that which is of like kind with that which is supreme in the universe (V. 21).
Antoninus speaks of a man's condemnation of himself when the diviner part within him has been overpowered and yields to the less honorable and to the perishable part, the body, and its gross pleasures.
Antoninus did not view G.o.d and the material universe as the same, any more than he viewed the body and soul of man as one. Antoninus has no speculations on the absolute nature of the Deity. It was not his fas.h.i.+on to waste his time on what man cannot understand. He was satisfied that G.o.d exists, that he governs all things, that man can only have an imperfect knowledge of his nature, and he must attain this imperfect knowledge by reverencing the divinity which is within him, and keeping it pure.
From all that has been said, it follows that the universe is administered by the Providence of G.o.d and that all things are wisely ordered. There are pa.s.sages in which Antoninus expresses doubts, or states different possible theories of the const.i.tution and government of the universe; but he always recurs to his fundamental principle; that if we admit the existence of a deity, we must also admit that he orders all things wisely and well (IV. 27; VI. 1; IX. 28; XII. 5).
But if all things are wisely ordered, how is the world so full of what we call evil, physical and moral? If instead of saying that there is evil in the world, we use the expression which I have used, ”what we call evil,”