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Page 11
[A] The original is [Greek: epi pas�s phantasias]. We have no word
which expresses [Greek: phantasia], for it is not only the sensuous
appearance which comes from an external object, which object is
called [Greek: to phantaston], but it is also the thought or feeling
or opinion which is produced even when there is no
corresponding external object before us. Accordingly everything
which moves the soul is [Greek: phantaston], and produces a
[Greek: phantasia].
In this extract Antoninus says [Greek: physiologein, pathologein,
dialektikeuesthai]. I have translated [Greek: pathologein] by using
the word Moral (Ethic), and that is the meaning here.
There are several expositions of the Physical, Theological, and Ethical
principles, which are contained in the work of Antoninus; and more
expositions than I have read. Ritter (Geschichte der Philosophie, iv.
241), after explaining the doctrines of Epictetus, treats very briefly
and insufficiently those of Antoninus. But he refers to a short essay,
in which the work is done better.[A] There is also an essay on the
Philosophical Principles of M. Aurelius Antoninus by J.M. Schultz,
placed at the end of his German translation of Antoninus (Schleswig,
1799). With the assistance of these two useful essays and his own
diligent study, a man may form a sufficient notion of the principles of
Antoninus; but he will find it more difficult to expound them to others.
Besides 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 passive 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 passivity (the passive effects) but in activity lie
the evil and the good of the rational social animal, just as his virtue
and his vice lie not in passivity, 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 philospher. 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.
[A] De Marco Aurelio Antonino ... ex ipsius Commentariis.
Scriptio Philologica. Instituit Nicolaus Bachius, Lipsiae,
1826.
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 fortitude 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 passages of this kind, but they are
evidence of the struggles which even the noblest 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."
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