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Page 17
Much matter might be collected from Antoninus on the notion of the
Universe being one animated Being. But all that he says amounts to no
more, as Schultz remarks, than this: the soul of man is most intimately
united to his body, and together they make one animal, which we call
man; so the Deity is most intimately united to the world, or the
material universe, and together they form one whole. But Antoninus did
not view God and the material universe as the same, any more than he
viewed the body and soul of man as one. Antoninus has 110 speculations
on the absolute nature of the Deity. It was not his fashion to waste his
time on what man cannot understand.[A] He was satisfied that God 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.
[A] "God, who is infinitely beyond the reach of our narrow
capacities" (Locke, Essay concerning the Human Understanding,
ii. chap. 17).
From all that has been said, it follows that the universe is
administered by the Providence of God ([Greek: pronoia]), and that all
things are wisely ordered. There are passages in which Antoninus
expresses doubts, or states different possible theories of the
constitution 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; and many other passages). Epictetus says (i. 6) that
we can discern the providence which rules the world, if we possess two
things,--the power of seeing all that happens with respect to each
thing, and a grateful disposition.
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," we have partly anticipated the emperor's answer. We see and
feel and know imperfectly very few things in the few years that we live,
and all the knowledge and all the experience of all the human race is
positive ignorance of the whole, which is infinite. Now, as our reason
teaches us that everything is in some way related to and connected with
every other thing, all notion of evil as being in the universe of things
is a contradiction; for if the whole comes from and is governed by an
intelligent being, it is impossible to conceive anything in it which
tends to the evil or destruction of the whole (viii. 55; x. 6).
Everything is in constant mutation, and yet the whole subsists; we might
imagine the solar system resolved into its elemental parts, and yet the
whole would still subsist "ever young and perfect."
All things, all forms, are dissolved, and new forms appear. All living
things undergo the change which we call death. If we call death an evil,
then all change is an evil. Living beings also suffer pain, and man
suffers most of all, for he suffers both in and by his body and by his
intelligent part. Men suffer also from one another, and perhaps the
largest part of human suffering comes to man from those whom he calls
his brothers. Antoninus says (viii. 55), "Generally, wickedness does no
harm at all to the universe; and particularly, the wickedness [of one
man] does no harm to another. It is only harmful to him who has it in
his power to be released from it as soon as he shall choose." The first
part of this is perfectly consistent with the doctrine that the whole
can sustain no evil or harm. The second part must be explained by the
Stoic principle that there is no evil in anything which is not in our
power. What wrong we suffer from another is his evil, not ours. But this
is an admission that there is evil in a sort, for he who does wrong does
evil, and if others can endure the wrong, still there is evil in the
wrong-doer. Antoninus (xi. 18) gives many excellent precepts with
respect to wrongs and injuries, and his precepts are practical. He
teaches us to bear what we cannot avoid, and his lessons may be just as
useful to him who denies the being and the government of God as to him
who believes in both. There is no direct answer in Antoninus to the
objections which may be made to the existence and providence of God
because of the moral disorder and suffering which are in the world,
except this answer which he makes in reply to the supposition that even
the best men may be extinguished by death. He says if it is so, we may
be sure that if it ought to have been otherwise, the gods would have
ordered it otherwise (xii. 5). His conviction of the wisdom which we may
observe in the government of the world is too strong to be disturbed by
any apparent irregularities in the order of things. That these disorders
exist is a fact, and those who would conclude from them against the
being and government of God conclude too hastily. We all admit that
there is an order in the material world, a Nature, in the sense in which
that word has been explained, a constitution ([Greek: kataskeu�]), what we
call a system, a relation of parts to one another and a fitness of the
whole for something. So in the constitution of plants and of animals
there is an order, a fitness for some end. Sometimes the order, as we
conceive it, is interrupted, and the end, as we conceive it, is not
attained. The seed, the plant, or the animal sometimes perishes before
it has passed through all its changes and done all its uses. It is
according to Nature, that is a fixed order, for some to perish early and
for others to do all their uses and leave successors to take their
place. So man has a corporeal and intellectual and moral constitution
fit for certain uses, and on the whole man performs these uses, dies,
and leaves other men in his place. So society exists, and a social state
is manifestly the natural state of man--the state for which his nature
fits him, and society amidst innumerable irregularities and disorders
still subsists; and perhaps we may say that the history of the past and
our present knowledge give us a reasonable hope that its disorders will
diminish, and that order, its governing principle, may be more firmly
established. As order then, a fixed order, we may say, subject to
deviations real or apparent, must be admitted to exist in the whole
nature of things, that which we call disorder or evil, as it seems to
us, does not in any way alter the fact of the general constitution of
things having a nature or fixed order. Nobody will conclude from the
existence of disorder that order is not the rule, for the existence of
order both physical and moral is proved by daily experience and all past
experience. We cannot conceive how the order of the universe is
maintained: we cannot even conceive how our own life from day to day is
continued, nor how we perform the simplest movements of the body, nor
how we grow and think and act, though we know many of the conditions
which are necessary for all these functions. Knowing nothing then of the
unseen power which acts in ourselves except by what is done, we know
nothing of the power which acts through what we call all time and all
space; but seeing that there is a nature or fixed order in all things
known to us, it is conformable to the nature of our minds to believe
that this universal Nature has a cause which operates continually, and
that we are totally unable to speculate on the reason of any of those
disorders or evils which we perceive. This I believe is the answer which
may be collected from all that Antoninus has said.[A]
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