Ἓν κράτος, εἷς δαίμων γένετο μέγας οὐρανὸν αἴθων
Ἓν δὲ τὰ πάντα τέτυκται· ἐν ᾧ τάδε πάντα κυκλεῖται.
And Euripides exclaims, ‘Where is the house, the fabric reared by man,
that could contain the immensity of God?’
Ποῖος δ’ ἂν οἶκος, τεκτόνων πλασθεὶς ὑπὸ
Δέμας, τὸ Θεῖον περιβάλλοι τοίχων πτυχαῖς,
and adds that the true God needs no sacrifices on his altar. And
Æschylus, in like manner, says:—
Ζεύς ἐστιν αἰθὴρ, Ζεὺς δὲ γῆ, Ζεὺς δ’ οὐρανὸς,
Ζεύς τοι τὰ πάντα, χὥτι τῶν δ’ ὑπέρτερον.
And Sophocles, also in similar lines, proclaims the unity and
universality of God. And Theocritus, in his ‘Idylls,’ echoes the same
sentiment. The same cast of thought, the same lofty idea of God, is
found among the ancient Romans. Lucan exclaims in his ‘Pharsalia:’—
‘Jupiter est quod cumque vides, quo cumque moveris.’
Valerius Soranus makes him the one universal, omnipotent God, the
Father and Mother of us all:—
‘Jupiter omnipotens, regum rerumque deumque
_Progenitor genetrix_que deum deus unus et omnes.’[26]
Can any statement be larger and more inclusive than this?[27] Such
indeed was the true philosophic idea of Jupiter, as entertained by
the best and most exalted in ancient days. You must go to the highest
sources to learn what the highest notions of Deity are among any
people, and not grope among the popular superstitions and myths. Then,
again, what nobler expressions of our relation to an infinite and
universal spirit of God are to be found than in Epictetus and Seneca?
‘God is near you, is with you, is within you,’ Seneca writes. ‘A sacred
spirit dwells within us, the observer and guardian of all our evil and
all our good. There is no good man without God.’ And again: ‘Even from
a corner it is possible to spring up into heaven. Rise, therefore,
and form thyself into a fashion worthy of God.’ And again: ‘It is
no advantage that conscience is shut up within us. We lie open to
God.’ And still again: ‘Do you wish to render the gods propitious? Be
virtuous.’ One might cite such passages for hours from the writings of
these men. Can you, then, think that our notions of God and duty were
so low and so debased?
“Look, too, at our arts. Art and religion with us and the Greeks
went hand in hand. If you seek the true spirit of religion among any
people, you will always find it in the productions of their art. In
sculpture, the most ideal of the plastic arts, you will see the real
features of the gods. They are grand, calm, serene, dignified, and
above the taint of human passion; claiming reverence and love in their
beauty and perfection beyond the human. Here there is nothing mean or
low. So godlike are they even in the poorer specimens of their noble
figures that have come down to you, that you yourselves recognize in
them ideal grace and power. Read the reflection of our faith in their
forms and features, and you will find in it nothing vulgar, nothing
degrading. The best personifications of your own divinities in art
look poor beside them. God himself in your pictures is feeble compared
with the divine Jupiter of Phidias; the Madonna weak and tame beside
the august grandeur of his Athene. Christ in your art is pitiable
beside the splendor of Apollo; so far from being the highest type of
even man, he is almost the weakest, composed of pale negatives, and
with nothing very positive and grand; while your saints are affected,
cowardly, and cringing, compared with the heroic demigods of Greece.
In art, at least, the ancient deities still live and command reverence
from a serene world beyond change. Would you know what our faith was,
look at the great works of art and at the best thoughts of the greatest
minds we owned, and not at the corrupted text of popular superstition.
These, indeed, were worthy of reverence. They lifted the thoughts and
cleared the spirit, and filled it with a sense of beauty and of power.
Who could look at that magnificent impersonation of Zeus at Olympia,
by Phidias, so grand, so simple, so serene, with its golden robes
and hair, its divine expression of power and sweetness, its immense
proportions, its perfection of workmanship, and not feel that they were
in the presence of an august, tremendous, and impassionate power?”
“Ah!” I exclaimed, “that truly I wish I could have seen—what majesty,
what beauty, it must have had!”
“Ay!” he answered. “No one could see it and not be enlarged in spirit
by it.”
“Was, then, the Athena of the Parthenon,” I asked, “equal in merit?”
“It was very different. It wanted the power and massive grandeur of the
Zeus; but in its dignity and serenity it had a wondrous charm. It was
the true type of wisdom, calm above doubt, and with a gentle severity
of aspect, as if, undisturbed by the tormenting questions that vex
humanity, it saw the eternal truth of things. When I compare with these
wondrous statues your best representations of your divinities, I cannot
but feel how vast a difference there is; and when in your temples one
sees the prostrate figures of men and women clinging to vulgar and
degraded images of saints, imploring aid and protection from them, and
soliciting their interposition against the avenging hand of Deity, I
cannot see that you are better than we.”
“But, after all, through this there is a belief in a pure and infinite
Being beyond—a Being beyond all human passion; not imperfect and
subject to wild caprices, and capable of abominable acts.”
“You see, we go back to the same question,” he replied. “You profess
to worship a God above nature, and yet your prayers are to Christ,
the man; to the saints, who were lower men and women; and you cling
to these as mediators. Well; and we also believed in a spirit and
power undefined and above all, whose nature we could not grasp,
and who expressed himself in every living thing. Our gods were but
anthropomorphic symbols of special powers and developments of an
infinite and overruling power. They partly represent, in outward shape
and form, philosophic ideas and human notions about the infinite God,
and partly body forth the phenomena of nature, that hint at the great
ultimate cause behind them, of which they are, so to speak, the outward
garment, by which the Universal Deity is made visible to man. In our
religion nature was but the veil which half hid the divine powers.
Everywhere they peered out upon us, from grove and river, from night
and morning, from lightning and storm, from all the elements and all
the changes and mysteries of the living universe. It delighted us to
feel their absolute, active presence among us—not far away from us,
involved in utter obscurity, and beyond our comprehension. We saw the
Great Cause in its second plane, close to us, in the growing of the
flower, in the flowing of the stream, in the drifting of the cloud, in
the rising and setting of the sun. Our gods (representing the great
idea beyond, and doing its work) were anthropomorphic by necessity,
just as yours are in art. The popular fables are but the mythical
garb behind which lie great facts and truths. They are symbolical
representations of the great processes of nature, of the laws of
life and growth, of the changes of the seasons, of the strife of the
elements. Apollo was the life-giving sun; Artemis, the mysterious
moon; Ceres and Proserpine, the burial of the grain in the earth, and
its reappearance and fructification. So, on another plane, Minerva
was the philosophic mind of man; Venus, the impassioned embodiment of
human love, as Eros was of spiritual affections; Bacchus, the serene
and full enjoyment of nature. We but divided philosophically what
you sum up in one final cause; but all our divisions looked back to
that cause. In an imaginative people like the Greeks, there is also a
natural tendency to mythical embodiment of facts in history as well
as in nature; and in the early periods, when little was written down,
traditions easily assumed the myth form. Ideas were reduced to visible
shapes, and facts were etherealized into ideas and imaginatively
transformed. The story of Diana and Endymion, of Cupid and Psyche,
will always be true—not to the reason, but to the imagination. It
expresses poetically a sentiment which cannot die. So, also, what
matters it if Dædalus built a ship for Icarus, and Icarus was simply
drowned? Sublimed into poetry, it became a myth, and Icarus flew
on waxen wings across the sea. All poetry is thus allegorical. The
wind will always have wings until it ceases to blow. These myths are
simply poetic moulds of thought, in which vague sentiments, ideas,
and facts are wrought together into an express shape. Think what your
own literature or thought would be without the old Grecian poems. Let
the reason reject them as it will, and drive them out into the cold,
the imagination will run forth and bring them back again to warm and
cherish them on its breast. Facts, as facts, are but dead husks. The
spirit cannot live upon them. Besides, are not our myths enchanting?
Could anything take their place? Can science, peering into all things,
ever find the secrets of nature? After all its explorations, the final
element of life, the motive and inspiring element that is the essence
of all the organism it uses and without which all is mere material,
mere machinery, flees utterly beyond its reach, and leaves it at last
with only dust in its hands. Does not the little child that makes
playmates of the flowers, and the brooks, and the sands, find God there
better than any of us? The subtle divinity hides anywhere, entices
everywhere, is just out of reach everywhere. We catch glimpses of it,
breathe its odor, hear its dim voice, see the last flutter of its robe,
pursue it endlessly, and never can seize it. The poet is poet because
he loves this spirit in nature, and comes nearer it; but he cannot
grasp it; and for all his pursuit he comes back laden at last with a
secret he cannot quite tell, and shapes us a myth to express it as well
as he may.”
“But surely,” I answered, “we should distinguish between mere poetry
and fact—between science and fancy. So long as we admit the unreality
of merely fanciful creations and explanations of facts, we may be
pleased with them; but let us not be misled by them into a belief of
their scientific truth.”
“Ah, ’tis the old story! The little child has a bit of wood, which to
her, in the free play of her imagination, is a person with good and bad
qualities, who acts well or ill, whom she loves or despises. She whips
it; she caresses it; she scolds it; she sends it to school or to bed;
she forgives it and fondles it. All is real to the child; more real,
perhaps, than to the nurse who stands beside her and laughs at her,
and says, ‘How silly! come away! it is only a stick!’ Which is right?
The Greeks were the child, and you are the nurse. What is truth, which
is always on our lips—truth of history, truth of science, truth of any
kind? Who knows—history? Two persons standing together see the same
occurrence; is it the same to both? Far from it. The literal friend
is amazed to hear what the imaginative friend saw. Yet both may be
right in their report, only one saw what the other had no senses to
perceive. We only see and feel according to our natures. What we are
modifies what we see. Out of the camomile flower the physician makes
a decoction, and the poet a song. History is but a dried herbarium of
withered facts, unless the imagination interpret them. I cannot but
smile at what is called history; and of all history, that of our own
Roman world seems the strangest, because, perhaps, I know it best.”
“Ah!” I broke in, “how one wishes you had written us familiar memoirs
of your time, and given us some intimate insight into your life, your
thoughts, your daily doings. We have so to grope about in the dark for
any knowledge of you. And then, in the history of art, what dreadful
blanks! I do not feel assured, except from your ‘Meditations,’ as we
call them, and your letters, that we really know anything accurately
about you. About the Thundering Legion, for instance,—what is the
truth?”
“There,” he answered, “is an instance of the ease with which a fable
is made, and how a simple fact may be tortured into an untruth merely
to suit a purpose. When I was on my campaign against the Quadi, in the
year 174, the incident to which you refer happened. The spring had been
cold and late, and suddenly the heats of summer overtook us in the
enemy’s country. After a long and difficult march on a very hot day,
we suddenly came upon the enemy, who, descending from the mountains,
attacked us, overcome with fatigue, in the plains. The battle went
against us for some time, for my army suffered so from thirst and heat
and exhaustion that they were unable to repel the attack, and were
forced back. While they were in full retreat and confusion, suddenly
the sky became clouded over, and a drenching shower poured upon us. My
men, who were dying of thirst, stopped fighting, took off their helmets
and reversed their shields to catch the rain, and while they were thus
engaged the enemy renewed their assault with double fury. All seemed
lost, when suddenly, as sometimes occurs among the mountains, a fierce
wind swept down with terrible peals of thunder and vivid flashes of
lightning; the rain changed into hail, which was blown and driven with
such a fury into the faces of the enemy that they were confounded and
confused, and began in their turn to fall back. My own men, having the
storm only on their backs, refreshed by the rain they had drunken from
their shields and helmets, and cooled by their bath, now anew attacked,
and, pouring upon their foe with fury, cut them to pieces. Among my
soldiers at this time there was an old legion, organized in the time of
Augustus, named the Fulminata, from the fact that they bore on their
shields a thunderbolt; upon this simple fact was founded the story,
repeated by many early writers in the Christian Church, that this
legion was composed of Christians only, that the storm was a miraculous
interposition of their God in answer to their prayer, and that they
then received the name of Fulminata, in commemoration of this miracle.
This is the simple truth of the case. My men said that Jupiter Pluvius
came to their aid, and they sacrificed to him in gratitude; and on the
column afterwards dedicated to me by the Senate in commemoration of
my services, you will see the sculptured figure of Jupiter Pluvius,
from whose beard, arms, and head the water is streaming to refresh my
soldiers, while his thunderbolts are flashing against the barbarians.”
As he spoke these words, a flash of lightning, so intense as to blind
the lamps, gleamed through the room, followed by a startling peal of
thunder, which seemed to shake not only the house but the sky above us.
He smiled and said, “We should have said in older time that Jupiter
affirmed the truth of my statement; but you are above such puerilities,
I suppose.”
“Certainly I should not say it was a sign from Jupiter. The thunder was
on the left, and that was considered by you a good omen, was it not?
‘Et cœli genitor de parte serena
Intonuit lævum.’”
“This thunder on the left was considered a good omen. But what was
it you said after you asked the question? You seemed to be making a
quotation in a strange tongue—at least a tongue I never heard.”
“That was Latin,” I answered, blushing a little, “and from
Virgil—Virgilius, perhaps I ought to say, or perhaps Maro.”
“Ah! Latin, was it?” he said. “I beg your pardon; I thought it might
have been a charm to avert the Evil Eye that you were uttering.”
“As difficult to understand as the Eleusinian mysteries,” I said. “And,
by the way, what were the Eleusinian mysteries?”
“They were mysteries! I can merely say to you that they concealed
under formal rites the worship of the spirit of nature, as symbolized
in Demeter and Persephone and Dionysos. In their purest and hidden
meaning, they represented the transformation, purification, and
resurrection of humanity in a new form and in another existence. But I
am not at liberty to say more than this. The outward rites were for the
multitude, the inner meaning for the highest and most developed minds.
Were it permitted to me to explain them to you, I think you would not
take so low a view of our religious philosophy as you now seem to have.
What you hear and read of was merely the outward and mystical drama,
with its lustrations and fasting, and cakes of sesame and honey, and
processions—as symbolical in its way as your mass and baptism, and
having as pure a significance.
“But,” he continued, “to revert to the questions which we were
previously discussing. It seems to me that in certain respects your
faith is not even so satisfactory as ours; for its tendency is to
degrade the present in view of the future, and to debase humanity in
its own view. With us life was not considered disgraceful, nor man a
mean and contemptible creature. We did not systematically humiliate
ourselves and cringe before the divine powers, but strove to stand
erect, and not to forget that we were made by God after his own image.
We did not affect that false humility which in the view of the ancient
philosophers was contemptible—nay, even we thought that the pride of
humility was of all the most despicable. We sought to keep ourselves
just, obedient to our best instincts, temperate and simple, looking
upon life as a noble gift of the gods, to be used for noble purposes.
We believed, beside this, that virtue should be practiced for itself,
and not through any hope of reward or any fear of punishment here or
hereafter. To act up to our highest idea of what was right was our
principle, not out of terror or in the hope of conciliating God, but
because it was right; and to look calmly on death, not as an evil, but
as a step onward to another existence. To desire nothing too much; to
hold one’s self equal to any fate; to keep one’s self in harmony with
nature and with one’s own nature; calmly to endure what is inevitable,
steadily to abstain from all that is wrong; to remember that there is
no such thing as misfortune to the brave and wise, but only phantasms
that falsely assume these shapes to shake the mind; that when what
we wish does not happen, we should wish what does happen; that God
hath given us courage, magnanimity, and fortitude, so that we may
stand up against invasions of evil and bear misfortune,—such were our
principles, and they enabled us to live heroic lives, vindicating
the nobility of human nature, and not despising it as base and lost;
believing in the justice of God and not in his caprice and enmity to
any of us, and having no ignoble fear of the future.”
“But are not these principles for the most part ours?” I answered. “Do
we not believe that virtue is the grand duty of man? Do none of us seek
to live heroic lives, and sacrifice ourselves to do good to the world
and to our brothers?”
“Certainly, you lead heroic lives; but your great principle is
humility—your great motive, reward or fear. You profess to look on
this life as mean and miserable, and on yourselves as creatures of
the dust; and you declare that you have no claim to be saved from
eternal damnation by leading a just life, but only by a capricious
election hereafter. You profess that your God is a God of love, and you
attribute to Him enmity and injustice of which you yourself would be
ashamed. You think you are to be saved because Christ died on the cross
for you, and you are not sure of it even then. But with us every one
deserved to be tried on his own merits, and to expiate his own errors
and crimes.”
“It is supposed by some that you were half a Christian yourself. Is
this so?”
“If you mean that I reverenced the life and doctrines of Christ, and
saw in Him a pure man, I certainly did. But in my principles I was
a Stoic purely, and it is only as a philosopher that I admired the
character of Christ. You think the principles He preached were new;
they were really as old as the world, almost. His life was blameless,
and He sacrificed his life for his principles; and for this I reverence
Him, but no further. His followers, however, were far less pure and
self-denying, and they sought power and endeavored to overthrow the
state.”
“Was it for this you persecuted them?” I said.
“I did not persecute them,” he answered. “As Christians they were
perfectly free in Rome. All religions were free, and all admitted. No
one was interfered with merely for his religious belief and worship,
whether it were that of Isis, of Mithras, of Jehovah, or of any other
deity. It was only when the Christians endeavored to attain to power
and provoke disturbance in the state, to abuse authority and set at
defiance the laws, that it became necessary—or at all events was
considered necessary—to stop them. When they were not content with
worshiping according to their own creed, but aggressively denounced
the popular worship as damnable, and sought to cast public contempt
on all gods but their own, they outraged the public sense as much
as if any one now should denounce Christ as a vagabond, and seek by
abuse to overthrow your church by all sorts of blasphemous language.
Nor would it matter in the least in your own time that any person so
outraging decency should be absolutely honest in his intentions, and
assured in his own mind of the truth of his own doctrines. Suppose one
step further,—that any set of men should not only undertake to turn
Christ into ridicule publicly, but should also abuse the government and
conspire to overthrow the monarchy. You would then have a case similar
to that of the Christians in my day. At all events, it was believed
that it was a settled plan with them to overthrow the empire, and it
was for this that they were, as you call it, persecuted. For my own
part, I was sorry for it, deeming in such matters it was better to take
no measures so severe; but I personally had nothing to do with it.
It was the fanatical zeal of the government, who, acting without my
commands, took advantage of ancient laws to punish the Christians; and
this your own Tertullian will prove to you. They undoubtedly supposed
that the Christians were endeavoring to create a political and social
revolution,—that they were in fact Communists, as you would now call
them, intent upon overthrowing the state. I confess that there was
a good deal of color given to such a judgment by the conduct of the
Christians. But as for myself, as I said, I was opposed to any movement
against them, believing them all to be honest of purpose, though
perhaps somewhat excited and fanatical.”
“Why did you think that they were Communists?” I asked. “Had you any
sufficient grounds for such a belief?”
“Surely; the most ample grounds in the very teachings of Christ
himself. His system was essentially communistic, and nothing else.
His followers and disciples were all Communists; they all lived in
common, had a common purse, and no one was allowed to own anything.
They were ordered by Christ not to labor, but to live from day to day,
and take no heed of the future, and lay up nothing, but to sell all
they had, and live like the ravens. Christ himself denounced riches
constantly—not the wrong use of riches, but the mere possession of
them; and said it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a
needle, than for a rich man to inherit the kingdom of heaven,—not a
bad rich man, observe, but any rich man. So, too, his story of Lazarus
and Dives turns on the same point. It does not appear that Lazarus was
good, but only that he was poor; nor does it appear that Dives was bad,
but only that he was rich; and when Dives in Hades prays for a drop
of water, he is told that he had the good things in his lifetime, and
Lazarus the evil things, and that _therefore_ he is now tormented, and
Lazarus is comforted.”
“But, surely,” I answered, “it was intended to mean that Dives had not
used his riches properly?”
“Nothing is said of the kind, or even intimated; for all that appears,
Dives may have been a good man, and Lazarus not. The only apparent
virtue of Lazarus is, that he was a beggar; the only fault of Dives,
that he was rich. Do you not remember, also, the rich young man who
desired to become one of Christ’s followers, and asked what he should
do to be saved? Christ told him that doing the commandments, and being
virtuous and honest, was not enough; but that he must sell all that
he had, and give it to the poor, and then he could follow Him, and
not otherwise; and the rich good man was very sorrowful, and went
away. What does all this mean but Communism? Yes; the system He would
carry out was community of goods, and He would permit no one to have
possessions of his own. This struck at the roots of all established law
and rights of property, and naturally made his sect feared and hated
among certain classes in Rome.”
“I am astonished,” I said, “to find that you have so carefully studied
the records of the teachings and doctrines of Christ.”
“Is it not the duty of any man,” he answered, “especially of one
in a responsible position, carefully to consider the arguments and
doctrines of all who are sincere and earnest in their convictions,
and, however averse they may be from our preconceived opinions, to
weigh them, as far as possible, calmly, and without prejudice, and see
what they really are and what truth there may be in them? and was not
this peculiarly incumbent on me in the case of so noble and spiritual
a teacher as Christ? Was it not my duty to endeavor, as far as in me
lay, first to recognize the great principles of his teaching, and then
in their light to examine and weigh his very words as far as they
are authentically reported to us by his followers? It is this fixed
notion, from which we cannot easily free ourselves, that we in our
own views alone can be right, that shuts up the mind and encrusts our
faith with superstitions. We at our best are merely men, subject to
errors, short-sighted, fixed in prejudices, and seeing but a part of
anything. No system of religion ever embraced all truth; no system is
without gleams of it; all recognize a higher power above us and beyond
our comprehension; and nothing is more unbecoming than to scorn what
we have not even striven to understand, or to shut our ears and our
minds to any doctrine or faith which is earnestly, seriously propounded
and accepted by others. Unfortunately, it is this narrow-mindedness
and arrogance of opinion which has always impeded the growth and
development of truth. There is nothing so bitter as religious
controversy,—nothing which has so petrified our intelligence or has
begotten such crimes and such persecutions. Therefore it was that I
deemed it my duty to study and endeavor to understand the doctrine and
belief of all sincere minds, whether of those who worshiped Jehovah or
Zeus, Mithras or Christ, and not to reject them as wicked or erroneous
simply because they were averse from the faith in which I had been
educated. Will you excuse me if I say that what amazes me in regard to
the Christian faith is, that while it is claimed that Christ is God,
and therefore to be implicitly obeyed in all his commands, so little
intelligence is shown in studying those commands, and such willful
perversion in avoiding them even when they are plainly enunciated;
and again, that while claiming that love and forgiveness are the very
corner-stone of your faith, you Christians none the less not only
accept war and battle as arbitraments of right, but in the name of
your great founder,—nay, of your very God,—have endeavored at times to
enforce those doctrines by the most hideous of crimes, and by wholesale
slaughter of those who differed from you in minor particulars
of faith; and still more, do constantly even now exhibit such
narrow-minded adherence to mere words and texts, without consideration
of the great principles which underlie them and in the light of which
surely they are to be interpreted. You are all Christians now, in Rome.
You profess absolute faith in the teaching of Christ. You profess to
consider his life as the great exemplar for all men. Do you follow it?
Do you, for instance, think it in accordance with his teaching or his
example to devote your lives selfishly to the laying up of riches for
your own individual luxuries, to clothe yourselves in purple and fine
linen, to make broad your phylacteries, or to use vain repetitions in
your prayers as the heathen do, standing in the synagogues and at the
corners of the streets, and to play the part of Dives while Lazarus is
starving at your gates? Are you any better than we heathens, as you
call us, in all this? Do you think Christ would have done thus, or
smiled approval on all you do in his name? Ah! you say, it would be
impossible for us strictly to carry out this system of Christ. It is
beautiful, but ideal, and for us, in the present state of the world,
absolutely impracticable. But have you ever tried it? Have you ever
even sought to try it, and to hold a common purse for the interest of
all?”
I had to bow my head, and admit that in that high sense we are not
Christians. “But,” I said, “to follow exactly all these commands, to
carry out all these doctrines, even to imitate his example as set
before us in his life, would be to revolutionize the world.”
“But does not the world need revolutionizing,” he said, “according to
your own principles?”
“We do what we can, at least we endeavor to do so, as far as we are
able.”
“Are you sure even of that?” he replied. “Are you sure it is not mammon
that you really worship, and not Christ? But I will say no more. You
are but mortal men as we were; and man is fallible and weak, and our
knowledge is but half-knowledge at best, and our love and faith have
but feeble wings to lift us above the earth on which we dwell. Look
upon us, therefore, as you would be looked upon yourselves, and be
not too stern on our shortcomings. We had our vices and faults and
deficiencies as you have yours, but we had also our virtues, and were
on the whole as high of purpose, as self-sacrificing, as pure even as
you; but man neither then nor now has led an ideal life.
“But to return to what we were saying about our treatment of
Christians. Let me add in my own justification that I for myself never
had any hand in persecutions, either of Christians or of others, nor
was I ever aware that they were persecuted. I knew that persons who
happened to be Christians were punished for political offenses; and
that was all, I think, that happened. Believe me, my soul was averse
from all such things, nor would I ever allow even my enemies to be
persecuted, much less those who merely differed from me on moral and
philosophical theses. Nay, I may say they differed little from me even
on these points, as you may well see if you read my letters on the
subject of the proper treatment of one’s enemies, written to Lucius
Verus, or if you will refer to that little diary of mine in Pannonia,
wherein I was not so base as to lie to myself.”
“Indeed,” I cried; “that book is a precious record of the purest and
highest morality.”
“’Tis a poor thing,” he answered, “but sincere. I strove to act up to
my best principles; but life is difficult, and man is not wise, and our
opinions are often incorrect. Still, I strove to act according to my
nature; to do the things which were fit for me, and not to be diverted
from them by fear of any blame; to keep the divine part in me tranquil
and content; and to look upon death and life, honor and dishonor, pain
and pleasure, as neither good nor evil in themselves, but only in the
way in which we receive them. For fame I sought not; for what is fame
but a smoke that vanishes, a river that runs dry, a lamp that soon is
extinguished—a tale of a day, and scarcely even so much? Therefore,
it benefits us not deeply to consider it, but to pass on through the
little space assigned to us conformably to nature, and in content,
and to leave it at last grateful for what we have received, just as
an olive falls off when it is ripe, blessing nature which produced
it, and thanking the tree on which it grew. So, also, it is our duty
not to defile the divinity in our breast, but to follow it tranquilly
and obediently as a god, saying nothing contrary to truth, and doing
nothing contrary to justice. For our opinions are but running streams,
flowing in various ways; but truth and justice are ever the same, and
permanent, and our opinions break about them as the waves round a
rock, while they stand firm forever. For every accident of life there
is a corresponding virtue to exercise; and if we consult the divine
within us, we know what it is. As we cannot avoid the inevitable, we
should accept it without murmuring; for we cannot struggle against
the gods without injuring ourselves. For the good we do to others, we
have our immediate reward; for the evil that others do to us, if we
cease to think of it, there is no evil to us. It is by accepting an
offense, and entertaining it in our thoughts, that we increase it,
and render ourselves unhappy, and veil our reason, and disturb our
senses. As for our life, it should be given to proper objects, or it
will not be decent in itself; for a man is the same in quality as the
object that engages his thoughts. Our whole nature takes the color of
our thoughts and actions. We should also be careful to keep ourselves
from rash and premature judgments about men and things; for often a
seeming wrong done to us is a wrong only through our misapprehension,
and arising from our fault. And so, making life as honest as possible
and calmly doing our duty in the present, as the hour and the act
require, and not too curiously considering the future beyond us,
standing ever erect, and believing that the gods are just, we may make
our passage through this life no dishonor to the Power that placed us
here. Throughout the early portion of my life, my father, Antoninus
Pius,—I call him my father, for he was ever dear to me, and was like a
father,—taught me to be laborious and assiduous, to be serene and just,
to be sober and kind, to be brave and without envy or vanity; and on
his death-bed, when he felt the shadow coming over him, he ordered the
captain of the guard to transfer to me the golden statuette of Fortune,
and gave him his last watchword of ‘Equanimity.’ From that day to the
day when, in my turn, I left the cares of empire and of life, I ever
kept that watchword in my heart—equanimity; nor do I know a better one
for any man.”
“Oh, tell me, for you know,” I cried, “what is there behind this
dark veil which we call death? You have told me of your opinions and
thoughts and principles of life, here; but of that life hereafter you
have not said a word. What is it?”
There was a blank silence. I looked up—the chair was empty! That noble
figure was no longer there.
“Fool that I was!” I cried; “why did I discuss with him these narrow
questions belonging to life and history, and leave that stupendous
question unasked which torments us all, and of which he could have
given the solution?”
I rose from my chair, and after walking up and down the room several
minutes, with the influence of him who had left me still filling my
being as a refined and delicate odor, I went to the window, pushed wide
the curtains, and looked out upon the night. The clouds were broken,
and through a rift of deep, intense blue, the moon was looking out on
the earth. Far away, the heavy and ragged storm was hovering over the
mountains, sullen and black, and I recalled the words of St. Paul to
the Romans:—
“When the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things
contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto
themselves;” and “the doers of the law shall be justified.”