“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 constitution is the social;” and he labored sincerely to make
not only his acts towards his fellow-men, but his thoughts also,
suitable to this conviction:—
“When thou wishest to delight thyself, think of the virtues 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 god 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 passion:—
“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 _scoriæ_ 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. Perhaps as to one
point we must make an exception. Marcus Aurelius is fond of urging as a
motive for man’s cheerful acquiescence in whatever befalls him, that
“whatever happens to every man _is for the interest of the universal_;”
that the whole contains nothing _which is not for its advantage_; that
everything which happens to a man is to be accepted, “even if it seems
disagreeable, _because it leads to the health of the universe_.” And the
whole course of the universe, he adds, has a providential reference to
man’s welfare: “_all other things have been made for the sake of
rational beings_.” Religion has in all ages freely used this language,
and it is not religion which will object to Marcus Aurelius’s use of it;
but science can hardly accept as severely accurate this employment of
the terms _interest_ and _advantage_. To a sound nature and a clear
reason the proposition that things happen “for the interest of the
universal,” as men conceive of interest, may seem to have no meaning at
all, and the proposition that “all things have been made for the sake of
rational beings” may seem to be false. Yet even to this language, not
irresistibly cogent when it is thus absolutely used, Marcus Aurelius
gives a turn which makes it true and useful, when he says: “The ruling
part of man can make a material for itself out of that which opposes it,
as fire lays hold of what falls into it, and rises higher by means of
this very material;”—when he says: “What else are all things except
exercises for the reason? Persevere then until thou shalt have made all
things thine own, as the stomach which is strengthened makes all things
its own, as the blazing fire makes flame and brightness out of
everything that is thrown into it;”—when he says: “Thou wilt not cease
to be miserable till thy mind is in such a condition, that, what luxury
is to those who enjoy pfleasure, such shall be to thee, in every matter
which presents itself, the doing of the things which are conformable to
man’s constitution; for a man ought to consider as an enjoyment
everything which it is in his power to do according to his own
nature,—and it is in his power everywhere.” In this sense it is, indeed,
most true that “all things have been made for the sake of rational
beings;” that “all things work together for good.”
In general, however, the action Marcus Aurelius prescribes is action
which every sound nature must recognize as right, and the motives he
assigns are motives which every clear reason must recognize as valid.
And so he remains the especial friend and comforter of all clear-headed
and scrupulous, yet pure-hearted and upward striving men, 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 lends 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 passed them by. One feels, too, that the Marcus Aurelius one reads
must still have remained, even had Christianity been fully known to him,
in a great measure himself; he would have been no Justin;—but how would
Christianity 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
notions of the _exitiabilis superstitio_, 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 manus ripæ uterioris amore_.