of Marcus Aurelius, force themselves upon one's notice, and demand a word
of comment: he persecuted the Christians, and he had for his son the
vicious and brutal Commodus. The persecution at Lyons, in which Attalus
and Pothinus suffered, the persecution at Smyrna, in which Polycarp
suffered, took place in his reign. Of his humanity, of his tolerance, of
his horror of cruelty and violence, of his wish to refrain from severe
measures against the Christians, of his anxiety to temper the severity of
these measures when they appeared to him indispensable, there is no doubt;
but, on the one hand, it is certain that the letter, attributed to him,
directing that no Christian should be punished for being a Christian, is
spurious; it is almost certain that his alleged answer to the authorities
of Lyons, in which he directs that Christians persisting in their
profession shall be dealt with according to the law, is genuine. Mr. Long
seems inclined to try to throw doubt over the persecution at Lyons, by
pointing out that the letter of the Lyons Christians relating it alleges
it to have been attended by miraculous and incredible incidents. "A man,"
he says, "can only act consistently by accepting all this letter or
rejecting it all, and we cannot blame him for either." But it is contrary
to all experience to say that, because a fact is related with incorrect
additions, and embellishments, therefore it probably never happened at
all; or that it is not, in general, easy for an impartial mind to
distinguish between the fact and the embellishments. I cannot doubt that
the Lyons persecution took place, and that the punishment of Christians
for being Christians was sanctioned by Marcus Aurelius.
But then I must add that nine modern readers out of ten, when they read
this, will, I believe, have a perfectly false notion of what the moral
action of Marcus Aurelius, in sanctioning that punishment, really was.
They imagine Trajan, or Antoninus Pius, or Marcus Aurelius, fresh from the
perusal of the Gospel, fully aware of the spirit and holiness of the
Christian saints, ordering their extermination because he loved darkness
rather than light. Far from this, the Christianity which these emperors
aimed at repressing was, in their conception of it, something
philosophically contemptible, politically subversive, and morally
abominable. As men, they sincerely regarded it much as well-conditioned
people, with us, regard Mormonism; as rulers, they regarded it much as
Liberal statesmen, with us, regard the Jesuits. A kind of Mormonism,
constituted as a vast secret society, with obscure aims of political and
social subversion, was what Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius believed
themselves to be repressing when they punished Christians. The early
Christian apologists again and again declare to us under what odious
imputations the Christians lay, how general was the belief that these
imputations were well-grounded, how sincere was the horror which the
belief inspired. The multitude, convinced that the Christians were
atheists who ate human flesh and thought incest no crime, displayed
against them a fury so passionate as to embarrass and alarm their rulers.
The severe expressions of Tacitus--"_exitiabilis superstitio_"; "_odio
humani generis convicti_"--show how deeply the prejudices of the multitude
imbued the educated class also. One asks one's self with astonishment how
a doctrine so benign as that of Christ can have incurred misrepresentation
so monstrous. The inner and moving cause of the misrepresentation lay, no
doubt, in this--that Christianity was a new spirit in the Roman world,
destined to act in that world as its dissolvent; and it was inevitable
that Christianity in the Roman world, like democracy in the modern world,
like every new spirit with a similar mission assigned to it, should at its
first appearance occasion an instinctive shrinking and repugnance in the
world which it was to dissolve. The outer and palpable causes of the
misrepresentation were, for the Roman public at large, the confounding of
the Christians with the Jews, that isolated, fierce, and stubborn race,
whose stubbornness, fierceness, and isolation, real as they were, the
fancy of a civilized Roman yet further exaggerated; the atmosphere of
mystery and novelty which surrounded the Christian rites; the very
simplicity of Christian theism; for the Roman statesman, the character of
secret assemblages which the meetings of the Christian community wore,
under a State-system as jealous of unauthorized associations as the Code
Napoleon.
A Roman of Marcus Aurelius's time and position could not well see the
Christians except through the mist of these prejudices. Seen through such
a mist, the Christians appeared with a thousand faults not their own; but
it has not been sufficiently remarked that faults really their own many of
them assuredly appeared with, besides--faults especially likely to strike
such an observer as Marcus Aurelius, and to confirm him in the prejudices
of his race, station, and rearing. We look back upon Christianity after
it has proved what a future it bore within it, and for us the sole
representatives of its early struggles are the pure and devoted spirits
through whom it proved this; Marcus Aurelius saw it with its future yet
unshown, and with the tares among its professed progeny not less
conspicuous than the wheat. Who can doubt that, among the professing
Christians of the second century, as among the professing Christians of
the nineteenth, there was plenty of folly, plenty of rabid nonsense,
plenty of gross fanaticism? Who will even venture to affirm that,
separated in great measure from the intellect and civilization of the
world for one or two centuries, Christianity, wonderful as have been its
fruits, had the development perfectly worthy of its inestimable germ? Who
will venture to affirm that, by the alliance of Christianity with the
virtue and intelligence of men like the Antonines,--of the best product of
Greek and Roman civilization, while Greek and Roman civilization had yet
life and power,--Christianity and the world, as well as the Antonines
themselves, would not have been gainers?
That alliance was not to be. The Antonines lived and died with an utter
misconception of Christianity; Christianity grew up in the Catacombs, not
on the Palatine. Marcus Aurelius incurs no moral reproach by having
authorized the punishment of the Christians; he does not thereby become,
in the least, what we mean by a _persecutor_. One may concede that it was
impossible for him to see Christianity as it really was, as impossible as
for even the moderate and sensible Fleury to see the Antonines as they
really were; one may concede that the point of view from which
Christianity appeared something anti-civil and anti-social, which the
State had the faculty to judge and the duty to suppress, was inevitably
his. Still, however, it remains true that this sage, who made perfection
his aim and reason his law, did Christianity an immense injustice and
rested in an idea of State-attributes which was illusive. And this is, in
truth, characteristic of Marcus Aurelius, that he is blameless, yet, in a
certain sense, unfortunate; in his character, beautiful as it is, there is
something melancholy, circumscribed, and ineffectual.
For of his having such a son as Commodus, too, one must say that he is not
to be blamed on that account, but that he is unfortunate. Disposition and
temperament are inexplicable things; there are natures on which the best
education and example are thrown away; excellent fathers may have, without
any fault of theirs, incurably vicious sons. It is to be remembered also,
that Commodus was left, at the perilous age of nineteen, master of the
whole world; while his father, at that age, was but beginning a twenty
years' apprenticeship to wisdom, labor, and self-command, under the
sheltering teachership of his uncle Antoninus. Commodus was a prince apt
to be led by favorites; and if the story is true which says that he left,
all through his reign, the Christians untroubled, and ascribes this lenity
to the influence of his mistress Marcia, it shows that he could be led to
good as well as to evil; for such a nature to be left at a critical age
with absolute power, and wholly without good counsel and direction, was
the more fatal. Still one cannot help wishing that the example of Marcus
Aurelius could have availed more with his own only son. One cannot but
think that with such virtue as his there should go, too, the ardor that
removes mountains, and that the ardor that removes mountains might have
even won Commodus; the word _ineffectual_ again rises to one's mind;
Marcus Aurelius saved his own soul by his righteousness, and he could do
no more. Happy they who can do this! but still happier, who can do more!
Yet, when one passes from his outward to his inward life, when one turns
over the pages of his "Meditations," entries jotted down from day to day,
amid the business of the city or the fatigues of the camp, for his own
guidance and support; meant for no eye but his own; without the slightest
attempt at style, with no care, even, for correct writing; not to be
surpassed for naturalness and sincerity--all disposition to carp and cavil
dies away, and one is overpowered by the charm of a character of such
purity, delicacy, and virtue. He fails neither in small things nor in
great; he keeps watch over himself, both that the great springs of action
may be right in him, and that the minute details of action may be right
also. How admirable in a hard-tasked ruler, and a ruler, too, with a
passion for thinking and reading, is such a memorandum as the following:--
"Not frequently nor without necessity to say to anyone, or to write in a
letter, that I have no leisure; nor continually to excuse the neglect of
duties required by our relation to those with whom we live, by alleging
urgent occupation."
And, when that ruler is a Roman emperor, what an "idea" is this to be
written down and meditated by him:--
"The idea of a polity in which there is the same law for all, a polity
administered with regard to equal rights and equal freedom of speech, and
the idea of a kingly government which respects most of all the freedom of
the governed."
And, for all men who "drive at practice," what practical rules may not one
accumulate out of these "Meditations":--
"The greatest part of what we say or do being unnecessary, if a man takes
this away, he will have more leisure and less uneasiness. Accordingly, on
every occasion, a man should ask himself, 'Is this one of the unnecessary
things?' Now a man should take away not only unnecessary acts, but also
unnecessary thoughts, for thus superfluous acts will not follow after."
And again:--
"We ought to check in the series of our thoughts everything that is
without a purpose and useless, but most of all the over-curious feeling
and the malignant; and a man should use himself to think of those things
only about which, if one should suddenly ask, 'What hast thou now in thy
thoughts?' with perfect openness thou mightest immediately answer, 'This
or That,' so that from thy words it should be plain that everything in
thee is simple and benevolent, and such as befits a social animal, and one
that cares not for thoughts about sensual enjoyments, or any rivalry or
envy and suspicion, or anything else for which thou wouldst blush if thou
shouldst say thou hadst it in thy mind."
So, with a stringent practicalness worthy of Franklin, he discourses on
his favorite text, "Let nothing be done without a purpose." But it is when
he enters the region where Franklin cannot follow him, when he utters his
thoughts on the ground-motives of human action, that he is most
interesting; that he becomes the unique, the incomparable Marcus Aurelius.
Christianity uses language very liable to be misunderstood when it seems
to tell men to do good, not, certainly, from the vulgar motives of worldly
interest, or vanity, or love of human praise, but "that their Father which
seeth in secret may reward them openly." The motives of reward and
punishment have come, from the misconception of language of this kind, to
be strangely overpressed by many Christian moralists, to the deterioration
and disfigurement of Christianity. Marcus Aurelius says, truly and
nobly:--
"One man, when he has done a service to another, is ready to set it down
to his account as a favor conferred. Another is not ready to do this, but
still in his own mind he thinks of the man as his debtor, and he knows
what he has done. A third, in a manner, does not even know what he has
done, _but he is like a vine which has produced grapes, and seeks for
nothing more after it has once produced its proper fruit_. As a horse when
he has run, a dog when he has caught the game, a bee when it has made its
honey, so a man, when he has done a good act, does not call out for others
to come and see, but he goes on to another act, as a vine goes on to
produce again the grapes in season. Must a man, then, be one of these, who
in a manner acts thus without observing it? Yes."
And again:--
"What more dost thou want when thou hast done a man a service? Art thou
not content that thou hast done something conformable to thy nature, and
dost thou seek to be paid for it, _just as if the eye demanded a
recompense for seeing, or the feet for walking_?"
Christianity, in order to match morality of this strain, has to correct
its apparent offers of external reward, and to say: "The kingdom of God is
within you."
I have said that it is by its accent of emotion that the morality of
Marcus Aurelius acquires a special character, and reminds one of Christian
morality. The sentences of Seneca are stimulating to the intellect; the
sentences of Epictetus are fortifying to the character; the sentences of
Marcus Aurelius find their way to the soul. I have said that religious
emotion has the power to _light up_ morality: the emotion of Marcus
Aurelius does not quite light up his morality, but it suffuses it; it has
not power to melt the clouds of effort and austerity quite away, but it
shines through them and glorifies them; it is a spirit, not so much of
gladness and elation, as of gentleness and sweetness; a delicate and
tender sentiment, which is less than joy and more than resignation. He
says that in his youth he learned from Maximus, one of his teachers,
"cheerfulness in all circumstances as well as in illness; _and a just
admixture in the moral character of sweetness and dignity_": and it is
this very admixture of sweetness with his dignity which makes him so
beautiful a moralist. It enables him to carry, even into his observation
of nature, a delicate penetration, a sympathetic tenderness, worthy of
Wordsworth; the spirit of such a remark as the following seems to me to
have no parallel in the whole range of Greek and Roman literature:--
"Figs, when they are quite ripe, gape open; and in the ripe olives the
very circumstance of their being near to rottenness adds a peculiar beauty
to the fruit. And the ears of corn bending down, and the lion's eyebrows,
and the foam which flows from the mouth of wild boars, and many other
things,--though they are far from being beautiful, in a certain
sense,--still, because they come in the course of nature, have a beauty in
them, and they please the mind; so that, if a man should have a feeling
and a deeper insight with respect to the things which are produced in the
universe, there is hardly anything which comes in the course of nature
which will not seem to him to be in a manner disposed so as to give
pleasure."
But it is when his strain passes to directly moral subjects that his
delicacy and sweetness lend to it the greatest charm. Let those who can
feel the beauty of spiritual refinement read this, the reflection of an
emperor who prized mental superiority highly:--
"Thou sayest, 'Men cannot admire the sharpness of thy wits.' Be it so; but
there are many other things of which thou canst not say, 'I am not formed
for them by nature.' Show those qualities, then, which are altogether in
thy power--sincerity, gravity, endurance of labor, aversion to pleasure,
contentment with thy portion and with few things, benevolence, frankness,
no love of superfluity, freedom from trifling, magnanimity. Dost thou not
see how many qualities thou art at once able to exhibit, as to which there
is no excuse of natural incapacity and unfitness, and yet thou still
remainest voluntarily below the mark? Or art thou compelled, through being
defectively furnished by nature, to murmur, and to be mean, and to
flatter, and to find fault with thy poor body, and to try to please men,
and to make great display, and to be so restless in thy mind? No, indeed;
but thou mightest have been delivered from these things long ago. Only, if
in truth thou canst be charged with being rather slow and dull of
comprehension, thou must exert thyself about this also, not neglecting nor
yet taking pleasure in thy dulness."
The same sweetness enables him to fix his mind, when he sees the isolation
and moral death caused by sin, not on the cheerless thought of the misery
of this condition, but on the inspiriting thought that man is blest with
the power to escape from it:--
"Suppose that thou hast detached thyself from the natural unity,--for thou
wast made by nature a part, but now thou hast cut thyself off,--yet here
is this beautiful provision, that it is in thy power again to unite
thyself. God has allowed this to no other part--after it has been
separated and cut asunder, to come together again. But consider the
goodness with which he has privileged man; for he has put it in his power,
when he has been separated, to return and to be united and to resume his
place."
It enables him to control even the passion for retreat and solitude, so
strong in a soul like his, to which the world could offer no abiding
city.
"Men seek retreat for themselves, houses in the country, seashores, and
mountains; and thou, too, art wont to desire such things very much. But
this is altogether a mark of the most common sort of man, for it is in thy
power whenever thou shalt choose to retire into thyself. For nowhere
either with more quiet or more freedom from trouble does a man retire than
into his own soul, particularly when he has within him such thoughts that,
by looking into them, he is immediately in perfect tranquillity.
Constantly, then, give to thyself this retreat, and renew thyself; and let
thy principles be brief and fundamental, which, as soon as thou shalt
recur to them, will be sufficient to cleanse the soul completely, and to
send thee back free from all discontent with the things to which thou
returnest."
Against this feeling of discontent and weariness, so natural to the great
for whom there seems nothing left to desire or to strive after, but so
enfeebling to them, so deteriorating, Marcus Aurelius never ceased to
struggle. With resolute thankfulness he kept in remembrance the blessings
of his lot; the true blessings of it, not the false.
"I have to thank Heaven that I was subjected to a ruler and a father
[Antoninus Pius] who was able to take away all pride from me, and to bring
me to the knowledge that it is possible for a man to live in a palace
without either guards, or embroidered dresses, or any show of this kind;
but that it is in such a man's power to bring himself very near to the
fashion of a private person, without being for this reason either meaner
in thought or more remiss in action with respect to the things which must
be done for public interest.... I have to be thankful that my children
have not been stupid or deformed in body; that I did not make more
proficiency in rhetoric, poetry, and the other studies, by which I should
perhaps have been completely engrossed, if I had seen that I was making
great progress in them;... that I knew Apollonius, Rusticus, Maximus;...
that I received clear and frequent impressions about living according to
nature, and what kind of a life that is, so that, so far as depended on
Heaven and its gifts, help, and inspiration, nothing hindered me from
forthwith living according to nature, though I still fall short of it
through my own fault, and through not observing the admonitions of Heaven,
and, I may almost say, its direct instructions; that my body has held out
so long in such a kind of life as mine; that, though it was my mother's
lot to die young, she spent the last years of her life with me; that,
whenever I wished to help any man in his need, I was never told that I had
not the means of doing it; that, when I had an inclination to philosophy,
I did not fall into the hands of a sophist."
And, as he dwelt with gratitude on these helps and blessings vouchsafed to
him, his mind (so, at least, it seems to me) would sometimes revert with
awe to the perils and temptations of the lonely height where he stood, to
the lives of Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, Domitian, in their hideous
blackness and ruin; and then he wrote down for himself such a warning
entry as this, significant and terrible in its abruptness:--
"A black character, a womanish character, a stubborn character, bestial,
childish, animal, stupid, counterfeit, scurrilous, fraudulent,
tyrannical!"
Or this:--
"About what am I now employing my soul? On every occasion I must ask
myself this question, and inquire, What have I now in this part of me
which they call the ruling principle, and whose soul have I now--that of a
child, or of a young man, or of a weak woman, or of a tyrant, or of one of
the lower animals in the service of man, or of a wild beast?"
The character he wished to attain he knew well, and beautifully he has
marked it, and marked, too, his sense of shortcoming:--
"When thou hast assumed these names,--good, modest, true, rational,
equal-minded, magnanimous,--take care that thou dost not change these
names; and, if thou shouldst lose them, quickly return to them. If thou
maintainest thyself in possession of these names, without desiring that
others should call thee by them, thou wilt be another being, and wilt
enter on another life. For to continue to be such as thou hast hitherto
been, and to be torn in pieces and denied in such a life, is the character
of a very stupid man, and one overfond of his life, and like those
half-devoured fighters with wild beasts, who though covered with wounds
and gore, still entreat to be kept to the following day, though they will
be exposed in the same state to the same claws and bites. Therefore fix
thyself in the possession of these few names; and if thou art able to
abide in them, abide as if thou wast removed to the Happy Islands."
For all his sweetness and serenity, however, man's point of life "between
two infinities" (of that expression Marcus Aurelius is the real owner) was
to him anything but a Happy Island, and the performances on it he saw
through no veils of illusion. Nothing is in general more gloomy and
monotonous than declamations on the hollowness and transitoriness of human
life and grandeur; but here, too, the great charm of Marcus Aurelius, his
emotion, comes in to relieve the monotony and to break through the gloom;
and even on this eternally used topic he is imaginative, fresh, and
striking:--
"Consider, for example, the times of Vespasian. Thou wilt see all these
things, people marrying, bringing up children, sick, dying, warring,
feasting, trafficking, cultivating the ground, flattering, obstinately
arrogant, suspecting, plotting, wishing for somebody to die, grumbling
about the present, loving, heaping up treasure, desiring to be consuls or
kings. Well, then that life of these people no longer exists at all.
Again, go to the times of Trajan. All is again the same. Their life too is
gone. But chiefly thou shouldst think of those whom thou hast thyself
known distracting themselves about idle things, neglecting to do what was
in accordance with their proper constitution, and to hold firmly to this
and to be content with it."
Again:--
"The things which are much valued in life are empty, and rotten, and
trifling; and people are like little dogs, biting one another, and little
children quarreling, crying, and then straightway laughing. But fidelity,
and modesty, and justice and truth are fled
Up to Olympus from the wide-spread earth.
What then is there which still detains thee here?"
And once more:--
"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 toward his fellow men, but his thoughts also, suitable to
this conviction.
"When thou wishest to delight thyself, think of the virtue 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."