life 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.[214] The persecution at Lyons, in which
Attalus[215] and Pothinus suffered, the persecution at Smyrna, in which
Polycarp[216] 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 law, is
genuine. Mr. Long seems inclined to try and 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_,[217] show how deeply the prejudices of the multitude imbued
the educated class also. One asks oneself with astonishment how a
doctrine so benign as that of Jesus 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 cause of mistake lay in that
character of secret assemblages which the meetings of the Christian
community wore, under a State-system as jealous of unauthorized
associations as is the State-system of modern France.
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. And 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[218] 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 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. But
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 which removes mountains,
and that the ardor which 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 any one, 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."[219]
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."[220] 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."[221]
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."[222]
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."[223]
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_?"[224]
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[225] 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 has
hardly a parallel, so far as my knowledge goes, 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."[226]
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."
[227]
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 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."[228]
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 men, 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."[229]
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 nor 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."[230]
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,[231] 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!"[232]
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?"[233]
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 defiled 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."[234]
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."[235]
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 quarrelling, 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?"[236]
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."[237]
He recognized, indeed, that (to use his own words) "the prime principle
in man's constitution is the social";[238] 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."[239]
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.'"[240]
_O faithless and perverse generation! how long shall I be with you? how
long shall I suffer you?_[241] Sometimes this strain rises even to
passion:--