English Conferences of Ernest Renan: Rome and Christianity. Marcus Aurelius

by Ernest Renan

This divine candor breathes in every page. No one has ever written more simply than did he for the sole purpose of unburdening his heart to God, his only witness. There is not a shadow of system in it. Marcus Aurelius, to speak exactly, had no philosophy: although he owed almost every thing to stoicism transformed by the Roman spirit, it is of no school. According to our idea, he has too little curiosity; for he knows not all that a contemporary of Ptolemy and Galen should know: he has some opinions on the system of the world, which were not up to the highest science of his time. But his moral thought, thus detached from all alliance with a system, reaches a singular height. The author of the book, "The Imitation," himself, although free from the quarrels of the schools, does not rise to this, for his manner of feeling is essentially Christian. Take away his Christian dogmas, and his book retains only a portion of its charm. The book of Marcus Aurelius, having no dogmatic base, preserves its freshness eternally. Every one, from the atheist, or he who believes himself one, to the man who is the most devoted to the especial creeds of each worship, can find in it some fruits of edification. It is the most purely human book which exists. It deals with no question of controversy. In theology, Marcus Aurelius floats between pure Deism, Polytheism interpreted in a physical sense according to the manner of the Stoics, and a sort of cosmic Pantheism. He holds not much more firmly to one hypothesis than to the other, and he uses indiscriminately the three vocabularies of the Deist, Polytheist, and Pantheist. His considerations have always two sides, according as God and the soul have, or have not, reality. It is the reasoning which we do each hour; for, if the most complete Materialism is right, we who have believed in truth and goodness shall be no more duped than others. If Idealism is right, we have been the true sages, and we have been wise in the only manner which becomes us, that is to say, with no selfish waiting, without having looked for a remuneration.

II.

We here touch a great secret of moral philosophy and religion. Marcus Aurelius has no speculative philosophy; his theology is utterly contradictory; he has no idea founded upon the soul and immortality. How could he be so moral without the beliefs that are now regarded as the foundations of morality? how so profoundly religious, without having professed one of the dogmas of what is called natural religion? It is important to make this inquiry.

The doubts, which, to the view of speculative reason, hover above the truths of natural religion, are not, as Kant has admirably shown, accidental doubts, capable of being removed, belonging, as is sometimes imagined, to certain conditions of the human mind. These doubts are inherent to the nature even of these truths, if one may say it without a paradox; and, if these doubts were removed, the truths with which they quarrel would disappear at the same time. Let us suppose, in short, a direct, positive proof, evident to all, of future sufferings and rewards: where will be the merit of doing good? They would be but fools whom gayety of heart should hasten to damnation. A crowd of base souls would secure their salvation without concealment: they would, in a sense, force the divine power. Who does not see, that, in such a system, there is neither morality nor religion? In the moral and religious order it is indispensable to believe without demonstration. It deals not with certainty: it acts by faith. This is what Deism forgets, with its habits of intemperate affirmation. It forgets that creeds too precise concerning human destiny would destroy all moral merit. For us, they would say that we should do as did St. Louis when he was told of the miraculous wafer,—we should refuse to see it. What need have we of these brutal proofs which trammel our liberty?

We should fear to become assimilated to those speculators in virtue, or those vulgar cowards, who mingle with spiritual things the gross selfishness of practical life. In the days which followed the belief in the resurrection of Jesus, this sentiment was manifested in the most touching manner. The faithful in heart, the sensitive ones, preferred to believe without seeing. "Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed," became the word for the time. Charming words! Eternal symbol of tender and generous Idealism, which has a horror of touching with the hands that which should only be seen with the heart!

Our good Marcus Aurelius, on this point as on all others, was in advance of the ages. He never cared to argue with himself concerning God and the soul. As if he had read the "Criticism of Practical Reason," he saw clearly, that, where the Infinite is concerned, no formula is absolute; and that, in such matters, one has no chance of seeing the truth during his life, without much self-contradiction. He distinctly separates moral beauty from all theoretical theology. He allows duty to depend on no metaphysical opinion of the First Cause. The intimate union with an unseen god was never carried to a more unheard-of delicacy. "To offer to the government of God that which is within thee,—a strong being ripened by age, a friend of the public good, a Roman, an emperor, a soldier at his post awaiting the signal of the trumpet, a man ready to quit life without regret." "There are many grains of incense destined to the same altar: one falls sooner, the other later, in the fire; but the difference is nothing." "Man should live according to nature during the few days that are given him on the earth, and, when the moment of leaving it comes, should submit himself sweetly, as an olive, which, in falling, blesses the tree which has produced it, and renders thanks to the branch which has borne it." "All that which thou arrangest is suited to me, O Cosmos! Nothing of that which comes from thee is premature or backward to me. I find my fruit in that which thy seasons bear, O Nature! From thee comes all; in thee is all; to thee all returns." "O man! thou hast been a citizen in the great city: what matters it to thee to have remained three or five years? That which is governed by laws is unjust for no one. What is there, then, so sorrowful in being sent from the city, not by a tyrant, not by an unjust judge, but by the same nature which allowed thee to enter there? It is as if a comedian is discharged from the theatre by the same prætor who engaged him. But wilt thou say, 'I have not played the five acts; I have played but three?' Thou sayest well; but in life three acts suffice to complete the entire piece.... Go, then, content, since he who dismisses thee is content."

Is this to say that he never revolted against the strange fate which leaves man alone face to face with the needs of devotion, of sacrifice, of heroism, and nature with its transcendent immorality, its supreme disdain for virtue? No. Once at least the absurdity, the colossal iniquity, of death, strikes him. But soon his temperament, completely mortified, resumes its power, and he becomes calm. "How happens it that the gods, who have ordered all things so well, and with so much love for men, should have forgotten one thing only; that is, that men of tried virtue, who during their lives have had a sort of interchange of relations with divinity, who have made themselves loved by it on account of their pious acts and their sacrifices, live not after death, but may be extinguished forever?

"Since it is so, be sure, that, if it should be otherwise, they (the gods) would not have failed; for, if it had been just, it would have been possible; if it had been suitable to nature, nature would have permitted it. Consequently, when it is not thus, strengthen thyself in this consideration, that it was not necessary that it should be thus. Thou thyself seest plainly that to make such a demand is to dispute his right with God. Now, we would not thus contend with the gods if they were not absolutely good and absolutely just: if they are so, they have allowed nothing to make a part of the order of the world which is contrary to justice and right."

Ah! is it too much resignation, ladies and gentlemen? If it is veritably thus, we have the right to complain. To say, that, if this world has not its counterpart, the man who is sacrificed to truth or right ought to leave it content, and absolve the gods,—that is too naïve. No, he has a right to blaspheme them. For, in short, why has his credulity been thus abused? Why should he have been endowed with deceitful instincts, of which he has been the honest dupe? Wherefore is this premium given to the frivolous or wicked man? Is it, then, he who is not deceived who is the wise man? Then cursed be the gods who so adjudge their preferences! I desire that the future may be an enigma; but, if there is no future, then this world is a frightful ambuscade. Take notice that our wish is not that of the vulgar clown. We wish not to see the chastisement of the culpable, nor to meddle with the interests of our virtue. Our wish has no selfishness: it is simply to be, to remain in accord with light, to continue the thought we have begun, to know more of it, to enjoy some day that truth which we seek with so much labor, to see the triumph of the good which we have loved. Nothing is more legitimate. The worthy emperor, moreover, was also sensible of it: "What! the light of a lamp burns until the moment in which it is extinguished, and loses nothing of its brilliancy, and the truth, justice, temperance, which are in thee shall be extinguished with thee!" All his life was passed in this noble hesitation. If he sinned, it was through too much piety. Less resigned, he would have been more just; for surely to demand that there should be an intimate and sympathetic witness of the struggles which we endure for goodness and truth is not to ask too much.