I have only one reason for alluding to atrocious and contemptible calumnies like these, and that is because--since no doubt such whispers reached his ears--they help to account for that deep unutterable melancholy which breathes through the little golden book of the Emperor's Meditations. We find, for instance, among them this isolated fragment:--
"A black character, a womanish character, a stubborn character, bestial, childish, animal, stupid, counterfeit, scurrilous, fraudulent, tyrannical."
We know not of whom he was thinking--perhaps of Nero, perhaps of Caligula, but undoubtedly also of men whom he had seen and known, and whose very existence darkened his soul. The same sad spirit breathes also through the following passages:--
"Soon, very soon, thou wilt be ashes, or a skeleton, and either a name, or not even a name; but name is sound and echo. And the things which are much valued in life are empty, and rotten, and trifling, and little dogs biting one another, and little children quarrelling, laughing, and then straightway weeping. But fidelity, and modesty, and justice, and truth are fled
"'Up to Olympus from the wide-spread earth.'"
(v. 33.)
"It would be a man's happiest lot to depart from mankind without having had a taste of lying, and hypocrisy, and luxury, and pride. However to breathe out one's life when a man has had enough of those things is the next best voyage, as the saying is." (ix. 2.)
"Enough of this wretched life, and murmuring, and apish trifles. Why art thou thus disturbed? What is there new in this? What unsettles thee?... Towards the gods, then, now become at last more simple and better." (ix. 37.) The thought is like that which dominates through the Penitential Psalms of David,--that we may take refuge from men, their malignity and their meanness, and find rest for our souls in God. From men David has no hope; mockery, treachery, injustice, are all that he expects from them,--the bitterness of his enemies, the far-off indifference of his friends. Nor does this greatly trouble him, so long as he does not wholly lose the light of God's countenance. "I had no place to flee unto, and no man cared for my soul. I cried unto thee, O Lord, and said, Thou art my hope, and my portion in the land of the living." "Cast me not away from Thy presence, and take not Thy Holy Spirit from me."
But whatever may have been his impulse at times to give up in despair all attempt to improve the "little breed" of men around him, Marcus had schooled his gentle spirit to live continually in far other feelings. Were men contemptible? It was all the more reason why he should himself be noble. Were men petty, and malignant, and passionate and unjust? In that proportion were they all the more marked out for pity and tenderness, and in that proportion was he bound to the utmost of his ability to show himself great, and forgiving, and calm, and true. Thus Marcus turns his very bitterest experience to gold, and from the vilenesses of others, which depressed his lonely life, so far from suffering himself to be embittered as well as saddened, he only draws fresh lessons of humanity and love.
He says, for instance, "Begin the morning by saying to thyself, I shall meet with the busybody, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial. All these things happen to them by reason of their ignorance of what is good and evil. But I who have seen the nature of the good that it is beautiful, and of the bad that it is ugly, and the nature of him that does wrong that is akin to me,... and that it partakes of the same portion of the divinity, I can neither be injured by any of them, for no one can fix on me what is ugly, nor can I be angry with my kinsman, nor hate him. For we are made for co-operation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth. To act against one another then is contrary to nature; and it is acting against one another to be vexed and turn away." (ii. 1.) Another of his rules, and an eminently wise one, was to fix his thoughts as much as possible on the virtues of others, rather than on their vices. "When thou wishest to delight thyself, think of the virtues of those who live with thee--the activity of one, the modesty of another, the liberality of a third, and some other good quality of a fourth." What a rebuke to the contemptuous cynicism which we are daily tempted to display! "An infinite being comes before us," says Robertson, "with a whole eternity wrapt up in his mind and soul, and we proceed to classify him, put a label upon him, as we would upon a jar, saying, This is rice, that is jelly, and this pomatum; and then we think we have saved ourselves the necessity of taking off the cover, How differently our Lord treated the people who came to Him!... consequently, at His touch each one gave out his peculiar spark of light."