Marcus valued temperance and self-denial as being the best means of keeping his heart strong and pure; but we are glad to learn he did not value the rigours of asceticism. Life brought with it enough, and more than enough, of antagonism to brace his nerves; enough, and more than enough, of the rough wind of adversity in his face to make it unnecessary to add more by his own actions. "It is not fit," he says, "that I should give myself pain, for I have never intentionally given pain even to another." (viii. 42.)
It was a commonplace of ancient philosophy that the life of the wise man should be a contemplation of, and a preparation for, death. It certainly was so with Marcus Aurelius. The thoughts of the nothingness of man, and of that great sea of oblivion which shall hereafter swallow up all that he is and does, are ever present to his mind; they are thoughts to which he recurs more constantly than any other, and from which he always draws the same moral lesson.
"Since it is possible that thou mayest depart from life this very moment, regulate every act and thought accordingly.... Death certainly, and life, honour and dishonour, pain and pleasure, all these things happen equally to good men and bad, being things which make us neither better nor worse. Therefore they are neither good nor evil." (ii. 11.)
Elsewhere he says that Hippocrates cured diseases and died; and the Chaldaeans foretold the future and died; and Alexander, and Pompey, and Caesar killed thousands, and then died; and lice destroyed Democritus, and other lice killed Socrates; and Augustus, and his wife, and daughter, and all his descendants, and all his ancestors, are dead; and Vespasian and all his Court, and all who in his day feasted, and married, and were sick and chaffered, and fought, and flattered, and plotted, and grumbled, and wished other people to die, and pined to become kings or consuls, are dead; and all the idle people who are doing the same things now are doomed to die; and all human things are smoke, and nothing at all; and it is not for us, but for the gods, to settle whether we play the play out, or only a part of it. "There are many grains of frankincense on the same altar; one falls before, another falls after; but it makes no difference." And the moral of all these thoughts is, "Death hangs over thee while thou livest: while it is in thy power be good." (iv. 17.) "Thou hast embarked, thou hast made the voyage, thou hast come to shore; get out. If, indeed, to another life there is no want of gods, not even there. But if to a state without sensation, thou wilt cease to be held by pains and pleasures." (iii. 3.)
Nor was Marcus at all comforted under present annoyances by the thought of posthumous fame. "How ephemeral and worthless human things are," he says, "and what was yesterday a little mucus, to-morrow will be a mummy or ashes." "Many who are now praising thee, will very soon blame thee, and neither a posthumous name is of any value, nor reputation, nor anything else." What has become of all great and famous men, and all they desired, and all they loved? They are "smoke, and ash, and a tale, or not even a tale." After all their rages and envyings, men are stretched out quiet and dead at last. Soon thou wilt have forgotten all, and soon all will have forgotten thee. But here, again, after such thoughts, the same moral is always introduced again:--"Pass then through the little space of time conformably to nature, and end the journey in content, just as an olive falls off when it is ripe, blessing nature who produced it, and thanking the tree on which it grew" "One thing only troubles me, lest I should do something which the constitution of man does not allow, or in the way which it does not allow, or what it does not allow now."
To quote the thoughts of Marcus Aurelius is to me a fascinating task. But I have already let him speak so largely for himself that by this time the reader will have some conception of his leading motives. It only remains to adduce a few more of the weighty and golden sentences in which he lays down his rule of life.
"To say all in a word, everything which belongs to the body is a stream, and what belongs to the soul is a dream and vapour; and life is a warfare, and a stranger's sojourn, and after fame is oblivion. What, then, is that which is able to enrich a man? One thing, and only one--philosophy. But this consists in keeping the guardian spirit within a man free from violence and unharmed, superior to pains and pleasures, doing nothing without a purpose, nor yet falsely, and with hypocrisy... accepting all that happens and all that is allotted ... and finally waiting for death with a cheerful mind" (ii. 17.)
"If thou findest in human life anything better than justice, truth, temperance, fortitude, and, in a word, than thine own soul's satisfaction in the things which it enables thee to do according to right reason, and In the condition that is assigned to thee without thy own choice; if, I say, thou seest anything better than this, turn to it with all thy soul, and enjoy that which thou hast found to be the best. But ... if thou findest everything else smaller and of less value than this, give place to nothing else.... Simply and freely choose the better, and hold to it." (iii. 6.)
"Body, soul, intelligence: to the body belong sensations, to the soul appetites, to the intelligence principles." To be impressed by the senses is peculiar to animals; to be pulled by the strings of desire belongs to effeminate men, and to men like Phalaris or Nero; to be guided only by intelligence belongs to atheists and traitors, and "men who do their impure deeds when they have shut the doors.... There remains that which is peculiar to the good man, to be pleased and content with what happens, and with the thread which is spun for him; and not to defile the divinity which is planted in his breast, nor disturb it by a crowd of images; but to preserve it tranquil, following it obediently as a god, neither saying anything contrary to truth, nor doing anything contrary to justice. (iii. 16.)
"Men seek retreats for themselves, houses in the country, sea-shores, and mountains, and thou too art wont to desire such things very much. But this is altogether a mark of the commonest sort of men, for it is in thy power whenever thou shalt chose to retire into thyself. For nowhere either with more quiet or with more freedom 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,--which is nothing else than the good ordering of the mind." (iv. 3.)