The volume of the 'Meditations' is the best mirror of the Emperor's soul. Therein will be found expressed delicately but unmistakably much of the sorrow that darkened his life. As the book proceeds the shadows deepen, and in the latter portion his loneliness is painfully apparent. Yet he never lost hope or faith, or failed for one moment in his duty as a man, a philosopher, and an Emperor. In the deadly marshes and in the great forests which stretched beside the Danube, in his mortal sickness, in the long nights when weakness and pain rendered sleep impossible, it is not difficult to imagine him in his tent, writing, by the light of his solitary lamp, the immortal thoughts which alone soothed his soul; thoughts which have out-lived the centuries--not perhaps wholly by chance--to reveal to men in nations then unborn, on continents whose very existence was then unknown, the Godlike qualities of one of the noblest of the sons of men.
The best literal translation of the work into English thus far made is that of George Long. It is published by Little, Brown & Co. of Boston. A most admirable work, 'The Life of Marcus Aurelius,' by Paul Barron Watson, published by Harper & Brothers, New York, will repay careful reading. Other general works to be consulted are as follows:--'Seekers After God,' by Rev. F.W. Farrar, Macmillan & Co. (1890); and 'Classical Essays,' by F.W.H. Myers, Macmillan & Co. (1888). Both of these contain excellent articles upon the Emperor. Consult also Renan's 'History of the Origins of Christianity,' Book vii., Marcus Aurelius, translation published by Mathieson & Co. (London, 1896); 'Essay on Marcus Aurelius' by Matthew Arnold, in his 'Essays in Criticism,' Macmillan & Co. Further information may also be had in Montesquieu's 'Decadence of the Romans,' Sismondi's 'Fall of the Roman Empire,' and Gibbon's 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.'
EXCERPTS FROM THE 'MEDITATIONS'
THE BROTHERHOOD OF MAN
Begin thy morning with these thoughts: I shall meet the meddler, the ingrate, the scorner, the hypocrite, the envious man, the cynic. These men are such because they know not to discern the difference between good and evil. But I know that Goodness is Beauty and that Evil is Loathsomeness: I know that the real nature of the evil-doer is akin to mine, not only physically but in a unity of intelligence and in participation in the Divine Nature. Therefore I know that I cannot be harmed by such persons, nor can they thrust upon me what is base. I know, too, that I should not be angry with my kinsmen nor hate them, because we are all made to work together fitly like the feet, the hands, the eyelids, the rows of the upper and the lower teeth. To be at strife one with another is therefore contrary to our real nature; and to be angry with one another, to despise one another, is to be at strife one with another. (Book ii,§ I.)
Fashion thyself to the circumstances of thy lot. The men whom Fate hath made thy comrades here, love; and love them in sincerity and in truth. (Book vi., § 39.)
This is distinctive of men,--to love those who do wrong. And this thou shalt do if thou forget not that they are thy kinsmen, and that they do wrong through ignorance and not through design; that ere long thou and they will be dead; and more than all, that the evil-doer hath really done thee no evil, since he hath left thy conscience unharmed. (Book viii., §22.)