Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. Emperor of Rome Marcus Aurelius

us to examine well all the impressions on our minds (φαντασίαι) and to form a right judgment of them, to make just conclusions, and to inquire into the meanings of words, and so far to apply Dialectic; but he has no attempt at any exposition of Dialectic, and his philosophy is in substance purely moral and practical. He says (viii. 13), "Constantly and, if it be possible, on the occasion of every impression on the soul,[A] apply to it the principles of Physic, of Ethic, and of Dialectic: "which is only another way of telling us to examine the impression in every possible way. In another passage (iii. 11) he says, "To the aids which have been mentioned, let this one still be added: make for thyself a definition or description of the object (τὸ φανταστόν) which is presented to thee, so as to see distinctly what kind of a thing it is in its substance, in its nudity, in its complete entirety, and tell thyself its proper name, and the names of the things of which it has been compounded, and into which it will be resolved." Such an examination implies a use of Dialectic, which Antoninus accordingly employed as a means toward establishing his Physical, Theological, and Ethical principles.

[A] The original is ἐπὶ πάσης φαντασίας. We have no word which expresses φαντασία, for it is not only the sensuous appearance which comes from an external object, which object is called τὸ φανταστόν, but it is also the thought or feeling or opinion which is produced even when there is no corresponding external object before us. Accordingly everything which moves the soul is φανταστόν, and produces a φαντασία.

      In this extract Antoninus says φυσιολογεῑν, παθολογεῑν, διαλεκτικεύεσθαι. I have translated παθολογεῑν by using the word Moral (Ethic), and that is the meaning here.

There are several expositions of the Physical, Theological, and Ethical principles, which are contained in the work of Antoninus; and more expositions than I have read. Ritter (Geschichte der Philosophie, iv. 241), after explaining the doctrines of Epictetus, treats very briefly and insufficiently those of Antoninus. But he refers to a short essay, in which the work is done better.[A] There is also an essay on the Philosophical Principles of M. Aurelius Antoninus by J.M. Schultz, placed at the end of his German translation of Antoninus (Schleswig, 1799). With the assistance of these two useful essays and his own diligent study, a man may form a sufficient notion of the principles of Antoninus; but he will find it more difficult to expound them to others. Besides the want of arrangement in the original and of connection among the numerous paragraphs, the corruption of the text, the obscurity of the language and the style, and sometimes perhaps the confusion in the writer's own ideas—besides all this, there is occasionally an apparent contradiction in the emperor's thoughts, as if his principles were sometimes unsettled, as if doubt sometimes clouded his mind. A man who leads a life of tranquillity and reflection, who is not disturbed at home and meddles not with the affairs of the world, may keep his mind at ease and his thoughts in one even course. But such a man has not been tried. All his Ethical philosophy and his passive virtue might turn out to be idle words, if he were once exposed to the rude realities of human existence. Fine thoughts and moral dissertations from men who have not worked and suffered may be read, but they will be forgotten. No religion, no Ethical philosophy is worth anything, if the teacher has not lived the "life of an apostle," and been ready to die "the death of a martyr." "Not in passivity (the passive effects) but in activity lie the evil and the good of the rational social animal, just as his virtue and his vice lie not in passivity, but in activity" (ix. 16). The emperor Antoninus was a practical moralist. From his youth he followed a laborious discipline, and though his high station placed him above all want or the fear of it, he lived as frugally and temperately as the poorest philospher. Epictetus wanted little, and it seems that he always had the little that he wanted and he was content with it, as he had been with his servile station! But Antoninus after his accession to the empire sat on an uneasy seat. He had the administration of an empire which extended from the Euphrates to the Atlantic, from the cold mountains of Scotland to the hot sands of Africa; and we may imagine, though we cannot know it by experience, what must be the trials, the troubles, the anxiety, and the sorrows of him who has the world's business on his hands, with the wish to do the best that he can, and the certain knowledge that he can do very little of the good which he wishes.

[A] De Marco Aurelio Antonino … ex ipsius Commentariis. Scriptio Philologica. Instituit Nicolaus Bachius, Lipsiae, 1826.

      In the midst of war, pestilence, conspiracy, general corruption, and with the weight of so unwieldy an empire upon him, we may easily comprehend that Antoninus often had need of all his fortitude to support him. The best and the bravest men have moments of doubt and of weakness; but if they are the best and the bravest, they rise again from their depression by recurring to first principles, as Antoninus does. The emperor says that life is smoke, a vapor, and St. James in his Epistle is of the same mind; that the world is full of envious, jealous, malignant people, and a man might be well content to get out of it. He has doubts perhaps sometimes even about that to which he holds most firmly. There are only a few passages of this kind, but they are evidence of the struggles which even the noblest of the sons of men had to maintain against the hard realities of his daily life. A poor remark it is which I have seen somewhere, and made in a disparaging way, that the emperor's reflections show that he had need of consolation and comfort in life, and even to prepare him to meet his death. True that he did need comfort and support, and we see how he found it. He constantly recurs to his fundamental principle that the universe is wisely ordered, that every man is a part of it and must conform to that order which he cannot change, that whatever the Deity has done is good, that all mankind are a man's brethren, that he must love and cherish them and try to make them better, even those who would do him harm. This is his conclusion (ii. 17): "What then is that which is able to conduct a man? One thing and only one, Philosophy. But this consists in keeping the divinity within a man free from violence and unharmed, superior to pains and pleasures, doing nothing without a purpose nor yet falsely and with hypocrisy, not feeling the need of another man's doing or not doing anything; and besides, accepting all that happens and all that is allotted, as coming from thence, wherever it is, from whence he himself came; and finally waiting for death with a cheerful mind as being nothing else than a dissolution of the elements of which every living being is compounded. But if there is no harm, to the elements themselves in each continually changing into another, why should a man have any apprehension about the change and dissolution of all the elements [himself]? for it is according to nature; and nothing is evil that is according to nature."

The Physic of Antoninus is the knowledge of the Nature of the Universe, of its government, and of the relation of man's nature to both. He names the universe (ἡ τῶν ὑλων οίσία vi. 1),[A] "the universal substance," and he adds that "reason " (λόγος) governs the universe. He also (vi. 9) uses the terms "universal nature" or "nature of the universe." He (vi. 25) calls the universe "the one and all, which we name Cosmos or Order" κόσμος). If he ever seems to use these general terms as significant of the All, of all that man can in any way conceive to exist, he still on other occasions plainly distinguishes between Matter, Material things (ὕλη, ὑλίκόν), and Cause, Origin, Reason (αἰτία, αἰτίῶδες, λόγος).[B] This is conformable to Zeno's doctrine that there are two original principles (ἀρχαί) of all things, that which acts (τὸ ποίοῦν) and that which is acted upon (τὸ πάσχον). That which is acted on is the formless matter (ὕλη): that which acts is the reason (λόγος), God, who is eternal and operates through all matter, and produces all things. So Antoninus (v. 32) speaks of the reason (λόγος) which pervades all substance (οὐσία), and through all time by fixed periods (revolutions) administers the universe (τὸ πᾶν). God is eternal, and Matter is eternal. It is God who gives form to matter, but he is