Page:Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Antoninus - Volume 1 - Farquharson 1944.pdf/383

 The main topics of the chapter were familiar to the ancient reader from the literature of consolation, in its many forms. The 'horror naturalis' of decomposition and decay had been treated with all his poetic power by Lucretius, and Seneca often dwells on the same theme. In modern literature the subject is handled by Montaigne in an essay largely based on Lucretius and Seneca, and Bacon follows Montaigne in the words: 'and by him that spake only as a philosopher and natural man, it was well said, pompa mortis magis terret quam mors ipsa. Groans and convulsions and a discoloured face, and friends weeping and blacks and obsequies, and the like shew Death terrible.' Similarly Adam Smith reminds us: 'We sympathize even with the dead, and overlooking what is of real importance in their situation we are chiefly affected by those circumstances which strike our senses.'

'''Ch. 13.''' The central subject of this chapter is the manner in which the deity within us is to be maintained in that purity which enables it to be the organ of intercourse with God, to be in contact with God, as was said at the end of the last chapter. The opening words are, however, difficult to interpret. Do they condemn the endless, restless curiosity for knowledge which the quotation from Pindar illustrates in the Theaetetus of Plato, from which Marcus seems to have taken it? There Plato contrasts the absorption of the philosopher in what he holds to be real with his neglect of everyday interests, the affairs of his neighbour, and even the business of his city. Here Marcus seems to condemn alike the curiosity of speculative inquiry and the curiosity as to our neighbours, and to treat them as similar in character. He takes an opposite view of the speculative activity of the mind in xi. 1.

The explanation is probably that he wishes to put everything else aside by comparison with devotion to the God within.

This cult of the Genius or Daemon forms perhaps the most remarkable problem in our Book. Does Marcus think of it as the godhead which has taken up its abode in him? That is the natural Rh