Page:Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Antoninus - Volume 1 - Farquharson 1944.pdf/401

 difficulties of the moral life, difficulties which had often been pressed against the Stoics. The first is the problem of reconciling moral freedom with the facts of human experience and with the ordered, inevitable process of a Universe governed by law and apparently ignoring the individual. The second is the question of retirement or withdrawal from the world. Actual political and moral life being so manifestly imperfect, and philosophy being a protest against evil and injustice, should not the wise man retire from practical life, like Socrates, and 'shelter' in Plato's words 'behind a wall'? Then, if a man chooses retirement, what is the nature and meaning of that withdrawal? The answers to these questions are connected with one another. To the first Marcus replies that he must adapt himself to circumstance, turning apparent evil to his own good by the use of the appropriate virtue, as a strong fire converts its material to itself (ch. 1). The good man is a trained artist in living; he does not create the stuff he works in, he takes and handles it with a devotion which is like that of the artist with his given material (ch. 2). This he expresses elsewhere as the truth that apparent evil, like the artist's stubborn material, strengthens a man by an opposition to be convinced or overcome (v. 20; vi. 50; viii. 41; x. 33. 4).

'''Ch. 3.''' The question of retreat is answered by the distinction of the two lives of action and of meditation. The wisdom of the answer is that the connexion between the two lives (or aspects of living) is made quite clear. To retire is not to seek refuge from the world, but to find in reflection the maxims which are to make living possible and good. This he pictures here by the image of retirement into the little country place which is the soul's domain. Elsewhere he speaks of a virgin citadel, and again of seeking refreshment from a hard stepmother in a mother's society (viii. 48; vi. 12).

The terms which he uses, especially the word for 'retreat', might evidently be taken in a mystical sense. This is true also of other passages of the Meditations. Thus he speaks of 'drawing inward into the self' (vii. 28; viii. 48; ix. 42); of finding the fountain of good within (vii. 59); of making himself simple (iv. 26); language which anticipates that used by Neoplatonists about the soul. What is so admirable in Marcus is that this return to Rh