Page:Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Antoninus - Volume 1 - Farquharson 1944.pdf/431

 fellow-man overrates what he has lost, you do but share his folly. He has forgotten what is the reality, he is lamenting a loss which was inevitable.

The last paragraph is by some taken to be a separate aphorism. It may, however, continue the dialogue (possibly it is a paraphrase of some well-known passage of complaint): 'Once upon a time I was a lucky man. ' 'Lucky you say, but what is luck? It depends upon your own disciplined temper.' Thus the chapter closes by a reassertion of what is the main teaching of chs. 33, 34, and 35.



The Book opens with a brief statement that the Universe is good, because it is created and informed by an entirely good will, the Reason (Logos) that shapes the material in which and through which it works (v. 32); it closes with the summary: 'No one shall prevent your living by the reason of your own nature: nothing will happen to you contrary to the Reason of universal nature.' Your will is free to realize its good purpose, your earthly dispensation also is good; there shall no evil happen to you, save of your own making. Similarly Marcus says, in what is the central chapter (ch. 30): 'Wrestle to abide such as philosophy would have made you. Reverence the gods, save mankind.' The last two words imply the third aspect of his creed; man s reason binds him to his fellow men, as both they and he are members of one whole. This duty to, and love of, neighbours, put first in vii. 55, is in this Book rarely stressed, except in sayings like: 'As Antoninus, my city and my fatherland is Rome; as a man, the Universe' (vi. 44); the City of God, so prominent in Book iv, lies in the background of his thought. The language, except in the occasional moral aphorisms, is almost entirely impersonal, the writer has reached the serene atmosphere of pantheistic calm. His words breathe a settled contentment and trust, with hardly a suggestion of that trouble and sadness which too often ruffle the surface of the Meditations.

In detail, the structure of the Book is hard to grasp; the continuity is repeatedly broken by practical reminders whose occasion is now not obvious to us; sometimes indeed it is hard to resist the Rh