Page:Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Antoninus - Volume 1 - Farquharson 1944.pdf/468

 point of view important to me, because he belongs with me to one reasonable society, but in another way he is a matter of indifference to me (i.e. he does not affect me), because his will lies outside my control. His conduct in this aspect is to me like the unconscious external forces of Nature, the wind or the sun. No harm can come to me from his acts, because God has given each the power to realize his own will in the moral sphere, which alone is his concern.

'''Ch. 57.''' A comparison, worked out with unusual fullness, between the activity of the sun in the natural world and the irradiation of mind in the realm of spirit.

In the Republic Plato speaks of the idea of the Good which, like the sun, is the source of light to the world of understanding, the cause also of life and growth. In the Hellenistic thinkers this became a semi-mystical religious tenet; its influence may be seen for example in St. John's gospel. To the Emperor Julian the sun-god himself was the object of an enthusiastic devotion. The widespread worship of Mithra in the third century shows the influence at work in the rank and file, especially the soldiers, of the Empire.

What Marcus says here might be interpreted to mean that the sun pours his light and heat upon the world without exhausting thereby his energy, and similarly mind in the Universe, and mind in man, pours itself out upon its objects without effusion, without loss. This was in the next century a tenet of Neoplatonic philosophers.

The main purport, however, of the chapter is to illustrate from the analogy of light the direct illumination of its objects by the energy of mind. The light of the sun rests upon what at first appear to be obstacles to its path. Everyone who has observed a pencil of light shining into a dark room will recall the impression made as the ray falls upon a solid body, almost as if the light were fluid and might stream off the object. Marcus suggests that what appears to be a hindrance is an opportunity for the exercise of the light-bearing quality, as he has often said that impediments rightly used are opportunities for virtue.

In the last words he introduces a fresh thought, which, again, 376