Page:Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Antoninus - Volume 1 - Farquharson 1944.pdf/487

 '''Chs. 5–7.''' The right judgement referred to in ch. 3 involves an understanding of the chain of necessary causation, what is called here by the poetical name of 'the web of Destiny'. From this he passes in ch. 6 to Nature's subordination of the parts of the Universe to the whole and to the co-ordination of the parts within the whole. On these two principles human society is based, the law which rules the life of a city is the correlate of the law which rules the eternal Commonwealth of gods and men.

Again (ch. 7), the parts of Nature all obey the law of regeneration by change. Decay and death, like life and growth, are instances of change. These changes must be good, since Nature cares for her parts and cannot be ignorant of the vicissitudes which those parts undergo.

But even if we surrender a belief in a reasonable Universe, wisely and justly determining its eternal process for good, and adopt a contrary view (ch. 7, § 2), what is the result? We may adopt the view of the Atomists, based on observed uniformity, and recognize that a chance concourse of material particles has resulted, as Epicurus taught, in a natural law by which this world, like a multitude of others, is subject to a constant process of decay and dissolution. We cannot therefore repine at the change and death of any individual, as if that were contrary to nature.

Such appears to be the force of what is condensed to extreme brevity. In fact the chief object of Epicurus' natural philosophy was confessedly to teach men by the realization of Nature's law to rise above the fear of death and superstition. In a later Book (xii. 34) Marcus recognizes this, as in an earlier passage (vii. 31) he said that if we accept the answer of the Atomist, 'it is sufficient to remember that all is by law'. Whether then death is a shattering into atoms or, as the Stoics held, a separation of the material and spiritual, each returning to its own kind; whether, as he adds, the world passes ultimately to the primal Fire and so the process of generation begins anew or (as some Stoics held with Aristotle) the world is eternal, and is sustained by a continuous series of renewals, the individual has no cause for surprise at death, no ground to complain of his destiny in a world of generation and decay.

So far the argument is clear, but the last section has been found Rh