Page:Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Antoninus - Volume 1 - Farquharson 1944.pdf/493

 ranks. See the fuller treatment in iv. 29. Marcus again plays on words, in suggesting the derivation of Law from assignment, that which distributes to each man his role, assigns to him his duty and reward.

'''Ch. 26.''' Reasoning argues from the seen to the unseen, from effect to concealed cause. Here the illustrations from elaboration of the embryo and absorption of nourishment are intended to prove the constant operation of the spermatic, generative, and restorative energies of Nature in physiological development. Marcus in simple words uses much the same argument as Galen in the opening chapters of his Natural Faculties. The great scientist there uncovers the hidden powers of the natural body from observation of results, and beginning with the shaping of the inborn child exhibits what he calls Generation, Growth, and Nutrition as processes designed and directed by Nature. Compare what Marcus said at iv. 36.

'''Ch. 27.''' As Physiology is a science of observed uniformities, the search for unity in hidden causes, so the student of History discovers behind ostensibly changed relations the unity of Law.

Marcus puts his philosophy of history in the form that life is a series of scenes in a drama which repeats itself, where the complication and denouement are determined by the great author of the piece. Similarly Aristotle in his Theory of Poetry says that tragedies belong to the same type, not because they present the fame individuals or even the same story, but because their construction follows an identical series of development.

Marcus used Vespasian and Trajan to illustrate his point in v. 32. Here he first names his elder contemporaries Hadrian and Pius, and then runs back to Philip of Macedon and his great son, and so to Croesus, who is made by Herodotus the standing example in history of a tragic reversal of fortune.

'''Ch. 28.''' Human destiny, like the 'sad stories of the death of kings' or the pictures of heroes on the tragic stage (xi. 6), is the fulfilment of a necessary chain of causes and effects. The man who rebels against circumstance, the runaway slave of ch. 25, the spiritual invalid upon his couch are like the reluctant pig appointed for sacrifice.