Page:Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Antoninus - Volume 1 - Farquharson 1944.pdf/495

 the underlying thought is given by the instances chosen. They belong to discussions of the relation of man's freedom to the necessary determination of the Universe. The answer given by the Stoics attempted to reconcile a definite, that is a limited, freedom of the individual with the notion of the Universe as the scene of predetermined Necessity. The 'roller' (or 'cylinder') recurs in this discussion both in the Stoic writers and in their critics. The point clearly was not (as it is often misrepresented) that the roller if started rolls down a slope, but that the motion of the roller is determined by its shape, and therefore, when set free, it pursues its own path. Within limits it is so to speak free. Similarly man in obeying his impulses is relatively free, since every animated being has an impulse to its own preservation. But man achieves what freedom he possesses as rational only by conforming his impulses to what he knows to be a natural law for reasonable creatures. Thus though the roller cannot behave otherwise, it still carries out what is determined by its conformation, and, similarly, man consciously, if he is rational, carries out what is determined by himself according to his own construction.

This solution of the problem of freedom does not deserve the scorn which Plutarch and others exhibit in their criticism. This criticism comes to saying that man is not free according to the Stoic showing and yet that moral conduct depends on man's consciousness of freedom. What none of the critics understands is the certainty with which Zeno and his followers had grasped the law of necessary cause and effect in the Universe. Given this, the Stoic solution, which is the recognition of limited freedom of the will, is the best that can be found. Marcus seems to have clearly grasped the Stoic answer, and he repeatedly enforces the true liberty of the disciplined reason.

Minor points of interest in the chapter are the assertion of the joy which consists in the exercise of man's real nature, which he boldly compares with the hedonist's self-indulgence, and the true statement (after repeating once more that obstacles to goodness are only obstacles because our judgement makes concessions to false ends, and that hindrances are not injurious unless they are themselves morally evil) that man is strengthened by these tests of his goodness. That is a favourite doctrine of Epictetus, which Rh