Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 11.djvu/482

466 shown by works; but the interesting aspect of any faith is best shown by the theory involved, the intellectual ideal, the point aimed at, the sweep of the curve; and we are at no loss for information of this kind with regard to Antoninus, although there is but little record of his personal practice. His faith, as a man of the world, was in a good, social habit of life; in active, industrious, kindly cooperation. He believed in the present opportunity, in its duties especially. Enjoy life (he says) by joining one good thing to another, so as not to leave even the smallest interval between; and make your acts refer to nothing else than to a social end—not forgetting that the kinship is close between every man and the whole human race, which is not a community of a little blood or seed, but of intelligence.

Although an emperor, he was, therefore, in a certain sense, a very good republican; and he argues that we ought to propose to ourselves an object in life that shall be of a socially political kind, and actually stigmatizes any thought that tends to destroy social union as one of four principal aberrations of the superior faculty. He has an appreciative sense of humor that would easily become grim, if the whole soul of the man were not basked in sunshine, and full of good tempered acquiescence in the mysterious chances (as they seem to be) of Providence. Heraclitus, he says (after so many speculations on the conflagrations of the universe), was filled with water internally, and died smeared over with mud.

He then gives several other equally untoward illustrations, and proceeds quite cheerfully to draw his moral and urge a constant readiness to close the voyage of life.

The defect in his range of ideas is in the direction that might be anticipated—in the too great detachment and isolation of the purely mental capacity. We do not find a comprehension of the close and intimate connection between material and immaterial (amounting to identity so far as personal experience is concerned), which has been established by modern scientific research. An undue prominence is given to the power of individual will in the direction of self-control and the avoidance of evil; sufficient allowance is not made for human nature—that is, the exaggerations of passion, appetite, or, in general terms, of temperament. There is, however, no suggestion of prejudice, no shallow closing of the avenues through which fresh information may come, and one feels that when with our modern opportunities for investigation it does come, the fresh statement is in harmony with what has preceded it in the definitions of Antoninus, which prove to be right as far as they go, but are incomplete.

Although a logician on principle, by natural gifts, and by constant practice, there is nothing pitiless in his logic. It would almost seem that he had been aware of the hardness that so easily accompanies the power to state with precision a sequence of cause and effect, and he chooses rather to show how easy it is to prove logically that