BOOK X
mountain[1] or on the sea-shore or wherever thou pleasest. Quite apposite shalt thou find to be the words of Plato[2]: Compassed about (by the city wall as) by a sheep-fold on the mountain, and milking flocks.
24. What is my ruling Reason and what am I making of it now? To what use do I now put it? Is it devoid of intelligence? Is it divorced and severed from neighbourliness? Does it so coalesce and blend with the flesh as to be swayed by it?
25. He that flies from his master is a runaway. But the Law is our master,[3] and he that transgresses the Law is a runaway. Now he also, that is moved by grief or wrath or fear, is fain that something should not have happened or be happening or happen in the future of what has been ordained by that which controls the whole Universe, that is by the Law laying down all that falls to a man's lot. He then is a runaway who is moved by fear, grief, or wrath.
26. A man passes seed into a womb and goes his way, and anon another cause takes it in hand and works upon it and perfects a babe—what a consummation from what a beginning![4] Again he[5] passes food down the throat, and anon another cause taking up the work creates sensation and impulse and in fine, life and strength and other things how many and how mysterious! Muse then on these
- ↑ iv. 3 ad init.; x. 15.
- ↑ Theaet. 174 D: Ἀγροικον καὶ ἀπαίδευτον ἀπὸ ἀσχολίας οὐδὲν ἧττον τῶν νομέων τὸν τοιοῦτον ἀναγκαῖον γενέσθαι σηκὸν ἐν ὄρει τὸ τεῖχος περιβεβλημένον. It is not easy to see the application of the words here. Marcus seems to mean that the king in the midst of his royal city is no better off, ipso facto, than the shepherd in his mountain fold. It is the little "plot within him," his ruling Reason that makes the difference. The use of ἐν ὄρει twice in this section appears to have a reference to its use in § 15.
- ↑ ii. 16 ad fin.
- ↑ cp. the remarkable parallel in Justin, Apol. i. 19.
- ↑ There is no subject expressed. It is possible to take the child as the subject.
