ENGLISH COMMENTARY
in the self, requiring to be settled. Thus these solitary meditations are linked to the dramatic dialogues of the Greek genius, which begin in that famous passage in the Iliad[1] where Ulysses is shown, deserted by his comrades, debating within himself whether to leave the battle:
Now on the field Ulysses stands alone,
The Greeks all fled, the Trojans pouring on:
But stands collected in himself, and whole,
And questions thus his own unconquer'd soul.
The purpose of the chapter is to show the reason why we are not to meet evil in another by evil in ourselves, by resentment and hate. Facing frankly the fact that we meet evil in our everyday life, Marcus does not here attempt to explain the existence, in a world ultimately ruled by good, of evil-doers, he merely considers what remedies there are in our own conduct for such evil. First he puts the paradox of Socrates that the man has attempted to do me evil from ignorance of what is real good and real evil. That is, he has chosen for himself mistaken ends. As is said in ch. 13, he is blinded to the distinction between light and darkness. He is to be pitied rather than to be hated.
Again, as is put at greater length in ch. 11, he has not injured me, because the gods do not permit a man to be morally injured, only to be hurt in those things which are not either good or evil, in property or fame, even in life and death. We are ourselves given the power of moral independence.
Thirdly, the wrong-doer is after all my kinsman; we participate, both of us, in the Divine reason; I cannot therefore be angry with or hate one who belongs to the same reasonable society with myself. We came into the world as members of one body, we are designed to work together, as the physical organism works in unison to preserve its natural existence. Anything then in me that tends to work against my fellow man is a resistance to Nature and natural law, and to return apparent evil by real evil in myself is to resist Nature. Thus the doctrines, so briefly stated in this opening chapter, are three. First that men are reasonable by nature, because they have in them a particle of Divine reason, and therefore contain a principle which is a deeper source of social unity than mere fellowship by blood and common race;
- ↑ Il. xi. 401.
