ENGLISH COMMENTARY
is common with the beautiful.'[1] Similarly Galen, in his treatise upon the structure of the body in reference to its functions, writes: 'You will discover the beauty of a bodily organ by a comparison of its construction with its uses: this is your canon, measure, and test of natural excellence as well as of true beauty.'[2] The remark that the relation of pleasure in beauty to pleasure in function not only removes any natural repugnance to 'the parallels on beauty's brow', but also sublimates the contemplation of youthful beauty, appears to be original to Marcus.
Ch. 3. The work of Nature is not only life, but change and death. The happy tone of ch. 2 gives place to what are almost cynical reflections upon mortality:
The sceptre, learning, physic must
All follow this, and come to dust. (Shirley.)
The chapter, like iv. 48 and vi. 57, belongs in form and content to that strain of reflection upon life which Marcus employs as a meditation for death. This vein, half of irony, half of consolation, recurs from time to time in the Meditations; here irony unexpectedly predominates. What did his skill avail the father of medicine, the lesson of the stars those wise men of the East? Great generals, God's scourges of mankind, went the way of all flesh. Heraclitus died a death which was a parody of his own doctrine. Democritus, the father of atomism, was the prey of minute pests, Socrates of pests in human guise. The expected conclusion does not follow; it is postponed to iv. 10. Instead the answer is like that given in ii. 11, that man is master of himself in the hour of death. Marcus adds the image of life's voyage, the haven, and the landing on the farther shore, and what Socrates prophesied should be there, a world governed like this world by the gods, or else the unawakening sleep. He has in mind the conviction that Socrates expressed to his judges: 'It is not permitted by God that evil men should hurt the good', and again: 'now the time is come to go away, you to live and I to die, but which to the better destiny is known only to God.'[3]
