ENGLISH COMMENTARY
appears thus to have related human law to the reason which governs the universe. This conception the Stoics adopted and gave a fuller expression to it. The likeness of Kant's moral theory to this conception is remarkable. The difference is that for Kant the intelligible world of which the moral law is the natural order is contrasted with the natural order of the phenomenal world, where necessity and natural causality obtain. For the Stoics, however difficult their view may be to support, the law of the Divine Universe which man shares with the gods is the law which rules also in the phenomenal world. As Marcus so often asserts, the freedom of man's will is expressed by his accepting unconditionally and gladly the law of the Whole; in the sense of the third chapter he can retire from the world of external conditions by realizing at any moment his own freedom, that is, by affirming and accepting the principles of the City of which he is a Freeman. This is the explanation also of what seems, at first sight, a merely formal reference to the axiom of continuity, 'nothing comes from nothing or passes into nothing' (cf. iv. 21). The Stoics combined this axiom with the principle of sufficient reason, that the process of becoming is governed by the law of necessary determination. Thus, if the material part of man is derived from and returns to the four elements, his spiritual part must be derived, on the principal of sufficient reason, from the universal mind, and into that it returns.[1]
Chs. 6–11. It is characteristic of the writer to pass from large questions to relatively small points of practice. These brief reflections turn upon two points, the difficulty of reconciling the unkindness or evil conduct of men with the reasonableness of the whole, and of explaining pain and suffering which seem to run counter to the justice and kindness of God. Chs. 6–8 and ch. 11 give remedies in practice for the former difficulty, chs. 9–10 for the latter.
Chs. 6–8. Reflections as to the right attitude to the evil and erring recur throughout the Meditations. Marcus seems to have felt the problem acutely, whether what he is concerned about is the right treatment of the wrong-doer, or the meaning in the
- ↑ Compare ch. 4 with x. 33, especially § 4. The connexion of chs. 4 and 5 is made clear by comparison with x. 6 and 7.
