ENGLISH COMMENTARY
bienheureuse éternité paraisse, j'irai dans la solitude (cf. v. 4), sur la montagne de la myrrhe et sur la colline de l'encens (cf. x. 15), pour contempler de là les vérités éternelles et pour m'élever à Dieu par la pénitence et par l'oraison, comme l'encens monte au ciel, en se détruisant lui-même et en se consommant dans la flamme.' One of the panels of Marcus' Arch of triumph shows him in the act of offering incense (cf. x. 28).
Chs. 16–17. This is the only passage in the Meditations where the writer speaks as if a man might become a god, a mode of speech often employed both by Stoics and Epicureans. He clearly means you may become really good, and so appear godlike where you now seem like a beast or an ape, as not governed by reason; Marcus' attitude in all his thoughts is that he himself falls too short of what a man has in him to attain, and he speaks just as he had done in ii. 4 and iii. 14. (Compare ii. 5, end, v. 27.)
Ch. 18. If you are to be good, your prime concern is with your own conduct and thoughts, not with your neighbour. This will give the quiet and ease of which we heard in iii. 4 and iv. 3, and to which we shall return in iv. 24 in connexion with the Epicurean teaching on Tranquillity.
The text at the end is corrupt. Many critics suppose that the last words of this chapter were a citation from the poet Agathon, a younger contemporary of Euripides.
Chs. 19–20. The transition of thought to fame arises from the reference to other selves in ch. 18. A man who seeks fame puts himself into the hands of others and depends for satisfaction upon their judgement. Marcus has touched upon the subject already in ii. 17. 1, iv. 3. 3, and here he speaks, as elsewhere, fully upon the 'last infirmity of noble mind'.
The two chapters are complementary; the former shows the folly of desire for glory hereafter, the second reminds us that what is intrinsically good or beautiful needs no praise to recommend it. Beauty, like goodness, terminates in itself. Life's handicap is imaged under the simile of a torch race, where the relay runners pass on the torch of life, and themselves in succession fall out from the race. The beautiful picture may have been suggested by Plato's[1] 'men handing on life, from one to another,
- ↑ Pl. Leg. 776 b.
