ENGLISH COMMENTARY
like a torch', or by Lucretius'[1] 'nations wax and wane, and in a short space the generations of the living change, and like men in a race pass on the torch of life.' Notice that Lucretius explains in this context, after the manner of his school, the problem raised in ch. 21 about disposal of dead bodies.
The desire for fame was both with Greeks and Romans a stimulus to worthy deeds in war and peace. Fame with posterity was a substitute for a belief in the survival of personality. Marcus never refers to the apotheosis of the Caesars, though he allowed Faustina's spirit to be represented as ascending to the gods. His own attitude is 'let not thy peace be in the tongues of men; for whether they construe thee well or ill: thou art not therefore another man,'[2] or, as Cicero[3] says: 'Virtue herself by her own attractions should draw you to the truth: what others may speak about you, let them look to it, but still they will speak.' The last words of this chapter are corrupt.
Ch. 20. Marcus states as self-evident the intrinsic value of the beautiful in natural and artistic objects. Then, since the term 'beautiful' covers in his philosophy both aesthetic and moral excellence, he shows that praise or blame is as irrelevant to moral good as to beauty. The instances exhibit his delicate sensibility in these matters. His theory implies that the feeling or pleasure of the observer, or the utility of the object observed, is not the determining element in the moral or aesthetic value.
The remarkable phrase 'terminates in itself' describes a psychological fact and anticipates such expressions as 'the very nature of affection, the idea itself, necessarily implies resting in its object as an end', and 'the objects of those affections are, each of them, in themselves eligible to be pursued upon its own account, and to be rested in as an end'.[4] Cicero[5] says something which approaches the idea: 'what we speak truly, even if it be praised by none, is naturally praiseworthy.'
Ch. 21. The problem is perhaps supposed to be raised by an antagonist belonging to the atomic school. On your hypothesis of the survival of the soul, which you assume to be material, however much refined, how is there room for disembodied souls in your limited universe? The answer given in both parts of the
