ENGLISH COMMENTARY
in order to mechanical attachment of atoms; providence to blind scattering. That is, the difference between law regarded as the expression of intelligence, and law as the outcome of accidental concurrence; living unity in the parts as opposed to composition of atoms; a world divine in all its parts and in the whole as against a world without the intervention of gods or providence. Summarily speaking, Spirit, Life, Providence against Matter, Mechanism, Accident. In xii. 14, and there alone, Marcus asks the question, debated within the Stoic school itself, whether the order of the Universe, marshalled from a remote beginning, implies an unalterable predetermination or whether there is room for the conception of a personal Providence open to intercession by the individual. Here his argument is simply from the microcosm to the macrocosm, from order and foresight in man to the same attributes of God. This is perhaps the commonest argument in Stoic writers.
Ch. 28. This chapter breaks the connexion between 27 and 29. Gataker thought that it had originally followed ch. 18, as an explanation of the words 'black character'. The origin of the aphorism is a reflection such as prompted v. 11 and ix. 39. Matthew Arnold suggested that he was thinking of 'the lives of Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, Domitian . . . and wrote down for himself such a warning entry as this, significant and terrible in its abruptness.'[1]
Chs. 29–30. Assuming that the Universe is ordered, the man who is ignorant of its purpose is a stranger and a runaway, a blind beggar, a blain and a fragment. He is contrasted with the man who has all that is sufficient in himself, the poor ill-dressed and ill-fed follower of wisdom. The images of the blind man recur in ii. 13, iii. 15; of the needy man, ii. 17. 2, iii. 5; of the blain, ii. 16; and of the fragment, viii. 34.
Ch. 31. The art in which he finds refreshment is the reasonable conduct of life (iv. 2; v. 1. 3). This is the equivalent of retirement from the court and the world (iv. 3; v. 9; vi. 7 and 12).
Chs. 32–7. Reflections upon the two periods which immediately preceded his own birth, the Flavian epoch a.d. 69–96, and the Nerva-Trajan age, a.d. 96–117. In the next chapter he selects the
- ↑ M. Arnold, Mixed Essays: Marcus Aurelius.
