ENGLISH COMMENTARY
like Epictetus, means the practical reason, the source of moral judgement. We may illustrate what Marcus says from a little dialogue in The Schoolmaster[1] of Clement of Alexandria, which appears to be of Stoic origin: 'No one who has intellect would put pleasure before good.' 'But we aren't all of us philosophers, don't we all love and pursue life?' 'How do you love God and your neighbour, without philosophy? How do you love yourself, without loving life?' 'I never learned my letters.' 'But even if you never learned to read, you cannot pretend to be deaf.'
Marcus adds that we have a duty to cultivate by practice such intellectual powers as we possess; as Horace said,
Some point of moral progress each may gain
Though to aspire beyond it should prove vain.[2]
See what he says in xii. 6.
The chapter is usually interpreted as an expression of conscious intellectual inferiority on the part of Marcus. It is more natural to think that he is teaching a general lesson. Notice too how the list of necessary attributes of the good life, and the complementary catalogue of failings, have grown since he wrote ii. 5.
Ch. 6. The dialogue in § 2 has been arranged differently by different editors. The sense of the chapter is, in any case, manifest. The reward of goodness lies in doing good. Marcus puts this in an original way. Man is to fulfil his social duties with an instinctiveness like that of the animals; nay more, as naturally as a cultivated plant bears its flower and fruit. Kindness and generosity should be a second nature. This, objects his critic, is to abrogate from man's distinctive gift, reason, and reason involves self-consciousness. The reply is an appeal to the unsophisticated conscience. Reason can certainly estimate gain and loss, so that, if you make a gift, the beneficiary is no doubt in your debt. But it is for him, not for you, to recognize the debt; otherwise your gift was not a free gift. The same point is made by Seneca,[3] and Marcus may remember Seneca or the source on which Seneca drew.
Ch. 7. He now pursues the problem of unselfish goodness, considering man's relation to Him from whom all blessings flow.
