ENGLISH COMMENTARY
Chs. 8–10. The main thread is resumed; in words reminiscent of what was said in ch. 1 of the divine Reason the creative freedom of the individual personality, in its own sphere, is asserted.[1] Then the unity of the all-embracing, self-contained Universe is repeated.[2] Finally we have the antithesis between the mechanistic and vitalistic theories of Nature, and their consequences to human happiness.[3]
Chs. 11–12. The necessity to spiritual life of retiring from the press. The point of view is the same as in iv. 3, and he returns to it again at vii. 28. Some have thought to see in this retirement an anticipation of the Neoplatonic withdrawal into self, a kind of mystical vein in Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus. Yet the words of Marcus, at least, indicate something simpler than mystical absorption, not the turning back of the self into itself, but the everyday religious prescription that a man should refresh himself with holy doctrine.
As Guigue puts it: 'Retreat and draw back from every side (the Latin word is equivalent to the Greek of vii. 28), lest haply the whirlpool of changing things find you therein and you suffer torment', or in the words of à Kempis: 'How can he abide long in peace . . . who little or seldom collects himself within?'[4]
The thought is illustrated here by two similes. One is that of recovering a broken rhythm, and becoming master of the melody by a return to it; that is recovering equilibrium after trouble and disturbance by a return to the balanced self. This makes a man 'content with self, in harmony with his fellows, in tune with the gods'.[5] The second simile is the simple and happy thought which makes court life a step-dame, philosophy a natural mother. Surely those are wrong who see in this a naive reference to his own mother Domitia and to the Empress, the elder Faustina, who was in fact his own father's sister and his wife's mother.
Ch. 13. This advice to effect disillusionment from sense imaginations by the use of analysis continues what was said in iii. 11. There the object was to remove the fear of death, here it is to overcome self-indulgence and self-esteem, which may arise from misrepresentation to one's self of the springs of virtuous
