ENGLISH COMMENTARY
Such was the careful study of moral psychology and pathology which these physicians of man's soul, these 'budge doctors of the Stoic fur' attempted. Galen's treatise on the Passions[1] (anger, appetite, sorrow, and so forth) is a similar psychological investigation by a great medical man. He divides his subject into 'guarding against passions', their 'diagnosis', their 'correction'.
Chs. 14–19. These chapters are examples, for use, of his moral method. They serve to illustrate some sides of what is described in outline in chs. 11 and 13.
Chs. 14–15. Reflection upon evil in other men and the cure for anger in ourselves. The philosopher regards his experience of evil men much as a physician his 'cases' of sickness, the master-mariner a contrary wind or foul weather. They are, each of them, natural and inevitable results of physical laws.
Ch. 16. Change of mind or purpose, upon correction, is not a sacrifice of moral freedom but an outcome of man's liberty (vi. 21).
Ch. 17. He continues the subject of evil conduct in oneself or another. If the evil is inevitable, patience and not rebellious complaint is the remedy.
Ch. 18. Fear of death is cured by remembering the general law of continuity and change in Nature.
Ch. 19. The purpose of the world process proves that man's end cannot be the gratification of pleasure.
Chs. 20–3. The trend of these chapters is to emphasize the insignificance of the individual against the background of the Whole, of which he is so small a part, but at the same time to express belief in the providential order (from which he starts in ch. 20 and to which he returns in ch. 23). The charm of the Meditations depends in part upon these frequent images of transience, expressed quite simply; the ball which
no Question makes of Ayes and Noes,
But Right or Left, as strikes the Player, goes;[2]
the bubble on the stream 'a moment there, then gone for ever';[3] the lamp which flickers and goes out when the oil is spent.
