ENGLISH COMMENTARY
answer is to accept the objection, to admit that the self is complex, but to require (even with that admission) that the judgement should keep itself free from passions which belong to what we call the lower self.
He then asks what the features of this complex self are. They depend on the fact that man has, like plants, a body which is the scene of unconscious organic change and growth; an animate self like that of animals; and thirdly what we call mind (the reason of ch. 40). Pain indicates hindrance to the unconscious or to the conscious functions, and our duty is to remove the cause of pain, if this is not to do injury to the higher elements (x. 2; vi. 14). But if the mind, or controlling self, is rightly governed, nothing can prove an obstacle to it. It can attain to entire self-contained realization, like the Universe itself, which Empedocles and Plato image as a sphere.[1]
Chs. 42–8. Aphorisms intended to illustrate and confirm what he has just said of the freedom of the enlightened understanding.
Socrates said, at his trial, that having never wronged any man intentionally, he did not deserve to injure himself by proposing a fine to escape the death penalty. Using the same idiom of popular speech and thought, Marcus says that he does not deserve to suffer sorrow since he has not made others suffer, by wronging them, and indeed any suffering which he may have he brings upon himself (ch. 42). Then, turning from sorrow to joy (ch. 26), he dwells upon the gladness of charity and content, coupled with health of soul (ch. 43); thus he may bestow the present time upon himself, realizing the folly of the pursuit of fame hereafter (ch. 44).
Whatever fate befall him, man can preserve the godhead within him, satisfied with the endowment which Nature has furnished. Nothing is of worth which implies the degradation of the self (ch. 45), nor can Nature's rule be broken, for she gives to every one of her creatures the faculty to bear what belongs to its own constitution (ch. 46).
Trouble arises not from external circumstance but from man's judgement, a judgement within his control; in the last resort, a contented death is open to a man who can no longer act with freedom (ch. 47). Death is a refuge, but the fortress of the soul
- ↑ Cf. 'Fortis, et in se ipso totus, teres atque rotundus' Hor. Sat. ii. 7. 86.
