ENGLISH COMMENTARY
ment in himself and his fellows, the language reflecting trouble, anxiety, and even personal loss.[1]
Both the inquiry into the right use and advantage of intercession (ch. 40) and the quotation from a letter of Epicurus (ch. 41) have this note of immediate personal feeling. Remarkable too is the repeated return to the subject of criticism or dislike of himself.[2]
Some parts of the Book appear to belong to an earlier period of his life than the contemporary events mentioned in Book viii. Thus the reference to the Plague (ch. 2), which first broke out in Italy on the return of Lucius Aurelius Verus from the Parthian campaign, would be naturally dated to the years a.d. 166–8, and in the next chapter Marcus writes as though expecting the birth of a child. His youngest child, Vibia Aurelia, was born in a.d. 166. If the whole Book belongs together and is relatively early in composition, we may see an explanation of a tone and feeling nearer to the living moment than he is wont to express when composing in riper age and philosophic calm.
Ch. 1. The object of this carefully written section is to give a religious foundation to the moral system of Stoicism. Injustice, untruth, indulgence in pleasure, rebellion in pain, care for the external and indifferent goods of life—these are all, in the end, offences against the will of the supreme Divine principle, attempts to resist the law of Reason and Universal Nature. Passions like these can only be the outcome of failure to obey the Divine purpose, to believe in and trust the perfect ordinance of Providence. In much the same spirit Plato in the Laws,[3] his last work, insists that the ordinances of the Ideal City must rest upon a reasoned conviction in its citizens that God exists, and that he governs for good ends. Plato, however, ordained punishment for the persistent unbeliever; there is no trace in Marcus, here or elsewhere, of the least leaning to the persecution of opinion. We learn that he founded a chair at Athens for the Epicurean philosophy, as well as for three rival schools.[4] The language of paragraph 5 is of interest because the 'natural powers', issuing from Nature's creative impulse and propagating themselves in the world of plants and animals and men, belong to a theory of creation which
