ENGLISH COMMENTARY
The main purpose of chs. 1–18 appears to be a statement of the various ways in which a reasonable character, that is the reason of the Universe manifesting itself in a conscious being, maintains its self-government in various circumstances and various relations. This part ends with a long chapter which is a kind of Duty to my neighbour.
Chapter 19 states four aspects of the self which militate against its rational unity, i.e. its life according to Nature, and ch. 20 contrasts this failure of the self, this desertion of its appointed post, with the co-ordination and subordination exhibited in the physical universe. It is a briefer statement of what was said in ix. 9. The end of ch. 20, with its emphasis upon holiness and justice, points back to the close of ch. 1 and forward to the opening of Book xii. There follows ch. 21 on the ideal of self-consistency, that is, action which is consistent with the common end prescribed by the law of Reason.
There is one remarkable digression, ch. 6, on the history and purpose of drama.
Ch. 1. The opening of Book x is an address to the Soul to enter upon its divinely appointed inheritance, the identification of human will with the unity and purpose of the World soul. Book x. 2 shows how man's nature rises from mere life to animal life, and builds on this a life which is reasonable and social, what is elsewhere called life in the company of gods and men.
Here Marcus gives his ideal of soul entirely rationalized, the claim of man's spirit to be a free personality. In xi. 8 he starts from the nature of the Whole and rises to a similar view. The marks of this reasonable spirit are that it sees itself, is self-conscious, moulds itself (the Greek word for the articulation of the embryo), makes and wins its freedom by a gradual effort, guided by will. Thus it rises out of the animal stage of sensation and impulse into a life of conscious habituation to right.
This growth completed, it enjoys the fruit of the Word, is master of itself at any and every moment of its conscious life of virtue. Good life, the Stoics held, is the exercise of reasonable free-will; it does not need, as Aristotle taught, a completed lease of life for its own fulfilment.
This autonomy is further seen in the freedom of the spirit as
