ENGLISH COMMENTARY
so far as to suggest that the patient should confess his thoughts to the friend.
St. Bernard[1] would almost appear to have known the subtle observation of Marcus when he said: 'On every other point a man trusts his own opinion before his neighbours': about himself alone he trusts his neighbours before himself'; Pascal[2] too might have had this passage of Marcus in his mind when he wrote: 'Il estime si grande la raison de l'homme que, quelque avantage qu'il ait sur la terre, s'il n'est placé avantageusement aussi dans la raison de l'homme, il n'est pas content. C'est la plus belle place du monde.'
Ch. 5. The imperfection of his own inward and secret thoughts leads him to consider men whose lives have actually been lived in close communion with God. Probably his revered adoptive father, the Emperor Pius, is in his mind (i. 16; vi. 30). How is it that such men are entirely extinguished by death? Do they never return to this world of generation and decay?
For once he puts his thoughts into the form of hypothetical reasoning, which was so much affected by the Stoic doctors:
If it had been just for them not to be extinguished, the gods would have preserved them (since what is just is within the power of Nature):
But, on the supposition that the dead are extinguished, the gods have not preserved them: therefore it is just for them to be extinguished.
Again:
If the gods were unjust and unrighteous, we should not be debating with them: but (by raising our problem) we are debating with them:
Therefore the gods are just and righteous.
The foundation of the reasoning is the assumption that justice and goodness as much as power are Divine attributes. Marcus, having suggested the notion of conditional immortality, dismisses it, and is content to found himself on God's goodness and justice. He clearly feels the absurdity of debating with God's wisdom: 'Beware thou dispute not of high matters, nor of the secret judgements of God,—why this man is so abandoned and that man
