ENGLISH COMMENTARY
taken into so high favour, . . . answer with the prophet: "Thou are just, O Lord, and thy judgement is right."'[1] Thomas Gataker cannot speak too highly of the Emperor, 'who wishes to account nothing unjust or unfair to God'; Renan,[2] on the contrary, selects the chapter for gentle censure: 'Ah! c'est trop de résignation, cher maître. S'il en est véritablement ainsi, nous avons le droit de nous plaindre. Dire que, si ce monde n'a pas sa contre-partie, l'homme qui s'est sacrifié pour le bien ou le vrai doit le quitter content et absoudre les dieux, cela est trop naïf. Non, il a droit de les blasphémer. . . . Toute la vie se passa pour lui dans cette noble hésitation. S'il pécha, ce fut par trop de piété. Moins résigné il eût été plus juste; car, sûrement, demander qu'il y ait un spectateur intime et sympathique des luttes que nous livrons pour le bien et le vrai, ce n'est pas trop demander.'
The religious temper, the naïveté of Marcus, if that is the right word, appears in his combination of words that recall the old Roman religious language of covenant and contract with phrases that imply man's communion with God. He does the same in ch. 14, and again in what he implies in xii. 36 about propitiation. When therefore he speaks of men who have made contracts with God (that seems the literal sense), and have had communion by acts of piety and religious observances, we are reminded of the solemn dedication by Quintus Fabius Maximus, at the height of the Second Carthaginian War, of a Sacred Spring. Warde Fowler[3] says of this solemn ritual act: 'This is not an address to Jupiter, nor is there any sign in it that the god was considered as bound to perform his part as in a contract; the covenant is a one-sided one, the people undertaking an act of self-renunciation, if the god be gracious to them.'
Marcus' devotion to religious observance, which the Roman populace ridiculed, followed scrupulously the ritual forms and language of the religion of his fathers, but was interpreted in the light of his own spiritual belief.
Ch. 6. The writer returns from larger issues to brief practical maxims, continuing in this vein till the end of ch. 13.
He first illustrates from the two hands the effect of habituation
