INTRODUCTION
duty is derived from this school, if not necessarily from Marcus.
Of more recent books Maeterlinck's Sagesse et Destinée continually refers to the Meditations, but in other writers the debt is not so easy to trace with confidence. What is more important is the effect upon the circle of everyday readers. Dr. Rendall has said: 'Translations, essays, and the records of biographies all testify how simple and learned alike fall under his spell.' I remember to have read that in 1914, when the news arrived that the Germans had broken faith and violated the frontier of Belgium, the United States Minister to the court of King Albert drove into the countryside to reflect upon the crisis, taking with him the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius.[1] In view of the wide interest taken in the book and its teaching, it is surprising that there should be no modern exegetical commentary upon the Meditations since 1652, as we have no modern commentary upon Epictetus, since Upton's of 1741 and Schweighäuser's of 1799. It has been left to the historians of philosophy to reconstruct the broad lines of Stoicism, so that, although the text of these two writers has been so carefully and thoroughly explored, little direct commentary upon detailed problems is available to the student. My friend Hastings Crossley, in England, had indeed contemplated an edition of Marcus, but his delicate health only permitted the publication of one Book.[2] Besides this work much valuable and exact criticism of the Meditations may be found in Paul Fournier's edition of Couat's translation,[3] as well as in Dr. Rendall's and Mr. J. Jackson's versions of the book.
- ↑ President Roosevelt seems to have been thinking of the Meditations when he said: 'Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds. They have within themselves the power to become free at any moment.' Address at the celebration of the Pan-American Union's 49th Birthday, 14 April 1939.
- ↑ Hastings Crossley, The Fourth Book of the Meditations &c. 1882.
- ↑ Pensées de Marc-Aurèle, Traduction d'Auguste Couat, éditée par Paul Fournier, Bordeaux, 1904.
