another, in this respect like himself; and again he seemed to detect the advent of some [47] new or changed spirit into the world, mystic, inward, hardly to be satisfied with that wholly external and objective habit of life, which had been sufficient for the old classic soul. His purely literary curiosity was greatly stimulated by this example of a book of self-portraiture. It was in fact the position of the modern essayist,—creature of efforts rather than of achievements, in the matter of apprehending truth, but at least conscious of lights by the way, which he must needs record, acknowledge. What seemed to underlie that position was the desire to make the most of every experience that might come, outwardly or from within: to perpetuate, to display, what was so fleeting, in a kind of instinctive, pathetic protest against the imperial writer's own theory—that theory of the "perpetual flux" of all things—to Marius himself, so plausible from of old.

There was, besides, a special moral or doctrinal significance in the
making of such conversation with one's self at all. The Logos, the reasonable spark, in man, is common to him with the gods—koinos autô pros tous theous+—cum diis communis. That might seem but the truism of a certain school of philosophy; but in Aurelius was clearly an original and lively apprehension. There could be no inward conversation with one's self such as this, unless there were indeed some one else, aware of our actual thoughts and feelings, pleased or displeased at [48] one's disposition of one's self. Cornelius Fronto too could enounce that theory of the reasonable community between men and God, in many different ways. But then, he was a cheerful man, and Aurelius a singularly sad one; and what to Fronto was but a doctrine, or a motive of mere rhetoric, was to the other a consolation. He walks and talks, for a spiritual refreshment lacking which he would faint by the way, with what to the learned professor is but matter of philosophic eloquence.

In performing his public religious functions Marcus Aurelius had ever seemed like one who took part in some great process, a great thing really done, with more than the actually visible assistants about him. Here, in these manuscripts, in a hundred marginal flowers of thought or language, in happy new phrases of his own like the impromptus of an actual conversation, in quotations from other older masters of the inward life, taking new significance from the chances of such intercourse, was the record of his communion with that eternal reason, which was also his own proper self, with the divine companion, whose tabernacle was in the intelligence of men—the journal of his daily commerce with that.

Chance: or Providence! Chance: or Wisdom, one with nature and man, reaching from end to end, through all time and all existence, orderly disposing all things, according to [49] fixed periods, as he describes it, in terms very like certain well-known words of the book of Wisdom:—those are the "fenced opposites" of the speculative dilemma, the tragic embarras, of which Aurelius cannot too often remind himself as the summary of man's situation in the world. If there be, however, a provident soul like this "behind the veil," truly, even to him, even in the most intimate of those conversations, it has never yet spoken with any quite irresistible assertion of its presence. Yet one's choice in that speculative dilemma, as he has found it, is on the whole a matter of will.—"'Tis in thy power," here too, again, "to think as thou wilt." For his part he has asserted his will, and has the courage of his opinion. "To the better of two things, if thou findest that, turn with thy whole heart: eat and drink ever of the best before thee." "Wisdom," says that other disciple of the Sapiential philosophy, "hath mingled Her wine, she hath also prepared Herself a table." Tou aristou apolaue:+ "Partake ever of Her best!" And what Marius, peeping now very closely upon the intimacies of that singular mind, found a thing actually pathetic and affecting, was the manner of the writer's bearing as in the presence of this supposed guest; so elusive, so jealous of any palpable manifestation of himself, so taxing to one's faith, never allowing one to lean frankly upon him and feel wholly at rest. Only, he [50] would do his part, at least, in maintaining the constant fitness, the sweetness and quiet, of the guest-chamber. Seeming to vary with the intellectual fortune of the hour, from the plainest account of experience, to a sheer fantasy, only "believed because it was impossible," that one hope was, at all events, sufficient to make men's common pleasures and their common ambition, above all their commonest vices, seem very petty indeed, too petty to know of. It bred in him a kind of magnificence of character, in the old Greek sense of the term; a temper incompatible with any merely plausible advocacy of his convictions, or merely superficial thoughts about anything whatever, or talk about other people, or speculation as to what was passing in their so visibly little souls, or much talking of any kind, however clever or graceful. A soul thus disposed had "already entered into the better life":—was indeed in some sort "a priest, a minister of the gods." Hence his constant "recollection"; a close watching of his soul, of a kind almost unique in the ancient world.—Before all things examine into thyself: strive to be at home with thyself!—Marius, a sympathetic witness of all this, might almost seem to have had a foresight of monasticism itself in the prophetic future. With this mystic companion he had gone a step onward out of the merely objective pagan existence. Here was already a master in that craft of self-direction, which was about to [51] play so large a part in the forming of human mind, under the sanction of the Christian church.

Yet it was in truth a somewhat melancholy service, a service on which one must needs move about, solemn, serious, depressed, with the hushed footsteps of those who move about the house where a dead body is lying. Such was the impression which occurred to Marius again and again as he read, with a growing sense of some profound dissidence from his author. By certain quite traceable links of association he was reminded, in spite of the moral beauty of the philosophic emperor's ideas, how he had sat, essentially unconcerned, at the public shows. For, actually, his contemplations had made him of a sad heart, inducing in him that melancholy—Tristitia—which even the monastic moralists have held to be of the nature of deadly sin, akin to the sin of Desidia or Inactivity. Resignation, a sombre resignation, a sad heart, patient bearing of the burden of a sad heart:—Yes! this belonged doubtless to the situation of an honest thinker upon the world. Only, in this case there seemed to be too much of a complacent acquiescence in the world as it is. And there could be no true Théodicé in that; no real accommodation of the world as it is, to the divine pattern of the Logos, the eternal reason, over against it. It amounted to a tolerance of evil.

The soul of good, though it moveth upon a way thou canst but little understand, yet prospereth on the journey:

[52] If thou sufferest nothing contrary to nature, there can be nought of evil with thee therein.

If thou hast done aught in harmony with that reason in which men are communicant with the gods, there also can be nothing of evil with thee—nothing to be afraid of:

Whatever is, is right; as from the hand of one dispensing to every man according to his desert:

If reason fulfil its part in things, what more dost thou require?

Dost thou take it ill that thy stature is but of four cubits?

That which happeneth to each of us is for the profit of the whole.

The profit of the whole,—that was sufficient!+

—Links, in a train of thought really generous! of which, nevertheless, the forced and yet facile optimism, refusing to