The system of the apologists, so warmly sustained by Tertullian, according to which the good emperors favored Christianity, and the bad ones persecuted it, was already full blown. "Born together," said they, "Christianity and the empire have grown up together, and prospered together." Their interests, their sufferings, their fortunes, their future,—all was in common. The apologists were advocates; and advocates in all orders resemble each other. They have arguments for every situation and all tastes. Nearly a hundred and fifty years rolled on before these sweet and half sincere invitations were understood. But the only impression they made in the time of Marcus Aurelius upon the mind of one of the most enlightened leaders of the Church was as a prognostic of the future. Christianity and the empire will become reconciled. They are made for each other. The shade of Meliton will tremble withjoy when the empire becomes Christian, and the emperor takes in hand the cause of truth.
Thus the Church already took more than one step toward empire. Through politeness, without doubt, but only as a very legitimate consequence of his principles, Meliton does not allow that an emperor can give an unjust order. It was easy to believe that certain emperors had not been absolutely opposed to Christianity. It is pleasant to relate that Tiberius had proposed to place Jesus in the rank of the gods: it was the senate which objected. The decided preference of Christianity for power where it hopes for favors is already very transparent. It is shown, contrary to all truth, that Hadrian and Antonine sought to repair the evil done by Nero and Domitian. Tertullian and his generation say the same thing of Marcus Aurelius. Tertullian doubted, it is true, whether one could be at the same time a Cæsar and a Christian; but this incompatibility a century later struck no one, and Constantine proved that Meliton of Sardis was a very sagacious man when he discerned so well—a century and a half in advance, seeing through the proconsular persecutions—the possibility of a Christian Empire.
The hatred of Christianity and of the empire was that of men who must one day love them. Under the Severi, the language of the Church remained plaintive and tender, as it had been underthe Antonines. The apologists affixed a species of legitimism, a pretension that the Church had always from the first saluted the emperor. "There were never among us," said Tertullian, "partisans of Cassius, partisans of Albinus, partisans of Niger." Foolish illusion! Certainly the revolt of Avidius Cassius against Marcus Aurelius was a political crime, and the Christians did well not to be involved in it. As for Severus, Albinus, and Niger, it was success that decided between them; and the Church had no other merit in attaching itself to Severus than that of seeing clearly who wouldbe thestrongest. This pretended worship of legitimacy was in truth only the worship of a fixed fact. The principle of St. Paul bore fruit: "All power comes from God: he who holds the sword holds it from God for good."
This correct attitude in regard to power clung to exterior necessities as much as to the principles which the Church had received from its founders. The Church was already a powerful association. It was essentially conservative. It needed order and legal guaranties. This was admirably shown in the act of Paul of Samos, Bishop of Antioch, under Aurelian. The Bishop of Antioch had become a powerful personage at this epoch. The goods of the Church were in his keeping: a crowd of men lived on his favors. Paul was a brilliant man, somewhat mystical, worldly, a great secular lord,seeking to render Christianity acceptable to men of the world and authority. The Pietists, as might be expected, considered him heretical, and dismissed him. Paul resisted, and refused to quit the Episcopal house. See into what the most exalted sects are led! They were in possession, and who could decide a question of proprietorship and possession, if not the civil authority. Aurelian, about this time, passed on his way towards Antioch; and the question was referred to him. Here was seen this original spectacle of an infidel sovereign and persecutor deputed to decide which was the true bishop. Aurelian showed under these circumstances remarkably good sense for a layman. He examined the correspondence of the two bishops, took note as to which was in relation with Rome and Italy, and decided that he was the true Bishop of Antioch.
Aurelian made some objections to the theological reasoning used on this occasion; but one fact was evident: it was, that Christianity could not live without the empire, and that the empire, on the other hand, could not do better than adopt Christianity as its religion. The world desired a religion of congregations, of churches, or of synagogues and chapels,—a religion in which the essence of the worship should be re-union, association, and fraternity. Christianity answered to all these conditions. Its admirable worship, its well-organized clergy, assured its future.
Several times in the third century this historical necessity fell short of realization. This is seen most plainly under those Syrian emperors whom their quality of foreigners and base origin placed beyond prejudices, and who, in spite of their vices, inaugurated a largeness of ideas and a tolerance hitherto unknown. Those Syrian women of Emesa,—Julia Domna, Julia Mæsa, Julia Mammæa, Julia Soemia,—beautiful, intelligent, perfectly fearless, and held by no tradition or social law, hesitated at nothing. They did what Roman women would never have dared. They entered the Senate, deliberated there, and governed the empire effectively, dreaming of Semiramis and Nitocris. The Roman worship seemed cold and insignificant to them. Not being bound by any family reasons, and their imagination being more in harmony with Christianity than with Italian Paganism, these women amused themselves with the recitals of the deed of the gods upon earth. Philostratus enchanted them with his "Life of Apollonius Tyane." Perhaps they had more than one secret affinity with Christianity. Certainly Heliogabalus was mad; and yet his chimera of a central, Monotheistic worship, established at Rome, and absorbing all the other worships, proved that the narrow circle of ideas of the Antonines was broken. Alexander Severus went still farther. He was sympathetic with the Christians: not content with according them liberty, he placed Jesus in his lararium with a touching eclecticism. Peace seemed to be made, not, as under Constantine, by the defection of one of the parties, but by a large reconciliation. The same thing was seen again under Philip the Arab, in the East under Zenobia, and generally under those emperors whose foreign origin placed them beyond Roman patriotism.
The struggle redoubled in rage when those grand reformers, Diocletian and Maximian, animated by the ancient spirit, believed themselves able to give new life for the empire by holding it to the narrow circle of Roman ideas. The Church triumphed through its martyrs. Roman pride was humbled. Constantine saw the interior strength of the Church. The population of Asia Minor, Syria, Thrace, and Macedonia, in a word the eastern part of the empire, was already more than half Christian. His mother, who had been a servant in an inn at Nicomedia, dazzled his eyes with the picture of an Eastern empire having its centre near Nicæa or Nicomedia, whose nerves should be the bishops and those multitudes of poor matriculates of the Church who controlled opinion in large cities. Constantine made the empire Christian. From the Occidental point of view, that was astonishing; for the Christians were still but a feeble minority in the West: in the Orient, the politics of Constantine was not only natural, but commanded.
Wonderful thing! The city of Rome received from that politics the heaviest blow it had ever suffered. Christianity was successful under Constantine; but it was Oriental Christianity. In building a new Rome on the Bosphorus, Constantine made the old Rome the capital of the West alone. The cataclysms which followed, the invasions of the barbarians who spared Constantinople, and fell upon Rome with all their weight, reduced the ancient capital of the world to a limited and often humble condition. That ecclesiastical primacy of Rome which burst with so much effect upon the second and third centuries flourished no longer when the Orient had an existence and a separate capital. Constantine was the real author of the schism of the Latin Church and the Church of the Orient.
Rome took its revenge, principally by the seriousness and depth of its spirit of organization. What men were St. Sylvester, St. Damasus, and Gregory the Great! With an admirable courage they labored for the conversion of the barbarians, attached them to themselves, and made them their friends and subjects. The master-work of its politics was its alliance with the Carlovingian house, and the bold stroke by which it re-established in that house the empire which had been dead three hundred years. The Church of Rome rose again more powerful than ever, and became again thecentre of all the grand affairs of the Occident during eight centuries.
Here my task is ended, gentlemen. You will confide to others the care of recounting the prodigious history of the feudal church, its grandeurs and its abuses. Another still will show you the re-action against these abuses,—Protestantism returning to the primitive idea of Christianity, and dividing, in its turn, the Latin Church. Each one of these grand historical pages will have its charm and its instruction. What I have recounted to you is full of grandeur. One is impartial only to the dead. Since Catholicism was an inimical power, a danger to the liberty of the human mind, it was right to oppose it. Our age is the age of history, because it is the age of doubt upon dogmatic matters: it is the age in which, without entering into the discussion of systems, an enlightened mind says to itself, "If, since right exists, and so many thousand symbols have made the pretension of presenting the complete truth, and if this pretension is always found vain, is it indeed probable that I shall be more happy than so many others, and that the truth has awaited my coming here below in order to make its definite revelation?" There is no definite revelation. It is the touching effort of man to render his destiny supportable. But its reward is not disdain, it isgratitude. Whoever believes that he has something to teach us concerning our destiny and our end should be welcome. Recall the account in your old histories of the judicious and discreet words of the Saxon chief of Northumbria, in the assembly where the question was discussed concerning the adoption of the doctrine of the Roman missionaries.
"Perhaps thou rememberest, O king! something which happens sometimes in the winter days, when thou art seated at table with thy captains and thy men-at-arms; that a good fire is lighted, that thy chamber is very warm, while it rains, snows, and blows without. There comes a little bird, which crosses the chamber on the wing, entering at one door, and going out by the other. The moment of this passage is full of sweetness for him: he no more feels the rain nor the storm. The bird is gone in an instant, and from the winter he passes again into the winter. Such seems to me the life of men on this earth, and its course of a moment, compared to the length of time which precedes and follows it. The time before birth and after death is gloomy. It torments us by its impossibility of comprehension: if, then, the new doctrine can teach us any thing a little certain, it deserves to be considered."
Alas! the Roman missionaries did not bear this minimum of certainty, with which the oldNorthumbrian chief, sage as he was, declared himself content. Life always appears to us a short passage between two long nights. Happy those who can sleep in the empty noise of menaces which trouble at times the human conscience, and should no more than cradle it! One thing is certain: it is the paternal smile which at certain hours pierces nature, attesting that one eye regards us, and one heart follows us. Let us guard ourselves from all absolute formula which might become one day an obstacle to the free expansion of our spirits. There is no religious communion which does not still possess some gifts of life and pardon; but it is on the condition only that an humble docility succeeds sympathetic adhesion. The comparison of the regiment, invented by Clement Romanus, and since so many times repeated, ought to be utterly abandoned.
You wished that I should recall to you the grandeurs of Catholicism in its finest epoch. I thank you for it. Some associations of childhood, the most profound of all, attach me to Catholicism; and, although I am separated from it, I am often tempted to say, as Job said (at least in our Latin version), "Etiam si occideret me, in ipso sperabo." This great Catholic family is too numerous not to have still a grand future. The strange excesses which it has supported during fifty years, this unequalled pontificate of Pius IX., the most astonishing in history, cannot be terminated in any ordinary way. There will be thunders and lightnings such as accompany all the great judgment-days of God. And will she have much to do in order to still remain acceptable to those who love her,—this old mother, who will not die so soon? Perhaps she will find, in order to arrest the arms of her conqueror, which is modern reason, some magician's arts, some words such as Balder murmured.
The Catholic Church is a woman: let us distrust the charming words of her agony. Let us imagine that she says to us, "My children, every thing here below is but a symbol and a dream. In this world there is only one little ray of light which pierces the darkness, and seems to be the reflection of a benevolent will. Come into my bosom, where one finds forgetfulness. For those who wish fetishes, I have them; to those who wish works, I offer them; for those who wish intoxication of heart, I have the milk of my breast, which will make drunk; for those who desire love, I have an abundance; to those who crave irony, I pour out freely. Come all: the time of dogmatic sadness is past. I have music and incense for your funerals, flowers for your marriages, the joyous welcome of bells for your new-born ones." Ah, well! if she should say that, our embarrassment would be extreme. But she never will.
Your great and glorious England has resolved, gentlemen, the practical part of the question. It is as easy to trace the line of conduct which the state and individuals should follow in the same matter, as it is impossible to arrive at a theoretic solution of the religious problem. All this may be conveyed in a single word, gentlemen,—liberty. What could be more simple? Faith does not control itself. We believe what we believe true. No one is bound to believe what he thinks false, whether it is false or not. To deny liberty of thought is a sort of contradiction. From liberty of thought to the right to express one's thought, there is but one step; for right is the same for all. I have no right to prevent a person from expressing his mind; but no one has the right to prevent me from expressing mine. Here is a theory which will appear very humble to the learned doctors who believe themselves to be in possession of absolute truth. We have a great advantage over them, gentlemen. They are obliged to be persecutors in order to be consistent; to us it is permitted to be tolerant,—tolerant for all, even for those, who, if they could, would not be so to us. Yes, let us even make this paradox: liberty is the best weapon against the enemies of liberty. Some fanatics say to us with sincerity, "We take your liberty, because you owe it to us according to your principles; but you shall not have ours, becausewe do not owe it to you." Ah, well! let us give them liberty all the same, and we do not imagine that in this exchange we shall be duped. No: liberty is the great dissolvent of all fanaticisms. In giving back liberty to my enemy, who would suppress me if he had the power, I shall really make him the worst gift. I oblige him to drink a strong beverage which shall turn his head, while I shall keep my own. Science supports the strangerégimeof liberty: fanaticism and superstition do not support it. We do more harm to dogmatism by treating it with an implacable sweetness than by persecuting it. By this sweetness we even inculcate the principle which destroys all dogmatism at its root, by understanding that all metaphysical controversy is sterile, and that, for this reason, the truth for each one is as he believes it. The essential, then, is not to silence dangerous teaching, and hush the discordant voice: the essential is to place the human mind in a state in which the mass can see the uselessness of its rage. When this spirit becomes the atmosphere of society, the fanatic can no longer live. He is conquered by a pervading gentleness. If, instead of conducting Polyeuctus to punishment, the Roman magistrate had dismissed him smiling, and taken him amicably by the hand, Polyeuctus would not have continued: perhaps even in his old age he would have laughed at his escapade, and would have become a man of good sense.
Royal Academy, London, April 16, 1880.
MARCUS AURELIUS.
Ladies and Gentlemen,—I have accepted with great pleasure the invitation to address you in this illustrious institution devoted to the noblest researches of science and of true philosophy. I have dreamed since my childhood of this island, where I have so many friends, and which I visit so tardily.
I am a Briton of France. In our old books, England is always called the Island of the Saints; and, in truth, all our saints of Armorican Brittany, those saints of doubtful orthodoxy, who, if they were again alive, would be more in harmony with us than with the Jesuits, came from the Island of Britain. I have seen in their chapel the trough of stone in which they crossed the sea. Of all races, the Britain race is that which has ever taken religion the most seriously. Even when the progress of reflection has shown us that some articles among the catalogues of things which we have always regarded as fixed should be modified, we neverbreak away from the symbol under which we have from the first approved the ideal.
For our faith is not contained in obscure metaphysical propositions: it is in the affirmations of the heart. I have therefore chosen for my discourse to you, not one of those subtleties which divide, but one of those themes, dear to the soul, which bring nearer, and reconcile. I shall speak to you of that book resplendent with the divine spirit, that manual of submissive life which the most godly of men has left us,—the Cæsar, Marcus Aurelius Antonine. It is the glory of sovereigns that the most irreproachable model of virtue may be found in their ranks, and that the most beautiful lessons of patience and of self-control may come from a condition which one naturally believes to be subject to all the seductions of pleasure and of vanity.
The inheritance of wisdom with a throne is always rare: I find in history but two striking examples of it,—in India, the succession of the three Mongol emperors, Bâber, Hoomâyoon, and Akbar; at Rome, at the head of the greatest empire that ever existed, the two admirable reigns of Antonine the Pious and Marcus Aurelius. Of the last two, I consider Antonine the greatest. His goodness did not lead him into faults: he was nottormented with that internal trouble which disturbed without ceasing the heart of his adopted son. This strange malady, this restless study of himself, this demon of scrupulousness, this fever of perfection, are signs of a less strong and distinguished nature. As the finest thoughts are those which are not written, Antonine had in this respect also a superiority over Marcus Aurelius. But let us add that we should be ignorant of Antonine, if Marcus Aurelius had not transmitted to us that exquisite portrait of his adopted father, in which he seems to have applied himself, through humility, to painting the picture of a better man than himself.
It is he who has sketched in the first book of his "Thoughts,"—that admirable background where the noble and pure forms of his father, mother, grandfather, and tutors, move in a celestial light. Thanks to Marcus Aurelius, we are able to understand how these old Roman families, who had seen the reign of the wicked emperors, still retained honesty, dignity, justice, the civil, and, if I may dare to say it, the republican spirit. They lived there in admiration of Cato, of Brutus, of Thrasea, and of the great stoics whose souls had never bowed under tyranny. The reign of Domitian was abhorred by them. The sages who had endured it without submission were honored as heroes. The accession of theAntonines was only the coming to power of the society of sages, of whose just anger Tacitus has informed us,—a society of wise men formed by the league of all those who had revolted against the despotism of the first Cæsars.
The salutary principle of adoption made the imperial court of the second century a true cradle of virtue. The noble and learned Nerva, in establishing this principle, assured the happiness of the human race during almost a hundred years, and gave to the world the best century of progress of which any knowledge has been preserved. The sovereignty thus possessed in common by a group of choice men who delegated it or shared it, according to the needs of the moment, lost a part of that attraction which renders it so dangerous.
Men came to the throne without seeking it, but also without the right of birth, or in any sense the divine right: men came there understanding themselves, experienced, having been long prepared. The empire was a civil burden which each accepted in his turn, without dreaming of hastening the hour. Marcus Aurelius was made emperor so young, that the idea of ruling had scarcely occurred to him, and had not for a moment exercised its charm upon his mind.
At eight years, when he was alreadypræsulof the Salian priests, Hadrian remarked this sad child, and loved him for his good-nature, hisdocility, and his incapability of falsehood. At eighteen years the empire was assured to him. He awaited it patiently for twenty-two years. The evening when Antonine, feeling himself about to die, after having given to the tribune the watchword,Æquanimitas, commanded the golden statue of Fortune, which was always in the apartment of the emperor, to be borne into that of his adopted son, he experienced neither surprise nor joy.
He had long been sated with all joys, without having tasted them: he had seen the absolute vanity of them by the profoundness of his philosophy.
The great inconvenience of practical life, and that which renders it insupportable to a superior man, is, that, if one carries into it the principles of the ideal, talents become defects; so that very often the accomplished man is less successful in it than one who is fitted by egotism or ordinary routine. Three or four times the virtue of Marcus Aurelius came near being his ruin. The first fault into which it led him was that of sharing the empire with Lucius Verus, to whom he was under no obligation. Verus was a frivolous and worthless man. Prodigies of goodness and delicacy were necessary in order to prevent his committing disastrous follies. The wise emperor, earnest and industrious, took with him in hislectica(sedan) the senseless colleague whom he had given himself. He persisted in treating him seriously: he never once revolted against this sorry companionship. Like all well-bred men, Marcus Aurelius discommoded himself continually: his manners came from a general habit of firmness and dignity. Souls of this kind, either from respect for human nature, or in order not to wound others, resign themselves to the appearance of seeing no evil. Their life is a perpetual dissimulation.
According to some, he even deceived himself, since, in his intimate intercourse with the gods, on the borders of the Granicus, speaking of his unworthy wife, he thanked them for having given him a wife "so amiable, so affectionate, so pure." I have shown elsewhere that the patience, or, if one chooses, the weakness, on this point, of Marcus Aurelius, has been somewhat exaggerated. Faustina had faults: the greatest one was that she disliked the friends of her husband; and, as these friends wrote history, she has paid the penalty before posterity. But a discriminating critic has no trouble in showing the exaggerations of the legend. Every thing indicates that Faustina at first found happiness and love in that villa at Lorium, or in that beautiful retreat at Lanuvium upon the highest points of the Alban mount, which Marcus Aurelius described to his tutorFronto as an abode full of the purest joys. Then she became weary of too much wisdom. Let us tell all: the beautiful sentences of Marcus Aurelius, his austere virtue, his perpetual melancholy, might have become tiresome to a young and capricious woman possessed of an ardent temperament and marvellous beauty. He understood it, suffered it, and spoke not. Faustina remained always his "very good and very faithful wife." No one succeeded, even after her death, in persuading him to give up this pious lie. In a bas-relief which is still seen in the Museum of the Capitol at Rome, while Faustina is borne to heaven by a messenger of the gods, the excellent emperor regards her with a look full of love. It seems that at last he had deceived himself, and forgotten all. But through what a struggle he must have passed in order to do this! During long years, a sickness at heart slowly consumed him. The desperate effort which was the essence of his philosophy, this frenzy of renunciation, carried sometimes even to sophism, concealed an immense wound at the bottom. How necessary it must have been to bid adieu to happiness in order to reach such an excess! No one will ever understand all that this poor wounded heart suffered, the bitterness which that pale face concealed, always calm, always smiling. It is true that the farewell to happiness is the beginning of wisdomand the surest means of finding peace. There is nothing so sweet as the return of joy which follows the renunciation of joy; nothing so keen, so profound, so charming, as the enchantment of the disenchanted.
Some historians, more or less imbued with that policy which believes itself to be superior, because it is not suspected of any philosophy, have naturally sought to prove that so accomplished a man was a bad administrator and a mediocre sovereign. It appears, in fact, that Marcus Aurelius sinned more than once by too much lenity. But never was there a reign more fruitful in reforms and progress. The public charity founded by Nerva and Trajan was admirably developed by him. New schools were established for poor children; the superintendents of provisions became functionaries of the first rank, and were chosen with extreme care; while the wants of poor young girls were cared for by the Institute ofJeunes Faustiniennes. The principle that the state has duties in some degree paternal towards its members (a principle which should be remembered with gratitude, even when it has been dispensed with),—this principle, I say, was proclaimed for the first time in the world by Trajan and his successors. Neither the puerile pomp of Oriental kingdoms, founded on the baseness and stupidity of men, nor the pedantic pride of the kingdoms of the middleages, founded on an exaggerated sentiment for hereditary succession, and on a simple faith in the rights of blood, could give an idea of the utterly republican sovereignty of Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antonine, and Marcus Aurelius.
Nothing of the prince by hereditary or divine right, nothing of the military chieftain: it was a sort of grand civil magistracy, without resembling a court in any way, or depriving the emperor of his private character. Marcus Aurelius, in particular, was neither much nor little a king in the true sense of the word. His fortune was immense, but all employed for good: his aversion for "the Cæsars," whom he considered as a species of Sardanapali, magnificent, debauched, and cruel, burst out at each instant. The civility of his manners was extreme. He gave to the Senate all its ancient importance: when he was at Rome, he never missed a session, and left his place only when the Consul had pronounced the formula, "Nihil vos moramar, patres conscripti." Almost every year of his reign he made war, and he made it well, although he found in it onlyennui. His listless campaigns against the Quadi and Marcomanni were very well conducted: the disgust which he felt for them did not prevent his most conscientious attention to them. It was in the course of one of these expeditions, that, encamped on the banks of the Granicus, in the midst of the monotonous plains of Hungary, he wrote the most beautiful pages of the exquisite book which has revealed his whole soul to us. It is probable, that, when very young, he kept a journal of his secret thoughts. He inscribed there the maxims to which he had recourse in order to fortify himself, the reminiscences of his favorite authors, the passages of the moralists which appealed most to him, the principles which had sustained him through the day, sometimes the reproaches which his scrupulous conscience addressed to him. "One seeks for himself solitary retreats, rustic cottages, sea-shore, or mountains: like others, thou lovest to dream of these good things. To what end, since it is permitted to thee to retire within thy soul each hour? Man has nowhere a more tranquil retreat, above all, if he has within himself those things, the contemplation of which will calm him. Learn, then, how to enjoy this retreat, and there renew thy strength. Let there be those short fundamental maxims, which above all will give again serenity to thy soul, and restore thee to a state in which to support with resignation the world to which thou shouldest return."
During the sad winters of the North, this consolation became still more necessary to him. He was nearly sixty years old: old age was premature with him. One evening all the pictures of his pious youth returned to his remembrance, andhe passed some delicious hours in calculating how much he owed to each one of the virtuous beings who had surrounded him.
"Examples of my grandfather Verus,—sweetness of manners, unchangeable patience."
"Qualities which one valued in my father, the souvenir which he has left me,—modesty, manly character."
"To imitate the piety of my mother, her benevolence; to abstain, like her, not only from doing evil, but from conceiving the thought of it; to lead her frugal life, which so little resembled the habitual luxury of the rich."
Then appeared to him, in turn, Diagnotus, who had inspired him with a taste for philosophy, and made agreeable to his eyes the pallet, the covering made of a simple skin, and all the apparel of Hellenic discipline; Junius Rusticus, who taught him to avoid all affectation of elegance in style, and loaned him the Conversations of Epictetus; Apollonius of Chalcis, who realized the Stoic ideal of extreme firmness and perfect sweetness; Sextus of Chaeroneia, so grave and so good; Alexander the grammarian, who censured with such refined politeness; Fronto, "who taught him the envy, duplicity, and hypocrisy of a tyrant, and the hardness which may exist in the heart of a patrician;" his brother Severus, "who made him understand Thrasia, Helvidius, Cato, Brutus, who gave himthe idea of what a free government is, where the rule is the natural equality of the citizens and the equality of their rights; of a royalty which places before all else the respect for the liberty of thecitizens;" and, rising above all others in his immaculate grandeur, Antonine, his father by adoption, whose picture he traces for us with redoubled gratitude and love. "I thank the gods," said he finally, "for having given me good ancestors, good parents, a good sister, good teachers, and in my surroundings, in my relations, in my friends, men almost all filled with goodness. I never allowed myself to be wanting in deference towards them: from my natural disposition, I could sometimes have shown irreverence; but the benevolence of the gods never permitted the occasion to present itself. I am also indebted to the gods, who preserved pure the flower of my youth, for having been reared under the rule of a prince, and a father who strove to free my soul from all trace of pride, to make me understand that it is possible, while living in a palace, to dispense with guards, with splendid clothes, with torches, with statues, to teach me, in short, that a prince can almost contract his life within the limits of that of a simple citizen, without, on that account, showing less nobility and vigor when he comes to be an emperor, and transact the affairs of state. They gave me a brother, whose manners were a continual exhortation to watch over myself, while his deference and attachment should have made the joy of my heart.
"Thanks to the gods again, that I have made haste to raise those who have cared for my education, to the honors which they seemed to desire. They have enabled me to understand Apollonius, Rusticus, Maximus, and have held out to me, surrounded with brilliant light, the picture of a life conformed to nature. I have fallen short of it in the end, it is true; but it is my fault. If my body has long supported the rude life which I lead; if, in spite of my frequent neglect of Rusticus, I have never overstepped the bounds, or done any thing of which I should repent; if my mother, who died young, was able, nevertheless, to pass her last years near me; if, whenever I have wished to succor the poor or afflicted, money has never been wanting; if I have never needed to accept any thing from others; if I have a wife of an amiable, affectionate, and pure character; if I have found many capable men for the education of my children; if, at the beginning of my passion for philosophy, I did not become the prey of a sophist,—it is to the gods that I owe it all. Yes, so many blessings could only be the result of the aid of the gods and a happy fortune."
This divine candor breathes in every page. No one has ever written more simply than did he forthe sole purpose of unburdening his heart to God, his only witness. There is not a shadow of system in it. Marcus Aurelius, to speak exactly, had no philosophy: although he owed almost every thing to stoicism transformed by the Roman spirit, it is of no school. According to our idea, he has too little curiosity; for he knows not all that a contemporary of Ptolemy and Galen should know: he has some opinions on the system of the world, which were not up to the highest science of his time. But his moral thought, thus detached from all alliance with a system, reaches a singular height. The author of the book, "The Imitation," himself, although free from the quarrels of the schools, does not rise to this, for his manner of feeling is essentially Christian. Take away his Christian dogmas, and his book retains only a portion of its charm. The book of Marcus Aurelius, having no dogmatic base, preserves its freshness eternally. Every one, from the atheist, or he who believes himself one, to the man who is the most devoted to the especial creeds of each worship, can find in it some fruits of edification. It is the most purely human book which exists. It deals with no question of controversy. In theology, Marcus Aurelius floats between pure Deism, Polytheism interpreted in a physical sense according to the manner of the Stoics, and a sort of cosmic Pantheism. He holds not much more firmly toone hypothesis than to the other, and he uses indiscriminately the three vocabularies of the Deist, Polytheist, and Pantheist. His considerations have always two sides, according as God and the soul have, or have not, reality. It is the reasoning which we do each hour; for, if the most complete Materialism is right, we who have believed in truth and goodness shall be no more duped than others. If Idealism is right, we have been the true sages, and we have been wise in the only manner which becomes us, that is to say, with no selfish waiting, without having looked for a remuneration.
We here touch a great secret of moral philosophy and religion. Marcus Aurelius has no speculative philosophy; his theology is utterly contradictory; he has no idea founded upon the soul and immortality. How could he be so moral without the beliefs that are now regarded as the foundations of morality? how so profoundly religious, without having professed one of the dogmas of what is called natural religion? It is important to make this inquiry.
The doubts, which, to the view of speculative reason, hover above the truths of natural religion, are not, as Kant has admirably shown, accidental doubts, capable of being removed, belonging, as issometimes imagined, to certain conditions of the human mind. These doubts are inherent to the nature even of these truths, if one may say it without a paradox; and, if these doubts were removed, the truths with which they quarrel would disappear at the same time. Let us suppose, in short, a direct, positive proof, evident to all, of future sufferings and rewards: where will be the merit of doing good? They would be but fools whom gayety of heart should hasten to damnation. A crowd of base souls would secure their salvation without concealment: they would, in a sense, force the divine power. Who does not see, that, in such a system, there is neither morality nor religion? In the moral and religious order it is indispensable to believe without demonstration. It deals not with certainty: it acts by faith. This is what Deism forgets, with its habits of intemperate affirmation. It forgets that creeds too precise concerning human destiny would destroy all moral merit. For us, they would say that we should do as did St. Louis when he was told of the miraculous wafer,—we should refuse to see it. What need have we of these brutal proofs which trammel our liberty?
We should fear to become assimilated to those speculators in virtue, or those vulgar cowards, who mingle with spiritual things the gross selfishness of practical life. In the days which followedthe belief in the resurrection of Jesus, this sentiment was manifested in the most touching manner. The faithful in heart, the sensitive ones, preferred to believe without seeing. "Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed," became the word for the time. Charming words! Eternal symbol of tender and generous Idealism, which has a horror of touching with the hands that which should only be seen with the heart!
Our good Marcus Aurelius, on this point as on all others, was in advance of the ages. He never cared to argue with himself concerning God and the soul. As if he had read the "Criticism of Practical Reason," he saw clearly, that, where the Infinite is concerned, no formula is absolute; and that, in such matters, one has no chance of seeing the truth during his life, without much self-contradiction. He distinctly separates moral beauty from all theoretical theology. He allows duty to depend on no metaphysical opinion of the First Cause. The intimate union with an unseen god was never carried to a more unheard-of delicacy. "To offer to the government of God that which is within thee,—a strong being ripened by age, a friend of the public good, a Roman, an emperor, a soldier at his post awaiting the signal of the trumpet, a man ready to quit life without regret." "There are many grains of incense destined to the same altar: one falls sooner, the other later, in the fire; but the difference is nothing." "Man should live according to nature during the few days that are given him on the earth, and, when the moment of leaving it comes, should submit himself sweetly, as an olive, which, in falling, blesses the tree which has produced it, and renders thanks to the branch which has borne it." "All that which thou arrangest is suited to me, O Cosmos! Nothing of that which comes from thee is premature or backward to me. I find my fruit in that which thy seasons bear, O Nature! From thee comes all; in thee is all; to thee all returns." "O man! thou hast been a citizen in the great city: what matters it to thee to have remained three or five years? That which is governed by laws is unjust for no one. What is there, then, so sorrowful in being sent from the city, not by a tyrant, not by an unjust judge, but by the same nature which allowed thee to enter there? It is as if a comedian is discharged from the theatre by the same prætor who engaged him. But wilt thou say, 'I have not played the five acts; I have played but three?' Thou sayest well; but in life three acts suffice to complete the entire piece.... Go, then, content, since he who dismisses thee is content."
Is this to say that he never revolted against the strange fate which leaves man alone face to facewith the needs of devotion, of sacrifice, of heroism, and nature with its transcendent immorality, its supreme disdain for virtue? No. Once at least the absurdity, the colossal iniquity, of death, strikes him. But soon his temperament, completely mortified, resumes its power, and he becomes calm. "How happens it that the gods, who have ordered all things so well, and with so much love for men, should have forgotten one thing only; that is, that men of tried virtue, who during their lives have had a sort of interchange of relations with divinity, who have made themselves loved by it on account of their pious acts and their sacrifices, live not after death, but may be extinguished forever?
"Since it is so, be sure, that, if it should be otherwise, they (the gods) would not have failed; for, if it had been just, it would have been possible; if it had been suitable to nature, nature would have permitted it. Consequently, when it is not thus, strengthen thyself in this consideration, that it was not necessary that it should be thus. Thou thyself seest plainly that to make such a demand is to dispute his right with God. Now, we would not thus contend with the gods if they were not absolutely good and absolutely just: if they are so, they have allowed nothing to make a part of the order of the world which is contrary to justice and right."
Ah! is it too much resignation, ladies and gentlemen? If it is veritably thus, we have the right to complain. To say, that, if this world has not its counterpart, the man who is sacrificed to truth or right ought to leave it content, and absolve the gods,—that is toonaïve. No, he has a right to blaspheme them. For, in short, why has his credulity been thus abused? Why should he have been endowed with deceitful instincts, of which he has been the honest dupe? Wherefore is this premium given to the frivolous or wicked man? Is it, then, he who is not deceived who is the wise man? Then cursed be the gods who so adjudge their preferences! I desire that the future may be an enigma; but, if there is no future, then this world is a frightful ambuscade. Take notice that our wish is not that of the vulgar clown. We wish not to see the chastisement of the culpable, nor to meddle with the interests of our virtue. Our wish has no selfishness: it is simply to be, to remain in accord with light, to continue the thought we have begun, to know more of it, to enjoy some day that truth which we seek with so much labor, to see the triumph of the good which we have loved. Nothing is more legitimate. The worthy emperor, moreover, was also sensible of it: "What! the light of a lamp burns until the moment in which it is extinguished, and loses nothing of its brilliancy, and the truth, justice, temperance, which are in thee shall be extinguished with thee!" All his life was passed in this noble hesitation. If he sinned, it was through too much piety. Less resigned, he would have been more just; for surely to demand that there should be an intimate and sympathetic witness of the struggles which we endure for goodness and truth is not to ask too much.
It is possible, also, that if his philosophy had been less exclusively moral, if it had implied a more curious study of history and of the universe, it would have escaped a certain excessive rigor. Like the ascetic Christians, Marcus Aurelius sometimes carried renunciation to dryness and subtlety. One feels that this calmness, which never belies itself, is obtained through an immense effort. Certainly, evil had never an attraction for him: he had no passion to struggle against. "Whatever one may do or say," writes he, "it is necessary that I should be a good man; as the emerald might say, 'Whatever one may say or do, I must remain an emerald, and retain my color.'" But, in order to hold one's self always upon the icy summit of stoicism, it is necessary to do cruel violence to nature, and to cut away from it more than one noble element. This perpetual repetition of the same reasoning, the thousand figures under which he seeks to represent to himself the vanity of allthings, these frequently artless proofs of universal frivolity, testify to strifes which he has passed through in order to extinguish all desire in himself. At times we find in it something harsh and sad. The reading of Marcus Aurelius strengthens, but it does not console: it leaves a void in the soul which is at once cruel and delightful, which one would not exchange for full satisfaction. Humility, renunciation, severity towards self, were never carried further. Glory—that last illusion of great souls—is reduced to nothingness. It is needful to do right without disturbing one's self as to whether any one knows that we do it. He perceives that history will speak of him: he sometimes dreams of the men of the past with whom the future will associate him. "If they have only played the part of tragic actors," said he, "no one has condemned me to imitate them." The absolute mortification at which he had arrived had destroyed the last fibre of self-love in him.
The consequences of this austere philosophy might have been hardness and obstinacy. It is here that the rare goodness of the nature of Marcus Aurelius shines out in its full brilliancy. His severity is only for himself. The fruit of this great tension of soul is an infinite benevolence. All his life was a study of how to return good for evil. At evening, after some sad experience ofhuman perversity, he wrote only as follows: "If thou canst, correct them; on the other hand, remember that thou shouldest exercise benevolence towards those who have been given to thee. The gods themselves are benevolent to men: they aid them,—so great is their goodness!—to acquire health, riches, glory. Thou art permitted to be like the gods." Another day, some one was very wicked; for see what he wrote upon his tablets: "Such is the order of nature: men of this sort must act thus from necessity. To wish it to be otherwise is to wish that the fig-tree shall bear no figs. Remember, thou, in one word, this thing: in a very short time thou and he will die; soon after, your names even will be known no more." The thoughts of a universal pardon recur without ceasing. At times a scarcely perceptible smile is mingled with this charming goodness,—"The best method of avenging one's self upon the wicked is not to be like them;" or a light stroke of pride,—"It is a royal thing to hear evil said of one's self when one does right." One day he thus reproached himself: "Thou hast forgotten," said he, "what holy relationship unites each man to the human race,—a relationship not of blood, or of birth, but the participation in the same intelligence. Thou hast forgotten that the reasoning power of each one is a god, derived from the Supreme Being."
In the business of life he was always exact, although a little ingenuous, as very good men usually are. The nine reasons for forbearance which he valued for himself (book xi. art. 18) show us his charming good-nature before family troubles, which perhaps came to him through his unworthy son. "If, upon occasion," said he to himself, "thou exhortest him quietly, and shalt give to him without anger some lessons like these,—'No, my child; we are born for each other. It is not I who suffer the evil, it is thou who doest it thyself, my child!'—show him adroitly, by a general consideration, that such is the rule; that neither the bees, nor the animals who live naturally in herds, resemble him. Say this without mockery or insult, with an air of true affection, with a heart which is not excited by anger; not as a pedant, not for the sake of being admired by those who are present; think only of him."
Commodus (if it was for him that he thus acted) was, without doubt, little touched by this good paternal rhetoric. One of the maxims of the excellent emperor was, that the wicked are unhappy, that one is only wicked in spite of himself, and through ignorance. He pitied those who were not like himself: he did not believe that he had the right to obtrude himself upon them.
He well understood the baseness of men; but he did not avow it. This willing blindness is thedefect of choice spirits. The world not being all that they could wish, they lie to themselves in order not to see it as it is. From thence arises an expediency in their judgments. In Marcus Aurelius, this expediency sometimes provokes us a little. If we wished to believe him, his instructors, several of whom were men of mediocrity, were, without exception, superior men. One would say that every one near him had been virtuous. This is carried to such a point, that one is forced to ask if the brother for whom he pronounces such a grand eulogy in his thanks to the gods was not his adopted brother, Lucius Verus. It is certain that the good emperor was capable of strong illusions when he undertook to lend to others his own virtues.
This quality, expressed as an ancient opinion, especially by the pen of the Emperor Julian, caused him to commit an enormous error, which was that of not disinheriting Commodus. This is one of those things which it is easy to say at a distance, when there are no obstacles present, and when one reasons without facts. It is forgotten at first that the emperors, who, after Nerva, made adoption so fruitful a political system, had no sons. Adoption, with the exheredation of the son or grandson, occurred in the first century of the empire without good results. Marcus Aurelius was evidently from principle in favor of directinheritance, in which he saw the advantage of the prevention of competition.
After the birth of Commodus, in 161, he presented him alone to the people, although he had a twin-brother: he frequently took him in his arms and renewed this act, which was a sort of proclamation. In 166 Lucius Verus demanded that the two sons of Marcus, Commodus and Annius Verus, should be made Cæsars. In 172 Commodus shared with his father the title of Germanicus. In 173, after the repression of the revolt of Avidius, the Senate, in order to recognize in some way the family disinterestedness which Marcus Aurelius had shown, demanded by acclamation the empire and the tribunitial power for Commodus.
Already the natural wickedness of the latter had betrayed itself by more than one symptom known to his tutors; but how shall one foresee the future from a few naughty acts of a child of twelve years? In 176-177 his father made himImperator, Consul, Augustus. This was certainly an imprudence; but he was bound by his previous acts: Commodus, moreover, still restrained himself. In later years, the evil completely revealed itself. On each page of the last books of the "Thoughts," we see the trace of the martyr within the excellent father, of the accomplished emperor, who saw a monster growing up beside him, ready to succeed him, and to take in every thingthrough antipathy, the opposite course from that which he had believed to be for the good of men. The thought of disinheriting Commodus must, without doubt, have come often to Marcus Aurelius. But it was too late. After having associated him in the empire, after having so many times proclaimed him to the legions as perfect and accomplished, to come before the world and declare him to be unworthy would be a scandal. Marcus was caught in his own phrases, by that style of benevolent expediency which was too habitual with him. And, after all, Commodus was only seventeen years old: who could be sure that he would not reform? Even after the death of Marcus Aurelius this was hoped for. Commodus at first showed the intention of following the counsels of meritorious persons with whom his father had surrounded him.
The reproach which is made, then, against Marcus Aurelius, is not that of not having, but of having, a son. It was not his fault if the age could not support so much wisdom. In philosophy, the great emperor had placed the ideal of virtue so high, that no one would care to follow him. In politics, his benevolent optimism had enfeebled the state services, above all, the army. In religion, in order not to be too much bound by a religion of the state, of which he saw the weakness, he prepared the great triumph of the non-official worship, and left a reproach to hover above his memory,—unjust, it is true; but even its shadow should not be found in so pure a life. We touch here upon one of the most delicate points in the biography of Marcus Aurelius. It is unhappily certain, that, under his reign, Christians were condemned to death, and executed. The policy of his predecessors had been firm in this particular. Trajan, Antonine, Hadrian himself, saw in the Christians a secret sect, anti-social, dreaming of overturning the empire. Like all men true to the old Roman principles, they believed in the necessity of repressing them. There was no need of special edicts: the laws against thecœtus illiciti, theillicita collegia, were numerous. The Christians fell in the most explicit sense under the force of these laws. Truly, it would have been worthy of the wise emperor who introduced so many reforms full of humanity, to suppress the edicts which entailed such cruel and unjust consequences. But it is necessary to observe primarily, that the true spirit of liberty, as we understand it, was not then understood by any one; and that Christianity, when it was master, practised it no more than the Pagan emperors. In the second place, the abrogation of the laws against illicit societies would have been the ruin of the empire, founded essentially upon the principle that the state ought not to admit within its bosom anysociety differing from it. The principle was bad, according to our ideas: it is very certain, at least, that it was the corner-stone in the Roman constitution. Marcus Aurelius, far from exaggerating it, extenuated it with all his powers; and one of the glories of his reign is the extension of the right of association. However, he did not go to the root: he did not completely abolish the laws against thecollegia illicita, and in the provinces there resulted from them some processes infinitely to be regretted. The reproach which can be made against him is the same that might be made to the rulers of our day, who do not suppress with a stroke of the pen all the laws restrictive of the liberties of re-union, of association, and of the press.
From the distance at which we stand, we can see that Marcus Aurelius, in being more completely liberal, would have been wiser. Perhaps Christianity left free would have developed in a manner less disastrous the theocratic and absolute principle which was in it; but one cannot reproach a man with not having stirred up a radical revolution on account of a prevision of what would occur several centuries after him. Trajan, Hadrian, Antonine, Marcus Aurelius, could not know the principles of general history and political economy which have been understood only in our time, and which only our last revolutionscould reveal. In any case, the mansuetude of the good emperor was in this respect shielded from all reproach. No one has the right to be more exacting in this respect than was Tertullian. "Consult your annals," said he to the Roman magistrates. "You will then see that the princes who have been severe towards us are of those who have held to the honor of having been our persecutors. On the contrary, all the princes who have respected divine and human laws include but one who persecuted the Christians. We can even name one of them who declared himself their protector,—the wise Marcus Aurelius. If he did not openly revoke the edicts against our brethren, he destroyed their power by the severe penalties which he declared against their accusers." It is necessary to remember that the Roman Empire was ten or twelve times as large as France, and that the responsibility of the emperor was very little in the judgments which were rendered in the provinces. It is necessary, moreover, to recall the fact that Christianity claimed not only the liberty of worship: all the creeds which tolerated each other were allowed much freedom in the empire. Christianity and Judaism were the exceptions to this rule on account of their intolerance and spirit of exclusion.
We have, then, good reason to mourn sincerely for Marcus Aurelius. Under him philosophyreigned. One moment, thanks to him, the world was governed by the best and greatest man of his age. Frightful decadences followed; but the little casket which contained the "Thoughts" on the banks of the Granicus was saved. From it came forth that incomparable book in which Epictetus was surpassed, that Evangel of those who believe not in the supernatural, which has not been comprehended until our day. Veritable, eternal Evangel, the book of "Thoughts," which will never grow old, because it asserts no dogma. The virtue of Marcus Aurelius, like our own, rests upon reason, upon nature. St. Louis was a very virtuous man, because he was a Christian: Marcus Aurelius was the most godly of men, not because he was a Pagan, but because he was a gifted man. He was the honor of human nature, and not of an established religion. Science may yet destroy, in appearance, God and the immortal soul; but the book of the "Thoughts" will still remain young with life and truth.
The religion of Marcus Aurelius is the absolute religion, that which results from the simple fact of a high moral conscience placed face to face with the universe. It is of no race, neither of any country. No revolution, no change, no discovery, will have power to affect it.