Emperor as he was, Marcus Aurelius found himself in a hollow and troublous world; but he did not give himself up to idle regret or querulous lamentations. If these sorrows and perturbations came from the gods, he kissed the hand that smote him; "he delivered up his broken sword to Fate the conqueror with a humble and a manly heart." In any case he haddutiesto do, and he set himself to perform them with a quiet heroism--zealously, conscientiously, even cheerfully.
The principles of the Emperor are not reducible to the hard and definite lines of a philosophic system. But the great laws which guided his actions and moulded his views of life were few and simple, and in his book ofMeditations, which is merely his private diary written to relieve his mind amid all the trials of war and government, he recurs to them again and again. "Plays, war, astonishment, torpor, slavery," he says to himself, "will wipe out those holy principles of thine;" and this is why he committed those principles to writing. Some of these I have already adduced, and others I proceed to quote, availing myself, as before, of the beautiful and scholar-like translation of Mr. George Long.
All pain, and misfortune, and ugliness seemed to the Emperor to be most wisely regarded under a threefold aspect, namely, if considered in reference to the gods, as being due to laws beyond their control; if considered with reference to the nature of things, as being subservient and necessary; and if considered with reference to ourselves, as being dependent on the amount of indifference and fortitude with which we endure them.
The following passages will elucidate these points of view:--
"The intelligence of the Universe is social. Accordingly it has made the inferior things for the sake of the superior, and it has fitted the superior to one another." (v. 30.)
"Things do not touch the soul, for they are eternal, and remain immovable; but our perturbations come only from the opinion which is within....The Universe is Transformation; life is opinion" (iv. 3.)
"To the jaundiced honey tastes bitter, and to those bitten by mad dogs water causes fear; and to little children the ball is a fine thing. Why then am I angry? Dost thou think that a false opinion has less power than the bile in the jaundiced, or the poison in him who is bitten by a mad dog?" (vi. 52.)
"How easy it is to repel and to wipe away every impression which is troublesome and unsuitable, and immediately to be at tranquillity." (v. 2.)
The passages in which Marcus speaks of evil as arelativething,--as being good in the making,--the unripe and bitter bud of that which shall be hereafter a beautiful flower,--although not expressed with perfect clearness, yet indicate his belief that our view of evil things rises in great measure from our inability to perceive the great whole of which they are but subservient parts.
"All things," he says, "come from that universal ruling power, either directly or by way of consequence.And accordingly the lion's gaping jaws, and that which is poisonous, and every hurtful thing, as a thorn, as mud, are after-products of the grand and beautiful. Do not therefore imagine that they are of another kind from that which thou dost venerate, but form a just opinion of the source of all."
In another curious passage he says that all things which are natural and congruent with the causes which produce them have a certain beauty and attractiveness of their own; for instance, the splittings and corrugations on the surface of bread when it has been baked. "And again, figs when they are quite ripe gape open; and in the ripe olives the very circumstances of their being near to rottenness adds a peculiar beauty to the fruit. Andthe ears of corn bending down, and the lion's eyebrows, and the foam which flows from the mouth of wild boars, and many other things--though they are far from being beautiful, if a man should examine them severally--still, because they are consequent upon the things which are formed by nature, help to adorn them, and they please the mind; so that if a man should have a feeling and deeper insight about the things found in the universe there is hardlyone of those which follow by way of consequencewhich will not seem to him to be in a manner disposed so as to give pleasure." (iv. 2.)
This congruity to nature--the following of nature, and obedience to all her laws--is the key-formula to the doctrines of the Roman Stoics.
"Everything which is in any way beautiful is beautiful in itself, and terminates in itself, not having praise as part of itself. Neither worse, then, nor better is a thing made by being praised....Is such a thing as an emerald made worse than it was, if it is not praised? or gold, ivory, purple, a lyre, a little knife, a flower, a shrub?" (iv. 20.)
"Everything harmonizes with me which is harmonious to thee, O Universe. Nothing for me is too early nor too late, which is in due time for thee. Everything is fruit to me which thy seasons bring, O Nature! from thee are all things, in thee are all things, to thee all things return.The poet says, Dear city of Cecrops; and wilt not thou say, Dear city of God?" (iv. 23.)
"Willingly give thyself up to fate, allowing her to spin thy thread into whatever thing she pleases." (iv. 34.)
And here, in a very small matter--getting out of bed in a morning--is one practical application of the formula:--
"In the morning when thou risest unwillingly, let these thoughts be present--'I am rising to the work of a human being.Why, then, am I dissatisfied if I am going to do the things for which I exist, and for which I was brought into the world? Or have I been made for this, to lie in the bedclothes and keep myself warm?' 'But this is more pleasant.'Dost thou exist, then, to take thy pleasure, and not for action or exertion? Dost thou not see the little plants, the little birds, the ants, the spiders, the bees, working together to put in order their several parts of the universe? And art thou unwilling to do the work of a human being, and dost thou not make haste to do that which is according to thy nature?" (v. 1.) ["Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise!"]
The same principle, that Nature has assigned to us our proper place--that a task has been given us to perform, and that our only care should be to perform it aright, for the blessing of the great Whole of which we are but insignificant parts--dominates through the admirable precepts which the Emperor lays down for the regulation of our conduct towards others. Some men, he says, do benefits to others only because they expect a return; some men even, if they do not demand any return, are notforgetfulthat they have rendered a benefit; but others do not even know what they have done, butare like a vine which has produced grapes, and seeks for nothing more after it has produced its proper fruit. So we ought to do good to others as simple and as naturally as a horse runs, or a bee makes honey, or a vine bears grapes season after season, without thinking of the grapes which it has borne. And in another passage, "What more dost thou want when thou hast done a service to another? Art thou not content to have done an act conformable to thy nature, and must thou seek to be paid for it, just as if the eye demanded a reward for seeing, or the feet for walking?"
"Judge every word and deed which is according to nature to be fit for thee, and be not diverted by the blame which follows...but if a thing is good to be done or said, do not consider it unworthy of thee." (v. 3.)
Sometimes, indeed, Marcus Aurelius wavers. The evils of life overpower him. "Such as bathing appears to thee," he says, "oil, sweat, dirt, filthy water, all things disgusting--so is every part of life and everything" (viii. 24); and again:--"Of human life the time is a point, and the substance is in a flux, and the perception dull, and the composition of the whole body subject to putrefaction, and the soul a whirl, and fortune hard to divine, and fame a thing devoid of judgment." But more often he retains his perfect tranquillity, and says, "Either thou livest here, and hast already accustomed thyself to it, or thou art going away, and this was thine own will; or thou art dying, and hast discharged thy duty.But besides these things there is nothing. Be of good cheer, then." (x. 22.) "Take me, and cast me where thou wilt, for then I shall keep my divine part tranquil, that is, content, if it can feel and act conformably to its proper constitution." (viii. 45.)
There is something delightful in the fact that even in the Stoic philosophy there was some comfort to keep men from despair. To a holy and scrupulous conscience like that of Marcus, there would have been an inestimable preciousness in the Christian doctrine of the "forgiveness of the sins." Of that divine mercy--of that sin-uncreating power--the ancient world knew nothing; but in Marcus we find some dim and faint adumbration of the doctrine, expressed in a manner which might at least breathe calm into the spirit of the philosopher, though it could never reach the hearts of the suffering multitude. For "suppose," he says, "that thou hast detached thyself from the natural unity,--for thou wast made by nature a part, but now hast cut thyself off--yet here is the beautiful provision that it is in thy power again to unite thyself. God has allowed this to no other part--after it has been separated and cut asunder, to come together again.But consider the goodness with which He has privileged man; for He has put it in his power, when he has been separated, to return and to be reunited, and to resume his place" And elsewhere he says, "If you cannot maintain a true and magnanimous character, go courageously into some corner where youcanmaintain them; or if even there you fail, depart at once from life, not with passion, but with modest and simple freedom--which will be to have done at leastonelaudable act." Sad that even to Marcus Aurelius death should have seemed the only refuge from the despair of ultimate failure in the struggle to be wise and good!
Marcus valued temperance and self-denial as being the best means of keeping his heart strong and pure; but we are glad to learn he didnotvalue the rigours of asceticism. Life brought with it enough, and more than enough, of antagonism to brace his nerves; enough, and more than enough, of the rough wind of adversity in his face to make it unnecessary to add more by his own actions. "It is not fit," he says, "that I should give myself pain, for I have never intentionally given pain even to another." (viii. 42.)
It was a commonplace of ancient philosophy that the life of the wise man should be a contemplation of, and a preparation for, death. It certainly was so with Marcus Aurelius. The thoughts of the nothingness of man, and of that great sea of oblivion which shall hereafter swallow up all that he is and does, are ever present to his mind; they are thoughts to which he recurs more constantly than any other, and from which he always draws the same moral lesson.
"Since it is possible that thou mayest depart from life this very moment, regulate every act and thought accordingly.... Death certainly, and life, honour and dishonour, pain and pleasure, all these things happen equally to good men and bad, being things which make us neither better nor worse. Therefore they are neither good nor evil." (ii. 11.)
Elsewhere he says that Hippocrates cured diseases and died; and the Chaldaeans foretold the future and died; and Alexander, and Pompey, and Caesar killed thousands, and then died; and lice destroyed Democritus, and other lice killed Socrates; and Augustus, and his wife, and daughter, and all his descendants, and all his ancestors, are dead; and Vespasian and all his Court, and all who in his day feasted, and married, and were sick and chaffered, and fought, and flattered, and plotted, and grumbled, and wished other people to die, and pined to become kings or consuls, are dead; and all the idle people who are doing the same things now are doomed to die; and all human things are smoke, and nothing at all; and it is not for us, but for the gods, to settle whether we play the play out, or only a part of it. "There are many grains of frankincense on the same altar; one falls before, another falls after; but it makes no difference." And the moral of all these thoughts is, "Death hangs over thee while thou livest: while it is in thy power be good." (iv. 17.) "Thou hast embarked, thou hast made the voyage, thou hast come to shore; get out. If, indeed, to another life there is no want of gods, not even there. But if to a state without sensation, thou wilt cease to be held by pains and pleasures." (iii. 3.)
Nor was Marcus at all comforted under present annoyances by the thought of posthumous fame. "How ephemeral and worthless human things are," he says, "and what was yesterday a little mucus, to-morrow will be a mummy or ashes." "Many who are now praising thee, will very soon blame thee, and neither a posthumous name is of any value, nor reputation, nor anything else." What has become of all great and famous men, and all they desired, and all they loved? They are "smoke, and ash, and a tale, or not even a tale." After all their rages and envyings, men are stretched out quiet and dead at last. Soon thou wilt have forgotten all, and soon all will have forgotten thee. But here, again, after such thoughts, the same moral is always introduced again:--"Pass then through the little space of time conformably to nature, and end the journey in content,just as an olive falls off when it is ripe, blessing nature who produced it, and thanking the tree on which it grew" "One thing only troubles me, lest I should do something which the constitution of man does not allow, or in the way which it does not allow, or what it does not allow now."
To quote the thoughts of Marcus Aurelius is to me a fascinating task. But I have already let him speak so largely for himself that by this time the reader will have some conception of his leading motives. It only remains to adduce a few more of the weighty and golden sentences in which he lays down his rule of life.
"To say all in a word, everything which belongs to the body is a stream, and what belongs to the soul is a dream and vapour; and life is a warfare, and a stranger's sojourn, and after fame is oblivion. What, then, is that which is able to enrich a man? One thing, and only one--philosophy. But this consists in keeping the guardian spirit within a man free from violence and unharmed, superior to pains and pleasures,doing nothing without a purpose, nor yet falsely, and with hypocrisy...accepting all that happens and all that is allotted...and finally waiting for death with a cheerful mind" (ii. 17.)
"If thou findest in human life anything better than justice, truth, temperance, fortitude, and, in a word, than thine own soul's satisfaction in the things which it enables thee to do according to right reason, and In the condition that is assigned to thee without thy own choice; if, I say, thou seest anything better than this, turn to it with all thy soul, and enjoy that which thou hast found to be the best. But ... if thou findest everything else smaller and of less value than this, give place to nothing else.... Simply and freely choose the better, and hold to it." (iii. 6.)
"Body, soul, intelligence: to the body belong sensations, to the soul appetites, to the intelligence principles." To be impressed by the senses is peculiar to animals; to be pulled by the strings of desire belongs to effeminate men, and to men like Phalaris or Nero; to be guided only by intelligence belongs to atheists and traitors, and "men who do their impure deeds when they have shut the doors.... There remains that which is peculiar to the good man,to be pleased and content with what happens, and with the thread which is spun for him; and not to defile the divinity which is planted in his breast, nor disturb it by a crowd of images; but to preserve it tranquil, following it obediently as a god, neither saying anything contrary to truth, nor doing anything contrary to justice. (iii. 16.)
"Men seek retreats for themselves, houses in the country, sea-shores, and mountains, and thou too art wont to desire such things very much. But this is altogether a mark of the commonest sort of men, for it is in thy power whenever thou shalt chose to retire into thyself. Fornowhere either with more quiet or with more freedom does a man retire than into his own soul, particularly when he has within him such thoughts that by looking into them he is immediately in perfect tranquillity,--which is nothing else than the good ordering of the mind." (iv. 3.)
"Unhappy am I, because this has happened to me? Not so, but happy am Ithoughthis has happened to me, because I continue free from pain; neither crushed by the present, nor fearing the future." (iv. 19.)
It is just possible that in some of these passages some readers may detect a trace of painful self-consciousness, andimaginethat they detect a little grain of self-complacence. Something of self-consciousness is perhaps inevitable in the diary and examination of his own conscience by one who sat on such a lonely height; but self-complacency there is none. Nay, there is sometimes even a cruel sternness in the way in which the Emperor speaks of his own self. He certainly dealt not with himself in the manner of a dissembler with God. "When," he says (x. 8), "thou hast assumed the names of a man who is good, modest, rational, magnanimous, cling to those names; and if thou shouldst lose them, quickly return to them....For to continue tobe such as thou hast hitherto been, and to be torn in pieces, and defiled in such a life, is the character of a very stupid man, and one over-fond of his life, andlike those half-devoured fighters with wild beasts, who, though covered with wounds and gore, still entreat to be kept till the following day, though they will be exposed in the same state to the same claws and bites. Therefore fix thyself in the possession of these few names: and if thou art able to abide in them, abide as if thou were removed to the Islands of the Blest." Alas! to Aurelius, in this life, the Islands of the Blest were very far away. Heathen philosophy was exalted and eloquent, but all its votaries were sad; to "the peace of God, which passeth all understanding," it was not given them to attain. We see Marcus "wise, self-governed, tender, thankful, blameless," says Mr. Arnold, "yet with all this agitated, stretching out his arms for something beyond--tendentemque manue ripae ulterioris amore"
I will quote in conclusion but three short precepts:--
"Be cheerful, and seek not external help, nor the tranquillity which others give.A man must stand erect, not be kept erect by others." (iv. 5.)
"Be like the promontory against which the waves continually break, but it stands firm and tames the fury of the water around it" (iv. 49.)
This comparison has been used many a time since the days of Marcus Aurelius. The reader will at once recall Goldsmith's famous lines:--
"As some tall cliff that rears its awful form,Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm,Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread,Eternal sunshine settles on its head."
"Short is the little that remains to thee of life.Live as on a mountain. For it makes no difference whether a man lives there or here, if he lives everywhere in the world as in a civil community. Let men see, let them know a real man who lives as he was meant to live. If they cannot endure him, let them kill him. For that is better than to live as men do." (x. 15.)
Such were some of the thoughts which Marcus Aurelius wrote in his diary after days of battle with the Quadi, and the Marcomanni, and the Sarmatae. Isolated from others no less by moral grandeur than by the supremacy of his sovereign rank, he sought the society of his own noble soul. I sometimes imagine that I see him seated on the borders of some gloomy Pannonian forest or Hungarian marsh; through the darkness the watchfires of the enemy gleam in the distance; but both among them, and in the camp around him, every sound is hushed, except the tread of the sentinel outside the imperial tent; and in that tent long after midnight sits the patient Emperor by the light of his solitary lamp, and ever and anon, amid his lonely musings, he pauses to write down the pure and holy thoughts which shall better enable him, even in a Roman palace, even on barbarian battlefields, daily to tolerate the meanness and the malignity of the men around him; daily to amend his own shortcomings, and, as the sun of earthly life begins to set, daily to draw nearer and nearer to the Eternal Light. And when I thus think of him, I know not whether the whole of heathen antiquity, out of its gallery of stately and royal figures, can furnish a nobler, or purer, or more lovable picture than that of this crowned philosopher and laurelled hero, who was yet one of the humblest and one of the most enlightened of all ancient "Seekers after God."
A sceptical writer has observed, with something like a sneer, that the noblest utterances of Gospel morality may be paralleled from the writings of heathen philosophers. The sneer is pointless, and Christian moralists have spontaneously drawn attention to the fact. In this volume, so far from trying to conceal that it is so, I have taken pleasure in placing side by side the words of Apostles and of Philosophers. The divine origin of Christianity does not rest on its morality alone. By the aid of the light which was within them, by deciphering the law written on their own consciences, however much its letters may have been obliterated or dimmed, Plato, and Cicero, and Seneca, and Epictetus, and Aurelius were enabled to grasp and to enunciate a multitude of great and memorable truths; yet they themselves would have been the first to admit the wavering uncertainty of their hopes and speculations, and the absolute necessity of a further illumination. So strong did that necessity appear to some of the wisest among them, that Socrates ventures in express words to prophesy the future advent of some heaven-sent Guide.[70]Those who imagine thatwithouta written revelation it would have been possible to learn all that is necessary for man's well-being, are speaking in direct contradiction of the greatest heathen teachers, in contradiction even of those very teachers to whose writing they point as the proof of their assertion. Augustine was expressing a very deep conviction when he said that in Plato and in Cicero he met with many utterances which were beautiful and wise, but among them all he never found, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you." Glorious as was the wisdom of ancient thought, its knowledge respecting the indwelling of the Spirit, the resurrection of the body, and the forgiveness of sins, was but fragmentary and vague. Bishop Butler has justly remarked that "The great doctrines of a future state, the dangers of a course of wickedness, and the efficacy of repentance are not onlyconfirmedin the Gospel, but are taught, especially the last is, with a degree of light to which that of nature is darkness."
[70]Xen. Mem. 1, iv. 14; Plato, Alcib. ii.
The morality of Paganism was, on its own confession,insufficient. It was tentative, where Christianity is authoritative: it was dim and partial, where Christianity is bright and complete; it was inadequate to rouse the sluggish carelessness of mankind, where Christianity came in with an imperial and awakening power; it gives only arule, where Christianity supplies aprinciple. And even where its teachings were absolutely coincident with those of Scripture, it failed to ratify them with a sufficient sanction; it failed to announce them with the same powerful and contagious ardour; it failed to furnish an absolutely faultless and vivid example of their practice; it failed to inspire them with an irresistible motive; it failed to support them with a powerful comfort under the difficulties which were sure to be encountered in the aim after a consistent and holy life.
The attempts of the Christian Fathers to show that the truths of ancient philosophy were borrowed from Scripture are due in some cases to ignorance and in some to a want of perfect honesty in controversial dealing. That Gideon (Jerubbaal) is identical with the priest Hierombalos who supplied information to Sanchoniathon, the Berytian; that Thales pieced together a philosophy from fragments of Jewish truth learned in Phoenicia; that Pythagoras and Democritus availed themselves of Hebraic traditions, collected during their travels; that Plato is a mere "Atticising Moses;" that Aristotle picked up his ethical system from a Jew whom he met in Asia; that Seneca corresponded with St. Paul: are assertions every bit as unhistorical and false as that Homer was thinking of Genesis when he described the shield of Achilles, or (as Clemens of Alexandria gravely informs us) that Miltiades won the battle of Marathon by copying the strategy of the battle of Beth-Horon! To say that Pagan morality "kindled its faded taper at the Gospel light, whether furtively or unconsciously taken," and that it "dissembled the obligation, and made a boast of the splendour as though it were originally her own, or were sufficient in her hands for the moral illumination of the world;" is to make an assertion wholly untenable.[71]Seneca, Epictetus, Aurelius, are among the truest and loftiest of Pagan moralists, yet Seneca ignored the Christians, Epictetus despised, and Aurelius persecuted them. All three, so far as they knew anything about the Christians at all, had unhappily been taught to look upon them as the most detestable sect of what they had long regarded as the most degraded and the most detestable of religions.
[71]See for various statements in this passage, Josephus,c. Apion. ii. Section 36; Cic.De Fin. v. 25; Clem. Alex.Strom, 1, xxii. 150, xxv. v. 14; Euseb.;Prof. Evang. x. 4, ix. 5, &c.; Lactant.Inst. Div. iv. 2, &c.
There is something very touching in this fact; but, if there be something very touching, there is also something very encouraging. God was their God as well as ours--their Creator, their Preserver, who left not Himself without witness among them; who, as they blindly felt after Him, suffered their groping hands to grasp the hem of His robe; who sent them rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling their hearts with joy and gladness. And His Spirit was with them, dwelling in them, though unseen and unknown, purifying and sanctifying the temple of their hearts, sending gleams of illuminating light through the gross darkness which encompassed them, comforting their uncertainties, making intercession for them with groaning which cannot be uttered. And more than all,ourSaviour wastheirSaviour, too; He, whom they regarded as a crucified malefactor was their true invisible King; through His righteousness their poor merits were accepted; their inward sicknesses were healed; He whose worship they denounced as an "execrable superstition" stood supplicating for them at the right hand of the Majesty on high, helping them (though they knew Him not) to crush all that was evil within them, and pleading for them when they persecuted even the most beloved of His saints, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do."
Yes, they too were all His offspring. Even if they had not been, should we grudge that some of the children's meat should be given unto dogs? Shall we deny to these "unconscious prophecies of heathendom" their oracular significance? Shall we be jealous of the ethical loftiness of a Plato or an Aurelius? Shall we be loth to admit that some power of the Spirit of Christ, even mid the dark wanderings of Seneca's life, kept him still conscious of a nobler and a better way, or that some sweetness of a divine hope inspired the depressions of Epictetus in his slavery? Shall our eye be evil because God in His goodness granted the heathen also to know such truths as enabled them "to overcome the allurements of the visible and the terrors of the invisible world?" Yes, if we have of the Christian Church so mean a conception that we look upon it as a mere human society, "set up in the world to defend a certain religion against a certain other religion." But if on the other hand we believe "that it wasa society established by God as a witness for the true condition of all human beings, we shall rejoice to acknowledge its members to be what they believed themselves to be,--confessors and martyrs for a truth which they could not fully embrace or comprehend, but which, through their lives and deaths, through the right and wrong acts, the true and false words, of those who understand them least, was to manifest and prove itself. Those who hold this conviction dare not conceal, or misrepresent, or undervalue, any one of those weighty and memorable sentences which are to be found in theMeditationof Marcus Aurelius.If they did, they would be underrating a portion of that very truth which the preachers of the Gospel were appointed to set forth; they would be adopting the error of the philosophical Emperor without his excuse for it. Nor dare they pretend that the Christian teaching had unconsciously imparted to him a portion of its own light while he seemed to exclude it. They will believe that it was God's good pleasure that a certain truth should be seized and apprehended by this age, and they will see indications of what that truth was in the efforts of Plutarch to understand the 'Daemon' which guided Socrates, in the courageous language of Ignatius, in the bewildering dreams of the Gnostics, in the eagerness of Justin Martyr to prove Christianity a philosophy ... in the apprehension of Christian principles by Marcus Aurelius, and in his hatred of the Christians. From every side they will derive evidence,that a doctrine and society which were meant for mankind cannot depend upon, the partial views and apprehensions of men, must go on justifying, reconciling, confuting, those views and apprehensions by the demonstration of facts"[72]
[72]Maurice,Philos. of the First Six Centuries, p. 37. We venture specially to recommend this weighty and beautiful passage to the reader's serious attention.
But perhaps some reader will say, What advantage, then, can we gain by studying in Pagan writers truths which are expressed more nobly, more clearly, and infinitely more effectually in our own sacred books? Before answering the question, let me mention the traditional anecdote[73]of the Caliph Omar. When he conquered Alexandria, he was shown its magnificent library, in which were collected untold treasures of literature, gathered together by the zeal, the labour, and the liberality of a dynasty of kings. "What is the good of all those books?" he said. "They are either in accordance with the Koran, or contrary to it. If the former they are superfluous; if the latter they are pernicious. In either case let them be burnt." Burnt they were, as legend tells; but all the world has condemned the Caliph's reasoning as a piece of stupid Philistinism and barbarous bigotry. Perhaps the question as to theuseof reading Pagan ethics is equally unphilosophical; at any rate, we can spare but very few words to its consideration. The answer obviously is, that God has spoken to men, [Greek: polymeros kai polytropos], "at sundry times and in divers manners,"[74]with a richly variegated wisdom.[75]Sometimes He has taught truth by the voice of Hebrew prophets, sometimes by the voice of Pagan philosophers. AndallHis voices demand our listening ear. If it was given to the Jew to speak with diviner insight and intenser power, it is given to the Gentile also to speak at times with a large and lofty utterance, and we may learn truth from men of alien lips and another tongue. They, too, had the dream, the vision, the dark saying upon the harp, the "daughter of a voice," the mystic flashes upon the graven gems. And such truths come to us with a singular force and freshness; with a strange beauty as the doctrines of a less brightly illuminated manhood; with a new power of conviction from their originality of form, which, because it is less familiar to us, is well calculated to arrest our attention after it has been paralysed by familiar repetitions. We cannot afford to lose these heathen testimonies to Christian truth; or to hush the glorious utterances of Muse and Sibyl which have justly outlived "the drums and tramplings of a hundred triumphs." We may make them infinitely profitable to us. If St. Paul quotes Aratus, and Menander, and Epimenides,[76]and perhaps more than one lyrical melody besides, with earnest appreciation,--if the inspired Apostle could both learn himself and teach others out of the utterances of a Cretan philosopher and an Attic comedian, we may be sure that many of Seneca's apophthegams would have filled him with pleasure, and that he would have been able to read Epictetus and Aurelius with the same noble admiration which made him see with thankful emotion that memorable altar TO THE UNKNOWN GOD.
[73]Now known to be unhistorical.
[74]Heb. i. 1.
[75][Greek: polypoikilos dophia].
[76]See Acts xvii. 28; 1 Cor.; Tit. i. 12.
Let us then make a brief and final sketch of the three great Stoics whose lives we have been contemplating, with a view to summing up their specialties, their deficiencies, and the peculiar relations to, or divergences from, Christian truth, which their writings present to us.
"Seneca saepe noster," "Seneca, often our own," is the expression of Tertullian, and he uses it as an excuse for frequent references to his works. Yet if, of the three, he be most like Christianity in particular passages, he diverges most widely from it in his general spirit.
He diverges from Christianity in many of his modes of regarding life, and in many of his most important beliefs. What, for instance, is his main conception of the Deity? Seneca is generally a Pantheist. No doubt he speaks of God's love and goodness, but with him God is no personal living Father, but the soul of the universe--the fiery, primaeval, eternal principle which transfuses an inert, and no less eternal, matter, and of which our souls are, as it were, but divine particles or passing sparks. "God," he says, "is Nature, is Fate, is Fortune, is the Universe, is the all-pervading Mind. He cannot change the substance of the universe, He is himself under the power of Destiny, which is uncontrollable and immutable. It is not God who rolls the thunder, it is Fate. He does not rejoice in His works, but is identical with them." In fact, Seneca would have heartily adopted the words of Pope:
"All are but parts of one stupendous whole,Whose body nature is, and God the soul."
Though there may be a vague sense in which those words may be admitted and explained by Christians, yet, in the mind of Seneca, they led to conclusions directly opposed to those of Christianity. With him, for instance, the wise man is theequalof God; not His adorer, not His servant, not His suppliant, but His associate, His relation. He differs from God in time alone. Hence all prayer is needless he says, and the forms of external worship are superfluous and puerile. It is foolish to beg for that which you can impart to yourself. "What need is there ofvows? Makeyourselfhappy." Nay, in the intolerable arrogance which marked the worst aberration of Stoicism, the wise man is under certain aspects placed even higher than God--higher than God Himself--because God is beyond the reach of misfortunes, but the wise man is superior to their anguish; and because God is good of necessity, but the wise man from choice. This wretched and inflated paradox occurs in Seneca's treatiseOn Providence, and in the same treatise he glorifies suicide, and expresses a doubt as to the immortality of the soul.
Again, the two principles on which Seneca relied as the basis of all his moral system are: first, the principle that we ought to follow Nature; and, secondly, the supposed perfectibility of the ideal man.
1. Now, of course, if we explain this precept of "following Nature" as Juvenal has explained it, and say that the voice of Nature is always coincident with the voice of philosophy--if we prove that our real nature is none other than the dictate of our highest and most nobly trained reason, and if we can establish the fact that every deed of cruelty, of shame, of lust, or of selfishness, is essentiallycontraryto our nature--then we may say with Bishop Butler, that the precept to "follow Nature" is "a manner of speaking not loose and undeterminate, but clear and distinct, strictly just and true." But how complete must be the system, how long the preliminary training, which alone can enable us to find any practical value, any appreciable aid to a virtuous life, in a dogma such as this! And, in the hands of Seneca, it becomes a very empty formula. He entirely lacked the keen insight and dialectic subtlety of such a writer as Bishop Butler; and, in his explanation of this Stoical shibboleth, any real meaning which it may possess is evaporated into a gorgeous mist of confused declamation and splendid commonplace.
2. Nor is he much more fortunate with his ideal man. This pompous abstraction presents us with a conception at once ambitious and sterile. The Stoic wise man is a sort of moral Phoenix, impossible and repulsive. He is intrepid in dangers, free from all passion, happy in adversity, calm in the storm; he alone knows how to live, because he alone knows how to die; he is the master of the world, because he is master of himself, and the equal of God; he looks down upon everything with sublime imperturbability, despising the sadnesses of humanity and smiling with irritating loftiness at all our hopes and all our fears. But, in another sketch of this faultless and unpleasant monster, Seneca presents us, not the proud athlete who challenges the universe and is invulnerable to all the stings and arrows of passion or of fate, but a hero in the serenity of absolute triumph, more tender, indeed, but still without desires, without passions, without needs, who can fell no pity, because pity is a weakness which disturbs his sapient calm! Well might the eloquent Bossuet exclaim, as he read of these chimerical perfections, "It is to take a tone too lofty for feeble and mortal men. But, O maxims truly pompous! O affected insensibility! O false and imaginary wisdom! which fancies itself strong because it is hard, and generous because it is puffed up! How are these principles opposed to the modest simplicity of the Saviour of souls, who, in our Gospel contemplating His faithful ones in affliction, confesses that they will be saddened by it!Ye shall weep and lament." Shall Christians be jealous of such wisdom as Stoicism did really attain, when they compare this dry and bloodless ideal with Him who wept over Jerusalem and mourned by the grave of Lazarus, who had a mother and a friend, who disdained none, who pitied all, who humbled Himself to death, even the death of the cross, whose divine excellence we cannot indeed attain because He is God, but whose example we can imitate because He was very man?[77]
[77]See Martha,Les Moralistes, p. 50; Aubertin,Sénèque et St. Paulp. 250.
The one grand aim of the life and philosophy of Seneca wasEase. It is the topic which constantly recurs in his booksOn a Happy Life, On Tranquility of Mind, On Anger, andOn the EaseandOn the Firmness of the Sage. It is the pitiless apathy, the stern repression, of every form of emotion, which was constantly glorified as the aim of philosophy. It made Stilpo exclaim, when he had lost wife, property, and children, that he had lost nothing, because he carried in his own person everything which he possessed. It led Seneca into all that is most unnatural, all that is most fantastic, and all that is least sincere in his writings; it was the bitter source of disgrace and failure in his life. It comes out worst of all in his bookOn Anger. Aristotle had said that "Anger was a good servant but a bad master;" Plato had recognized the immense value and importance of the irascible element in the moral constitution. Even Christian writers, in spite of Bishop Butler, have often lost sight of this truth, and have forgotten that to a noble nature "the hate of hate" and the "scorn of scorn" are as indispensable as "the love of love." But Seneca almost gets angry himself at the very notion of the wise man being angry and indignant even against moral evil. No, he must not get angry, because it would disturb his sublime calm; and, if he allowed himself to be angry at wrong-doing, he would have to be angry all day long. This practical Epicureanism, this idle acquiescence in the supposed incurability of evil, poisoned all Seneca's career. "He had tutored himself," says Professor Maurice, "to endure personal injuries without indulging an anger; he had tutored himself to look upon all moral evil without anger. If the doctrine is sound and the discipline desirable, we must be content to take the whole result of them. If we will not do that, we must resolve to hate oppression and wrong,even at the cost of philosophical composure"But repose is not to be our aim:--
"We have no right to bliss,No title from the gods to welfare and repose."
It is one of the truths which seems to me most needed in the modern religious world, that the type of a Christian's virtue must be very miserable, and ordinary, and ineffectual, if he does not feel his whole soul burn within him with an almost implacable moral indignation at the sight of cruelty and injustice, of Pharisaic faithlessness and social crimes.
I have thus freely criticised the radical defects of Stoicism, so far as Seneca is its legitimate exponent; but I cannot consent to leave him with the language of depreciation, and therefore here I will once more endorse what an anonymous writer has said of him: "An unconscious Christianity covers all his sentiments. If the fair fame of the man is sullied, the aspiration to a higher life cannot be denied to the philosopher; if the tinkling cymbal of a stilted Stoicism sometimes sounds through the nobler music, it still leaves the truer melody vibrating on the ear."
2. If Seneca sought for EASE, the grand aim of Epictetus was FREEDOM, of Marcus Aurelius was SELF-GOVERNMENT. This difference of aim characterises their entire philosophy, though all three of them are filled with precepts which arise from the Stoical contempt of opinion, of fortune, and of death. "Epictetus, the slave, with imperturbable calm, voluntarily strikes off the desire for all those blessings of which fortune had already deprived him. Seneca, who lived in the Court, fenced himself beforehand against misfortune with the spirit of a man of the world and the emphasis of a master of eloquence. Marcus Aurelius, at the zenith of human power--having nothing to dread except his passions, and finding nothing above him except immutable necessity,--surveys his own soul and meditates especially on the eternal march of things. The one is the resigned slave, who neither desires nor fears; the other, the great lord, who has everything to lose; the third, finally, the emperor, who is dependent only on himself and upon God."
Of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius we shall have very little to say by way of summary, for they show no inconsistencies and very few of the imperfections which characterise Seneca's ideal of the Stoic philosophy. The "moral peddling," the pedagogic display, the puerile ostentation, the antithetic brilliancy, which we have had to point out in Seneca, are wanting in them. The picture of theinnerlife, indeed, of Seneca, his efforts after self-discipline, his untiring asceticism, his enthusiasm for all that he esteems holy and of good report-this picture, marred as it is by rhetoric and vain self-conceit, yet "stands out in noble contrast to the swinishness of the Campanian villas, and is, in its complex entirety, very sad and affecting." And yet we must admit, in the words of the same writer, that when we go from Seneca to Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, "it is going from the florid to the severe, from varied feeling to the impersonal simplicity of the teacher, often from idle rhetoric to devout earnestness." As far as it goes, the morality of these two great Stoics is entirely noble and entirely beautiful. If there be even in Epictetus some passing and occasional touch of Stoic arrogance and Stoic apathy; if there be in Marcus Aurelius a depth and intensity of sadness which shows how comparatively powerless for comfort was a philosophy which glorified suicide, which knew but little of immortality, and which lost in vague Pantheism the unspeakable blessing of realizing a personal relation to a personal God and Father--there is yet in both of them enough and more than enough to show that in all ages and in all countries they who have sought for God have found Him, that they have attained to high principles of thought and to high standards of action--that they have been enabled, even in the thick darkness, resolutely to place their feet at least on the lowest rounds of that ladder of sunbeams which winds up through the darkness to the great Father of Lights.
And yet the very existence of such men is in itself a significant comment upon the Scriptural decision that "the world by wisdom knew not God." For how many like them, out of all the records of antiquity, is it possible for us to count? Are there five men in the whole circle of ancient history and ancient literature to whom we could, without a sense of incongruity, accord the title of "holy?" When we have mentioned Socrates, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, I hardly know of another.Justmen there were in multitudes--men capable of high actions; men eminently worthy to be loved; men, I doubt not, who, when the children of the kingdom shall be rejected, shall be gathered from the east and the west with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, into the kingdom of heaven. Yes,justmen in multitudes; but how manyrighteous, how manyholy? Some, doubtless, whom we do not know, whose names were never written, even for a few years, on the records of mankind--men and women in unknown villages and humble homes, "the faithful who were not famous." We do not doubt that there were such--but were theyrelativelynumerous? If those who rose above the level of the multitude--if those whom some form of excellence, and often of virtue, elevated into the reverence of their fellows--present to us a few examples of stainless life, can we hope that a tolerable ideal of sanctity was attained by any large proportion of the ordinary myriads? Seeing that the dangerous lot of the majority was cast amid the weltering sea of popular depravity, can we venture to hope that many of them succeeded in reaching some green island of purity, integrity, and calm? We can hardly think it; and yet, in the dispensation of the Kingdom of Heaven we see such a condition daily realized. Not only do we see many of the eminent, but also countless multitudes of the lowly and obscure, whose common lives are, as it were, transfigured with a light from heaven. Unhappy, indeed, is he who has not known such men in person, and whose hopes and habits have not caught some touch of radiance reflected from the nobility and virtue of lives like these. The thought has been well expressed by the author ofEcce Homo, and we may well ask with him, "If this be so, has Christ failed, or can Christianity die?"
No, it has not failed; it cannot die; for the saving knowledge which it has imparted is the most inestimable blessing which God has granted to our race. We have watched philosophy in its loftiest flight, but that flight rose as far above the range of the Pagan populace as Ida or Olympus rises above the plain: and even the topmost crests of Ida and Olympus are immeasurably below the blue vault, the body of heaven in its clearness, to which it has been granted to some Christians to attain. As regards the multitude, philosophy had no influence over the heart and character; "it was sectarian, not universal; the religion of the few, not of the many. It exercised no creative power over political or social life; it stood in no such relation to the past as the New Testament to the Old. Its best thoughts were but views and aspects of the truth; there was no centre around which they moved, no divine life by which they were impelled; they seemed to vanish and flit in uncertain succession of light." But Christianity, on the other hand, glowed with a steady and unwavering brightness; it not only swayed the hearts of individuals by stirring them to their utmost depths, but it moulded the laws of nations, and regenerated the whole condition of society. It gave to mankind a fresh sanction in the word of Christ, a perfect example in His life, a powerful motive in His love, an all sufficient comfort in the life of immortality made sure and certain to us by His Resurrection and Ascension. But if without this sanction, and example, and motive, and comfort, the pagans could learn to do His will,--if, amid the gross darkness through which glitters the degraded civilization of imperial Rome, an Epictetus and an Aurelius could live blameless lives in a cell and on a throne, and a Seneca could practise simplicity and self-denial in the midst of luxury and pride--how much loftier should be both the zeal and the attainments of us to whom God has spoken by His Son? What manner of men ought we to be? If Tyre and Sidon and Sodom shall rise in the judgment to bear witness against Chorazin and Bethsaida, may not the pure lives of these great Seekers after God add a certain emphasis of condemnation to the vice, the pettiness, the mammon-worship of many among us to whom His love, His nature, His attributes have been revealed with a clearness and fullness of knowledge for which kings and philosophers have sought indeed and sought earnestly, but sought in vain?