=136.= M. AURELIUS ANTONINUS PIUS (121-180 A.D.) is commonly spoken of as ‘the philosopher upon the throne,’ but this description may be misleading. Aurelius was in the first instance a Roman prince; to the institutions of Rome and to his own position as their chief representative he owed his chief allegiance. He was undoubtedly an apt pupil of the courtly philosophers by whom he was surrounded; he deliberately chose philosophy in preference to rhetoric, and of the various schools of philosophy his judgment ranked Stoicism highest. He was fairly well instructed, but by no means learned, in its doctrines; he adhered with sincerity, but without ardour, to its practical precepts. In the leisure hours of a busy life it was his comfort and his relaxation to express his musings in the form of philosophic reflections. But his attitude towards Stoicism is always that of a judge rather than that of an advocate; and much that the school received as convincing reasoning he rejected as ingenious pleading. Hence a large part of Stoic doctrine, and almost the whole of its detailed instruction, disappears from his view; but we have the advantage that the last of the Stoic writers brings out into clearer relief those features of this philosophy which could still rivet attention in his own time, and which therefore form part of the last message of the ancient world to the coming generations. [Sidenote: His belief in the cosmos.] =137.= It follows at once from the judicial attitude of Marcus Aurelius that he cannot countenance the Stoic claim to certainty of knowledge. The objection of opponents that the wise man, who alone (according to Stoic theory) possesses such knowledge, is nowhere to be found, is sustained: ‘Things are so wrapped in veils, that to gifted philosophers not a few all certitude seems unattainable. Nay to the Stoics themselves such attainment seems precarious; and every act of intellectual assent is fallible; for where is the infallible man[131]?’ Yet Aurelius does not relapse into scepticism. One doctrine at least is so convincing that he cannot for a moment doubt it; it does after all shine forth as true by its own light. It is that all things are ultimately one, and that man lives not in a chaos, but in a cosmos: ‘All things intertwine one with another, in a holy bond; scarce one thing is disconnected from another. In due coordination they combine for one and the same order. For the world-order is one made out of all things, and god is one pervading all, and being is one, and law is one, even the common reason of all beings possessed of mind, and truth is one: seeing that truth is the one perfecting of beings one in kind and endowed with the same reason[132].’