“If the gods have determined about me and about the things which must happen to me, they have determined well, for it is not easy even to imagine a deity without forethought; and as to doing me any harm, why should they have any desire towards that? For what advantage would result to them from this, or to the whole, which is the special object of their providence? But if they have not determined about me individually, they have certainly determined about the whole at least, and the things which happen by way of sequence in this general arrangement I ought to accept with pleasure and to be content with them. But if they determine about nothing, which it is wicked to believe, or if we do believe it, let us neither sacrifice, nor pray, nor swear by them, nor do anything else which we do as if the gods were present and lived with us--but if, however, the gods determine about none of those things which concern us, I am able to determine about myself, and I can inquire about that which is useful; and that is useful to each man which is conformable to his own constitution and nature. But my nature is rational and social; my city and country so far as I am Antoninus is Rome, but so far as I am a man it is the world. The things then that are useful to these cities are alone useful to me.” All this is very beautiful; it is admirable; but it is not human. An abstract idea never ministered to a mind diseased or healed a broken heart; and when all is said the Stoic Weltanschauung is a sad one. As Arnold felt many have felt: “It is impossible to rise from reading Epictetus or Marcus Aurelius without a sense of constraint and melancholy, without feeling that the burden laid upon man is well-nigh greater than he can bear.” But we must add with him: “Honour to the sages who have felt this, and yet have borne it.” For ourselves we feel a need of something more personal, something with more love and sympathy and appeal. How chilling are the maxims of the Porch beside the glowing verses of the Apostle of Love, which express the essence of Christianity--an intense personal love for God, an acceptance of all trials from a motive of love, and a love of our neighbour like unto the love God bears them. This was the Christian answer to all the ancient philosophies--the solution of the world-problem by love; and neither in Marcus Aurelius nor Plotinus nor any of the great pagans do we find anything at once so human and divine, anything which so responds to the noblest aspirations of the human soul without losing sight of its weakness. But it is not the formal doctrine of the book of the Meditations which gives it its attraction; it is the spirit of the author it reveals so intimately. Rarely do we get from philosophers such familiar self-revelation as this from the beginning of the fifth book: interesting, even though it suggests a lack of humour and sense of proportion: