principles that this is so, and that even bees do not do as he does, nor any animals, which are formed by nature to be gregarious. And thou must do this neither with any double meaning nor in way of reproach, but affectionately and without any rancour in thy soul; and not as if thou wert lecturing him, nor yet that any by-stander may admire, but when he is alone.” Again he asks himself what have the evil deeds of others to do with the intellect’s abiding pure, self-possessed, temperate, and just. Nothing at all: “Even as if one standing by a sweet and transparent fountain were to utter abuse against it, and it ceased not to pour forth its salutary waters. And if one cast mud or filth therein, it would speedily dissipate and wash it away, and would in no wise be stained by it. How shalt thou be an ever-flowing spring, and not a cistern? Grow every hour into freedom, united with gentleness, simplicity and modesty.” The view of his fellow-men which Marcus expresses is a curious mixture of charity, pity, and contempt. He frequently strengthened himself against human respect by considering that the evil lives of other men made their opinion contemptible. These passages seem to reveal a nature tinged with spiritual pride and aloofness. He insists time and again on the fellowship of men, as fellow-citizens of one great polity: but he has a profound sense of their folly and baseness too. Yet his lonely nature craved for friendship with kindred souls, though seemingly fastidious in its friendship. With his detached attitude towards his fellow-men it is little wonder that he had but few friends; and he was conscious of it. In a letter to Fronto he mentions this and also in a passage from the Meditations: “Solace your departure with the reflection: I am leaving a life in which my own associates, for whom I have so strived, prayed, and thought, themselves wish for my removal, their hope being that they will perchance gain in freedom thereby.” This note of world-weariness and disillusion as regards everything men prize recurs again and again in the course of the Meditations: it runs through his doctrines of resignation, of charity and forbearance, of self-restraint and peace. Its recurrence in the many--perhaps too many--quotations in this chapter may have wearied the reader: yet I do not regret that I have made it prominent, for it was the most intense idea in the Emperor’s mind, and surely strange enough to be interesting when found in the ruler of the greatest of Empires at the height of its civilisation. I hope, too, that these quotations will initiate the reader into the spirit of the great Stoic. There was no question of giving an exact account of the system expounded in the Meditations: for there is no such system; Marcus Aurelius was more interested in virtue than in learning; he would rather feel compunction than know its definition. CHAPTER VII LAST DAYS IN ROME