Man being conscious that he is a spiritual power or an intellectual
power, or that he has such a power, in whatever way he conceives that
he has it,—for I wish simply to state a fact,—from this power which he
has in himself, he is led, as Antoninus says, to believe that there is
a greater power, which, as the old Stoics tell us, pervades the whole
universe as the intellect pervades man.
God exists then, but what do we know of his nature? Antoninus says that
the soul of man is an efflux from the divinity. We have bodies like
animals, but we have reason, intelligence, as the gods. Animals have
life and what we call instincts or natural principles of action: but
the rational animal man alone has a rational, intelligent soul.
Antoninus insists on this continually: God is in man, and so we must
constantly attend to the divinity within us, for it is only in this way
that we can have any knowledge of the nature of God. The human soul is
in a sense a portion of the divinity, and the soul alone has any
communication with the Deity; for as he says (XII. 2): “With his
intellectual part alone God touches the intelligence only which has
flowed and been derived from himself into these bodies.” In fact he
says that which is hidden within a man is life, that is the man
himself. All the rest is vesture, covering, organs, instrument, which
the living man, the real man, uses for the purpose of his present
existence. The air is universally diffused for him who is able to
respire; and so for him who is willing to partake of it the intelligent
power, which holds within it all things, is diffused as wide and free
as the air (VIII. 54). It is by living a divine life that man
approaches to a knowledge of the divinity. It is by following the
divinity within, as Antoninus calls it, that man comes nearest to the
Deity, the supreme good; for man can never attain to perfect agreement
with his internal guide. “Live with the gods. And he does live with the
gods who constantly shows to them that his own soul is satisfied with
that which is assigned to him, and that it does all the daemon wishes,
which Zeus hath given to every man for his guardian and guide, and a
portion of himself. And this daemon is every man’s understanding and
reason” (V. 27).
There is in man, that is in the reason, the intelligence, a superior
faculty which if it is exercised rules all the rest. A man must
reverence only his ruling faculty and the divinity within him. As we
must reverence that which is supreme in the universe, so we must
reverence that which is supreme in ourselves; and this is that which is
of like kind with that which is supreme in the universe (V. 21).
Antoninus speaks of a man’s condemnation of himself when the diviner
part within him has been overpowered and yields to the less honorable
and to the perishable part, the body, and its gross pleasures.