Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus — Marcus Aurelius — John Shaqi
Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
Marcus Aurelius · en
All things, all forms, are dissolved, and new forms appear. All living
things undergo the change which we call death. If we call death an evil,
then all change is an evil. Living beings also suffer pain, and man
suffers most of all, for he suffers both in and by his body and by his
intelligent part. Men suffer also from one another, and perhaps the
largest part of human suffering comes to man from those whom he calls
his brothers. Antoninus says (viii. 55), "Generally, wickedness does no
harm at all to the universe; and particularly, the wickedness [of one
man] does no harm to another. It is only harmful to him who has it in
his power to be released from it as soon as he shall choose." The first
part of this is perfectly consistent with the doctrine that the whole
can sustain no evil or harm. The second part must be explained by the
Stoic principle that there is no evil in anything which is not in our
power. What wrong we suffer from another is his evil, not ours. But this
is an admission that there is evil in a sort, for he who does wrong does
evil, and if others can endure the wrong, still there is evil in the
wrong-doer. Antoninus (xi. 18) gives many excellent precepts with
respect to wrongs and injuries, and his precepts are practical. He
teaches us to bear what we cannot avoid, and his lessons may be just as
useful to him who denies the being and the government of God as to him
who believes in both. There is no direct answer in Antoninus to the
objections which may be made to the existence and providence of God
because of the moral disorder and suffering which are in the world,
except this answer which he makes in reply to the supposition that even
the best men may be extinguished by death. He says if it is so, we may
be sure that if it ought to have been otherwise, the gods would have
ordered it otherwise (xii. 5). His conviction of the wisdom which we may
observe in the government of the world is too strong to be disturbed by
any apparent irregularities in the order of things. That these disorders
exist is a fact, and those who would conclude from them against the
being and government of God conclude too hastily. We all admit that
there is an order in the material world, a Nature, in the sense in which
that word has been explained, a constitution ([Greek: kataskeuê]), what we
call a system, a relation of parts to one another and a fitness of the
whole for something. So in the constitution of plants and of animals
there is an order, a fitness for some end. Sometimes the order, as we
conceive it, is interrupted, and the end, as we conceive it, is not
attained. The seed, the plant, or the animal sometimes perishes before
it has passed through all its changes and done all its uses. It is
according to Nature, that is a fixed order, for some to perish early and
for others to do all their uses and leave successors to take their
place. So man has a corporeal and intellectual and moral constitution