his perfect tranquillity, and says, “Either thou livest here, and hast already accustomed thyself to it, or thou art going away, and this was thine own will; or thou art dying, and hast discharged thy duty. But besides these things there is nothing.  Be of good cheer, then.” (x. 22.) “Take me, and cast me where thou wilt, for then I shall keep my divine part tranquil, that is, content, if it can feel and act conformably to its proper constitution.” (viii. 45.)

There is something delightful in the fact that even in the Stoic philosophy there was some comfort to keep men from despair.  To a holy and scrupulous conscience like that of Marcus, there would have been an inestimable preciousness in the Christian doctrine of the “forgiveness of the sins.”  Of that divine mercy—­of that sin-uncreating power—­the ancient world knew nothing; but in Marcus we find some dim and faint adumbration of the doctrine, expressed in a manner which might at least breathe calm into the spirit of the philosopher, though it could never reach the hearts of the suffering multitude.  For “suppose,” he says, “that thou hast detached thyself from the natural unity,—­for thou wast made by nature a part, but now hast cut thyself off—­yet here is the beautiful provision that it is in thy power again to unite thyself.  God has allowed this to no other part—­after it has been separated and cut asunder, to come together again. But consider the goodness with which He has privileged man; for He has put it in his power, when he has been separated, to return and to be reunited, and to resume his place” And elsewhere he says, “If you cannot maintain a true and magnanimous character, go courageously into some corner where you can maintain them; or if even there you fail, depart at once from life, not with passion, but with modest and simple freedom—­which will be to have done at least one laudable act.”  Sad that even to Marcus Aurelius death should have seemed the only refuge from the despair of ultimate failure in the struggle to be wise and good!

Marcus valued temperance and self-denial as being the best means of keeping his heart strong and pure; but we are glad to learn he did not value the rigours of asceticism.  Life brought with it enough, and more than enough, of antagonism to brace his nerves; enough, and more than enough, of the rough wind of adversity in his face to make it unnecessary to add more by his own actions.  “It is not fit,” he says, “that I should give myself pain, for I have never intentionally given pain even to another.” (viii. 42.)

It was a commonplace of ancient philosophy that the life of the wise man should be a contemplation of, and a preparation for, death.  It certainly was so with Marcus Aurelius.  The thoughts of the nothingness of man, and of that great sea of oblivion which shall hereafter swallow up all that he is and does, are ever present to his mind; they are thoughts to which he recurs more constantly than any other, and from which he always draws the same moral lesson.