It is just possible that in some of these passages some readers may detect a trace of painful self-consciousness, and imagine that they detect a little grain of self-complacence.  Something of self-consciousness is perhaps inevitable in the diary and examination of his own conscience by one who sat on such a lonely height; but self-complacency there is none.  Nay, there is sometimes even a cruel sternness in the way in which the Emperor speaks of his own self.  He certainly dealt not with himself in the manner of a dissembler with God.  “When,” he says (x. 8), “thou hast assumed the names of a man who is good, modest, rational, magnanimous, cling to those names; and if thou shouldst lose them, quickly return to them.... For to continue to be such as thou hast hitherto been, and to be torn in pieces, and defiled in such a life, is the character of a very stupid man, and one over-fond of his life, and like those half-devoured fighters with wild beasts, who, though covered with wounds and gore, still entreat to be kept till the following day, though they will be exposed in the same state to the same claws and bites.  Therefore fix thyself in the possession of these few names:  and if thou art able to abide in them, abide as if thou were removed to the Islands of the Blest.”  Alas! to Aurelius, in this life, the Islands of the Blest were very far away.  Heathen philosophy was exalted and eloquent, but all its votaries were sad; to “the peace of God, which passeth all understanding,” it was not given them to attain.  We see Marcus “wise, self-governed, tender, thankful, blameless,” says Mr. Arnold, “yet with all this agitated, stretching out his arms for something beyond—­tendentemque manue ripae ulterioris amore”

I will quote in conclusion but three short precepts:—­

“Be cheerful, and seek not external help, nor the tranquillity which others give. A man must stand erect, not be kept erect by others.” (iv. 5.)

“Be like the promontory against which the waves continually break, but it stands firm and tames the fury of the water around it” (iv. 49.)

This comparison has been used many a time since the days of Marcus Aurelius.  The reader will at once recall Goldsmith’s famous lines:—­

     “As some tall cliff that rears its awful form,
      Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm,
      Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread,
      Eternal sunshine settles on its head.”

“Short is the little that remains to thee of life. Live as on a mountain.  For it makes no difference whether a man lives there or here, if he lives everywhere in the world as in a civil community.  Let men see, let them know a real man who lives as he was meant to live.  If they cannot endure him, let them kill him.  For that is better than to live as men do.” (x. 15.)