He recognized, indeed, that (to use his own words) “the prime principle in man’s constitution is the social";[238] and he labored sincerely to make not only his acts towards his fellow-men, but his thoughts also, suitable to this conviction:—­

“When thou wishest to delight thyself, think of the virtues of those who live with thee; for instance, the activity of one, and the modesty of another, and the liberality of a third, and some other good quality of a fourth."[239]

Still, it is hard for a pure and thoughtful man to live in a state of rapture at the spectacle afforded to him by his fellow-creatures; above all it is hard, when such a man is placed as Marcus Aurelius was placed, and has had the meanness and perversity of his fellow-creatures thrust, in no common measure, upon his notice,—­has had, time after time, to experience how “within ten days thou wilt seem a god to those to whom thou art now a beast and an ape.”  His true strain of thought as to his relations with his fellow-men is rather the following.  He has been enumerating the higher consolations which may support a man at the approach of death, and he goes on:—­

“But if thou requirest also a vulgar kind of comfort which shall reach thy heart, thou wilt be made best reconciled to death by observing the objects from which thou art going to be removed, and the morals of those with whom thy soul will no longer be mingled.  For it is no way right to be offended with men, but it is thy duty to care for them and to bear with them gently; and yet to remember that thy departure will not be from men who have the same principles as thyself.  For this is the only thing, if there be any, which could draw us the contrary way and attach us to life, to be permitted to live with those who have the same principles as ourselves.  But now thou seest how great is the distress caused by the difference of those who live together, so that thou mayest say:  ’Come quick, O death, lest perchance I too should forget myself.’"[240]

O faithless and perverse generation! how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you?[241] Sometimes this strain rises even to passion:—­

“Short is the little which remains to thee of life.  Live as on a mountain.  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."[242]

It is remarkable how little of a merely local and temporary character, how little of those scoriae which a reader has to clear away before he gets to the precious ore, how little that even admits of doubt or question, the morality of Marcus Aurelius exhibits.  Perhaps as to one point we must make an exception.  Marcus Aurelius is fond of urging as a motive for man’s cheerful acquiescence in whatever befalls him, that “whatever happens to every man is for the interest of the universal";[243] that the whole contains nothing which is not for its