From all that has been said, it follows that the universe is administered by the Providence of God ([Greek:  pronoia]), and that all things are wisely ordered.  There are passages in which Antoninus expresses doubts, or states different possible theories of the constitution and government of the universe; but he always recurs to his fundamental principle, that if we admit the existence of a deity, we must also admit that he orders all things wisely and well (iv. 27; vi. 1; ix. 28; xii. 5; and many other passages).  Epictetus says (i. 6) that we can discern the providence which rules the world, if we possess two things,—­the power of seeing all that happens with respect to each thing, and a grateful disposition.

But if all things are wisely ordered, how is the world so full of what we call evil, physical and moral?  If instead of saying that there is evil in the world, we use the expression which I have used, “what we call evil,” we have partly anticipated the emperor’s answer.  We see and feel and know imperfectly very few things in the few years that we live, and all the knowledge and all the experience of all the human race is positive ignorance of the whole, which is infinite.  Now, as our reason teaches us that everything is in some way related to and connected with every other thing, all notion of evil as being in the universe of things is a contradiction; for if the whole comes from and is governed by an intelligent being, it is impossible to conceive anything in it which tends to the evil or destruction of the whole (viii. 55; x. 6).  Everything is in constant mutation, and yet the whole subsists; we might imagine the solar system resolved into its elemental parts, and yet the whole would still subsist “ever young and perfect.”

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