last moments of the Emperor Antoninus Pius.  Antoninus Pius—­who was perhaps truly the best and most perfect man this world has known, better even than Marcus Aurelius; for in addition to the virtues, the kindness, the deep feeling and wisdom of his adopted son, he had something of greater virility and energy, of simpler happiness, something more real, spontaneous, closer to everyday life—­Antoninus Pius lay on his bed, awaiting the summons of death, his eyes dim with unbidden tears, his limbs moist with the pale sweat of agony.  At that moment there entered the captain of the guard, come to demand the watchword, such being the custom.  AEQUANIMITAS—­evenness of mind, he replied, as he turned his head to the eternal shadow.  It is well that we should love and admire that word, said my friend.  But better still, he added, to have it in us to sacrifice, unknown to others, unknown even to ourselves, the time fortune accords us wherein to admire it, in favour of the first little useful, living deed that the same fortune incessantly offers to every willing heart.

6.  “It was doubtless the will of their destiny that men and events should oppress them whithersoever they went,” said an author of the heroes of his book.  Thus it is with the majority of men; Indeed, with all those who have not yet learned to distinguish between exterior and moral destiny.  They are like a little bewildered stream that I chanced to espy one evening as I stood on the hillside.  I beheld it far down in the valley, staggering, struggling, climbing, falling:  blindly groping its way to the great lake that slumbered, the other side of the forest, in the peace of the dawn.  Here it was a block of basalt that forced the streamlet to wind round and about four times; there, the roots of a hoary tree; further on still, the mere recollection of an obstacle now gone for ever thrust it back to its source, bubbling in impotent fury, divided for all time from its goal and its gladness.  But, in another direction, at right angles almost to the distraught, unhappy, useless stream, a force superior to the force of instinct had traced a long, greenish canal, calm, peaceful, deliberate; that flowed steadily across the country, across the crumbling stones, across the obedient forest, on its clear and unerring, unhurrying way from its distant source on the horizon to the same tranquil, shining lake.  And I had at my feet before me the image of the two great destinies offered to man.

7.  Side by side with those whom men and events oppress, there are others who have within them some kind of inner force, which has its will not only with men, but even with the events that surround them.  Of this force they are fully aware, and indeed it is nothing more than a knowledge of self that has far overstepped the ordinary limits of consciousness.