Meditations, Marcus Aurelius [books for 20 year olds txt] 📗

being for the use of the superior, and of rational beings being the highest, he may here mean rational beings. He also, in this alternative, assumes a governing power of the universe, and that it acts by directing its power toward these chief objects, or making its special, proper, motion toward them. And here he uses the noun (όρμή) “movement,” which contains the same notion as the verb (ῶρμηδε) “moved,” which he used at the beginning of the paragraph when he was speaking of the making of the universe. If we do not accept the first hypothesis, he says, we must take the conclusion of the second, that the “chief things toward which the ruling power of the universe directs its own movement are governed by no rational principle.” The meaning then is, if there is no meaning in it, that though there is a governing power, which strives to give effect to its efforts, we must conclude that there is no rational direction of anything, if the power which first made the universe does not in some way govern it still. Besides, if we assume that anything is now produced or now exists without the action of the supreme intelligence, and yet that this intelligence makes an effort to act, we obtain a conclusion which cannot be reconciled with the nature of a supreme power, whose existence Antoninus always assumes. The tranquility that a man may gain from these reflections must result from his rejecting the second hypothesis, and accepting the first; whatever may be the exact sense in which the emperor understood the first. Or, as he says elsewhere, if there is no providence which governs the world, man has at least the power of governing himself according to the constitution of his nature; and so he may be tranquil, if he does the best that he can.

If there is no error in the passage, it is worth the labor to discover the writer’s exact meaning; for I think that he had a meaning, though people may not agree what it was. (Compare Book IX, ¶28.) If I have rightly explained the emperor’s meaning in this and other passages, he has touched the solution of a great question. ↩

Caius is C. Julius Caesar, the dictator; and Pomeius is Cn. Pompeius, named Magnus. ↩

Antoninus V, 16. Thucydides, III, 10; ὲν ϒὰρ τῷ διαλλάσσοντι ϒνώμης καὶ αί διαϕοραὶ τῶν έρϒων καθίστανται. ↩

The text has αίτιον, which in Antoninus means “form,” “formal.” Accordingly Schultz recommends either Valkenaer’s emendation ὰϒϒεῖον, “body,” or Corais’ σωμάτιον. Compare Book XII, ¶16; Book X, ¶42. ↩

Areius (Άρειος) was a philosopher, who was intimate with Augustus; Sucton, Augustus, C, 89; Plutarch, Antoninus, 80; Dion Cassius, 51, C, 16. ↩

The text is corrupt at the beginning of the paragraph, but the meaning will appear if the second λοϒικῶν is changed into ὄλων: though this change alone will not establish the grammatical completeness of the text. ↩

“Verus” is a conjecture of Saumaise, and perhaps the true reading. ↩

όρεγομένη in this passage seems to have a passive sense. It is difficult to find an apt expression for it and some of the other words. A comparison with Book XI, ¶17, will help to explain the meaning. ↩

Extensions (άκτϊνες) because they are extended (άπό τοϋ έκτείνεδθαι): A piece of bad etymology. ↩

Compare Epictetus, III, 9, 12. ↩

“As there is not any action or natural event, which we are acquainted with, so single and unconnected as not to have a respect to some other actions and events, so, possibly each of them, when it has not an immediate, may yet have a remote, natural relation to other actions and events, much beyond the compass of this present world.”

Again:

“Things seemingly the most insignificant imaginable, are perpetually observed to be necessary conditions to other things of the greatest importance; so that any one thing whatever, may, for aught we know to the contrary, be a necessary condition to any other.”

Butler’s Analogy, Chapter 7. See all the chapter.

Some critics take τὰ ύπάρχοντα in this passage of Antoninus to be the same as τὰ ὄντα: but if that were so, he might have said πρὸςἄλληλα instead of πρὸς τὰ ύπάρχοντα. Perhaps the meaning of πρὸς τὰ ύπάρχοντα may be “to all prior things.” If so, the translation is still correct. See Book VI, ¶38. ↩

“Virtutis omnis laus in actione consistit.”

—⁠Cicero, De Officiis, I, 6.

↩

τὸ τῆς Νεκνίας may be as Gataker conjectures, a dramatic representation of the state of the dead. Schultz supposes that it may be also a reference to the Νεκνία of the Odyssey (lib. XI.) ↩

The words which immediately follow κατ ὲπακολούθησιν are corrupt. But the meaning is hardly doubtful. (Compare Book VII, 71.) ↩

Those who wish to know what Plato’s Republic is, may now study it in the accurate translation of Davies and Vaughan. ↩

There is some corruption at the end of this section; but I think that the translation expresses the emperor’s meaning. Whether intelligence rules all things or chance rules, a man must not be disturbed. He must use the power that he has, and be tranquil. ↩

Άπέχει τὸ ῖδιον. This sense of άπέχειν occurs in Book XI, ¶1, and Book VI, ¶51; also