ENGLISH COMMENTARY
often called soul he substitutes the Stoical term, 'the governing self', corresponding to our expression 'the reasonable will'. Later he sometimes employs the phrase 'governing self' for the ruling power in the Universe.
This governing self in man is often identified with Mind[1] or Understanding or the reasonable part, sometimes with the Divine in man. In this Book, however, Marcus distinguishes it from the indwelling Genius,[2] the god-in-man. This distinction is characteristic of the second and third Books and the twelfth, whereas the other Books rarely mention the Genius.
The almost ascetic tone in which he speaks of the body reflects a temper of mind which appears to be personal. It is not far removed from the view expressed by Socrates in the Phaedo of Plato, where the body is a prison-house of the soul. This aspect of Marcus' thought has been supposed to reflect a Platonizing tendency in later Stoicism. Clearly it conflicts with the view which represents the body, as much as the mind, as part of a world-process which is determined to good by a wise Providence. We may best understand it as the outcome of a religious dualism which is opposed to the scientific reflection of genuine Stoicism, a reflection which unifies the world of experience in the light of natural law. Marcus appears to be concerned in this Book to emphasize the importance to moral well-being of a reverence for self, which is also a reverence for the indwelling spirit. At the outset then he lays stress upon the importance of the reasonable judgement to moral well-being, and speaks of moral freedom as opposed to servitude to the flesh, and of man's end as being a restoration of the harmony of the individual with the universal mind.
This contempt for the body is extended elsewhere in his reflections to a depreciation of the world man lives in by comparison with the world of the heavenly luminaries, the visible gods (as Marcus believed). This attitude of mind runs through much of Greek speculation, even of their natural philosophy, but is seen most conspicuously in their language about the visible heavens. We find a more convincing 'piece of divinity' in the hyssop upon the wall than in the solar system; they find the godlike in what is above this region of mist and darkness. A good illustration of this fundamental diversity of view may be drawn from the
