ENGLISH COMMENTARY
of fellow men and the gods. The image of ch. 11 is thus repeated; man's felicity is to be in harmony with the divine will, a harmony which Dante compares to a 'wheel whose motion nothing jars'.[1]
Ch. 17. A corollary to ch. 16 with its image of rhythmical harmony. The activity of virtue moves on a path which transcends human understanding, and which is different from the paths of the elements. There is perhaps a thought of the fifth element, the motion of which transcends earthly movement, a hint of the opposition between mind and matter which belongs to the occasional Pythagorean or Platonic inclination of Marcus' thought.
Chs. 18–24. A set of disconnected aphorisms. Ch. 18 gives a new turn to the theme of glory. Men are greedy for the praise of posterity, yet grudge it to their contemporaries. The curious point that our predecessors did not know our fame is made by Scipio Africanus in Cicero's Dream of Scipio,[2] but he adds that they were better men than the present and their praise therefore more worth our having.
Ch. 19. A rendering of the maxim, 'we can because we believe we can'. Epictetus[3] has a study of the weakness which is characteristic of ages of decline, want of self-confidence. He makes it the antithesis to self-conceit. His remedy is to practise oneself in difficulties, to propose what is reasonably in one's power, to remember that progress must be gradual.
Ch. 20. A short and rather clumsy statement of what is now called 'playing the game'.
Ch. 21. A chapter in the exact spirit of Socrates, 'the life not subjected to criticism is not worth living'.
Chs. 22–3. By those 'who lose their way' Marcus means the ignorant. Probably he is alluding to Heraclitus' picture[4] of the drunken man led home by a beardless boy, 'the man who forgets where the road leads' (iv. 46). The 'three hours' of the closing words have been interpreted to mean three hours of prayer, but a more natural sense is that three hours rightly spent are as good as three years, a favourite paradox.[5]
