ENGLISH COMMENTARY
mean 'bearing with you the inspired word'. If this be so, compare the remarkable expression at the close of xii. 23.
Chs. 9–10. The mention of the indwelling reason seems to kindle the writer's enthusiasm, so that he gives utterance to this splendid statement of belief in Providence and the penetration of the whole Universe by the one Reason (Logos). 'One universe out of all, . . . and one truth.' The language of St. Paul[1] resembles this: 'One body and one spirit . . . one God and Father of all, God over all and through all and in all', as (using Stoic words) he spoke just before of preserving the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.
The 'sacred bond' is interpreted by Pope:[2]
Vast chain of Being, which from God began,
and Marcus may refer to the Stoic allegorization of the chain fastened to Zeus in Homer,[3] which his contemporary Aelius Aristides[4] interprets in this sense. Characteristically the expression of unity is followed by the other dominant motive, the rapid vanishing of the temporal.[5]
Ch. 11. The identification here of Nature and Reason implies the principle that natural things endeavour to persist in their own being. The apparent self-seeking of the individual is in animals unconsciously subordinated to reason, in man consciously. Thus his interest and his duty to fellow-man and to the Whole are one. 'As (natural agents) have their law, which law directeth them in the means whereby they tend to their own perfection: so likewise another law there is, which toucheth them as they are sociable parts united into one body; a law which bindeth them each to serve unto other's good, and all to prefer the good of the whole before whatsoever their own particular.'[6]
Ch. 12. 'Upright or held upright' agrees with ch. 7 in meaning. We may suppose that Marcus has advanced from the orthodox position of iii. 5 to an increased sense of dependence upon God's help. 'He shall rise if God extraordinarily lends him His hand; he shall rise by abandoning and renouncing his own proper means, and by suffering himself to be raised and elevated by means
