ENGLISH COMMENTARY
where he says that refreshment may be found at any time from the life of a court in philosophic calm, and even more explicitly where he reminds himself 'that no other calling in life is so suited to philosophy as the one in which you now happen to be' (iv. 3; vi. 12; xi. 7).
These regrets are wrung from him by an aspiration for man's high calling. As Kant said:[1] 'the conception of the moral law robs self-love of its influence, self-conceit of its illusion.' In good men the sense of failure is proof of lofty purpose, evidence also perhaps of nervous exhaustion; it is what Milton felt when he said:[2]
My hasting days fly on with full career,
But my late spring no bud or blossom sheweth.
Though Marcus says these things of himself, we can hardly, in the case of one whose whole life was so dedicated to duty and to good, so devoted to the care of a great government, press the words 'in how many paths have you strayed and nowhere found the good life.'
Chs. 2–3. Goodness is the conduct of every day, guided by the law which man as reasonable enjoys in common with God; it is justice, self-control, fortitude, liberty. This obedience to law distinguishes the apostles of freedom, Socrates and the like, from the great conquerors who imposed their will upon the world; Pompeius Magnus, whom Romans liked to compare, for his Eastern conquests, with Alexander, and his rival Julius Caesar, in whom Stoic thought at least saw the destroyer of the Republic rather than the builder of the Empire. Their violence and power was at the expense of their country and themselves. Even Alexander,[3] of whose grand political aims Plutarch was aware, is continually censured by the moralists for his self-will and notorious personal weaknesses.
Probably Marcus' mind recurs to what he said in ch. 1 of the conflict between his own imperial calling, his duty in the theatre of war, and his desire to imitate the philosophic guides of man's life. The judgement he passes is upon two kinds of life. So Pascal contrasts the soldier with the Carthusian recluse; both
