ENGLISH COMMENTARY
punishment benefits the criminal far more than to escape the consequences of crime.
Ch. 5. There are wrongs of omission as well as of commission. This truth appears now to be a truism; it is the counterpart in ancient Ethics to the golden rule of Christian morality: 'whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, even so do ye also unto them.'
Ch. 6. A restatement of vii. 54. There are two points: first, that present action is our only concern; secondly, that rectitude depends upon clear and distinct apprehension of the object pursued, reference to social good, and contentment with circumstance.
By 'a cause without' Marcus means what is beyond one's own control, what he often calls, in the language of his school, 'the indifferent', objects such as pleasure and pain, good and ill repute.
Ch. 7. Again a restatement, of what he said in vii. 29, but with the addition of stress upon self-government. By saying that the self is to be in its own control he touches upon the problem that is suggested in ch. 4, the division in the man himself, the imperfect unity which contrasts with his reasonable constitution. This was the subject of part of vii. 55, where he said that the reasonable self is not to be inferior to, not to give in to bodily feelings. In the earlier Books the problem is met by the suggested relation of the man to the divine within him, the god in the breast. In the central Books the answer is that man's reason must be consistent with his natural constitution; in that way he may establish also his relations with fellow men and with God.
Chs. 8–9. Government of self, and the subordination of the body to the soul, and of the lower in man to the higher, are related in vii. 54–5 to the government of the whole, with its subordination and co-ordination of its parts and members.
Here Marcus gives a more complete survey of an optimistic view of the Universe, especially of his belief that moral life and social concord rest upon and express the systematic unity which Nature manifests throughout. In ch. 8 he compares the one spirit which runs through and orders both irrational and reasonable beings with the common light by which we see and the atmosphere which we respire.
