ENGLISH COMMENTARY
in moral progress. (The further question of the effect of natural left-handedness on mental development has been much studied in recent years, and the results applied to education.)
Plato observes that a child is bom nearly ambidextrous, becoming right-handed by habituation. Aristotle twice says that man is the only ambidextrous animal, but normally he asserts the natural superiority of the right limbs to the left.
Ch. 7. Four memoranda, jotted down roughly, of points already often emphasized.
Ch. 8. The important relation of clear understanding and correct imagination to moral conduct (iv. 21. 2; vii. 29) and the value of analysis (xii. 10, 18, 29) are now very familiar. Here the points seem to be that if we analyse pains and pleasures, &c., we realize that their causes lie outside our will and so that they are indifferent in a moral view; that the wrong of another cannot injure our own will, which depends upon right judgement.
Ch. 9. An illustration, from the boxer and the armed combatant, to show that moral precepts are to become the habitual possession of the moral self, not taken up and put down at will.
Ch. 10. A mere note on the division of the objects of intelligence (xii. 20, 29).
Ch. 11. A vigorous assertion of moral liberty, a truth often pushed to paradox in his school. Notice also the realization of a personal relation to God (xii. 2, 31, 36).
Ch. 12. Find fault neither with gods nor men. Marcus' charity to all men, and resignation towards the heavenly powers increases with each Book. The former virtue is treated more fully in ch. 16.
Ch. 13. The man who is imbued with true principles is never taken by surprise, he is familiar with the universal laws, he is no stranger in the Eternal City.
Chs. 14–15. Even in this last Book, Marcus keeps his mind open in regard to the three solutions offered by thinkers to the problem of Universal law: the Stoic alternatives Fate and Providence, the Epicurean view of Chance concourse of atoms. Man's concern, whichever of the three solutions he may provisionally adopt, is with the right attitude to practice.
