ENGLISH COMMENTARY
'the unquiet walks of Devils, prompting and suggesting us unto mischief, blood, and villainy'.
This may be one of the places to which Renan[1] refers in the words: 'le surnaturel n'est dans les Pensées qu'une petite tache insignifiante, qui n'atteint pas la merveilleuse beauté du fond.'
Ch. 25. Judgement here must mean erroneous judgement, as in ch. 22 (iv. 7. 38).
Ch. 26. This chapter is a summary of much of Book ii: (a) the ordinance of Universal nature, ii. 3; (b) the evil not yours but the wrongdoer's, ii. 1; (c) generation and passing away, ii. 12; (d) mind, not blood or seed, is the bond of the human family, ii. 1; (e) the true Self comes from a spiritual source beyond the present, ii. 4 and 17; (f) nothing is your own, it is a loan from another world, ii. 4; (g) judgement is the determining power in morality, ii. 4; (h) the uniqueness and importance of the present moment, ii. 14.
Ch. 27. There is a colour and reality here, which is unfortunately rare in a writing which consists so much of generalized truths; there is also a touch of satire such as the Emperor rarely allows himself. Except the old age of Tiberius at Capri, which Tacitus has immortalized, nothing is known of the persons mentioned. Marcus' point is perhaps emphasized by the oblivion that now covers all but the names of these pursuers of baffled ambitions.
Marcus contrasts such lives with the simple service of God. Simplicity is the best of virtues in his eyes, just as affected simplicity is the worst of evils (xi. 15).
And the Devil did grin, for his darling sin
Is pride that apes humility.[2]
Ch. 28. The answer to the question of the sceptic about evidence for the existence of the gods is that there are visible gods, for instance the heavenly luminaries, and secondly that man may argue from effect to cause, from the phenomenal world to the unseen agency which sustains and directs it (x. 26).
This argument, in its general form, is reasoning from the evidence of design in the world, as Socrates did, to a wise creator. The special form used here is by analogy with the argument to
