Meditations — Marcus Aurelius
MARCUS AURELIUS ANTONINUS.
55 all sequences of Phenomena to the laws of Nature, or to the other words that people may use, is absolutely absurd.1 Now, though there is great difficulty in understanding all the passages of Antoninus, in which he speaks of Nature, of the changes of things and of the economy of the universe, I am convinced that his sense of Nature and Natural is the same as that which I have stated ; and as he was a man who knew how to use words in a clear way and with strict consistency, we ought to assume, even if his meaning in some passages is doubtful, that his view of Nature was in harmony with his fixed belief in the all-pervading, ever present, and ever active energy of God. (ii.
4 ; iv. 40 ; x. 1 ; vi. 40 ; and other passages. Compare Seneca, De Benef. iv. 7. Swedenborg, Angelic Wisdom, 349 - 357.) 1 Time and space are the conditions of our thought ; but time infinite and space infinite cannot be objects of thought, except in a very imperfect way. Time and space must not in any way be thought of when we think of the Deity.
Swedenborg says, " The natural man may believe that he would have no thought, if the ideas of time, of space, and of things material were taken away; for upon those is founded all the thought that man has.
But let him know that the thoughts are limited and confined in proportion as they partake of time, of space, and of what is material ; and that they are not limited and are extended, in proportion as they do not partake of those things ; since the mind is so far elevated above the things corporeal and worldly " (Concerning Heaven and Hell, 169).
p. 56There is much in Antoninus that is hard to understand, and it might be said that he did not fully comprehend all that he wrote ; which would however be in no way remarkable, for it happens now that a man may write what neither he nor anybody can understand. Antoninus tells us (xii.
10) to look at things and see what they are, resolving them into the material (tA.77), the casual (cutiov), and the relation (ava<}>opd), or the purpose, by which he seems to mean something in the nature of what we call effect, or end. The word Cause (atria) is the difficulty.
There is the same word in the Sanscrit (hStu) ; and the subtle philosophers of India and of Greece, and the less subtle philosophers of modern times, have all used this word, or an equivalent word, in a vague way. Yet the confusion sometimes may be in the inevitable ambiguity of language rather than in the mind of the writer, for I cannot think that some of the wisest of men did not know what they intended to say. When Antoninus says (iv.
36), "that everything that exists is in a manner the seed of that which will be," he might be supposed to say what some of the Indian philosophers have said, and thus a profound truth might be converted into a gross absurdity. But he says, " in a manner," and in a manner he said true ; and in another manner, if you mistake his meaning, he said false. When Plato said, "Nothing ever is,
MAR CUS A URELIUS ANTONINUS. 57 but is always becoming " (del yCyvercu), he delivered a text, out of which we may derive something ; for he destroys by it not all practical, but all speculative notions of cause and effect.
The whole series of things, as they appear to us, must be contemplated in time, that is in succession, and we conceive or suppose intervals between one state of things and another state of things, so that there is priority and sequence, and interval, and Being, and a ceasing to Be, and begining and ending. But there is nothing of the kind in the Nature of Things. It is an everlasting continuity (iv. 45 ; vii. 75).
When Antoninus speaks of generation (x.
26), he speaks of one cause ( aWCa) acting, and then another cause taking up the work, which the former left in a certain state, and so on ; and we might perhaps conceive that he had some notion like what has been called " the self-evolving power of nature ; " a fine phrase indeed, the full import of which I believe that the writer of it did not see, and thus he laid himself open to the imputation of being a follower of one of the Hindu sects, which makes all things come by evolution out of nature or matter, or out of something which takes the place of Deity, but is not Deity.
I would have all men think as they please, or as they can, and I only claim the same freedom which I give. When a man writes anything, we may fairly try to find *s>ut
MARCUS AURELIUS ANTONINUS.
55 all sequences of Phenomena to the laws of Nature, or to the other words that people may use, is absolutely absurd.1 Now, though there is great difficulty in understanding all the passages of Antoninus, in which he speaks of Nature, of the changes of things and of the economy of the universe, I am convinced that his sense of Nature and Natural is the same as that which I have stated ; and as he was a man who knew how to use words in a clear way and with strict consistency, we ought to assume, even if his meaning in some passages is doubtful, that his view of Nature was in harmony with his fixed belief in the all-pervading, ever present, and ever active energy of God. (ii.
4 ; iv. 40 ; x. 1 ; vi. 40 ; and other passages. Compare Seneca, De Benef. iv. 7. Swedenborg, Angelic Wisdom, 349 - 357.) 1 Time and space are the conditions of our thought ; but time infinite and space infinite cannot be objects of thought, except in a very imperfect way. Time and space must not in any way be thought of when we think of the Deity.
Swedenborg says, " The natural man may believe that he would have no thought, if the ideas of time, of space, and of things material were taken away; for upon those is founded all the thought that man has.
But let him know that the thoughts are limited and confined in proportion as they partake of time, of space, and of what is material ; and that they are not limited and are extended, in proportion as they do not partake of those things ; since the mind is so far elevated above the things corporeal and worldly " (Concerning Heaven and Hell, 169).
56 PHILOSOPHY. There is much in Antoninus that is hard to understand, and it might be said that he did not fully comprehend all that he wrote ; which would however be in no way remarkable, for it happens now that a man may write what neither he nor anybody can understand. Antoninus tells us (xii.
10) to look at things and see what they are, resolving them into the material (tA.77), the casual (cutiov), and the relation (ava<}>opd), or the purpose, by which he seems to mean something in the nature of what we call effect, or end. The word Cause (atria) is the difficulty.
There is the same word in the Sanscrit (hStu) ; and the subtle philosophers of India and of Greece, and the less subtle philosophers of modern times, have all used this word, or an equivalent word, in a vague way. Yet the confusion sometimes may be in the inevitable ambiguity of language rather than in the mind of the writer, for I cannot think that some of the wisest of men did not know what they intended to say. When Antoninus says (iv.
36), "that everything that exists is in a manner the seed of that which will be," he might be supposed to say what some of the Indian philosophers have said, and thus a profound truth might be converted into a gross absurdity. But he says, " in a manner," and in a manner he said true ; and in another manner, if you mistake his meaning, he said false. When Plato said, "Nothing ever is,
MAR CUS A URELIUS ANTONINUS. 57 but is always becoming " (del yCyvercu), he delivered a text, out of which we may derive something ; for he destroys by it not all practical, but all speculative notions of cause and effect.
The whole series of things, as they appear to us, must be contemplated in time, that is in succession, and we conceive or suppose intervals between one state of things and another state of things, so that there is priority and sequence, and interval, and Being, and a ceasing to Be, and begining and ending. But there is nothing of the kind in the Nature of Things. It is an everlasting continuity (iv. 45 ; vii. 75).
When Antoninus speaks of generation (x.
26), he speaks of one cause ( aWCa) acting, and then another cause taking up the work, which the former left in a certain state, and so on ; and we might perhaps conceive that he had some notion like what has been called " the self-evolving power of nature ; " a fine phrase indeed, the full import of which I believe that the writer of it did not see, and thus he laid himself open to the imputation of being a follower of one of the Hindu sects, which makes all things come by evolution out of nature or matter, or out of something which takes the place of Deity, but is not Deity.
I would have all men think as they please, or as they can, and I only claim the same freedom which I give. When a man writes anything, we may fairly try to find *s>ut
No commentary for this page under the selected tracks.
There is commentary on page 1.