could be discovered. My
own conviction is that once in his life Marcus Aurelius had a real good
time. He came home feeling pleased with himself without knowing quite
why.

"I will write it down," he said to himself, "now, while it is fresh in my
mind."

It seemed to him the most wonderful thing that anybody had ever said.
Maybe he shed a tear or two, thinking of all the good he was doing, and
later on went suddenly to sleep. In the morning he had forgotten all
about it, and by accident it got mixed up with the rest of the book. That
is the only explanation that seems to me possible, and it comforts me.

We are none of us philosophers all the time.

Philosophy is the science of suffering the inevitable, which most of us
contrive to accomplish without the aid of philosophy. Marcus Aurelius
was an Emperor of Rome, and Diogenes was a bachelor living rent free. I
want the philosophy of the bank clerk married on thirty shillings a week,
of the farm labourer bringing up a family of eight on a precarious wage
of twelve shillings. The troubles of Marcus Aurelius were chiefly those
of other people.

"Taxes will have to go up, I am afraid," no doubt he often sighed. "But,
after all, what are taxes? A thing in conformity with the nature of
man--a little thing that Zeus approves of, one feels sure. The daemon
within me says taxes don't really matter."

Maybe the paterfamilias of the period, who did the paying, worried about
new sandals for the children, his wife insisting she hadn't a frock fit
to be seen in at the amphitheatre; that, if there was one thing in the
world she fancied, it was seeing a Christian eaten by a lion, but now she
supposed the children would have to go without her, found that philosophy
came to his aid less readily.

"Bother these barbarians," Marcus Aurelius may have been tempted, in an
unphilosophical moment, to exclaim; "I do wish they would not burn these
poor people's houses over their heads, toss the babies about on spears,
and carry off the older children into slavery. Why don't they behave
themselves?"

But philosophy in Marcus Aurelius would eventually triumph over passing
fretfulness.

"But how foolish of me to be angry with them," he would argue with
himself. "One is not vexed with the fig-tree for yielding figs, with the
cucumber for being bitter! One must expect barbarians to behave
barbariously."

Marcus Aurelius would proceed to slaughter the barbarians, and then
forgi