we assume that anything is now
produced or now exists without the action of the supreme
intelligence, and yet that this intelligence makes an effort to
act, we obtain a conclusion which cannot be reconciled with the
nature of a supreme power, whose existence Antoninus always
assumes. The tranquillity that a man may gain from these
reflections must result from his rejecting the second
hypothesis and accepting the first--whatever may be the exact
sense in which the emperor understood the first. Or, as he says
elsewhere, if there is no Providence which governs the world,
man has at least the power of governing himself according to
the constitution of his nature; and so he may be tranquil if he
does the best that he can.

If there is no error in the passage, it is worth the labor to
discover the writer's exact meaning--for I think that he had a
meaning, though people may not agree what it was. (Compare ix.
28.) If I have rightly explained the emperor's meaning in this
and other passages, he has touched the solution of a great
question.

VIII.

This reflection also tends to the removal of the desire of empty fame,
that it is no longer in thy power to have lived the whole of thy life,
or at least thy life from thy youth upwards, like a philosopher; but
both to many others and to thyself it is plain that thou art far from
philosophy. Thou hast fallen into disorder then, so that it is no longer
easy for thee to get the reputation of a philosopher; and thy plan of
life also opposes it. If then thou hast truly seen where the matter
lies, throw away the thought, How thou shall seem [to others], and be
content if thou shalt live the rest of thy life in such wise as thy
nature wills. Observe then what it wills, and let nothing else distract
thee; for thou hast had experience of many wanderings without having
found happiness anywhere,--not in syllogisms, nor in wealth, nor in
reputation, nor in enjoyment, nor anywhere. Where is it then? In doing
what man's nature requires. How then shall a man do this? If he has
principles from which come his affects and his acts. What principles?
Those which relate to good and bad: the belief that there is nothing
good for man which does not make him just, temperate, manly, free; and
that there is nothing bad which does not do the contrary to what has
been mentioned.

2. On the occasion of every act ask thyself, H