but only those things
which are conformable to its nature: still it does not submit, but is
carried in the opposite direction. For the movement towards injustice
and intemperance and to anger and grief and fear is nothing else than
the act of one who deviates from nature. And also when the ruling
faculty is discontented with anything that happens, then too it deserts
its post: for it is constituted for piety and reverence towards the gods
no less than for justice. For these qualities also are comprehended
under the generic term of contentment with the constitution of things,
and indeed they are prior[A] to acts of justice.

[A] The word [Greek: presbytera], which is here translated
"prior," may also mean "superior;" but Antoninus seems to say
that piety and reverence of the gods precede all virtues, and
that other virtues are derived from them, even justice, which
in another passage (xi. 10) he makes the foundation of all
virtues. The ancient notion of justice is that of giving to
every one his due. It is not a legal definition, as some have
supposed, but a moral rule which law cannot in all cases
enforce. Besides, law has its own rules, which are sometimes
moral and sometimes immoral; but it enforces them all simply
because they are general rules, and if it did not or could not
enforce them, so far Law would not be Law. Justice, or the
doing what is just, implies a universal rule and obedience to
it; and as we all live under universal Law, which commands both
our body and our intelligence, and is the law of our nature,
that is, the law of the whole constitution of a man, we must
endeavor to discover what this supreme Law is. It is the will
of the power that rules all. By acting in obedience to this
will, we do justice, and by consequence everything else that we
ought to do.

21. He who has not one and always the same object in life, cannot be one
and the same all through his life. But what I have said is not enough,
unless this also is added, what this object ought to be. For as there is
not the same opinion about all the things which in some way or other are
considered by the majority to be good, but only about some certain
things, that is, things which concern the common interest, so also ought
we to propose to ourselves an object which shall be of a common kind
[social] and political. For he who directs all his own efforts to this
ob