,
placed at the end of his German translation of Antoninus (Schleswig,
1799). With the assistance of these two useful essays and his own
diligent study, a man may form a sufficient notion of the principles of
Antoninus; but he will find it more difficult to expound them to others.
Besides the want of arrangement in the original and of connection among
the numerous paragraphs, the corruption of the text, the obscurity of
the language and the style, and sometimes perhaps the confusion in the
writer's own ideas--besides all this, there is occasionally an apparent
contradiction in the emperor's thoughts, as if his principles were
sometimes unsettled, as if doubt sometimes clouded his mind. A man who
leads a life of tranquillity and reflection, who is not disturbed at
home and meddles not with the affairs of the world, may keep his mind at
ease and his thoughts in one even course. But such a man has not been
tried. All his Ethical philosophy and his passive virtue might turn out
to be idle words, if he were once exposed to the rude realities of human
existence. Fine thoughts and moral dissertations from men who have not
worked and suffered may be read, but they will be forgotten. No
religion, no Ethical philosophy is worth anything, if the teacher has
not lived the "life of an apostle," and been ready to die "the death of
a martyr." "Not in passivity (the passive effects) but in activity lie
the evil and the good of the rational social animal, just as his virtue
and his vice lie not in passivity, but in activity" (ix. 16). The
emperor Antoninus was a practical moralist. From his youth he followed a
laborious discipline, and though his high station placed him above all
want or the fear of it, he lived as frugally and temperately as the
poorest philospher. Epictetus wanted little, and it seems that he always
had the little that he wanted and he was content with it, as he had been
with his servile station! But Antoninus after his accession to the
empire sat on an uneasy seat. He had the administration of an empire
which extended from the Euphrates to the Atlantic, from the cold
mountains of Scotland to the hot sands of Africa; and we may imagine,
though we cannot know it by experience, what must be the trials, the
troubles, the anxiety, and the sorrows of him who has the world's
business on his hands, with the wish to do the best that he can, and the
certain knowledge that he can do very little of the good which he
wishes.