that which of all who live is the utmost thing demanded, these
have achieved. I cannot sorrow for them, but the thought of their
vanished life moves me to a brotherly tenderness. The dead, amid this
leafy silence, seem to whisper encouragement to him whose fate yet
lingers: As we are, so shalt thou be; and behold our quiet!

XIII.

Many a time, when life went hard with me, I have betaken myself to the
Stoics, and not all in vain. Marcus Aurelius has often been one of my
bedside books; I have read him in the night watches, when I could not
sleep for misery, and when assuredly I could have read nothing else. He
did not remove my burden; his proofs of the vanity of earthly troubles
availed me nothing; but there was a soothing harmony in his thought which
partly lulled my mind, and the mere wish that I could find strength to
emulate that high example (though I knew that I never should) was in
itself a safeguard against the baser impulses of wretchedness. I read
him still, but with no turbid emotion, thinking rather of the man than of
the philosophy, and holding his image dear in my heart of hearts.

Of course the intellectual assumption which makes his system untenable by
the thinker of our time is: that we possess a knowledge of the absolute.
Noble is the belief that by exercise of his reason a man may enter into
communion with that Rational Essence which is the soul of the world; but
precisely because of our inability to find within ourselves any such sure
and certain guidance do we of to-day accept the barren doom of
scepticism. Otherwise, the Stoic's sense of man's subordination in the
universal scheme, and of the all-ruling destiny, brings him into touch
with our own philosophical views, and his doctrine concerning the
"sociable" nature of man, of the reciprocal obligations which exist
between all who live, are entirely congenial to the better spirit of our
day. His fatalism is not mere resignation; one has not only to accept
one's lot, whatever it is, as inevitable, but to accept it with joy, with
praises. Why are we here? For the same reason that has brought about
the existence of a horse, or of a vine, to play the part allotted to us
by Nature. As it is within our power to understand the order of things,
so are we capable of guiding ourselves in accordance therewith; the will,
powerless over circumstance, is free to determine the habits of the soul.
The first duty is self-discipline; its corresponde