use; of the antagonisms of
which the "wise" Marcus Aurelius was unaware.

That long chapter of the cruelty of the Roman public shows may,
perhaps, leave with the children of the modern world a feeling of
self-complacency. Yet it might seem well to ask ourselves--it is
always well to do so, when we read of the slave-trade, for instance, or
of great religious persecutions on this side or on that, or of anything
else which raises in us the question, "Is thy servant a dog, that he
should do this thing?"--not merely, what germs of feeling we may
entertain which, under fitting circumstances, would induce us to the
like; but, even more practically, what thoughts, what sort of
considerations, may be actually present to our minds such as might have
furnished us, living in another age, and in the midst of those legal
crimes, with plausible excuses for them: each age in turn, perhaps,
having its own peculiar point of blindness, with its consequent
peculiar sin--the touch-stone of an unfailing conscience in the select
few.

Those cruel amusements were, certainly, the sin of blindness, of
deadness and stupidity, in the age of Marius; and his light had not
failed him regarding it. Yes! what was needed was the heart that would
make it impossible to witness all this; and the future would be with
the forces that could beget a heart like that. [243] His chosen
philosophy had said,--Trust the eye: Strive to be right always in
regard to the concrete experience: Beware of falsifying your
impressions. And its sanction had at least been effective here, in
protesting--"This, and this, is what you may not look upon!" Surely
evil was a real thing, and the wise man wanting in the sense of it,
where, not to have been, by instinctive election, on the right side,
was to have failed in life.

END OF VOL. I

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