es; above
all it is hard, when such a man is placed as Marcus Aurelius was placed,
and has had the meanness and perversity of his fellow-creatures thrust,
in no common measure, upon his notice,--has had, time after time, to
experience how "within ten days thou wilt seem a god to those to whom
thou art now a beast and an ape." His true strain of thought as to his
relations with his fellow-men is rather the following. He has been
enumerating the higher consolations which may support a man at the
approach of death, and he goes on:--

"But if thou requirest also a vulgar kind of comfort which shall reach
thy heart, thou wilt be made best reconciled to death by observing the
objects from which thou art going to be removed, and the morals of those
with whom thy soul will no longer be mingled. For it is no way right to
be offended with men, but it is thy duty to care for them and to bear
with them gently; and yet to remember that thy departure will not be
from men who have the same principles as thyself. For this is the only
thing, if there be any, which could draw us the contrary way and attach
us to life, to be permitted to live with those who have the same
principles as ourselves. But now thou seest how great is the distress
caused by the difference of those who live together, so that thou mayest
say: 'Come quick, O death, lest perchance I too should forget
myself.'"[240]

_O faithless and perverse generation! how long shall I be with you? how
long shall I suffer you?_[241] Sometimes this strain rises even to
passion:--

"Short is the little which remains to thee of life. Live as on a
mountain. Let men see, let them know, a real man, who lives as he was
meant to live. If they cannot endure him, let them kill him. For that is
better than to live as men do."[242]

It is remarkable how little of a merely local and temporary character,
how little of those _scoriae_ which a reader has to clear away before he
gets to the precious ore, how little that even admits of doubt or
question, the morality of Marcus Aurelius exhibits. Perhaps as to one
point we must make an exception. Marcus Aurelius is fond of urging as a
motive for man's cheerful acquiescence in whatever befalls him, that
"whatever happens to every man _is for the interest of the
universal_";[243] that the whole contains nothing _which is not for its
advantage_; that everything which happens to a man is to be accepted,
"even if it seems disagreeable, _because it lea