Marcus Aurelius Antoninus to Himself - College of Stoic Philosophers

civ INTRODUCTION SECT.
stand, to discipline, and to confirm itself, and so in
the conduct of life to attain a more susceptible ap-
preciation, a more strenuous devotion, a perfected
allegiance of will to the leadings of nature and God.
Their counterpart has emanated more often from the
cell or the hermitage than from the statesman's cabinet
or the general's praetorium ; they are a De Imitatione
such as might have been penned amid the isolations of
Khartoum.
Among philosophers Marcus is neither prophet, lawgiver,
nor scribe ; he is not a teacher expounding a creed,
He is
confirming doubters, or controverting opponents.
a diarist conversing with himself, not claiming even for
the doctrines of his school, much less for his own judg-
ments, any absolute infallibility or certitude. 1 There is
no pretence to completeness, little even to method, in
the handling of ethical topics. Terminology is not
always, from the scholastic point of view, exact or
uniform. Words are used in the popular sense as well
as in the technical. Quotations are admitted from alien
schools and teachers, 2
for not even the straitest ortho-
doxy foregoes eclecticism in the privacy
of medita-
tion. Allowing this amount of latitude, it is true to say
that the presentation of Stoicism found in the Thoughts
is correct and careful beyond expectation. In early
boyhood 3 he was attracted by its doctrines and its disciplines,
in manhood he espoused them as his rule of
life ; each day from its first waking hour, 4 each action
1 v. 10.
2
E.g. Epicurus, vii. 64 ; Plato, vii. 35, 44-48, 63 ; x. 23 ; Theo-
ii. phrastus, 10.
3
i. 6.
4
ii. I ; x. 13.