Marcus Aurelius Antoninus to Himself - College of Stoic Philosophers

Ixxiv INTRODUCTION SECT.
of knowing, virtue involves the habit of willing and
acting ; while it leans on the understanding for guidance,
it derives its motive power from desire and will.
Analysis may separate the three, and adjudge precedence
in time or dignity; but every moral act presupposes
not only the knowledge which reveals and defines the
end, but also the desire which adopts it, and the will
which gives effect to the desire in an act of self-deter-
mination. Without desires, which depend for, their
existence on the affections and emotions, knowledge
remains impotent, and loses the motive power which
elevates it into virtue. Each exercise of virtue implies
an existing basis of character and knowledge, determin-
ing itself in a new act of volition. Thus in so far as the
Stoics were misled by an unsound psychology into
denouncing all emotional activities, and set themselves
to 'efface' and 'extinguish' impressions and desires, 1
instead of enforcing the need of selecting, guiding, and
utilising them to the best end, they narrowed and
weakened the scope of their morality. By suppression
of desires, the moral ideal could easily be reduced to
the hard and narrow self- consistency, towards which
the Stoic type habitually leans, or drill itself or decline
into the moral 'apathy' which results from restricting
virtue to the sphere of intellectual and unimpassioned
self-regard. This is the secret of that '
accent of futility,'
1 Few maxims recur more frequently in M. A. Cf. e.g. v. 2,
36 ; vi. 13 ; vii. 17, 29 ; viii. 29, 47 ; ix. 7 ; xi. 16,
to which iv.
7 and all its parallels ii. 15 ; iii. 9 ; iv. 3, 39 ; vi. 52 ; vii. 14, 16 ;
viii. 40; ix. 13; xi. 16, 18; xii. 8, 22, 25, 26 may properly
be added.