Marcus Aurelius Antoninus to Himself - College of Stoic Philosophers

Ixxxii INTRODUCTION SECT.
The difficulties thus raised are fundamental, and
on the monistic assumption, certainly as formulated by
the Stoics, insuperable. The independence of the will
as a true first principle or dp^r) is incompatible with its
identification with the world-soul. If,
as Stoic masters
taught, the highest consciousness of man represents the
most complete and perfect embodiment of the world-
spirit, the saving thought of self-determination towards
some transcendent, and yet unapprehended, harmony is
excluded. Not only is man part of the universal pre-
destination, but the limits of that predestination are
known and absolute. The subjection imposed becomes
intolerable. It is impossible to identify the soul of man
with the infinite creative spirit of the universe, and at
the same time to circumscribe his outlook within the
finite limitations of space and time and 'the material
shell.' 1 Nature as a whole may be conceived as in
some marvellous way
at once self-circumscribed and
2
self-sufficing but the individual limited isolated ;
part
cannot at once inherit and express the spiritual fulness
of the whole, and at the same time acquiesce in the
transient and incomplete appropriation of limitations
that are final. Further, the facts of consciousness
remain unsatisfied. The Stoics laboured the classifica-
tion and nomenclature of various orders of emotion, but
give no account of the inner antagonisms that exist
between reason, desire, and impulse. They do not
1 For enforcement of time limitations see ii. 14, 17 J iii. 10,
12; iv. 16, 19, 26, 49; vi. 32; vii. 29, 54; viii. 2, 7, 36, 44;
ix. 25, 29; x. II ; xii. I, 3, 26.
2 viii. 50.