The Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius - College of Stoic Philosophers

228 MARCUS AURELIUS
vitium perfecte vincimus, et ad quotidianum profectum
non accendimur, Semper aliquid certi proponendum
est, Tibi ipsi violentiam frequenter fac : A life without
1
a purpose
is a languid, drifting thing, Every day we ought
to renew our purpose, saying to ourselves : this day let us
make a sound beginning, for what we have hitherto done is
naught, Our improvement
is in proportion to our purpose,
We hardly ever manage to get completely rid even of one
fault, and do not set our hearts on daily improvement,
1
Always place a definite purpose before thee, Gel the habit
of mastering thine inclination. These are moral precepts,
and moral precepts of the best kind. As rules to hold
possession of our conduct, and to keep us in the right
course through outward troubles and inward per
plexity, they are equal to the best ever furnished by
the great masters of morals Epictetus or Marcus
Aurelius.
But moral rules, apprehended as ideas first, and then
rigorously followed as laws, are, and must be, for the sage
only. The mass of mankind have neither force of intellect
enough to apprehend them clearly as ideas, nor force of
character enough to follow them strictly as laws. The
mass of mankind can be carried along a course full of
hardship for the natural man, can be borne over the
thousand impediments of the narrow way, only by the
tide of a joyful and bounding emotion. It is
impossible
to rise from reading Epictetus or Marcus Aurelius without
a sense of constraint and melancholy, without feeling that
the burden laid upon man is well-nigh greater than he can
bear. Honour to the sages who have felt this, and yet
have borne it 1
Yet, even for the sage, this sense of
labour and sorrow in his march towards the goal con
stitutes a relative inferiority ;
the noblest souls of what
ever creed, the pagan Empedocles as well as the Christian
Paul, have insisted on the necessity of an inspiration, a
living emotion, to make moral action perfect ;
an obscure