The Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius - College of Stoic Philosophers

268 L^LIUS; OR,
be treated as it deserves. Unpremeditated dissertations
of this kind can only be expected from those Grecian
geniuses, who are accustomed to speak on the sudden
upon any given question and to those learned ;
disputants
I must refer you, if you wish to hear the subject properly
discussed. As for myself, I can only exhort you to look
on Friendship as the most valuable of all human pos
sessions, no other being equally suited to the moral
nature of man, or so applicable to every state and cir
in which
cumstance, whether of prosperity or adversity,
he can possibly be placed. But at the same time I lay
it down as a fundamental axiom that true Friendship
can only subsist between those who are animated by the
strictest principles of honour and virtue. When I say
this, I would not be thought to adopt the sentiments of
those speculative moralists who pretend that no man
can justly be deemed virtuous wr
ho is not arrived at that
state of absolute perfection which constitutes, according
to their ideas, the character of genuine wisdom. This
opinion may appear true, perhaps, in theory, but is
altogether inapplicable to any useful purpose of society,
as it supposes a degree of virtue to which no mortal was
ever capable of rising. It is not, therefore, that notional
species of merit which imagination may possibly conceive,
or our wishes perhaps form, that we have reason to expect
and require in a friend ;
it is those moral attainments
alone which we see actually realized among mankind.
And, indeed, I can never be persuaded
to think that
either Fabricius, or Coruncanius, or Curius, whom our
forefathers justly revered for the superior rectitude of
their conduct, were sages according to that sublime
criterion which these visionary philosophers have en
deavoured to establish.
I should be contented, however,
to leave them in the undisturbed possession of their
arrogant and unintelligible notions of virtue, provided
they would allow that the great persons I have named