The Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius - College of Stoic Philosophers

308 LJELIUS; OR,
refinement) unanimously acknowledge that without friend
ship life can have no true enjoyment. She insinuates
herself, indeed, by
I know not what irresistible charm
into the hearts of every rank and class of men, and mixes
in all the various modes and arrangements of human life.
Were there a man in the world of so morose and acri
monious a disposition as to shun (agreeably to what we
are told of a certain Timon of Athens) all communication
with his species, even such an odious misanthropist could
not endure to be excluded from one associate, at least,
before whom he might discharge the whole rancour and
virulence of his heart. The truth is, if we could suppose
ourselves transported by some divinity into a solitude
replete with all the delicacies which the heart of man could
desire, but secluded at the same time from every possible
intercourse with our kind, there is not a person in the
world of so unsocial and savage a temper as to be capable
under these forlorn circumstances of relishing any enjoy
ment. Accordingly, nothing
is more true than what
Archytas of Tarentum, if I mistake not, is reported to
have said, That were a man to be carried up into heaven,
and the beauties of universal nature displayed to his
view, he would receive but little pleasure from the wonder
ful scene if there were none to whom he might relate the
glories he had beheld. Human nature, indeed, is so
constituted as to be incapable of lonely satisfactions ;
man, like those plants which are formed to embrace
others, is
led by an instinctive impulse
to recline on his
species, and he finds his happiest and most secure support
in the arms of a faithful friend. But although in this
instance, as in every other, Nature points out her
tendencies by a variety of unambiguous notices, and
proclaims her meaning in
the most emphatical language,
yet, I know not how it is, we seem strangely
blind to her clearest signals, and deaf to her loudest
voice I