The Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius - College of Stoic Philosophers

THE PHILOSOPHY OF ANTONINUS 45
exact meaning to it. It is the same with the expression
Laws of Nature, which some writers may use in an intel
ligible sense, but others as clearly use in no definite sense
at all. There is no meaning in this word Nature, except
that which Bishop Butler assigns to it, when he says, The
only distinct meaning of that word Natural is Stated,
Fixed or Settled ;
since what is natural as much requires
and presupposes an intelligent agent to render it so, i.e.
to effect it continually or at stated times, as what is super
natural or miraculous does to effect it at once. This is
Plato s
meaning (De Leg. iv, 715), when he says, that God
holds the beginning and end and middle of all that exists,
and proceeds straight on his course, making his circuit
according to nature (that is, by a fixed order) ;
and he is
continually accompanied by justice who punishes those
who deviate from the divine law, that is, from the order or
course which God observes.
When we look at the motions of the planets, the action
of what we call gravitation,
the elemental combination
of unorganized bodies and their resolution, the produc
tion of plants and of living bodies, their generation, growth,
and their dissolution, which we call their death, we observe
a regular sequence of phaenomena, which within the limits
of experience present and past, so far as we know the past,
is fixed and invariable. But if this is not so, if the order
and sequence of phaenomena, as known to us, are subject
to change in the course of an infinite progression, and
such change is conceivable, we have not discovered,
nor shall we ever discover, the whole of the order and
sequence of phaenomena, in which sequence there may be
involved according to its very nature, that is, according
to its fixed order, some variation of what we now call the
Order or Nature of Things. It is also conceivable that
such changes have taken place, changes in the order of
things, as we are compelled by the imperfection of language
to call them, but which are no changes ; and further it is