The Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius - College of Stoic Philosophers

THE PHILOSOPHY OF ANTONINUS 47
Now, though
there is
great
difficulty in understanding
all the passages of Antoninus, in which he speaks of Nature,
of the changes of things and of the economy of the universe,
I am convinced that his sense of Nature and Natural is
the same as that which I have stated ;
and as he was a
man who knew how to use words in a clear way and with
strict consistency, we ought to assume, even if his mean
ing in some passages is doubtful, that his view of Nature
vas in harmony with his fixed belief in the all-pervading,
ever present, and ever active energy of God (i, 4 ; iv, 40 ;
x, 1 ; vi, 40 ;
and other passages. Compare Seneca, De
Benef. iv, 7. Swedenborg, Angelic Wisdom, 349-357).
There is much in Antoninus that is hard to understand,
and it
might be said that he did not fully comprehend all
that he wrote ; which would however be in no way remark
able, for it
happens now that a man may write what
neither he nor anybody can understand. Antoninus tells us
(xn, 10) to look at things and see what they are, resolving
them into the material (v\rj), the causal (airiov), and
the relation (avafopd), or the purpose, by which he seems
to mean something in the nature of what we call effect,
or end. The word Cause (air fa) is the difficulty. There is
the same word in the Sanscrit (hetu) ;
and the subtle
philosophers of India and of Greece, and the less subtle
philosophers of modern times have all used this word, or
an equivalent word, in a vague way. Yet the confusion
sometimes may be in the inevitable ambiguity of language
rather than in the mind of the writer, for I cannot think
that some of the wisest of men did not know what they
intended to say. When Antoninus says (iv, 36), that
everything that exists is in a manner the seed of that which
those is founded all the thought that man has. But let him know
that the thoughts are limited and confined in proportion as they
partake of time, of space, and of what is material ;
and that they are
not limited and are extended, in proportion as they do not partake
of those things ;
since the mind is so far elevated above the things
corporeal and worldly (Concerning Heaven and Hell, 169).