The Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius - College of Stoic Philosophers

THE PHILOSOPHY OF ANTONINUS 49
the eyes, but still no less clearly. But whether in this
passage (x, 26) he means that the power
is conceived to
be in the different successive causes (alrlai), or in some
thing else, nobody can tell. From other passages how
ever I do collect that his notion of the phaenomena
of the universe is what I have stated. The deity works
unseen, if we may use such language, and perhaps I
may,
as Job did, or he who wrote the book of Job. In him
we live and move and are, said St Paul to the Athenians,
and to show his hearers that this was no new doctrine, he
quoted the Greek poets. One of these poets was the Stoic
Cleanthes, whose noble hymn to Zeus or God is an elevated
expression of devotion and philosophy. It deprives Nature
of her power and puts her under the immediate govern
ment of the deity.
Thee all this heaven, which whirls around the earth,
Obeys and willing follows where thou leadest.
Without thee, God, nothing is done on earth,
Nor in the aethereal realms, nor in the sea,
Save what the wicked do through their own folly.
Antoninus conviction of the existence of a divine power
and government was founded on his perception of the
order of the universe. Like Socrates (Xen. Mem. iv, 3,
13, etc.), he says that though we cannot see the forms of
divine powers, we know that they exist
because we see
their works.
To those who ask, Where hast thou seen the gods, or
how dost thou comprehend that they exist and so worshippest
them ? I answer, in the first place, that they
may be seen even with the eyes in the second ; place,
neither have I seen my own soul and yet I honour it. Thus
then with respect to the gods, from what I constantly
experience of their power, from this I
comprehend that
they exist and I venerate them (xn, 28, and the note.
Comp. Aristotle de Mundo, c. 6 ; Xen. Mem. i, 4, 9 ; Cicero,