The Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius - College of Stoic Philosophers

THE PHILOSOPHY OF ANTONINUS 63
to accept with pleasure and to be content with them.
But if
they determine about nothing which it is wicked
to believe, or if we do believe it, let us neither sacrifice
nor pray nor swear by them nor do anything else which
we do as if the gods were present and lived with us but
if however the gods determine about none of the things
which concern us, I am able to determine about myself,
and I can inquire about that which is useful ;
and that
is useful to every man which is conformable to his own
constitution (xarao-KevTy)
and nature. But my nature is
rational and social ;
and my city and country, so far as I
am Antoninus, is Rome ;
but so far as I am a man, it is
the world. The things then which are useful to these
cities are alone useful to me (vi, 44).
It would be tedious, and it is not necessary to state
the emperor s opinions on all the ways
in which a man
may profitably use his understanding towards perfecting
himself in practical virtue. The passages to this purpose
are in all parts of his book, but as they are in no order or
connexion, a man must use the book a long time before
he will find out all that is in it. A few words may be
added here. If we analyse all other things, we find how
insufficient they are for human life, and how truly worth
less many of them are. Virtue alone is indivisible, one,
The notion of Virtue cannot be
and perfectly satisfying.
considered vague or unsettled, because a man may find
it difficult to explain the notion fully
to himself or to
expound it to others in such a way as to prevent cavilling.
Virtue is a whole, and no more consists of parts than
man s intelligence does, and yet we speak of various
intellectual faculties as a convenient way of expressing
the various powers which man s intellect shows by
his works. In the same way we may speak of various
virtues or parts of virtue, in a practical sense, for
the purpose of showing what particular virtues we
ought to practise
in order to the exercise of the