Meditations II.13
Nothing can be more miserable than the man who goes through the whole round of things, and, as the poet19 says, pries into the secrets of the earth, and would fain guess the thoughts in his neighbour’s heart, while having no conception that he needs but to associate himself with the divine ‘genius’ in his bosom,20 and to serve it truly. And service of it is to keep it pure from passion and aimlessness and discontent with anything that proceeds from Gods or men. For that which proceeds from the Gods is worthy of reverence in that it is excellent; and that which proceeds from men, of love, in that they are akin, and, at times and in a manner,21 of compassion, in that they are ignorant of good and evil—a defect this no less than the loss of power to distinguish between white and black.
- 19.Pindar, Fragment (see Plato’s Theaetetus 173 E).
Pindar was a Greek lyric poet. The line survives because Plato quotes it in the Theaetetus, his dialogue on the nature of knowledge, in a digression describing the philosopher whose mind ranges over the depths of the earth and the heavens while ignorant of his neighbour’s affairs.
- 20.§ 17; iii. 6, 16. Compare Shakespeare, The Tempest ii. 1. 275: “Conscience, this deity in my bosom.” The δαιμόνιον of Socrates is well known.
The Shakespeare line is Antonio’s in The Tempest, dismissing conscience as a “deity” he does not feel. Marcus’s word here is daimōn, which Haines renders “genius”; Socrates’ daimonion, described in Plato’s Apology, was the inner divine sign that warned him against particular actions.
- 21.Marcus qualifies his departure from the strict Stoic view, for which see Seneca’s On Clemency ii. 4–6, where he calls pity pusillanimity, and says sapiens non miserebitur sed succurret. Marcus was far from a Stoic in this, see Herodian i. 4, § 2. See above, p. xiii.
On Clemency is Seneca’s treatise addressed to the young Nero; sapiens non miserebitur sed succurret, in translation: “the wise man will not pity, but will help.” Herodian was a Greek historian whose history of the emperors begins with the death of Marcus in 180. Haines’s “p. xiii” refers to a page of his own Introduction.