Meditations III.16
Body, Soul, Intelligence: for the body sensations, for the soul desires, for the intelligence axioms. To receive impressions by way of the senses is not denied even to cattle; to be as puppets35 pulled by the strings of desire is common to wild beasts and to pathics and to a Phalaris and a Nero. Yet to have the intelligence a guide to what they deem their duty is an attribute of those also who do not believe in Gods and those who fail their country in its need and those who do their deeds behind closed doors.36
If then all else is the common property of the classes mentioned, there is left as the characteristic of the good man to delight in and to welcome what befalls and what is spun for him by destiny; and not to sully the divine ‘genius’ that is enthroned in his bosom,37 nor yet to perplex it with a multitude of impressions, but to maintain it to the end in a gracious serenity, in orderly obedience to God, uttering no word that is not true and doing no deed that is not just. But if all men disbelieve in his living a simple and modest and cheerful life, he is not wroth with any of them, nor swerves from the path which leads to his life’s goal, whither he must go pure, peaceful, ready for release, needing no force to bring him into accord with his lot.
- 35.See ii. 2.
- 36.Must undoubtedly refer to the Christians, who were accused precisely of these three things—atheism, want of patriotism, and secret orgies. Compare also i. 6; vii. 68; viii. 48, 51; and see note pp. 381 ff.
The charges are those the 2nd-century Christian apologists answer: Athenagoras’s Plea for the Christians, addressed to Marcus and Commodus, lists atheism, cannibal feasts, and incest. Haines’s “pp. 381 ff.” refers to his appended note on Marcus and the Christians.
- 37.iii. 6, § 2; St. Paul, 1 Corinthians iii. 16.
In 1 Corinthians 3:16 Paul writes, “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?” (King James).