Christians. Hadrian, Antoninus' grandfather, wrote to many, and among them to Fundanus, the governor of Asia. Antoninus Pius, when Marcus was associated with him in the empire, wrote to the cities that they must not trouble the Christians; among others, to the people of Larissa, Thessalonica, the Athenians, and all the Greeks. Melito concluded thus: "We are persuaded that thou who hast about these things the same mind that they had, nay rather one much more humane and philosophical, wilt do all that we ask thee."--This Apology was written after A.D. 169, the year in which Verus died, for it speaks of Marcus only and his son Commodus. According to Melito's testimony, Christians had only been punished for their religion in the time of Nero and Domitian, and the persecutions began again in the time of M.
Antoninus, and were founded on his orders, which were abused, as he seems to mean. He distinctly affirms "that the race of the godly is now persecuted and harassed by fresh imperial orders in Asia, a thing which had never happened before." But we know that all this is not true, and that Christians had been punished in Trajan's time.
If we had a true ecclesiastical history, we should know how the Roman emperors attempted to check the new religion; how they enforced their principle of finally punishing Christians, simply as Christians, which Justin in his Apology affirms that they did, and I have no doubt that he tells the truth; how far popular clamor and riots went in this matter, and how far many fanatical and ignorant Christians--for there were many such--contributed to excite the fanaticism on the other side and to embitter the quarrel between the Roman government and the new religion.
Our extant ecclesiastical histories are manifestly falsified, and what truth they contain is grossly exaggerated; but the fact is certain that in the time of M. Antoninus the heathen populations were in open hostility to the Christians, and that under Antoninus' rule men were put to death because they were Christians. Eusebius, in the preface to his fifth book, remarks that in the seventeenth year of Antoninus' reign, in some parts of the world, the persecution of the Christians became more violent, and that it proceeded from the populace in the cities; and he adds, in his usual style of exaggeration, that we may infer from what took place in a single nation that myriads of martyrs were made in the habitable earth. The nation which he alludes to is Gallia; and he then proceeds to give the letter of the churches of Vienna and Lugdunum. It is probable that he has assiged the true cause of the persecutions, the fanaticism of the populace, and that both governors and emperor had a great deal of trouble with these disturbances. How far Marcus was cognizant of these cruel proceedings we do not know, for the historical records of his reign are very defective. He did not make the rule against the Christians, for Trajan did that; and if we admit that he would have been willing to let the Christians alone, we cannot affirm that it was in his power, for it would be a great mistake to suppose that Antoninus had the unlimited authority which some modern sovereigns have had. His power was limited by certain constitutional forms, by the Senate, and by the precedents of his predecessors. We cannot admit that such a man was an active persecutor, for there is no evidence that he was,[A] though it is certain that he had no good opinion of the Christians, as appears from his own words.[B] But he knew nothing of them except their hostility to the Roman religion, and he probably thought that they were dangerous to the state, notwithstanding the professions, false or true, of some of the Apologists. So much I have said, because it would be unfair not to state all that can be urged against a man whom his contemporaries and subsequent ages venerated as a model of virtue and benevolence. If I admitted the genuineness of some documents, he would be altogether clear from the charge of even allowing any persecutions; but as I seek the truth and am sure that they are false, I leave him to bear whatever blame is his due.[C] I add that it is quite certain that Antoninus did not derive any of his ethical principles from a religion of which he knew nothing.[D] [A] Except that of Orosius (vii. 15), who says that during the Parthian war there were grievous persecutions of the Christians in Asia and Gallia under the orders of Marcus (praecepto ejus), and "many were crowned with the martyrdom of saints."
[B] See xi. 3. The emperor probably speaks of such fanatics as Clemens (quoted by Gataker on this passage) mentions. The rational Christians admitted no fellowship with them. "Some of these heretics," says Clemens, "show their impiety and cowardice by loving their lives, saying that the knowledge of the really existing God is true testimony (martyrdom), but that a man is a self-murderer who bears witness by his death. We also blame those who rush to death; for there are some, not of us, but only bearing the same name, who give themselves up. We say of them that they die without being martyrs, even if they are publicly punished; and they give themselves up to a death which avails nothing, as the Indian Gymnosophists give themselves up foolishly to fire." Cave, in his primitive Christianity (ii. c. 7), says of the Christians: "They did flock to the place of torment faster than droves of beasts that are driven to the shambles. They even longed to be in the arms of suffering. Ignatius, though then in his journey to Rome in order to his execution, yet by the way as he went could not but vent his passionate desire of it 'Oh that I might come to those wild beasts that are prepared for me; I heartily wish that I may presently meet with them; I would invite and encourage them speedily to devour me, and not be afraid to set upon me as they have been to others; nay, should they refuse it, I would even force them to it;'" and more to the same purpose from Eusebius.
Cave, an honest and good man, says all this in praise of the Christians; but I think that he mistook the matter. We admire a man who holds to his principles even to death; but these fanatical Christians are the Gymnosophists whom Clemens treats with disdain.
[C] Dr. F.C. Baur, in his work entitled "Das Christenthum und die Christliche Kirche der drei ersten Jahrhunderte," &c., has examined this question with great good sense and fairness, and I believe he has stated the truth as near as our authorities enable us to reach it.
[D] In the Digest, 48, 19, 30, there is the following excerpt from Modestinus: "Si quis aliquid fecerit, quo leves hominum animi superstitione numinis terrerentur, divus Marcus hujusmodi homines in insulam relegari rescripsit."
There is no doubt that the Emperor's Reflections--or his Meditations, as they are generally named--is a genuine work. In the first book he speaks of himself, his family, and his teachers; and in other books he mentions himself. Suidas (v.[Greek: Markos]) notices a work of Antoninus in twelve books, which he names the "conduct of his own life;" and he cites the book under several words in his Dictionary, giving the emperor's name, but not the title of the work. There are also passages cited by Suidas from Antoninus without mention of the emperor's name. The true title of the work is unknown. Xylander, who published the first edition of this book (Zürich, 1558, 8vo, with a Latin version), used a manuscript which contained the twelve books, but it is not known where the manuscript is now. The only other complete manuscript which is known to exist is in the Vatican library, but it has no title and no inscriptions of the several books: the eleventh only has the inscription, [Greek: Markou autokratoros] marked with an asterisk. The other Vatican manuscripts and the three Florentine contain only excerpts from the emperor's book. All the titles of the excerpts nearly agree with that which Xylander prefixed to his edition, [Greek: Markou Antôninou Autokratoros tôn eis heauton biblia ib.] This title has been used by all subsequent editors. We cannot tell whether Antoninus divided his work into books or somebody else did it. If the inscriptions at the end of the first and second books are genuine, he may have made the division himself.
It is plain that the emperor wrote down his thoughts or reflections as the occasions arose; and since they were intended for his own use, it is no improbable conjecture that he left a complete copy behind him written with his own hand; for it is not likely that so diligent a man would use the labor of a transcriber for such a purpose, and expose his most secret thoughts to any other eye. He may have also intended the book for his son Commodus, who however had no taste for his father's philosophy.
Some careful hand preserved the precious volume; and a work by Antoninus is mentioned by other late writers besides Suidas.
Many critics have labored on the text of Antoninus. The most complete edition is that by Thomas Gataker, 1652, 4to. The second edition of Gataker was superintended by George Stanhope, 1697, 4to. There is also an edition of 1704. Gataker made and suggested many good corrections, and he also made a new Latin version, which is not a very good specimen of Latin, but it generally expresses the sense of the original, and often better than some of the more recent translations. He added in the margin opposite to each paragraph references to the other parallel passages; and he wrote a commentary, one of the most complete that has been written on any ancient author. This commentary contains the editor's exposition of the more difficult passages, and quotations from all the Greek and Roman writers for the illustration of the text. It is a wonderful monument of learning and labor, and certainly no Englishman has yet done anything like it. At the end of his preface the editor says that he wrote it at Rotherhithe near London, in a severe winter, when he was in the seventy-eighth year of his age, 1651--a time when Milton, Selden, and other great men of the Commonwealth time were living; and the great French scholar Saumaise (Salmasius), with whom Gataker corresponded and received help from him for his edition of Antoninus.
The Greek test has also been edited by J. M. Schultz, Leipzig, 1802, 8vo; and by the learned Greek Adamantinus Corais, Paris, 1816, 8vo. The text of Schultz was republished by Tauchnitz, 1821.
There are English, German, French, Italian, and Spanish translations of M. Antoninus, and there may be others. I have not seen all the English translations. There is one by Jeremy Collier, 1702, 8vo, a most coarse and vulgar copy of the original. The latest French translation by Alexis Pierron in the collection of Charpentier is better than Dacier's, which has been honored with an Italian version (Udine, 1772). There is an Italian version (1675), which I have not seen. It is by a cardinal.
"A man illustrious in the church, the Cardinal Francis Barberini the elder, nephew of Pope Urban VIII., occupied the last years of his life in translating into his native language the thoughts of the Roman emperor, in order to diffuse among the faithful the fertilizing and vivifying seeds. He dedicated this translation to his soul, to make it, as he says in his energetic style, redder than his purple at the sight of the virtues of this Gentile" (Pierron, Preface).
I have made this translation at intervals after having used the book for many years. It is made from the Greek, but I have not always followed one text; and I have occasionally compared other versions with my own. I made this translation for my own use, because I found that it was worth the labor; but it may be useful to others also; and therefore I determined to print it. As the original is sometimes very difficult to understand and still more difficult to translate, it is not possible that I have always avoided error. But I believe that I have not often missed the meaning, and those who will take the trouble to compare the translation with the original should not hastily conclude that I am wrong, if they do not agree with me. Some passages do give the meaning, though at first sight they may not appear to do so; and when I differ from the translators, I think that in some places they are wrong, and in other places I am sure that they are. I have placed in some passages a +, which indicates corruption in the text or great uncertainty in the meaning. I could have made the language more easy and flowing, but I have preferred a ruder style as being better suited to express the character of the original; and sometimes the obscurity which may appear in the version is a fair copy of the obscurity of the Greek. If I should ever revise this version, I would gladly make use of any corrections which may be suggested. I have added an index of some of the Greek terms with the corresponding English. If I have not given the best words for the Greek, I have done the best that I could; and in the text I have always given the same translation of the same word.
The last reflection of the Stoic philosophy that I have observed is in Simplicius' Commentary on the Enchiridion of Epictetus. Simplicius was not a Christian, and such a man was not likely to be converted at a time when Christianity was grossly corrupted. But he was a really religious man, and he concludes his commentary with a prayer to the Deity which no Christian could improve. From the time of Zeno to Simplicius, a period of about nine hundred years, the Stoic philosophy formed the characters of some of the best and greatest men. Finally it became extinct, and we hear no more of it till the revival of letters in Italy. Angelo Poliziano met with two very inaccurate and incomplete manuscripts of Epictetus' Enchiridion, which he translated into Latin and dedicated to his great patron Lorenzo de' Medici, in whose collection he had found the book. Poliziano's version was printed in the first Bâle edition of the Enchiridion, A.D. 1531 (apud And. Cratandrum). Poliziano recommends the Enchiridion to Lorenzo as a work well suited to his temper, and useful in the difficulties by which he was surrounded.
Epictetus and Antoninus have had readers ever since they were first printed. The little book of Antoninus has been the companion of some great men. Machiavelli's Art of War and Marcus Antoninus were the two books which were used when he was a young man by Captain John Smith, and he could not have found two writers better fitted to form the character of a soldier and a man. Smith is almost unknown and forgotten in England, his native country, but not in America, where he saved the young colony of Virginia. He was great in his heroic mind and his deeds in arms, but greater still in the nobleness of his character. For a man's greatness lies not in wealth and station, as the vulgar believe, nor yet in his intellectual capacity, which is often associated with the meanest moral character, the most abject servility to those in high places, and arrogance to the poor and lowly; but a man's true greatness lies in the consciousness of an honest purpose in life, founded on a just estimate of himself and everything else, on frequent self-examination, and a steady obedience to the rule which he knows to be right, without troubling himself, as the emperor says he should not, about what others may think or say, or whether they do or do not do that which he thinks and says and does.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF MARCUS AURELIUS ANTONIUS It has been said that the Stoic philosophy first showed its real value when it passed from Greece to Rome. The doctrines of Zeno and his successors were well suited to the gravity and practical good sense of the Romans; and even in the Republican period we have an example of a man, M. Cato Uticensis, who lived the life of a Stoic and died consistently with the opinions which he professed. He was a man, says Cicero, who embraced the Stoic philosophy from conviction; not for the purpose of vain discussion, as most did, but in order to make his life conformable to the Stoic precepts. In the wretched times from the death of Augustus to the murder of Domitian, there was nothing but the Stoic philosophy which could console and support the followers of the old religion under imperial tyranny and amidst universal corruption. There were even then noble minds that could dare and endure, sustained by a good conscience and an elevated idea of the purposes of man's existence.
Such were Paetus Thrasae, Helvidius Priscus, Cornutus, C. Musonius Rufus,[A] and the poets Persius and Juvenal, whose energetic language and manly thoughts may be as instructive to us now as they might have been to their contemporaries. Persius died under Nero's bloody reign; but Juvenal had the good fortune to survive the tyrant Domitian and to see the better times of Nerva, Trajan, and Hadrian.[B] His best precepts are derived from the Stoic school, and they are enforced in his finest verses by the unrivalled vigor of the Latin language.
[A] I have omitted Seneca, Nero's preceptor. He was in a sense a Stoic, and he has said many good things in a very fine way.
There is a judgment of Gellius (xii. 2.) on Seneca, or rather a statement of what some people thought of his philosophy, and it is not favorable. His writings and his life must be taken together, and I have nothing more to say of him here. The reader will find a notice of Seneca and his philosophy in "Seekers after God," by the Rev. P. W. Farrar. Macmillan and Co.
[B] Ribbeck has labored to prove that those Satires, which contain philosophical precepts, are not the work of the real, but of a false Juvenal, a Declamator. Still the verses exist, and were written by somebody who was acquainted with the Stoic doctrines.
The best two expounders of the later Stoical philosophy were a Greek slave and a Roman emperor. Epictetus, a Phrygian Greek, was brought to Rome, we know not how, but he was there the slave and afterwards the freedman of an unworthy master, Epaphroditus by name, himself a freedman and a favorite of Nero. Epictetus may have been a hearer of C. Musonius Rufus, while he was still a slave, but he could hardly have been a teacher before he was made free. He was one of the philosophers whom Domitian's order banished from Rome. He retired to Nicopolis in Epirus, and he may have died there. Like other great teachers he wrote nothing, and we are indebted to his grateful pupil Arrian for what we have of Epictetus' discourses. Arrian wrote eight books of the discourses of Epictetus, of which only four remain and some fragments. We have also from Arrian's hand the small Enchiridion or Manual of the chief precepts of Epictetus. This is a valuable commentary on the Enchiridion by Simplicius, who lived in the time of the emperor Justinian.[A] [A] There is a complete edition of Arrian's Epictetus with the commentary of Simplicius by J. Schweighaeuser, 6 vols. 8vo.
1799, 1800. There is also an English translation of Epictetus by Mrs. Carter.
Antoninus in his first book (i. 7), in which he gratefully commemorates his obligations to his teachers, says that he was made acquainted by Junius Rusticus with the discourses of Epictetus, whom he mentions also in other passages (iv. 41; xi. 34, 36). Indeed, the doctrines of Epictetus and Antoninus are the same, and Epictetus is the best authority for the explanation of the philosophical language of Antoninus and the exposition of his opinions. But the method of the two philosophers is entirely different. Epictetus addressed himself to his hearers in a continuous discourse and in a familiar and simple manner.
Antoninus wrote down his reflections for his own use only, in short, unconnected paragraphs, which are often obscure.
The Stoics made three divisions of philosophy,--Physic ([Greek: phusikon]), Ethic ([Greek: êthikon]), and Logic ([Greek: logikon]) (viii. 13). This division, we are told by Diogenes, was made by Zeno of Citium, the founder of the Stoic sect, and by Chrysippus; but these philosophers placed the three divisions in the following order,--Logic, Physic, Ethic. It appears, however, that this division was made before Zeno's time, and acknowledged by Plato, as Cicero remarks (Acad. Post.
i. 5). Logic is not synonymous with our term Logic in the narrower sense of that word.
Cleanthes, a Stoic, subdivided the three divisions and made six,--Dialectic and Rhetoric, comprised in Logic; Ethic and Politic; Physic and Theology. This division was merely for practical use, for all Philosophy is one. Even among the earliest Stoics Logic, or Dialectic, does not occupy the same place as in Plato: it is considered only as an instrument which is to be used for the other divisions of Philosophy.
An exposition of the earlier Stoic doctrines and of their modifications would require a volume. My object is to explain only the opinions of Antoninus, so far as they can be collected from his book.
According to the subdivision of Cleanthes, Physic and Theology go together, or the study of the nature of Things, and the study of the nature of the Deity, so far as man can understand the Deity, and of his government of the universe. This division or subdivision is not formally adopted by Antoninus, for, as already observed, there is no method in his book; but it is virtually contained in it.
Cleanthes also connects Ethic and Politic, or the study of the principles of morals and the study of the constitution of civil society; and undoubtedly he did well in subdividing Ethic into two parts. Ethic in the narrower sense and Politic; for though the two are intimately connected, they are also very distinct, and many questions can only be properly discussed by carefully observing the distinction. Antoninus does not treat of Politic. His subject is Ethic, and Ethic in its practical application to his own conduct in life as a man and as a governor. His Ethic is founded on his doctrines about man's nature, the Universal Nature, and the relation of every man to everything else. It is therefore intimately and inseparably connected with Physic, or the Nature of Things, and with Theology, or the Nature of the Deity. He advises us to examine well all the impressions on our minds ([Greek: phantasiai]) and to form a right judgment of them, to make just conclusions, and to inquire into the meanings of words, and so far to apply Dialectic; but he has no attempt at any exposition of Dialectic, and his philosophy is in substance purely moral and practical. He says (viii. 13), "Constantly and, if it be possible, on the occasion of every impression on the soul,[A] apply to it the principles of Physic, of Ethic, and of Dialectic:" which is only another way of telling us to examine the impression in every possible way. In another passage (iii.
11) he says, "To the aids which have been mentioned, let this one still be added: make for thyself a definition or description of the object ([Greek: to phantaston]) which is presented to thee, so as to see distinctly what kind of a thing it is in its substance, in its nudity, in its complete entirety, and tell thyself its proper name, and the names of the things of which it has been compounded, and into which it will be resolved." Such an examination implies a use of Dialectic, which Antoninus accordingly employed as a means toward establishing his Physical, Theological, and Ethical principles.
[A] The original is [Greek: epi pasês phantasias]. We have no word which expresses [Greek: phantasia], for it is not only the sensuous appearance which comes from an external object, which object is called [Greek: to phantaston], but it is also the thought or feeling or opinion which is produced even when there is no corresponding external object before us. Accordingly everything which moves the soul is [Greek: phantaston], and produces a [Greek: phantasia].
In this extract Antoninus says [Greek: physiologein, pathologein, dialektikeuesthai]. I have translated [Greek: pathologein] by using the word Moral (Ethic), and that is the meaning here.
There are several expositions of the Physical, Theological, and Ethical principles, which are contained in the work of Antoninus; and more expositions than I have read. Ritter (Geschichte der Philosophie, iv.
241), after explaining the doctrines of Epictetus, treats very briefly and insufficiently those of Antoninus. But he refers to a short essay, in which the work is done better.[A] There is also an essay on the Philosophical Principles of M. Aurelius Antoninus by J.M. Schultz, placed at the end of his German translation of Antoninus (Schleswig, 1799). With the assistance of these two useful essays and his own diligent study, a man may form a sufficient notion of the principles of Antoninus; but he will find it more difficult to expound them to others.
Besides the want of arrangement in the original and of connection among the numerous paragraphs, the corruption of the text, the obscurity of the language and the style, and sometimes perhaps the confusion in the writer's own ideas--besides all this, there is occasionally an apparent contradiction in the emperor's thoughts, as if his principles were sometimes unsettled, as if doubt sometimes clouded his mind. A man who leads a life of tranquillity and reflection, who is not disturbed at home and meddles not with the affairs of the world, may keep his mind at ease and his thoughts in one even course. But such a man has not been tried. All his Ethical philosophy and his passive virtue might turn out to be idle words, if he were once exposed to the rude realities of human existence. Fine thoughts and moral dissertations from men who have not worked and suffered may be read, but they will be forgotten. No religion, no Ethical philosophy is worth anything, if the teacher has not lived the "life of an apostle," and been ready to die "the death of a martyr." "Not in passivity (the passive effects) but in activity lie the evil and the good of the rational social animal, just as his virtue and his vice lie not in passivity, but in activity" (ix. 16). The emperor Antoninus was a practical moralist. From his youth he followed a laborious discipline, and though his high station placed him above all want or the fear of it, he lived as frugally and temperately as the poorest philospher. Epictetus wanted little, and it seems that he always had the little that he wanted and he was content with it, as he had been with his servile station! But Antoninus after his accession to the empire sat on an uneasy seat. He had the administration of an empire which extended from the Euphrates to the Atlantic, from the cold mountains of Scotland to the hot sands of Africa; and we may imagine, though we cannot know it by experience, what must be the trials, the troubles, the anxiety, and the sorrows of him who has the world's business on his hands, with the wish to do the best that he can, and the certain knowledge that he can do very little of the good which he wishes.
[A] De Marco Aurelio Antonino...ex ipsius Commentariis.
Scriptio Philologica. Instituit Nicolaus Bachius, Lipsiae, 1826.
In the midst of war, pestilence, conspiracy, general corruption, and with the weight of so unwieldy an empire upon him, we may easily comprehend that Antoninus often had need of all his fortitude to support him. The best and the bravest men have moments of doubt and of weakness; but if they are the best and the bravest, they rise again from their depression by recurring to first principles, as Antoninus does. The emperor says that life is smoke, a vapor, and St. James in his Epistle is of the same mind; that the world is full of envious, jealous, malignant people, and a man might be well content to get out of it. He has doubts perhaps sometimes even about that to which he holds most firmly. There are only a few passages of this kind, but they are evidence of the struggles which even the noblest of the sons of men had to maintain against the hard realities of his daily life. A poor remark it is which I have seen somewhere, and made in a disparaging way, that the emperor's reflections show that he had need of consolation and comfort in life, and even to prepare him to meet his death. True that he did need comfort and support, and we see how he found it. He constantly recurs to his fundamental principle that the universe is wisely ordered, that every man is a part of it and must conform to that order which he cannot change, that whatever the Deity has done is good, that all mankind are a man's brethren, that he must love and cherish them and try to make them better, even those who would do him harm. This is his conclusion (ii. 17): "What then is that which is able to conduct a man?
One thing and only one, Philosophy. But this consists in keeping the divinity within a man free from violence and unharmed, superior to pains and pleasures, doing nothing without a purpose nor yet falsely and with hypocrisy, not feeling the need of another man's doing or not doing anything; and besides, accepting all that happens and all that is allotted, as coming from thence, wherever it is, from whence he himself came; and finally waiting for death with a cheerful mind as being nothing else than a dissolution of the elements of which every living being is compounded. But if there is no harm, to the elements themselves in each continually changing into another, why should a man have any apprehension about the change and dissolution of all the elements [himself]? for it is according to nature; and nothing is evil that is according to nature."
The Physic of Antoninus is the knowledge of the Nature of the Universe, of its government, and of the relation of man's nature to both. He names the universe ([Greek: hê tôn hylôn ousia], vi. 1),[A] "the universal substance," and he adds that "reason" ([Greek: logos]) governs the universe. He also (vi. 9) uses the terms "universal nature" or "nature of the universe." He (vi. 25) calls the universe "the one and all, which we name Cosmos or Order" ([Greek: kosmos]). If he ever seems to use these general terms as significant of the All, of all that man can in any way conceive to exist, he still on other occasions plainly distinguishes between Matter, Material things ([Greek: hylê, hylikon]), and Cause, Origin, Reason ([Greek: aitia, aitiôdes, logos]).[B] This is conformable to Zeno's doctrine that there are two original principles ([Greek: archai]) of all things, that which acts ([Greek: to poioun]) and that which is acted upon ([Greek: to paschon]). That which is acted on is the formless matter ([Greek: hylê]): that which acts is the reason ([Greek: logos]), God, who is eternal and operates through all matter, and produces all things. So Antoninus (v. 32) speaks of the reason ([Greek: logos])which pervades all substance ([Greek: ousia]), and through all time by fixed periods (revolutions) administers the universe ([Greek: to pan]). God is eternal, and Matter is eternal. It is God who gives form to matter, but he is not said to have created matter.
According to this view, which is as old as Anaxagoras, God and matter exist independently, but God governs matter. This doctrine is simply the expression of the fact of the existence both of matter and of God. The Stoics did not perplex themselves with the in-soluble question of the origin and nature of matter.[C] Antoninus also assumes a beginning of things, as we now know them; but his language is sometimes very obscure.
I have endeavored to explain the meaning of one difficult passage (vii.
75, and the note).
[A] As to the word [Greek: ousia], the reader may see the Index. I add here a few examples of the use of the word; Antoninus has (v. 24), [Greek: hê sumpasa ousia], "the universal substance." He says (xii. 30 and iv. 40), "there is one common substance" ([Greek: ousia]), distributed among countless bodies. In Stobaeus (tom. 1, lib. 1, tit. 14) there is this definition, [Greek: ousian de phasin tôn ontôn hapantôn tên prôtên hylên]. In viii. II, Antoninus speaks of [Greek: to ousiôdes kai hyulikon], "the substantial and the material;" and (vii. 10) he says that "everything material" ([Greek: enulon]) disappears in the substance of the whole ([Greek: tê tôn holôn ousia]). The [Greek: ousia] is the generic name of that existence which we assume as the highest or ultimate, because we conceive no existence which can be coordinated with it and none above it. It is the philosopher's "substance:" it is the ultimate expression for that which we conceive or suppose to be the basis, the being of a thing. "From the Divine, which is substance in itself, or the only and sole substance, all and everything that is created exists" (Swedenborg, Angelic Wisdom, 198).
[B] I remark, in order to anticipate any misapprehension, that all these general terms involve a contradiction. The "one and all," and the like, and "the whole," imply limitation. "One" is limited; "all" is limited; the "whole" is limited. We cannot help it. We cannot find words to express that which we cannot fully conceive. The addition of "absolute" or any other such word does not mend the matter. Even the word God is used by most people, often unconsciously, in such a way that limitation is implied, and yet at the same time words are added which are intended to deny limitation. A Christian martyr, when he was asked what God was, is said to have answered that God has no name like a man; and Justin says the same (Apol. ii. 6), "the names Father, God, Creator, Lord, and Master are not names, but appellations derived from benefactions and acts." (Compare Seneca, De Benef. iv. 8.) We can conceive the existence of a thing, or rather we may have the idea of an existence, without an adequate notion of it, "adequate" meaning coextensive and coequal with the thing. We have a notion of limited space derived from the dimensions of what we call a material thing, though of space absolute, if I may use the term, we have no notion at all; and of infinite space the notion is the same--no notion at all; and yet we conceive it in a sense, though I know not how, and we believe that space is infinite, and we cannot conceive it to be finite.
[C] The notions of matter and of space are inseparable. We derive the notion of space from matter and form. But we have no adequate conception either of matter or space. Matter in its ultimate resolution is as unintelligible as what men call mind, spirit, or by whatever other name they may express the power which makes itself known by acts. Anaxagoras laid down the distinction between intelligence [Greek: nous] and matter, and he said that intelligence impressed motion on matter, and so