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Figures

refrain from adding any judgment value to naked reality.60 In the words of Epictetus: "we shall never give our assent to anything but that of which we have an objective representation," 61 and he adds the following illustration: So-and-so's son is dead.

What happened?

His son is dead.

Nothing else?

Not a thing.

So-and so's ship sank.

What happened?

His ship sank.

So-and-so was carted off to prison.

What happened?

He was carted off to prison.

- But if we now add to this "He has had bad luck," then each of us is adding this observation on his own account.62

In these objective/realistic definitions, some historians63 believe they can discover the traces of an attitude of repugnance in the face of matter and the objects of the physical world. Thus, according to this view, Marcus Aurelius renounced the Stoic doctrine of the immanence of divine reason in the world and in matter, and there is no longer any trace in him of the admiration felt by Chrysippus for the phenomenal world. We can therefore, it is alleged, find traces in Marcus of a tendency to affirm the transcendence of a divinity existing apart from the phenomenal world.

Some passages in Marcus do indeed seem provocative in this regard, but they require the most painstaking interpretation. When, for instance, Marcus evokes "the putridity of the matter underlying all things . . . liquid, dust, bones, stench," M he does not mean to say that matter itself is putrefaction; rather, he wants to emphasize that the transformations of matter, qua natural processes, are necessarily accompanied by phenomena which seem to us to be repugnant, although in reality they too are natural.

The passage we have cited above65 may seem even more provocative: "Just like your bath-water appears to you - oil, sweat, filth, dirty water, all kinds of loathsome stuff - such is each portion of life, and every substance." This concise text can be interpreted in several different ways. In the first place, we could say that Marcus is here applying his method of objective definitions.

What he means to say would be this: "when I observe physical and physiological phenomena as they truly are, I have to admit that there nre many aspects of them which seem to me to he diNl(UNt inl( or 1 rlvi11l: 1 hcy

Marcus Aurelius

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consist of dust, the filth which covers abandoned objects, bad smells, and stenches. Our objective representation must recognize all .these aspects of reality, without seeking to conceal any of them." Yet this realist vision has a threefold function. In the first place, it is intended to prepare us to confront life such as it is. As Seneca remarks,

To be offended by these things is just as ridiculous as to complain that you got splashed in the bath, or that you got pushed around in a crowd, or that you got dirty in a mud-puddle. The same things happen in life as in the baths, in a crowd, or on the road . . . Life is not a delicate thing.66

Secondly, the realistic outlook is not intended to deny the immanence of reason in the world, but to persuade us to search for reason where it can be found in its purest state: in the daimon or inner genius, that guiding principle within man, source of freedom and principle of the moral life.

Finally, by reinforcing the sombre tones of disgust and repulsion, such definitions are intended to provide a contrast with the splendid illumination which transfigures all things when we consider them from the perspective of universal reason. Elsewhere, Marcus does not hesitate to declare: Everything comes from above, whether it has originated directly in that common directing principle, or whether it is a necessary consequence thereof. Thus, the gaping jaws of a lion, poison, and all kinds of unpleasant things, like thorns and mud, are by-products of those venerable, beautiful things on high. Don't imagine, therefore, that these unpleasant things are alien to that principle you venerate, but rather consider that source of all things. 67