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