and later on went suddenly to sleep. In the morning he had forgotten
all about it, and by accident it got mixed up with the rest of the
book. That is the only explanation that seems to me possible, and it
comforts me.

We are none of us philosophers all the time.

Philosophy is the science of suffering the inevitable, which most of
us contrive to accomplish without the aid of philosophy. Marcus
Aurelius was an Emperor of Rome, and Diogenes was a bachelor living
rent free. I want the philosophy of the bank clerk married on thirty
shillings a week, of the farm labourer bringing up a family of eight
on a precarious wage of twelve shillings. The troubles of Marcus
Aurelius were chiefly those of other people.

"Taxes will have to go up, I am afraid," no doubt he often sighed.
"But, after all, what are taxes? A thing in conformity with the
nature of man--a little thing that Zeus approves of, one feels sure.
The daemon within me says taxes don't really matter."

Maybe the paterfamilias of the period, who did the paying, worried
about new sandals for the children, his wife insisting she hadn't a
frock fit to be seen in at the amphitheatre; that, if there was one
thing in the world she fancied, it was seeing a Christian eaten by a
lion, but now she supposed the children would have to go without her,
found that philosophy came to his aid less readily.

"Bother these barbarians," Marcus Aurelius may have been tempted, in
an unphilosophical moment, to exclaim; "I do wish they would not burn
these poor people's houses over their heads, toss the babies about on