that wholly external and objective habit of life, which had been
sufficient for the old classic soul. His purely literary curiosity
was greatly stimulated by this example of a book of self-portraiture.
It was in fact the position of the modern essayist,--creature of
efforts rather than of achievements, in the matter of apprehending
truth, but at least conscious of lights by the way, which he must
needs record, acknowledge. What seemed to underlie that position was
the desire to make the most of every experience that might come,
outwardly or from within: to perpetuate, to display, what was so
fleeting, in a kind of instinctive, pathetic protest against the
imperial writer's own theory--that theory of the "perpetual flux" of
all things--to Marius himself, so plausible from of old.

There was, besides, a special moral or doctrinal significance in the
making of such conversation with one's self at all. The Logos, the
reasonable spark, in man, is common to him with the gods--koinos auto
pros tous theous+--cum diis communis. That might seem but the truism
of a certain school of philosophy; but in Aurelius was clearly an
original and lively apprehension. There could be no inward
conversation with one's self such as this, unless there were indeed
some one else, aware of our actual thoughts and feelings, pleased or
displeased at [48] one's disposition of one's self. Cornelius Fronto
too could enounce that theory of the reasonable community between men
and God, in many different ways. But then, he was a cheerful man,
and Aurelius a singularly sad one; and what to Fronto was but a
doctrine, or a motive of mere rhetoric, was to the other a
consolation. He walks and talks, for a spiritual refreshment lacking
which he would faint by the way, with what to the learned professor
is but matter of philosophic eloquence.