partly anticipated the emperor's answer. We see and
feel and know imperfectly very few things in the few years that we live,
and all the knowledge and all the experience of all the human race is
positive ignorance of the whole, which is infinite. Now, as our reason
teaches us that everything is in some way related to and connected with
every other thing, all notion of evil as being in the universe of things
is a contradiction; for if the whole comes from and is governed by an
intelligent being, it is impossible to conceive anything in it which
tends to the evil or destruction of the whole (viii. 55; x. 6).
Everything is in constant mutation, and yet the whole subsists; we might
imagine the solar system resolved into its elemental parts, and yet the
whole would still subsist "ever young and perfect."

All things, all forms, are dissolved, and new forms appear. All living
things undergo the change which we call death. If we call death an evil,
then all change is an evil. Living beings also suffer pain, and man
suffers most of all, for he suffers both in and by his body and by his
intelligent part. Men suffer also from one another, and perhaps the
largest part of human suffering comes to man from those whom he calls
his brothers. Antoninus says (viii. 55), "Generally, wickedness does no
harm at all to the universe; and particularly, the wickedness [of one
man] does no harm to another. It is only harmful to him who has it in
his power to be released from it as soon as he shall choose." The first
part of this is perfectly consistent with the doctrine that the whole
can sustain no evil or harm. The second part must be explained by the
Stoic principle that there is no evil in anything which is not in our
power. What wrong we suffer from another is his evil, not ours. But this
is an admission that there is evil in a sort, for he who does wrong does
evil, and if others can endure the wrong, still there is evil in the
wrong-doer. Antoninus (xi. 18) gives many excellent precepts with
respect to wrongs and injuries, and his precepts are practical. He
teaches us to bear what we cannot avoid, and his lessons may be just as
useful to him who denies the being and the government of God as to him
who believes in both. There is no direct answer in Antoninus to the
objections which may be made to the existence and providence of God
because of the moral disorder and suffering which are in the world,
except this answer which he makes in repl