e, Nikias
would have disagreed with him, and where he and Nikias both agreed
against us?

We have, of course, the systems of the great philosophers--especially of
Plato and Aristotle. Better than either, perhaps, we can make out the
religion of M. Aurelius. Amid all the harshness and plainness of his
literary style, Marcus possessed a gift which has been granted to few,
the power of writing down what was in his heart just as it was, not
obscured by any consciousness of the presence of witnesses or any
striving after effect. He does not seem to have tried deliberately to
reveal himself, yet he has revealed himself in that short personal
note-book almost as much as the great inspired egotists, Rousseau and
St. Augustine. True, there are some passages in the book which are
unintelligible to us; that is natural in a work which was not meant to
be read by the public; broken flames of the white passion that consumed
him bursting through the armour of his habitual accuracy and
self-restraint.

People fail to understand Marcus, not because of his lack of
self-expression, but because it is hard for most men to breathe at that
intense height of spiritual life, or, at least, to breathe soberly. They
can do it if they are allowed to abandon themselves to floods of
emotion, and to lose self-judgement and self-control. I am often rather
surprised at good critics speaking of Marcus as 'cold'. There is as much
intensity of feeling in +Ta eis heauton+ as in most of the nobler modern
books of religion, only there is a sterner power controlling it. The
feeling never amounts to complete self-abandonment. 'The Guiding Power'
never trembles upon its throne, and the emotion is severely purged of
earthly dross. That being so, we children of earth respond to it less
readily.

Still, whether or no we can share Marcus's religion, we can at any rate
understand most of it. But even then we reach only the personal religion
of a very extraordinary man; we are not much nearer to the religion of
the average educated person--the background against which Marcus, like
Plato, ought to stand out. I believe that our conceptions of it are
really very vague and various. Our great-grandfathers who read 'Tully's
_Offices_ and _Ends_' were better informed than we. But there are many
large and apparently simple questions about which, even after reading
Cicero's philosophical translations, scholars probably feel quite
uncertain. Were the morals of Epictetus or