whole
a matter of will.--"'Tis in thy power," here too, again, "to think as
thou wilt." For his part he has asserted his will, and has the courage
of his opinion. "To the better of two things, if thou findest that,
turn with thy whole heart: eat and drink ever of the best before thee."
"Wisdom," says that other disciple of the Sapiential philosophy, "hath
mingled Her wine, she hath also prepared Herself a table." Tou aristou
apolaue:+ "Partake ever of Her best!" And what Marius, peeping now
very closely upon the intimacies of that singular mind, found a thing
actually pathetic and affecting, was the manner of the writer's bearing
as in the presence of this supposed guest; so elusive, so jealous of
any palpable manifestation of himself, so taxing to one's faith, never
allowing one to lean frankly upon him and feel wholly at rest. Only,
he [50] would do his part, at least, in maintaining the constant
fitness, the sweetness and quiet, of the guest-chamber. Seeming to vary
with the intellectual fortune of the hour, from the plainest account of
experience, to a sheer fantasy, only "believed because it was
impossible," that one hope was, at all events, sufficient to make men's
common pleasures and their common ambition, above all their commonest
vices, seem very petty indeed, too petty to know of. It bred in him a
kind of magnificence of character, in the old Greek sense of the term;
a temper incompatible with any merely plausible advocacy of his
convictions, or merely superficial thoughts about anything whatever, or
talk about other people, or speculation as to what was passing in their
so visibly little souls, or much talking of any kind, however clever or
graceful. A soul thus disposed had "already entered into the better
life":--was indeed in some sort "a priest, a minister of the gods."
Hence his constant "recollection"; a close watching of his soul, of a
kind almost unique in the ancient world.--Before all things examine
into thyself: strive to be at home with thyself!--Marius, a sympathetic
witness of all this, might almost seem to have had a foresight of
monasticism itself in the prophetic future. With this mystic companion
he had gone a step onward out of the merely objective pagan existence.
Here was already a master in that craft of self-direction, which was
about to [51] play so large a part in the forming of human mind, under
the sanction of the Christian church.

Yet it was in truth a somewhat melancholy