y acts, but also
unnecessary thoughts, for thus superfluous acts will not follow after."

And again:--

"We ought to check in the series of our thoughts everything that is
without a purpose and useless, but most of all the over-curious feeling
and the malignant; and a man should use himself to think of those things
only about which, if one should suddenly ask, 'What hast thou now in thy
thoughts?' with perfect openness thou mightest immediately answer, 'This
or That,' so that from thy words it should be plain that everything in
thee is simple and benevolent, and such as befits a social animal, and one
that cares not for thoughts about sensual enjoyments, or any rivalry or
envy and suspicion, or anything else for which thou wouldst blush if thou
shouldst say thou hadst it in thy mind."

So, with a stringent practicalness worthy of Franklin, he discourses on
his favorite text, "Let nothing be done without a purpose." But it is when
he enters the region where Franklin cannot follow him, when he utters his
thoughts on the ground-motives of human action, that he is most
interesting; that he becomes the unique, the incomparable Marcus Aurelius.
Christianity uses language very liable to be misunderstood when it seems
to tell men to do good, not, certainly, from the vulgar motives of worldly
interest, or vanity, or love of human praise, but "that their Father which
seeth in secret may reward them openly." The motives of reward and
punishment have come, from the misconception of language of this kind, to
be strangely overpressed by many Christian moralists, to the deterioration
and disfigurement of Christianity. Marcus Aurelius says, truly and
nobly:--

"One man, when he has done a service to another, is ready to set it down
to his account as a favor conferred. Another is not ready to do this, but
still in his own mind he thinks of the man as his debtor, and he knows
what he has done. A third, in a manner, does not even know what he has
done, _but he is like a vine which has produced grapes, and seeks for
nothing more after it has once produced its proper fruit_. As a horse when
he has run, a dog when he has caught the game, a bee when it has made its
honey, so a man, when he has done a good act, does not call out for others
to come and see, but he goes on to another act, as a vine goes on to
produce again the grapes in season. Must a man, then, be one of these, who
in a manner acts thus without observing it? Yes."

And aga