[44] It is not easy to understand this section. It has been suggested that there is some error in ἢ ἀλόγιστα, &c. Some of the translators have made nothing of the passage, and they have somewhat perverted the words. The first proposition is, that the universe was made by some sufficient power. A beginning of the universe is assumed, and a power which framed an order. The next question is, How are things produced now; or in other words, by what power do forms appear in continuous succession? The answer, according to Antoninus, may be this: It is by virtue of the original constitution of things that all change and succession have been effected and are effected. And this is intelligible in a sense, if we admit that the universe is always one and the same, a continuity of identity; as much one and the same as man is one and the same, which he believes himself to be, though he also believes and cannot help believing that both in his body and in his thoughts there is change and succession. There is no real discontinuity then in the universe; and if we say that there was an order framed in the beginning and that the things which are now produced are a consequence of a previous arrangement, we speak of things as we are compelled to view them, as forming a series or succession; just as we speak of the changes in our own bodies and the sequence of our own thoughts. But as there are no intervals, not even intervals infinitely small, between any two supposed states of any one thing, so there are no intervals, not even infinitely small, between what we call one thing and any other thing which we speak of as immediately preceding or following it. What we call time is an idea derived from our notion of a succession of things or events, an idea which is a part of our constitution, but not an idea which we can suppose to belong to an infinite intelligence and power. The conclusion then is certain that the present and the past, the production of present things and the supposed original order, out of which we say that present things now come, are one: and the present productive power and the so-called past arrangement are only different names for one thing. I suppose then that Antoninus wrote here as people sometimes talk now, and that his real meaning is not exactly expressed by his words. There are certainly other passages from which, I think, that we may collect that he had notions of production something like what I have expressed.

We now come to the alternative: "or even the chief things principle." I do not exactly know what he means by τὰ κυριώτατα "the chief," or, "the most excellent," or whatever it is. But as he speaks elsewhere of inferior and superior things, and of the inferior being for the use of the superior, and of rational beings being the highest, he may here mean rational beings. He also in this alternative assumes a governing power of the universe, and that it acts by directing its power towards these chief objects, or making its special, proper, motion towards them. And here he uses the noun (ὁρμῄ) "movement," which contains the same notion as the verb (ὡρμησε) "moved," which he used at the beginning of the paragraph when he was speaking of the making of the universe. If we do not accept the first hypothesis, he says, we must take the conclusion of the second, that the "chief things towards which the ruling power of the universe makes a movement are directed by no rational principle." The meaning then is, if there is a meaning in it, that though there is a governing power, which strives to give effect to its efforts, we must conclude that there is no rational direction of anything, if the power which first made the universe does not in some way govern it still. Besides, if we assume that anything is now produced or now exists without the action of the supreme intelligence, and yet that this intelligence makes an effort to act, we obtain a conclusion which cannot be reconciled with the nature of a supreme power, whose existence Antoninus always assumes. The tranquillity that a man may gain from these reflections must result from his rejecting the second hypothesis, and accepting the first; whatever may be the exact sense in which the emperor understood the first. Or, as he says elsewhere, if there is no providence which governs the world, man has at least the power of governing himself according to the constitution of his nature; and so he may be tranquil, if he does the best that he can.

If there is no error in the passage, it is worth the labor to discover the writer's exact meaning; for I think that he had a meaning, though people may not agree what it was. (Compare ix. 28.) If I have rightly explained the emperor's meaning in this and other passages, he has touched the solution of a great question.