He at least, the humble follower of the bodily eye, was aware of a crisis in life, in this brief, obscure existence, a fierce opposition of real good and real evil around him, the issues of which he must by no [242] means compromise or confuse; of the antagonisms of which the "wise" Marcus Aurelius was unaware.
That long chapter of the cruelty of the Roman public shows may, perhaps, leave with the children of the modern world a feeling of self-complacency.

Yet it might seem well to ask ourselves--it is always well to do so, when we read of the slave-trade, for instance, or of great religious persecutions on this side or on that, or of anything else which raises in us the question, "Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this thing ?"--not merely, what germs of feeling we may entertain which, under fitting circumstances, would induce us to the like; but, even more practically, what thoughts, what sort of considerations, may be actually present to our minds such as might have furnished us, living in another age, and in the midst of those legal crimes, with plausible excuses for them: each age in turn, perhaps, having its own peculiar point of blindness, with its consequent peculiar sin--the touch-stone of an unfailing conscience in the select few.
Those cruel amusements were, certainly, the sin of blindness, of deadness and stupidity, in the age of Marius; and his light had not failed him regarding it.

Yes! what was needed was the heart that would make it impossible to witness all this; and the future would be with the forces that could beget a heart like that.

[243] His chosen philosophy had said,--Trust the eye: Strive to be right always in regard to the concrete experience: Beware of falsifying your impressions.

And its sanction had at least been effective here, in protesting--"This, and this, is what you may not look upon!" Surely evil was a real thing, and the wise man wanting in the sense of it, where, not to have been, by instinctive election, on the right side, was to have failed in life.
END OF VOL.