Marcus Aurelius Antoninus to Himself - College of Stoic Philosophers

ex INTRODUCTION SECT.
and intelligible. The interest lies in another plane, in
the ethics of practical experience.
Epictetus is the teacher to whom Marcus Aurelius is
most allied in age, in doctrine, and in scope of thought.
In the emphasis, as well as in the substance, of their
teaching there is close resemblance ; their psychology
and their epistemology agree ; they insist on the
same main ethical dogmas ; they take the same
attitude towards abstract dialectic, and to rival schools
of philosophy Cynic, Epicurean, or Sceptic. In their
concentration upon practical ethics, their recurrence to
Socratic formulas, their abandonment of Stoic arrogations
of certitude and indefectibility, their extension and
enforcement of social obligation, their ethical realisation
of the omnipresent immanence of God, they occupy the
same position towards Stoicism. But the likeness goes
deeper than mere general traits. Among his debts to
his chief teacher Rusticus, Marcus recalls with crowning
emphasis his gift of the Memoirs of Epictetus.^ With
the treatise of Ariston, they may be regarded as the
instrument of his 'conversion.' The disciple names
Epictetus 2 in the same category with Chrysippus and
Socrates, quotes him 3 more often than any philosopher,
and borrows from his stores his favourite excerpts,
metaphors, and illustrations ; thought and language are
saturated with conscious and unconscious reminiscences,
too numerous to recapitulate. The most noteworthy
differences arise from Marcus' fuller recognition and
1 i. 7.
2 vii. 19.
3 See iv. 41 ; v. 29 ; xi. 33, 34, 35, 36, 37. The citation
from Plato in vii. 63 is in the form preserved only by Epictetus.