Marcus Aurelius Antoninus to Himself - College of Stoic Philosophers

v MARCUS AURELIUS ANTONINUS cxxxvii
man. We are made for one another :
'
the bond of
kind makes alls things human dear.' * The rational and
social element is as inherent in the constitution of man,
as gravity in the various elements of matter. 2 He can-
not escape or annul this property of nature ; he is (as
Aristotle too had said) *
a social being,' made for social
action; its authentications are paramount and binding,
its performance his refreshment and delight. 3
It is
in the pages of Marcus that the conception of the social
tie gains fullest recognition and enforcement. Rational
soul only attains its height, in realising 'catholic and
social aims.' 4 The seed of this is found historically in
the bond of citizenship, which supplied the Athenian
Greek with his basis of morality and human obligation.
The Stoic philosopher, proclaiming the moral autonomy
of the individual, disclaimed the strictly political bond
and sanction, to found morality upon bases that were
universal. The civic obligation (in its narrower application)
was annulled and superseded by the cosmic, but
the name and the associations of '
citizenship '
were too
deeply grafted into moral consciousness to be killed out.
They survived into the idea of a 'world -citizenship.'
' The world is as it were a city,' 5 and if to the Athenian
Athens was Dear City of Cecrops, to the Stoic the
universe is Dear City of God? At the outset the phrase
1 ii. i, 13; iii. 4; iv. 3, 4 ; v. i, 16, 30; vi. 39; vii. 13,
22, 31, 55; viii. 8, 26, 56, 59; ix. i, 27 ; xi. i, 10, 18 ; xii. 30.
2 ix. 9 ; xi. 20.
3 iii. 6, ii ; v. i, 6, 16 ; vi. 7, 14, 30; vii. 5, 55, 74; viii.
12, 23 ; ix. 31, 42 ; x. 6 ; xi. 21 4
; xii. 20.
vi. 14, etc.
6
ii. 16; iii. n ; iv. 3, 4, 23; vi. 44; vii. 8; x. 6, 15;
xii. 36.
6 iv. 23.