Marcus Aurelius Antoninus to Himself - College of Stoic Philosophers

ii 2 BIRTH OF STOICISM xli
and processes and sensations which constitute man's
life. With these he must put himself in agreement.
The intimations of sense and instinct were the sure
utterance of nature, convincing and unimpeachable ;
agreement with them,
in
virtue and will would find their
natural exercise, and attain full and undivided self-
realisation. The one sufficient way to happiness lay
in obedience to the primary mandates of Nature, as
expressed in impulses of appetite, of function, and
of natural propensity, and satisfied by inner self-satisfaction
of the will. Centring on these, the wise man
would refuse to implicate himself in disturbing sensi-
bilities, or in any gratuitous distractions of thought or
affection or exterior deference or obligation. Praise,
blame, and the whole array of social sanctions were
extraneous to the man's own nature, and must not be
suffered to impair that unconditional self-assertion and
self-mastery which were indispensable
to moral inde-
pendence. Still less could any weight attach to purely
external appendages, such as wealth, rank, costume,
reputation, or environment. These things
are not to
be decried as in themselves baneful or undesirable j or
to be regarded as temptations, which the wise man must
by virtue of his profession eschew ; they fall strictly into
the same category as their opposites, poverty or squalor
or obloquy. The inner satisfaction is found in ignoring,
not in mortifying the desires. So far as the Cynic or
the Stoic is an ascetic, it is by compromise rather
than upon principle, a precaution and in some sense a
confession of weakness, rather than a counsel of perfection
j asceticism is not inculcated as a form of moral