Calvert Vaux

“ When an ethical principle is to be inculcated about which (we will assume) there is no difference of opinion, the appeal will be made to one kind of intelligence by thinkers of the calibre of (let us say) George Herbert, and to another kind by studious inquirers of a type which may be represented by Emerson and Antoninus, about whom all that one can say in the way of definition is that his appeal in each separate instance seems to be directly made without qualification or limitation, to himself, to you, to me, to every being capable of understanding the meaning of ordinary words. ”

“ His experience shows the immense advantage of good fortune, when crystallized in the form of a liberal, far-reaching education; and one feels that to produce a man so cool, complete, and many-sided, none of his advantages were less than he required. The instinct that suggests the possession of wealth as a desideratum to nine-tenths of the race, finds here a sufficient defense. We want to have leisure, opportunity, plenty of right to occupy other people's time, and plenty of time to exercise our rights. In Antoninus we find a man, an emperor, who has been liberally brought up from the first ”

“ It is, perhaps, fair enough for the teacher to say that faith is best shown by works; but the interesting aspect of any faith is best shown by the theory involved, the intellectual ideal, the point aimed at, the sweep of the curve; and we are at no loss for information of this kind with regard to Antoninus, although there is but little record of his personal practice. His faith, as a man of the world, was in a good, social habit of life; in active, industrious, kindly cooperation. ”

“ You say, men cannot admire the sharpness of your wit. Be it so. But there are many other things of which you can hardly say you are not formed for them by Nature. Show those qualities then which are altogether in your power, sincerity, gravity, endurance of labor, contentment with your portion, benevolence, frankness, freedom from trifling, magnanimity. Do you not see how many qualities you are immediately able to exhibit in which there is no excuse for natural incapacity and unfitness? ”

“ Wait for death with a cheerful mind, as being nothing else than a dissolution of the elements of which every human being is compounded. But if there is no harm to the elements themselves in each continually changing into another, why should a man have any apprehension about the change and dissolution of all the elements ”

“ It is never special, but always general and in the direction of character which belongs, like the air, to every human being, and not in the direction of genius or acquirement, which is owned like the earth by human beings very unequally. ”

“ When the Japanese embassadors visited the United States, it was remarked that the manners of the most refined men among them were essentially European or American, if we choose so to state it; not that they were in the smallest particular borrowed or assumed, but because there is a logic in the culture of the human being, that brings about the same results all the world over, so far as manners are concerned. The style of Marcus Antoninus has this cosmopolitan air. He seems to have been the really complete ideal of a cultivated man ”

“ An undue prominence is given to the power of individual will in the direction of self-control and the avoidance of evil; sufficient allowance is not made for human nature—that is, the exaggerations of passion, appetite, or, in general terms, of temperament. ”

“ In the series of things, those which follow are always aptly fitted to those which have gone before; and the things which come into existence exhibit no mere succession, but a certain wonderful relationship. ”

“ It hardly seems possible that men who through pious acts have been most intimate with the Divinity, when they die should be completely extinguished. But if this is so, rest assured that it ought not to have been otherwise; for, you see, in this inquiry you are disputing with the Deity, who would not have allowed anything in the order of the universe to be neglected unjustly and irrationally. ”

“ He is exposed to selfish, baneful influences, as every emperor must be, but he is equal to the emergency; his self-respect encourages him constantly to draw the line between his own and other people's experiences, and to keep his own unconfused. ”

“ The recognition of a process of development in all things—or, as it is well termed, "evolution"—is the essential natural law which seems just now to be the important centre of scientific interest; and it may almost be said to be an outgrowth of the present decade. ”

“ Imperial Rome, at the beginning of the Christian era, may of course be viewed from a different standpoint; and it seems to me worth while to-night to follow the clew that is given us by the writings of another Roman emperor, Marcus Antoninus, who began his reign in the middle of the second century. ”

“ The people were inspired with such a spirit of honor, virtue, and religion, by the great example of Brien, and by his excellent administration, that as a proof of it we are informed that a young lady of great beauty, adorned with jewels and a costly dress, undertook a journey alone from one end of the kingdom to the other, with a wand only in her hand, on the top of which was a ring of great value ”

“ It is, in fact, in such a man's power to bring himself very nearly to the fashion of a private person, without being for this reason either meaner in thought or more remiss in action with respect to the things which must be done for the public interest in a manner that befits a ruler. ”

“ These writings of Antoninus may be accepted in a similar sense as proof positive in regard to the good type of an imperial Roman. The ideas could not have grown in an isolated way on uncongenial soil; there must have been other good, imperial Romans, and many of them. He is a noble exemplar of his own age, and we learn through him to respect his contemporaries. He is also interesting as a representative man in a more extended sense. ”

“ He is a shrewd, busy, responsible man of the world; always giving orders and attending to the details of his position. He is, of course, never free from the influence of flatterers, hypocrites, and time-servers. ”

“ The deeply-rooted doctrine of special creation is, we know, now losing force day by day, for all who have the opportunity to become acquainted with the current results of scientific investigation, even in a superficial, popular way. ”

“ The invention of a matured animal is seen to be inconceivable, because all the facts that appertain to the idea of maturity are so definitely associated with the recognition of advancing age, that the conceptions are found to be inseparable. One of the scientific puzzles has therefore been to account in an intelligent manner for the different phases of life that occur from age to age ”

“ Among his acknowledgments to his teachers and friends, he mentions that he learned from his governor to be neither of the green nor the blue party at the games in the circus (showing that the feud was in active force at the time) ; also endurance of labor, to want little, to work with his own hands, not to meddle with other people's affairs, and not to be ready to listen to slander. ”

“ It would almost seem that he had been aware of the hardness that so easily accompanies the power to state with precision a sequence of cause and effect, and he chooses rather to show how easy it is to prove logically that a charitable view may be taken of the evil doings of others. ”

“ The volume seems to be a commonplace book, made up of notes that have no special connection with each other in the pages on which they happen to stand, but are very definitely related in the sequence of moods that occur to the writer. ”

“ Although he began his reign a century and a half after the birth of Jesus, it is evident that he is unaware of any influence that has been brought to bear on his own mind that may be traced to this source. "A soul," he says, "should be ready at any moment to be separated from the body, to be extinguished, or to continue to exist ”

“ In his time the opposition between the old and the new belief was continually growing stronger, and the adherents of the heathen religion urged those in authority to a more regular resistance to the invasions of the Christian faith. ”