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d populous cities; spends  his days to deliver the ends of the earth or to benefit  unborn posterity; and yet knows himself for a piece of  unsurpassed fragility and the creature of a few days。  His  sight; which conducts him; which takes notice of the farthest  stars; which is miraculous in every way and a thing defying  explanation or belief; is yet lodged in a piece of jelly; and  can be extinguished with a touch。  His heart; which all  through life so indomitably; so athletically labours; is but  a capsule; and may be stopped with a pin。  His whole body;  for all its savage energies; its leaping and its winged  desires; may yet be tamed and conquered by a draught of air  or a sprinkling of cold dew。  What he calls death; which is  the seeming arrest of everything; and the ruin and hateful  transformation of the visible body; lies in wait for him  outwardly in a thousand accidents; and grows up in secret  diseases from within。  He is still learning to be a man when  his faculties are already beginning to decline; he has not  yet understood himself or his position before he inevitably  dies。  And yet this mad; chimerical creature can take no  thought of his last end; lives as though he were eternal;  plunges with his vulnerable body into the shock of war; and  daily affronts death with unconcern。  He cannot take a step  without pain or pleasure。  His life is a tissue of  sensations; which he distinguishes as they seem to come more  directly from himself or his surroundings。  He is conscious  of himself as a joyer or a sufferer; as that which craves;  chooses; and is satisfied; conscious of his surroundings as  it were of an inexhaustible purveyor; the source of aspects;  inspirations; wonders; cruel knocks and transporting  caresses。  Thus he goes on his way; stumbling among delights  and agonies。

Matter is a far…fetched theory; and materialism is without a  root in man。  To him everything is important in the degree to  which it moves him。  The telegraph wires and posts; the  electricity speeding from clerk to clerk; the clerks; the  glad or sorrowful import of the message; and the paper on  which it is finally brought to him at home; are all equally  facts; all equally exist for man。  A word or a thought can  wound him as acutely as a knife of steel。  If he thinks he is  loved; he will rise up and glory to himself; although he be  in a distant land and short of necessary bread。  Does he  think he is not loved? … he may have the woman at his beck;  and there is not a joy for him in all the world。  Indeed; if  we are to make any account of this figment of reason; the  distinction between material and immaterial; we shall  conclude that the life of each man as an individual is  immaterial; although the continuation and prospects of  mankind as a race turn upon material conditions。  The  physical business of each man's body is transacted for him;  like a sybarite; he has attentive valets in his own viscera;  he breathes; he sweats; he digests without an effort; or so  much as a consenting volition; for the most part he even  eats; not with a wakeful consciousness; but as it were  between two thoughts。  His life is centred among other and  more important considerations; touch him in his honour or his  love; creatures of the imagination which attach him to  mankind or to an individual man or woman; cross him in his  piety which connects his soul with heaven; and he turns from  his food; he loathes his breath; and with a magnanimous  emotion cuts the knots of his existence and frees himself at  a blow from the web of pains and pleasures。

It follows that man is twofold at least; that he is not a  rounded and autonomous empire; but that in the same body with  him there dwell other powers tributary but independent。  If I  now behold one walking in a garden; curiously coloured and  illuminated by the sun; digesting his food with elaborate  chemistry; breathing; circulating blood; directing himself by  the sight of his eyes; accommodating his body by a thousand  delicate balancings to the wind and the uneven surface of the  path; and all the time; perhaps; with his mind engaged about  America; or the dog…star; or the attributes of God … what am  I to say; or how am I to describe the thing I see?  Is that  truly a man; in the rigorous meaning of the word? or is it  not a man and something else?  What; then; are we to count  the centre…bit and axle of a being so variously compounded?   It is a question much debated。  Some read his history in a  certain intricacy of nerve and the success of successive  digestions; others find him an exiled piece of heaven blown  upon and determined by the breath of God; and both schools of  theorists will scream like scalded children at a word of  doubt。  Yet either of these views; however plausible; is  beside the question; either may be right; and I care not; I  ask a more particular answer; and to a more immediate point。   What is the man?  There is Something that was before hunger  and that remains behind after a meal。  It may or may not be  engaged in any given act or passion; but when it is; it  changes; heightens; and sanctifies。  Thus it is not engaged  in lust; where satisfaction ends the chapter; and it is  engaged in love; where no satisfaction can blunt the edge of  the desire; and where age; sickness; or alienation may deface  what was desirable without diminishing the sentiment。  This  something; which is the man; is a permanence which abides  through the vicissitudes of passion; now overwhelmed and now  triumphant; now unconscious of itself in the immediate  distress of appetite or pain; now rising unclouded above all。   So; to the man; his own central self fades and grows clear  again amid the tumult of the senses; like a revolving Pharos  in the night。  It is forgotten; it is hid; it seems; for  ever; and yet in the next calm hour he shall behold himself  once more; shining and unmoved among changes and storm。

Mankind; in the sense of the creeping mass that is born and  eats; that generates and dies; is but the aggregate of the  outer and lower sides of man。  This inner consciousness; this  lantern alternately obscured and shining; to and by which the  individual exists and must order his conduct; is something  special to himself and not common to the race。  His joys  delight; his sorrows wound him; according as THIS is  interested or indifferent in the affair; according as they  arise in an imperial war or in a broil conducted by the  tributary chieftains of the mind。  He may lose all; and THIS  not suffer; he may lose what is materially a trifle; and THIS  leap in his bosom with a cruel pang。  I do not speak of it to  hardened theorists: the living man knows keenly what it is I  mean。

'Perceive at last that thou hast in thee something better and  more divine than the things which cause the various effects;  and; as it were; pull thee by the strings。  What is that now  in thy mind? is it fear; or suspicion; or desire; or anything  of that kind?'  Thus far Marcus Aurelius; in one of the most  notable passages in any book。  Here is a question worthy to  be answered。  What is in thy mind?  What is the utterance of  your inmost self when; in a quiet hour; it can be heard  intelligibly?  It is something beyond the compass of your  thinking; inasmuch as it is yourself; but is it not of a  higher spirit than you had dreamed betweenwhiles; and erect  above all base considerations?  This soul seems hardly  touched with our infirmities; we can find in it certainly no  fear; suspicion; or desire; we are only conscious … and that  as though we read it in the eyes of some one else … of a  great and unqualified readiness。  A readiness to what? to  pass over and look beyond the objects of desire and fear; for  something else。  And this something else? this something  which is apart from desire and fear; to which all the  kingdoms of the world and the immediate death of the body are  alike indifferent and beside the point; and which yet regards  conduct … by what name are we to call it?  It may be the love  of God; or it may be an inherited (and certainly well  concealed) instinct to preserve self and propagate the race;  I am not; for the moment; averse to either theory; but it  will save time to call it righteousness。  By so doing I  intend no subterfuge to beg a question; I am indeed ready;  and more than willing; to accept the rigid consequence; and  lay aside; as far as the treachery of the reason will permit;  all former meanings attached to the word righteousness。  What  is right is that for which a man's central self is ever ready  to sacrifice immediate or distant interests; what is wrong is  what the central self discards or rejects as incompatible  with the fixed design of righteousness。

To make this admission is to lay aside all hope of  definition。  That which is right upon this theory is  intimately dictated to each man by himself; but can never be  rigorously set forth in language; and never; above all;  imposed upon another。  The conscience has; then; a vision  like that of the eyes; which is incommunicable; and for the  most part illuminates none but its possessor。  When many  people perceive the same or any cognate facts; they agree  upon a word as symbol; and hence we have such wor

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