Nor could this have been otherwise amongst a people who tried
every thing by the standard of _social_ value; never seeking for a
canon of excellence, in man considered abstractedly in and for himself,
and as having an independent value--but always and exclusively in man as a
gregarious being, and designed for social uses and functions. Not man in
his own peculiar nature, but man in his relations to other men, was the
station from which the Roman speculators took up their philosophy of human
nature. Tried by such standard, Mark Anthony would be found wanting. As a
citizen, he was irretrievably licentious, and therefore there needed not
the bitter personal feud, which circumstances had generated between them,
to account for the _acharnement_ with which Cicero pursued him. Had
Anthony been his friend even, or his near kinsman, Cicero must still have
been his public enemy. And not merely for his vices; for even the grander
features of his character, his towering ambition, his magnanimity, and the
fascinations of his popular qualities,--were all, in the circumstances of
those times, and in _his_ position, of a tendency dangerously uncivic.
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