Its motion is
_towards_ the divine, but _by_ and _through_ the human. In fact, it offers
the Stoic humanized in his scheme of means, and the Epicurean exalted in
his final objects. Nor is it possible to conceive a practicable scheme of
morals which should not rest upon such a synthesis of the two elements as
the Christian scheme presents; nor any other mode of fulfilling that
demand than, such a one as is there first brought forward, viz., a double
or Janus nature, which stands in an equivocal relation,--to the divine
nature by his actual perfections, to the human nature by his participation
in the same animal frailties and capacities of fleshly temptation. No
other vinculum could bind the two postulates together, of an absolute
perfection in the end proposed, and yet of utter imperfection in the means
for attaining it.
Such was the outline of this famous tribute by an unbelieving philosopher
to the merits of Christianity as a scheme of moral discipline. Now, it
must be remembered that Marcus Aurelius was by profession a Stoic; and
that generally, as a theoretical philosopher, but still more as a Stoic
philosopher, he might be supposed incapable of descending from these airy
altitudes of speculation to the true needs, infirmities, and capacities of
human nature.
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