Marius the Epicurean, vol 2 | Page 2

had the effect of an utterance
adroitly designed for him. His conscience still vibrating painfully under
the shock of that scene in the amphitheatre, and full of the ethical
charm of Cornelius, he was questioning himself with much impatience
as to the possibility of an adjustment between his own elaborately
thought-out intellectual scheme and the "old morality." In that
intellectual scheme indeed the old morality had so far been allowed no
place, as seeming to demand from him the admission of certain first
principles such as might misdirect or retard him in his efforts towards a
complete, many-sided existence; or distort the revelations of the
experience of life; or curtail his natural liberty of heart and mind. But
now (his imagination being occupied for the moment with the noble
and resolute air, the gallantry, so to call it, which composed the
outward mien and presentment of his strange friend's inflexible ethics)

he felt already some nascent suspicion of his philosophic programme,
in regard, precisely, to the question of good taste. There was the taint of
a graceless "antinomianism" perceptible in it, a dissidence, a revolt
against accustomed modes, the actual impression of which on other [7]
men might rebound upon himself in some loss of that personal pride to
which it was part of his theory of life to allow so much. And it was
exactly a moral situation such as this that Fronto appeared to be
contemplating. He seemed to have before his mind the case of
one--Cyrenaic or Epicurean, as the courtier tends to be, by habit and
instinct, if not on principle--who yet experiences, actually, a strong
tendency to moral assents, and a desire, with as little logical
inconsistency as may be, to find a place for duty and righteousness in
his house of thought.
And the Stoic professor found the key to this problem in the purely
aesthetic beauty of the old morality, as an element in things, fascinating
to the imagination, to good taste in its most highly developed form,
through association--a system or order, as a matter of fact, in
possession, not only of the larger world, but of the rare minority of élite
intelligences; from which, therefore, least of all would the sort of
Epicurean he had in view endure to become, so to speak, an outlaw. He
supposed his hearer to be, with all sincerity, in search after some
principle of conduct (and it was here that he seemed to Marius to be
speaking straight to him) which might give unity of motive to an actual
rectitude, a cleanness and probity of life, determined partly by natural
affection, partly by enlightened self-interest or the feeling of honour,
due in part even to the mere fear of penalties; no element of which, [8]
however, was distinctively moral in the agent himself as such, and
providing him, therefore, no common ground with a really moral being
like Cornelius, or even like the philosophic emperor. Performing the
same offices; actually satisfying, even as they, the external claims of
others; rendering to all their dues--one thus circumstanced would be
wanting, nevertheless, in the secret of inward adjustment to the moral
agents around him. How tenderly--more tenderly than many stricter
souls--he might yield himself to kindly instinct! what fineness of
charity in passing judgment on others! what an exquisite conscience of
other men's susceptibilities! He knows for how much the manner,

because the heart itself, counts, in doing a kindness. He goes beyond
most people in his care for all weakly creatures; judging, instinctively,
that to be but sentient is to possess rights. He conceives a hundred
duties, though he may not call them by that name, of the existence of
which purely duteous souls may have no suspicion. He has a kind of
pride in doing more than they, in a way of his own. Sometimes, he may
think that those men of line and rule do not really understand their own
business. How narrow, inflexible, unintelligent! what poor guardians
(he may reason) of the inward spirit of righteousness, are some
supposed careful walkers according to its letter and form. And yet all
the while he admits, as such, no moral world at all: no [9] theoretic
equivalent to so large a proportion of the facts of life.
But, over and above such practical rectitude, thus determined by natural
affection or self-love or fear, he may notice that there is a remnant of
right conduct, what he does, still more what he abstains from doing, not
so much through his own free election, as from a deference, an
"assent," entire, habitual, unconscious, to custom--to the actual habit or
fashion of others, from whom he could not endure to break away, any
more than he would care to be out of agreement with them on questions
of mere manner,