So we ought to do good to others as simple and as naturally as a
horse runs, or a bee makes honey, or a vine bears grapes season after
season, without thinking of the grapes which it has borne. And in
another passage, "What more dost thou want when thou hast done a service
to another? Art thou not content to have done an act conformable to thy
nature, and must thou seek to be paid for it, just as if the eye
demanded a reward for seeing, or the feet for walking?"
"Judge every word and deed which is according to nature to be fit for
thee, and be not diverted by the blame which follows...but if a thing is
good to be done or said, do not consider it unworthy of thee." (v. 3.)
Sometimes, indeed, Marcus Aurelius wavers. The evils of life overpower
him. "Such as bathing appears to thee," he says, "_oil, sweat, dirt,
filthy water, all things disgusting--so is every part of life and
everything_" (viii. 24); and again:--"Of human life the time is a point,
and the substance is in a flux, and the perception dull, and the
composition of the whole body subject to putrefaction, and the soul a
whirl, and fortune hard to divine, and fame a thing devoid of judgment.
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