HKB
and others, had a larger meaning than the narrow sense which is generally given to it. (Agapetus, ed. Stephan. Schoning, Franeker, 1608. This volume contains also the Paraeneses of Nilus.)
There is in man, that is in the reason, the intelligence, a superior faculty which if it is exercised rules all the rest. This is the ruling faculty ([Greek: to hegemonikon]), which Cicero (De Natura Deorum, ii. 11) renders by the Latin word Principatus, "to which nothing can or ought to be superior." Antoninus often uses this term and others which are equivalent. He names it (vii. 64) "the governing intelligence." The governing faculty is the master of the soul (v. 26). A man must reverence only his ruling faculty and the divinity within him. As we must reverence that which is supreme in the universe, so we must reverence that which is supreme in ourselves; and this is that which is of like kind with that which is supreme in the universe (v. 21). So, as Plotinus says, the soul of man can only know the divine so far as it knows itself. In one passage (xi. 19) Antoninus speaks of a man's condemnation of himself when the diviner part within him has been overpowered and yields to the less honorable and to the perishable part, the body, and its gross pleasures. In a word, the views of Antoninus on this matter, however his expressions may vary, are exactly what Bishop Butler expresses when he speaks of "the natural supremacy of reflection or conscience," of the faculty "which surveys, approves, or disapproves the several affections of our mind and actions of our lives."
Much matter might be collected from Antoninus on the notion of the Universe being one animated Being. But all that he says amounts to no more, as Schultz remarks, than this: the soul of man is most intimately united to his body, and together they make one animal, which we call man; so the Deity is most intimately united to the world, or the material universe, and together they form one whole. But Antoninus did not view God and the material universe as the same, any more than he viewed the body and soul of man as one. Antoninus has 110 speculations on the absolute nature of the Deity. It was not his fashion to waste his time on what man cannot understand.[A] He was satisfied that God exists, that he governs all things, that man can only have an imperfect knowledge of his nature, and he must attain this imperfect knowledge by reverencing the divinity which is within him, and keeping it pure.
[A] "God, who is infinitely beyond the reach of our narrow capacities" (Locke, Essay concerning the Human Understanding, ii. chap. 17).
From all that has been said, it follows that the universe is administered by the Providence of God ([Greek: pronoia]), and that all things are wisely ordered. There are passages in which Antoninus expresses doubts, or states different possible theories of the constitution and government of the universe; but he always recurs to his fundamental principle, that if we admit the existence of a deity, we must also admit that he orders all things wisely and well (iv. 27; vi. 1; ix. 28; xii. 5; and many other passages). Epictetus says (i. 6) that we can discern the providence which rules the world, if we possess two things,--the power of seeing all that happens with respect to each thing, and a grateful disposition.