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Campanella, Bruno, and Bacon stand, as it were, on the brink of the dividing stream, tenduntque manus ripae ulterioris amore. If we are to draw any useful lines of demarcation in the continuous flux of history we must neglect anticipations and announcements, and we need not scruple to say that, in the realm of knowledge and thought, modern history begins in the seventeenth century.
Arnold, while not without emotional equipment, and inspired by idealism of a high order, introduces a yet larger element of practical season. Tendens manus ripæ ulterioris amore, he is yet first of all a man of this world. His chief instrument is common sense, and he looks at questions from the point of view of the highly intelligent and cultivated man.
If I take the famous line which describes how the souls of the dead stood waiting by the river, imploring a passage from Charon: Tendebantque manus ripae ulterioris amore, and if I translate it, "and were stretching forth their hands in longing for the further bank," the charm of the original has fled. Why has it fled?
Heathen philosophy was exalted and eloquent, but all its votaries were sad; to "the peace of God, which passeth all understanding," it was not given them to attain. We see Marcus "wise, self-governed, tender, thankful, blameless," says Mr. Arnold, "yet with all this agitated, stretching out his arms for something beyond tendentemque manue ripae ulterioris amore"
The lot of the dead who have not been vouchsafed the trifling boon of a handful of earth cast upon their bones was very different. They had not yet been admitted to the world below, and were forced to wander for a hundred years before they might enter Charon's boat. Æneas beheld them on the banks of the Styx, stretching out their hands "ripæ ulterioris amore."
What would have become of his notions of the exitiabilis superstitio, of the "obstinacy of the Christians"? Vain question! yet the greatest charm of Marcus Aurelius is that he makes us ask it. We see him wise, just, self-governed, tender, thankful, blameless; yet, with all this, agitated, stretching out his arms for something beyond, tendentemque manus ripæ ulterioris amore.
And it does so partly because this picture and this sense are conveyed not only by the obvious meaning of the words, but through the long-drawn sound of "tendebantque," through the time occupied by the five syllables and therefore by the idea of "ulterioris," and through the identity of the long sound "or" in the penultimate syllables of "ulterioris amore" all this, and much more, apprehended not in this analytical fashion, nor as added to the beauty of mere sound and to the obvious meaning, but in unity with them and so as expressive of the poetic meaning of the whole.
Are we then dangerously out of the way in believing that that wherein all the sons of men unite is the veritable goal towards which they are consciously or unconsciously reaching Tendentes manus ripae ulterioris amore? And there is one other unmistakable evidence that the stream of tendency is in our direction.
I like to form an imaginary picture, which the austerity of the scientific conscience will, I know, repudiate with horror, of the unhappy congregation, mournfully assembled bag and baggage on the edge of the straits and gazing wistfully across at the white cliffs of England, which they were not privileged to reach tendentesque manus ripae ulterioris amore, 'stretching out their paws in longing for the further bank.
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