Rees (1992) calls the "Meditations" "unendingly moving and inspiring," but does not offer them up as works of original philosophy. Bertrand Russell found them contradictory and inconsistent, evidence of a "tired age" where "even real goods lose their savour." Using Marcus as an example of greater Stoic philosophy, he found the Stoic ethical philosophy to contain an element of "sour grapes." "We can't be happy, but we can be good; let us therefore pretend that, so long as we are good, it doesn't matter being unhappy." Both Russell and Rees find an element of Marcus' Stoic philosophy in the philosophical system of Immanuel Kant.