Seneca · a new plain-English translation from the Latin
I have never realized how poor - no, how destitute - our vocabulary is as clearly as I did today. A thousand things came up, when we happened to be talking about Plato, that wanted names and had none, and some words, though we once had them, we have let go out of fastidiousness. But who can afford fastidiousness in the midst of poverty? What the Greeks call "oestrus," which drives cattle mad and scatters them across whole forests, our people used to call "asilus." You can believe this on Virgil's authority:
Near the grove of the Silarus and green Alburnus, thick with holm oaks, there flies a swarm of insects - the Romans name it asilus, the Greeks have turned it into "oestrus" - harsh, its buzzing bitter, and at its sound whole herds scatter in terror through the woods.
I think it's clear that word has died out. And not to keep you waiting too long, some simple words were once in use, such as "to fight it out between themselves with the sword," cernere ferro inter se. Virgil will confirm this for you too:
Mighty men, born in different parts of the world, met and fought it out, cernere, with the sword.
What we now say as decernere: the plain, simple use of that verb has been lost. The ancients used to say si iusso, that is, "if I shall have ordered," for iussero. I don't want you to take my word alone for this, but again from Virgil:
the rest, wherever I shall order, iusso, let the band bring arms with me.
I'm not going to all this trouble now to show you how much time I've wasted with a grammar teacher, but so you'll understand from it how much ground has been lost to us in words that Ennius and Accius once used - when even in Virgil, who is combed over every day, some things have slipped away from us. "What's the point," you ask, "of all this preamble? Where is it heading?" I won't hide it from you: I want, if it can be done, to say "essentia" to your sympathetic ear - and if not that, I'll say it to an unsympathetic one too. I have Cicero as the authority for this word, a wealthy one, I think; if you want someone more recent, there's Fabianus, eloquent and elegant, his style polished even by our fastidious standards. But what else can be done, my dear Lucilius? How else will we say "ousia," that necessary thing, the underlying nature that contains the foundation of everything? So I ask you to let me use this word. Even so, I'll take care to exercise the right you've granted as sparingly as possible; perhaps I'll be content just to have permission. But what good will your indulgence do me, when look - there's something I simply cannot express in Latin at all, and it's on that very account that I've been abusing our language? You'll condemn Roman poverty even more once you learn there's a single syllable I can't translate. You ask what it is? "To on." You'll think me a dull sort of mind: laid right out in the open, surely it can be rendered "that which is." But I see there's a great difference: I'm forced to put a whole phrase in place of a single word. But if that's how it must be, I'll set down "that which is."
Our learned friend was saying today that Plato speaks of this in six ways. I'll set them all out for you, once I've first pointed out that there is something called a genus, and something called a species. Now, the first thing we're looking for is that genus from which all the other species hang suspended, from which every division is born, and which comprehends the whole of things. And we'll find it if we start reading particular things backward; that way we'll be led back to the first one. Man is a species, as Aristotle says; horse is a species; dog is a species. So we must look for some common bond among all of these, something that embraces them and holds them under itself. What is this? Animal. So animal has become the genus of all these I've just mentioned - man, horse, dog. But some things have a soul and are not animals; for it's generally agreed that even trees and shrubs have a kind of life in them, and so we say of them too that they live and die. So living things will hold a higher place, since both animals and plants fall under this form. But some things lack life altogether, like stones; so there will be something still prior to living things, namely, body. This I will divide by saying that all bodies are either living or lifeless. And even now there's something higher than body; for we say that some things are corporeal, some incorporeal. What, then, will be the thing from which these are derived? That thing to which we just now gave a rather improper name, "that which is." It will be cut into species like this: we say that "that which is" is either corporeal or incorporeal. This, then, is the first and most ancient genus, and, so to speak, the generic one; the rest are genera too, but subordinate ones. Take man, for instance, as a genus: it contains within it the species of nations - Greeks, Romans, Parthians; of colors - white, black, yellow; it contains individuals - Cato, Cicero, Lucretius. So insofar as it contains many things, it falls under "genus"; insofar as it stands under something else, it falls under "species." That generic genus, "that which is," has nothing above it; it is the beginning of things; everything is under it. The Stoics want to set above even this yet another, more principal genus; I'll speak of that presently, once I've shown that the genus I've been discussing deserves to be set first, since it holds room for absolutely everything. I divide "that which is" into these species: corporeal or incorporeal, nothing else. How do I divide body? I say: either living or lifeless. Again, how do I divide living things? I say: some have a mind, some have only life - or rather, put it this way: some have impulse, they move about, they cross from place to place, while some are rooted fast in the soil and are nourished and grow that way. Again, into what species do I cut animals? Either they are mortal or immortal. Some Stoics think this first genus should be called "something" (quid); I'll set out why they think so. "In the nature of things," they say, "some things exist, some do not exist, and the nature of things embraces even those that do not exist, things that occur to the mind, like centaurs, giants, and whatever else, shaped by a false notion, has come to take on some image, even though it has no real substance."
Now I return to what I promised you: how Plato divides everything that exists into six kinds. First there is that "that which is," grasped by neither sight nor touch nor any sense at all: it is an object of thought. What exists generically, like man in general, does not come before the eyes; but the specific form does come before them, as Cicero and Cato do. Animal is not seen: it is thought. But its species is seen - horse, and dog. Second among the things that exist, Plato places what stands out and surpasses everything else; this, he says, exists by way of pre-eminence. "Poet" is used as a common term - it's the name for everyone who writes verse - but among the Greeks it has already narrowed down to mark out one man alone: when you hear "the Poet," you understand Homer. What, then, is this pre-eminent thing? God, of course, greater and more powerful than all. The third kind is that of the things that properly exist; these are innumerable, but placed beyond our sight. You ask what they are? This is Plato's own particular furniture: he calls them "Ideas," from which everything we see comes into being, and to which everything is shaped. These are immortal, unchangeable, inviolable. Listen to what an Idea is, that is, what Plato thinks it to be: "an Idea is the eternal model of the things that come to be by nature." I'll add an explanation to the definition, to make the thing clearer to you. Suppose I want to make your portrait. I have you as the model for the picture, from which my mind takes a certain form to impose on its own work; so that face which teaches and instructs me, from which the imitation is drawn, is the Idea. Nature, then, has countless such models of things - of men, of fish, of trees - to which whatever is to be made by her is matched. The fourth place will belong to "eidos." You need to pay attention to what this eidos is, and blame Plato, not me, for the difficulty of the subject; there's no subtlety without some difficulty. A little earlier I used the image of the painter. When he wanted to render Virgil in colors, he kept his eyes on Virgil himself. The Idea was Virgil's face, the model of the work to come; what the artist draws from this and imposes on his own work is the eidos. You ask what the difference is? One is the model, the other is the form taken from the model and imposed on the work; the artist imitates the one, and makes the other. A statue has a certain look: that is the eidos. The model itself, which the craftsman looked at while shaping the statue, has a certain look too: that is the Idea. If you still want another distinction, the eidos is in the work, the Idea is outside the work - and not just outside the work, but before the work. The fifth kind is that of the things that exist in the common sense; these are the things that begin to concern us; here belong all things - men, cattle, objects. The sixth kind is that of the things that, so to speak, exist - like empty space, like time.
Whatever we see or touch, Plato does not count among the things he thinks truly exist; for they are in flux, in constant loss and constant addition. None of us is the same in old age as he was in youth; none of us is the same in the morning as he was the day before. Our bodies are swept along like rivers. Whatever you see runs on together with time; nothing of what we see stays in place; even I myself, while I speak of these things changing, have already changed. This is what Heraclitus means: "we step into the same river twice, and we do not." The river keeps the same name, but the water has already flowed past. This is more obvious in a stream than in a man; but we too are swept along by no less swift a current, and so I marvel at our madness in loving so fleeting a thing as the body so intensely, and fearing that we might one day die, when every single moment is the death of the state we were in a moment before. Will you please stop being afraid that something will happen once, when it happens every single day! I've been speaking of man, a fluid, perishable matter, exposed to every cause of harm; but the world too, an eternal and unconquerable thing, changes and does not remain the same. For although it still contains everything it ever had, it holds it differently than it once did: it changes its order.
"What good will all this subtlety do me?" you ask. If you're asking me, none at all; but just as an engraver, after long straining and tiring his eyes, lets them rest and turns them elsewhere and, as the saying goes, gives them pasture, so we too should sometimes let the mind relax and refresh it with certain pleasures. But let even these pleasures be a kind of work; from these too, if you pay attention, you can draw something that turns out to be beneficial. This is what I make a habit of doing, Lucilius: out of every notion, even one furthest removed from philosophy, I try to dig out something and turn it to use. What could be further from the reform of character than the things we've just been handling? How can Plato's Ideas make me a better man? What can I draw from them that will check my desires? Well, take this very point: that all these things which serve the senses, which inflame and provoke us, Plato denies belong among the things that truly exist. So they are mere images, and only for a time do they wear any semblance of a face; none of them is stable or solid; and yet we desire them as though they would last forever, or as though we would possess them forever. Weak and flowing, we stand planted among illusions: let us send our minds instead to the things that are eternal. Let us marvel at the forms of all things soaring on high, and at God moving among them and providing for this - how he defends from death, and by reason overcomes the failing of matter, those things which he could not make immortal, because matter itself stood in the way. For all things endure not because they are eternal, but because they are defended by the care of their ruler; immortal things would need no guardian. This is how the craftsman preserves them, overcoming the fragility of matter by his own power. Let us despise everything so little precious that it's a genuine question whether it even exists at all. Let us at the same time reflect on this: if providence rescues the world itself, no less mortal than we are, from danger, then our own foresight too can, to some extent, prolong this brief stay for our little body, if only we can govern and restrain our pleasures, the very thing through which the greater part of us perishes. Plato himself, through his own careful discipline, extended his life into old age. He had, it's true, been given a strong and sturdy body, and the breadth of his chest had even earned him his name; but voyages and dangers had drained much from his strength; and yet frugality, and moderation in the things that stir up craving, and diligent care of himself, brought him to old age despite many causes working against it. For you know, I think, that it fell to Plato, thanks to his own careful discipline, to die on his birthday, having completed his eighty-first year without any loss. And so the Magi, who happened to be in Athens at the time, sacrificed to the dead man, believing his lot to have been more than human, because he had rounded out that most perfect number, made up of nine multiplied by nine. I have no doubt you're ready to let go, from that total, a few days and a sacrifice too. Frugal living can lengthen old age - which, though I don't think it should be craved, I don't think it should be refused either; it's pleasant to be with oneself for as long as possible, when one has made oneself worthy of one's own company.
So we'll pass judgment on this question: whether we ought to spurn the last stretch of old age, and not wait for the end but bring it about by our own hand. The man who sluggishly waits for fate is not far from the coward - just as the man who drains the jar to the very dregs and sucks out the sediment too is too far gone in devotion to wine. But on this we'll ask: is the topmost part of life the dregs, or something perfectly clear and pure - provided the mind is unharmed and the intact senses aid it, and the body is not yet failing and half-dead already; for it matters a great deal whether a person is prolonging life or prolonging death. But if the body has become useless for its functions, why shouldn't it be right to bring out the struggling soul? And perhaps it should be done a little before it's strictly necessary, so that when it does become necessary, you may not be able to do it; and since the risk of living badly is greater than that of dying quickly, only a fool refuses to buy so great a stake with so small a stake of time. A very long old age has brought only a few men to death unscathed; for many, an idle life has simply lain there, useless even to themselves: how much more cruel, then, do you judge it, to have lost something out of life, than to lose the right to end it? Don't listen to me unwillingly, as though this decision were already yours to make, but weigh what I'm saying: I will not abandon old age, if it leaves me whole to myself - whole, that is, in the better part of me; but if it begins to shake my mind, to tear away its faculties one by one, if it leaves me not life but mere breath, I will leap out of the crumbling, collapsing building. I will not flee illness by way of death, so long as it is curable and does not cripple the mind. I will not lay hands on myself because of pain: to die that way is to be defeated. But if I know I must endure this pain forever, I will make my exit - not because of the pain itself, but because it will stand as an obstacle to everything for whose sake one lives; weak and cowardly is the man who dies because of pain, foolish is the man who lives for the sake of pain.
But I'm running on too long; there's more material besides that could stretch the day out further. And how will the man who cannot put an end to a letter manage to put an end to his life? Farewell, then - and you'll read that word more gladly than a letter of nothing but deaths. Farewell.