Seneca · a new plain-English translation from the Latin
Seneca to his dear Lucilius: greetings.
You threaten me with a falling-out if I let you stay ignorant of anything I do every day. See how openly I live with you: I'll hand over this too. I've been attending a philosopher's lectures — in fact this is the fifth day I've gone to the school and listened to him disputing from the eighth hour on. 'A fine age for it,' you say. Why not a fine age? What's more foolish than refusing to learn just because you haven't learned for a long time? 'What then? Am I to do what the young dandies and the youths do?' I'm doing well if the only thing that disgraces my old age is this: the school admits people of every age. 'Are we to grow old just so we can follow the young?' I'll go to the theater as an old man, I'll be carried to the circus, and no gladiatorial match will be fought out without me watching — and shall I blush to go to a philosopher? You must keep learning as long as you don't know something — and if we trust the proverb, as long as you live. And nothing fits that saying better than this: you must keep learning how to live as long as you live. Yet I too teach something there. You ask what I teach? That even an old man must keep learning. I'm ashamed of the human race whenever I walk into that school. As you know, on the way to Metronax's house one has to pass the theater of the Neapolitans. That place is packed, and people judge with tremendous eagerness who is the best flute-player; the Greek trumpeter and the herald draw a crowd too. But in that other place, where a good man is sought, where a good man is made, only a very few sit, and most people think they have nothing better to do than that — they're called useless and idle. May that mockery fall on me too: the taunts of the ignorant must be heard with an even mind, and anyone heading toward what is honorable must despise being despised.
Push on, Lucilius, and hurry, so that you don't end up like me, learning in old age — no, hurry all the more for that very reason, since you've now taken up something you can hardly master fully even as an old man. 'How much progress will I make?' you ask. As much as you attempt. What are you waiting for? No one has ever stumbled into wisdom by chance. Money will come on its own, honor will be offered, favor and standing may perhaps be heaped on you unasked — but virtue will not fall into your lap. It isn't gained by light effort or small labor; but it's worth the labor, since one who wins it wins every good thing at once. For there is only one good, the honorable; in all those other things that please popular opinion you will find nothing true, nothing certain. As for why I say the only good is the honorable — since you judge that I didn't follow the point through enough in my last letter, and think this claim was praised to you rather than proved — let me compress into a tight space what was said there.
Everything is defined by its own particular good. A vine is commended by its fruitfulness and the flavor of its wine; a stag by its speed. If you ask how strong pack animals should be in the back, the answer lies in their one use: to carry a load. In a dog the first quality is a keen nose, if it must track wild game; speed, if it must run them down; boldness, if it must bite and attack. In each creature, that quality must be best which is the reason it was born, the standard by which it is judged. In a human being, what is best? Reason. By this we surpass the animals and follow close behind the gods. Perfected reason, then, is our own particular good; everything else we share, and share sufficiently, with the animals. He is strong — so are lions. He is handsome — so are peacocks. He is fast — so are horses. I'm not saying he is beaten in all these things; I'm not asking what quality is greatest in him, but what is properly his own. He has a body — so do trees. He has impulse and voluntary motion — so do beasts and even worms. He has a voice — but how much clearer is the voice of dogs, how much sharper that of eagles, how much deeper that of bulls, how much sweeter and more supple that of the nightingale? What is properly a human being's own? Reason. When this is straight and complete, it fulfills human happiness. So if every thing, once it has perfected its own particular good, is praiseworthy and has reached the end set by its nature, and if reason is man's own particular good, then if he has perfected reason he is praiseworthy and has touched the end set by his nature. This perfected reason is called virtue, and it is the same thing as the honorable. That, then, is the one good in a human being which belongs to man alone; for we are not now asking what is good in general, but what is the good of man. If man has nothing else that is his alone but reason, then reason will be his one good — but weighed against everything else. If someone is bad, I think he'll be condemned by this measure; if good, he'll be approved by it. This, then, is the one thing in man, first and only, by which he is both approved and condemned.
You have no doubt that this is a good; you doubt whether it is the only good. Suppose someone has everything else — health, wealth, many ancestral portraits, a crowded entrance hall — but is admittedly bad: you will condemn him. Likewise, suppose someone has none of the things I just listed — he lacks money, a crowd of clients, noble birth, a long line of ancestors — but is admittedly good: you will approve of him. This, then, is the one good of man: whoever has it deserves praise even if he is stripped of everything else, and whoever lacks it is condemned and rejected even amid an abundance of everything else. The condition that applies to things applies to people too. A ship is called good not because it's painted in costly colors, nor because its prow is silver or gold, nor because its figurehead is carved in ivory, nor because it's loaded down with chests and royal treasure, but because it is steady and sound, its joints packed tight against the water, solid enough to bear the sea's assault, responsive to the helm, swift, and unfeeling of the wind. You will call a sword good not because its sword-belt is gilded nor because its scabbard is studded with gems, but because its edge is fine for cutting and its point will pierce any defense. A ruler is judged not by how handsome it is but by how straight it is: each thing is praised for the quality proper to it, the quality by which it is measured. So in a human being too, it makes no difference to the matter how much land he plows, how much he lends out at interest, how many people pay him morning calls, how costly the couch he reclines on, how clear the glass he drinks from — what matters is how good he is. And he is good if his reason is unfolded straight and true, and fitted to what his nature wills. This is called virtue; this is the honorable, and the sole good of man. For since reason alone perfects a human being, reason alone makes him perfectly happy; and this is the one good by which alone he is made happy. We also call good the things that spring and are drawn from virtue — that is, all of virtue's works — but virtue itself is the one good, because nothing is good without it. If every good lies in the mind, then whatever strengthens it, lifts it, enlarges it is good — and it is virtue that makes the mind stronger, loftier, and more expansive. Everything else that stirs up our desires actually weakens the mind and undermines it, and even when such things seem to lift it up, they only puff it up and deceive it with much vanity. So the one good is that by which the mind is made better. All the actions of an entire life are governed with an eye to the honorable and the shameful; the reasoning for doing or not doing something is directed by these alone. Let me tell you what this means: a good man will do whatever he judges he can do honorably, even if it costs him money, even if it is laborious, even if it brings him loss, even if it is dangerous; conversely, he will not do what is shameful, even if it brings him money, even pleasure, even power. Nothing will scare him away from the honorable, nothing will lure him toward the shameful. So if he is bound to pursue the honorable in every case and to avoid the shameful in every case, and in every act of his life is bound to look to these two things alone — no good but the honorable, no evil but the shameful — and if virtue alone is incorruptible and alone remains constant in its own tenor, then the one good is virtue, which can no longer ever cease to be good. It has escaped the danger of change: folly can crawl up toward wisdom, but wisdom never slides back down into folly.
I said, if you happen to remember, that many people, driven by a reckless impulse, have trampled underfoot the things the crowd both desires and dreads. There have been those who threw away riches, those who put a hand into the flames without letting a torturer's cruelty interrupt their laughter, who did not shed a tear at their children's funeral, who faced death without trembling; love, anger, or desire had demanded these risks of them. If a brief fit of stubborn resolve, stirred up by some single goad, can do so much, how much more can virtue do, which is strong not from impulse or a sudden surge but steadily, and whose strength is permanent? It follows that the things reckless people often despise, and wise people always despise, are neither good nor bad. Virtue itself, then, is the one good, walking proudly between good and bad fortune alike, with great contempt for both.
If you accept the view that there is some good besides the honorable, then no virtue at all will hold together; for none can be maintained if it has to look outside itself for anything. If that is so, it contradicts reason, from which the virtues spring, and it contradicts truth, which cannot exist without reason; and any opinion that contradicts truth is false. You must grant that a good man is a man of the utmost devotion toward the gods. He will therefore bear with an even mind whatever happens to him; for he will know that it happened by that divine law by which the whole universe proceeds. If this is so, then the one good for him will be the honorable, since it consists precisely in this: obeying the gods, not flaring up at sudden events or lamenting one's own lot, but accepting fate patiently and doing what is commanded. If there is any good besides the honorable, then a greed for life will pursue us, and a greed for the things that furnish life — and that is unbearable, endless, and unstable. The only good, then, is the honorable, which has its own measure.
We said that human life would turn out happier than that of the gods, if the things of which the gods have no use at all — such as money and honors — were counted as goods. Add to this that, if souls remain once released from bodies, a happier state awaits them than while they are caught up in the body. But if the things we use through our bodies are good, then souls will be worse off once set free — which contradicts belief — since it would make souls free and released in general happier while shut in and beleaguered by the body. I had also said this: if the things that fall to man's lot fall equally to dumb animals, then dumb animals too would be living a happy life — which is utterly impossible. Everything must be endured for the sake of the honorable; and that would not have to be done if there were any good besides the honorable.
Although I went into this more fully in my last letter, I've tightened it up and run through it briefly here. But this opinion will never seem true to you unless you lift up your mind and ask yourself: if circumstances demanded that you die for your country and buy the safety of all your fellow citizens with your own, would you stretch out your neck not just patiently but even gladly? If you would do this, then there is no other good; for you give up everything in order to have this one thing. See how great is the power of the honorable: you will die for the republic even if you would do so instantly, the moment you knew it was required of you. Sometimes great joy is drawn even from the briefest and shortest span of the finest action, and although no fruit of a completed work belongs to the man who has died and been removed from human affairs, the mere contemplation of the deed to come brings its own pleasure — and a brave, just man, once he has set before himself the price of his death, the freedom of his country, the safety of all those for whom he lays down his life, feels the deepest pleasure and enjoys his own danger. But even the man who is robbed of this very joy — the joy that comes from carrying through the greatest and final deed — will still, without hesitation, leap down into death, content simply to have acted rightly and dutifully. Set before him, even now, all the many arguments meant to dissuade him; say, 'oblivion will soon overtake what you've done, and the citizens' gratitude will be scant.' He will answer you: 'All that lies outside my own work; I am looking at the deed itself. I know this is honorable; and so, wherever it leads and calls, I go.'
This, then, is the one good — and not only the perfected mind feels it, but also a generous one, and one of good natural disposition. Everything else is trivial, changeable. That's why such things are held onto anxiously; even when fortune's favor has heaped them all together in one place, they weigh heavily on their owners and press down on them constantly, and sometimes make fools of them too. None of those you see dressed in purple is happy, any more than those to whom, in a stage play, the scepter and the royal cloak are assigned: while the crowd is watching they walk about grandly, in their tragic buskins, but the moment they exit, off come the buskins, and they're back to their own height. None of those whom riches and honors set upon a higher pedestal is truly great. Why, then, does he seem great? Because you're measuring him along with his pedestal. A dwarf is not tall even if he stands on a mountain; a colossus keeps its size even if it stands in a well. This is the error we struggle under, this is how we're deceived: we never assess anyone for what he actually is, but add on to him the things he's decked out with. But when you want to make a true assessment of a man, to know what he's really like, look at him naked; let him set aside his estate, set aside his honors and fortune's other lies, let him strip off even his body: look at his mind — what sort it is, how great it is, whether its greatness is borrowed or its own. If he looks straight-eyed at flashing swords, and if he knows it makes no difference whether his soul goes out through his mouth or through a wound in his throat, call him happy; if, when tortures of the body are announced to him — both those that come by chance and those inflicted by another's power — if he hears of chains and exile and the empty terrors that haunt human minds without fear, and says:
'O maiden, this strange, unexpected shape now rises before me;
but I foresaw it all, and rehearsed it in my mind long ago.
You are announcing that to me today; but I have always announced it to myself, and prepared myself, a mere man, for what befalls men.' A blow that has been thought through beforehand lands softly. But to fools, and to those who trust in fortune, every shape that events take seems new and unexpected; and to the untrained, novelty makes up a large part of any evil. To confirm this: things they had thought harsh they bear more bravely once they've grown used to them. That's why the wise man grows accustomed beforehand to evils yet to come, and what others make light through long endurance, he makes light through long reflection. We sometimes hear the ignorant say, 'I knew this was in store for me' — but the wise man knows that everything is in store for him; whatever happens, he says, 'I knew it.' Farewell.