Seneca · a new plain-English translation from the Latin
[1] I'm sending you the letter I wrote to Marullus when he lost his young son and was said to be taking it hard. In it I didn't follow my usual practice, and I didn't think he deserved gentle handling, since his case called for a scolding rather than comfort. When someone is struck down and bearing a great wound badly, you have to give way for a while; let him wear himself out, or at least spend the first rush of grief. But those who have taken it upon themselves to mourn on principle should be checked at once, and taught that some kinds of weeping are simply foolish.
"You expect comfort? Take a scolding instead. Is this how weakly you bear the death of your son? What would you do if you'd lost a friend? A son of uncertain promise has died, a little boy; a small amount of time has been lost. We go hunting for reasons to grieve, and we're even willing to complain unfairly against fortune, as if it wouldn't be only too glad to supply us with genuine grounds for complaint. And yet, by god, you used to strike me as having spirit enough even against solid misfortunes, let alone against these shadows of misfortune that people groan over out of habit. Here's the greatest of all losses: if you had lost a friend, you should have made it your business to rejoice more that you'd had him than to grieve that you'd lost him. But most people never reckon up how much they received, how much joy they had. This is what's worst about this kind of grief besides everything else: it isn't just useless, it's ungrateful. So because you had such a friend, does the fact vanish into nothing? Did so many years, such a close-knit life together, such an intimate partnership in your pursuits, come to nothing? Do you bury your friendship along with your friend? And why grieve at having lost him, if having had him did you no good? Believe me: a great part of those we have loved, even though circumstance has carried off the men themselves, remains with us still. The time that has passed is ours, and nothing is in a safer place than what has already happened. We're ungrateful about the hopes we've already realized for the future, as if what is going to happen — provided only it turns out well for us — won't quickly pass over into the past. Whoever finds his enjoyment only in the present narrows his profit from things too much: both future and past give pleasure, the one through expectation, the other through memory. But the one is uncertain and may never come to pass, the other cannot possibly not have been. What madness, then, to let go of the one thing that is perfectly certain! Let's rest content with what we've already drunk in, provided we weren't drinking with a leaky vessel of a mind that let slip away whatever it had received.
"There are countless examples of people who have buried young children without tears, who went straight from the funeral pyre to the senate or to some public office and turned at once to other business. And not without reason: first, it's useless to grieve if grieving gets you nowhere; second, it's unfair to complain about something that has happened to one person when it awaits everyone; third, it's a foolish complaint of longing when there's so little difference between the one lost and the one doing the longing. We ought therefore to be all the more at ease, because we're only following those we've lost. Consider the speed of time as it rushes past, think how brief this stretch is through which we run at breakneck pace, watch this procession of the human race heading toward the same point, separated by the smallest intervals even where they seem greatest: the one you think has perished has simply been sent on ahead. And what is crazier than weeping for someone who went first, when you yourself have the same journey to complete? Does anyone weep over something he knew all along was going to happen? Or if he never gave thought to the fact that a human being must die, he has only himself to blame. Does anyone weep over something he himself used to say couldn't possibly not happen? Whoever complains that someone has died is complaining that he was a human being. The same condition binds us all: whoever is granted birth has death still owing. We're set apart by intervals, we're made equal by the end. What lies between the first day and the last is variable and uncertain: reckoned by its troubles, it's long even for a child; reckoned by its speed, it's short even for an old man. Nothing is free of slipperiness and deception, nothing more shifting than any storm; everything is tossed about and reverses itself at fortune's command, and amid such churning of human affairs nothing is certain for anyone except death — and yet everyone complains about the one thing in which no one is ever deceived.
"'But he was a child when he died.' I'm not yet ready to say that things go better for someone who departs life quickly; let's turn instead to someone who lived to old age: by how little does he outdo the infant! Set before yourself the vastness of the depths of time and take in the whole of it, then compare this thing we call a human lifetime to the immense expanse: you'll see how tiny a thing it is that we long for, that we stretch out. Out of this span, how much is taken up by tears, how much by anxieties? How much by the death we long for before it comes, how much by illness, how much by fear? How much is held by years that are either too raw or too useless? Half of this time is slept away. Add to that our labors, our griefs, our dangers, and you'll realize that even in the longest life, what is actually lived amounts to very little. But who will grant you that the one who gets to turn back quickly isn't better off, the one whose journey is finished before he grows weary? Life is neither a good nor an evil: it is simply the space where good and evil occur. So he has lost nothing except a throw of the dice that was more certain to turn out a loss. He might have grown up modest and wise; under your care he might have been shaped toward better things. But — and this is the more justified fear — he might have turned out like so many others. Look at those young men whom luxury has flung into the arena from the noblest houses; look at those who indulge their own and each other's lust, trading shamelessness back and forth, not one of whom lets a day pass without drunkenness, not one without some notorious disgrace: it will be plain that there was more to fear from him than to hope for. You shouldn't, then, go hunting for reasons to grieve, or pile up trivial troubles by working yourself into indignation over them. I'm not urging you to brace up and rise above this; I don't think so poorly of you that I believe you need to summon the whole of virtue against this blow. This isn't grief, it's a sting — you're the one turning it into grief. Philosophy has certainly done you a great deal of good, if you're longing with a stout heart for a child who was still better known to his nurse than to his father!
"Now then, am I urging hardness on you, insisting that your face stay rigid at the very funeral, refusing to let your spirit contract even for a moment? Not at all. That would be inhumanity, not virtue — to view the funerals of our own with the same eyes we view them with when they're strangers, and to feel nothing at the first parting from family. But suppose I did forbid it: some things are their own masters; tears fall even when we try to hold them back, and once let flow they relieve the mind. So what's the answer? Let's allow them to fall, not command them to. Let them flow as much as feeling forces out, not as much as imitation demands. But let's add nothing to our grief, and not swell it by following someone else's example. Putting grief on display demands more than grief itself does — how many people are actually sad on their own account? They groan more loudly when there's an audience, and stay quiet and calm as long as they're alone, only to work themselves up into fresh tears the moment they see other people; then they tear at their own heads — something they could have done more freely with no one stopping them — then they pray for their own death, then they fling themselves off their couches: grief stops the moment there's no one watching. In this, as in other things, we're subject to this failing: we shape ourselves to the example of the many, and look not to what's proper but to what's customary. We abandon nature and give ourselves over to the crowd, which is a poor guide in anything, and in this matter as in all others the most inconsistent of guides. It sees someone bearing his grief bravely and calls him unfeeling and brutish; it sees someone collapsing and clinging to the body and calls him effeminate and weak. So everything must be brought back to reason. Nothing, in fact, is more foolish than chasing a reputation for sorrow and putting on a show of tears, which I think a wise man should sometimes let fall, sometimes bear with self-control. Let me explain the difference. When the first news of a bitter death strikes us, when we hold the body in our arms that is about to pass over into the fire, natural necessity wrings out tears, and the breath, driven by the shock of grief, shakes the whole body just as it shakes the eyes, squeezing out and expelling the moisture that lies in them. These tears fall under compulsion, against our will; there are others which we allow their outlet when we go back over the memory of those we've lost, and there's a certain sweetness mixed in with the sadness when we recall their pleasant conversation, their cheerful company, their devoted affection; then the eyes relax as if in joy. To the second kind we may give way; by the first we are simply overcome. So there's no reason either to hold back your tears or to force them out on account of someone standing by or sitting with you: they never stop, and never flow, as shamefully as when they're put on for show. Let them come of their own accord. But they can come calmly and under control; often tears have flowed without any loss to a wise man's dignity, with such moderation that they lacked neither humanity nor self-respect. It's allowed, I say, to comply with nature while preserving one's composure. I have seen men, at the funerals of their own, worthy of reverence, in whose faces love shone out with every trace of theatrical mourning removed; there was nothing but what genuine feeling supplied. There is a certain grace even to grieving; this the wise man should preserve, and just as in everything else, so too in tears there's a point that's enough: the foolish let their joys overflow just as they let their sorrows.
"Accept life's necessities with an even mind. What has happened that's unbelievable, that's new? At this very moment, how many people's funerals are being arranged, how many people are buying funeral goods, how many are mourning after your own mourning is over! Every time you think of him as a boy, think of him also as a human being, to whom nothing is promised for certain, whom fortune doesn't necessarily carry through to old age: it dismisses him whenever it sees fit. But do speak of him often, and celebrate his memory as much as you can; it will come back to you more readily if it returns without bitterness — for no one willingly spends time with someone sad, let alone with sadness itself. If there were any words of his, any jokes, however small, that you once heard with pleasure, go back over them often; affirm boldly that he could have fulfilled the hopes you had conceived for him as a father. But to forget one's own, to bury their memory along with their bodies, to weep without restraint yet remember with the utmost stinginess — that belongs to an inhuman spirit. That's how birds, how wild animals, love their young — their love is intense, almost frenzied, but once the young are lost it's utterly extinguished. This isn't fitting for a wise man: let him persist in remembering, let him stop mourning.
"I don't approve at all of what Metrodorus says, that there's a certain pleasure akin to sadness, and that this is what should be hunted for at such a time. I've copied out Metrodorus's own words: 'From Metrodorus's letter to his sister: for there is a certain pleasure kindred to grief, which one should hunt for at such a time.' I have no doubt what your reaction to this will be. What could be more disgraceful than to hunt for pleasure right in the midst of mourning — worse, through mourning — and to look for something enjoyable even amid tears? These are the people who charge us with excessive harshness and brand our principles as cruel, because we say that grief should either not be let into the mind at all, or should be driven out quickly. Which, I ask you, is more unbelievable or more inhuman: to feel no grief at the loss of a friend, or to go chasing after pleasure in the very midst of grief? What we teach is honorable: once feeling has poured out some tears and, so to speak, worked off its froth, the mind should not be handed over to grief. But you — are you saying pleasure should be mixed right into grief itself? That's how we comfort children with little cakes, how we quiet an infant's crying by pouring in milk. Not even at the moment when your son is burning on the pyre, or your friend is breathing his last, do you let pleasure stop — you actually want to tickle grief itself? Which is more honorable: banishing grief from the mind, or admitting pleasure even into grief? 'Admitting,' did I say? Hunting it out — and out of grief itself, no less. 'There is,' he says, 'a certain pleasure akin to sadness.' We are allowed to say that; you certainly are not. You people recognize one good, pleasure, and one evil, pain: what kinship can there be between a good and an evil? But suppose there is one: is this really the moment to go digging it out? Are we now, of all times, to scrutinize grief itself to see whether it has something pleasant and enjoyable about it? Certain remedies that are beneficial when applied to some parts of the body cannot be used on others, being too shameful and unseemly, and something that elsewhere would do good with no loss of decency becomes disgraceful when applied to a wound: aren't you ashamed to heal mourning with pleasure? That kind of injury needs to be treated more severely. Remind him instead of this: no awareness of misfortune reaches the one who has perished, for if it reaches him, he hasn't perished. Nothing, I say, can harm someone who is nothing; he's alive if he can be harmed. Do you think it's bad for him that he's nothing, or that he's still something? And yet neither can there be torment for him from the fact that he doesn't exist (for who has any awareness once he's nothing?), nor from the fact that he does exist; for he has escaped the greatest drawback of death — not existing. Let's also say this to someone who weeps and longs for a young life cut off in its prime: all of us, when it comes to the shortness of our span, whether young or old, stand on equal footing if you compare us to the whole of time. For less comes to us out of all the ages than what anyone would call the smallest possible amount, since even the smallest amount is still some part of something; but this life we're living amounts to next to nothing — and yet, what madness is ours, we spread it out so grandly!
"I've written all this to you not as though you'd be expecting so late a remedy from me — it's clear enough to me that you've already said to yourself whatever you're about to read — but to scold you a little for that brief lapse in which you gave way, and to urge you, for the future, to raise your spirits against fortune, and to look ahead at all her weapons not as things that merely could come, but as things that certainly will come. Farewell.'