Seneca · a new plain-English translation from the Latin
Seneca to his dear Lucilius: greetings. It's the way a man who is dreaming something pleasant is annoyed by whoever wakes him up (for he takes away a pleasure, even a false one, that nonetheless had the effect of a real one); that's the injury your letter has done me. It called me back from a train of thought I was well suited to, one I would gladly have pursued further had I been allowed. [2] I was enjoying inquiring into the eternity of souls -- or rather, by god, believing in it; for I was giving myself over freely to the opinions of great men who promise this most welcome thing more than they prove it. I was surrendering myself to so great a hope; already I was weary of myself, already I was scorning the broken remnants of this life, on the verge of passing into that immeasurable span of time and into possession of the whole of eternity, when suddenly I woke up on receiving your letter, and lost so lovely a dream. But I will reclaim it and buy it back, once I've dealt with you.
[3] You say that in my first letter I did not work out the whole question in which I was trying to prove what our school holds -- that the renown which comes after death is a good. For I did not, you say, resolve the objection raised against us: 'no good,' they say, 'can consist of separate parts; but this does.' [4] What you're asking about, my dear Lucilius, belongs to another branch of the same inquiry, and that's why I had put off not only that point but others bearing on the same subject; for, as you know, in questions of ethics some points of logic get mixed in. So I dealt with the part that is straightforwardly ethical and bears on conduct: whether it's foolish and pointless to look after matters beyond one's last day, whether our goods perish along with us and nothing belongs to one who no longer exists, or whether, since we will have no sensation of it when it happens, no benefit can be perceived or sought before it exists. [5] All these questions bear on conduct, and so they were placed in their proper spot. But the objections raised by the logicians against this view had to be kept separate, and so they were set aside. Now, since you demand everything, I will go through everything they say, and then answer each point in turn.
[6] Unless I first lay down some groundwork, the objections to be refuted won't be understood. What do I want to establish first? That some bodies are continuous, like a man; some are composite, like a ship, a house -- everything, in short, whose different parts are joined together and forced into one; and some consist of separate parts, whose members are still distinct, like an army, a people, a senate. The individuals through whom such bodies are formed are joined by right or by duty, but by nature they are separate and remain individuals. What else do I want to establish right now? [7] We hold that no good can consist of separate parts; for a single good must be held together and governed by a single spirit, and the ruling principle of one good must be one. If you ever want this proven on its own merits, that can be done; for now it had to be laid down, since these are the weapons being hurled at us.
[8] 'You say,' the objector puts it, 'that no good consists of separate parts; but renown is nothing but the favorable opinion held of good men by other good men. For just as reputation is not the talk of one person, nor a bad name the poor opinion of one person, so too renown is not the approval of a single good man; a number of distinguished and respected men must agree on this for there to be renown. But this is produced by the judgments of a plurality, that is, of separate individuals; therefore it is not a good.'
[9] 'Renown,' he says, 'is praise given by good men to a good man; praise is speech, and speech is a sound signifying something; but sound, even if it comes from good men, is not itself good. For not everything a good man does is good; he also applauds and he also hisses, yet no one calls either the applause or the hissing good, however much he may admire and praise everything about the man -- any more than one calls his sneeze or his cough good. Therefore renown is not a good.'
[10] 'In sum, tell us whether the good belongs to the one who praises or to the one who is praised. If you say it belongs to the one praised, you're making as ridiculous a claim as if you asserted that another man's good health is mine. But to praise those who deserve it is an honorable action; so the good belongs to the one who praises, whose action it is, not to us who are praised -- and yet that was exactly the question at issue.' [11] I'll answer each point now, briefly. First, whether any good can consist of separate parts is still an open question, and both sides have their arguments. Next, does renown require many votes? It can be satisfied with the judgment of a single good man: a good man judges good men to be good. [12] 'What then?' he says. 'Will reputation too be the estimation of a single person, and a bad name the malicious talk of one? Glory too,' he says, 'I understand to be something more widely spread, for it requires the agreement of many.' The situation of these is different from that other case. Why? Because if one good man thinks well of me, I stand in exactly the same position as if all good men thought the same of me; for all of them, once they come to know me, will think the same. Their judgment is identical and equal, and equally in accord with truth. They cannot disagree; so it's as good as if they all held the same opinion, since they cannot hold any other. [13] For glory or reputation, one person's opinion is not enough. There, a single verdict can carry the same weight as everyone's, because if everyone were polled, there would be one verdict; here, the judgments of dissimilar people are dissimilar. You will find agreement hard to come by, everything uncertain, shifting, suspect. Do you think there could be one single opinion held by everyone? A single opinion doesn't even belong to one person alone. There, what is agreed on is true, and truth has one force, one face; among these people, the things they agree on are false. But there is never any constancy in falsehoods; they vary and clash.
[14] 'But praise,' he says, 'is nothing but a sound, and a sound is not a good.' When they say that renown is praise given by good men to a good man, they are not referring to the sound but to the judgment behind it. For even if a good man stays silent but judges someone worthy of praise, that person has been praised. [15] Besides, praise is one thing, a formal eulogy another; the latter does require speech, and so no one calls a funeral tribute 'praise' but 'a eulogy,' whose whole function consists in speech. When we say that someone is worthy of praise, we are not promising him kindly words from men but their judgments. So praise belongs even to the man who says nothing but privately holds a good opinion and praises a good man within himself. [16] Further, as I said, praise refers to the state of mind, not to the words, which merely carry out the praise already conceived and broadcast it to a wider audience. The one who praises is the one who judges someone worthy of praise. When our tragic poet says it is a splendid thing 'to be praised by a man himself praised,' he means one worthy of praise. And when an equally ancient poet says 'praise nourishes the arts,' he does not mean formal eulogy, which corrupts the arts; for nothing has done as much damage to eloquence and to every other pursuit devoted to pleasing the ear as popular applause. [17] Reputation certainly requires speech; renown can occur even without speech, content with judgment alone. It is fully present not only among those who are silent but even among those who cry out against it. Let me tell you the difference between renown and glory: glory consists of the judgments of many, renown of the judgments of good men.
[18] 'To whom,' he asks, 'does renown belong -- that is, the praise given by good men to a good man -- to the one praised or to the one praising?' To both. It's mine, the one praised, because my nature has produced the mind of everyone else too, and I rejoice both that I have done well and that I have found grateful interpreters of my virtues. That they are grateful is a good belonging to them, but it is also mine; for I am so disposed in mind that I count the good of others as my own, especially of those for whom I myself am the cause of good. [19] That is the good of those who praise; for it comes about through virtue, and every act of virtue is a good. This could not have happened to them unless I were the kind of person I am. So being deservedly praised is a good for both parties -- just as, by god, having judged rightly is a good for the one who judges, and also for the one about whom the judgment is made. Surely you don't doubt that justice is a good both for the one who has it and for the one to whom what is owed is paid? To praise a person who deserves it is an act of justice; therefore it is a good for both.
[20] We have now answered these quibblers more than enough. But it should not be our goal to argue subtleties and drag philosophy down from its majesty into these narrow straits: how much better it is to walk the open, straight road than to lay out for oneself a maze of twists and turns that one will later have to retrace with great difficulty! For these disputations are nothing but a game played between people cleverly trying to trap one another. [21] Tell me instead how natural it is for the mind to extend itself into the immeasurable. The human soul is a great and noble thing; it will not tolerate any limits set upon it except those it shares with god. First, it refuses to accept some lowly homeland -- Ephesus or Alexandria, or whatever place is even more crowded with inhabitants and richer in buildings: its homeland is whatever the outermost circuit encloses in its whole span, this whole vault within which lie the seas together with the lands, within which the air, while separating the human from the divine, also joins them together, in which so many divine powers, arrayed in their places, keep watch over their courses. [22] Next, it will not allow itself to be confined to a cramped span of years: 'all ages are mine,' it says; 'no era is closed to great minds, no time is impassable to thought. When that day comes which will separate this mixture of the divine and the human, I will leave the body here where I found it, and I myself will return to the elements from which I came. Nor am I without them even now, but I am weighed down and held back by what is earthly and heavy.' [23] Through these delays of a mortal span, the soul is being rehearsed for that better and longer life. Just as the womb holds us for ten months and prepares us not for itself but for that other place into which we seem to be sent forth, already fit to draw breath and to endure in the open air, so through this span that stretches from infancy to old age we are being made ready, unknowingly, for another birth. Another origin awaits us, another state of things. [24] We cannot yet endure heaven except at a distance. So look ahead, undaunted, to that decisive hour: it is not the last hour for the soul, but for the body. Whatever possessions lie around you, regard them as the baggage of an inn where you are only a guest: you must move on. Nature strips the one who is leaving just as she stripped the one who was entering. [25] You are not allowed to carry out more than you brought in -- indeed, a great part of even what you brought to life must be set down. This skin that wraps around you, the last covering of yourself, will be stripped away; the flesh will be stripped away, and the blood suffused through it and coursing through the whole body; the bones and sinews, the supports of these fluid and shifting parts, will be stripped away. [26] This day that you dread as your last is the birthday of your eternity. Set down your burden: why do you hesitate, as if you had not already, once before, left behind the body in which you were hidden and come forth from it? You cling, you resist -- yet then too you were driven out only by your mother's great effort. You groan, you weep -- and this very weeping belongs to one being born, though then it deserved to be forgiven: you had come raw and ignorant of everything. Released from the warm and soft shelter of your mother's womb, a freer air met your breath; then you encountered the touch of rough hands, and still tender and knowing nothing, you stood dazed among unfamiliar things. [27] Now it is not new to you to be separated from that of which you were once a part; calmly let go of limbs that are now superfluous, and set aside that body you have inhabited so long. It will be torn apart, buried, destroyed -- why does that grieve you? So it always goes: the wrappings of those being born always perish in the end. Why do you cling so to these things as if they were your own? You were covered by them: the day will come that strips you free and leads you out of the company of a foul and reeking womb. [28] From this womb, too, withdraw yourself now as much as you can, and stay apart from pleasure, except insofar as it must cling to necessities; turn your thoughts to something loftier and more sublime. One day the secrets of nature will be unveiled to you, this fog will be dispersed, and light will strike you clear from every side. Imagine to yourself how great that brightness will be, with so many stars mingling their light together. No shadow will trouble that clear sky; every quarter of the heavens will shine equally; day and night are only the alternations of the lowest air. Then you will say that you had been living in darkness, once you have seen the whole of light in its entirety -- the light you now glimpse only dimly through the narrow channels of your eyes, and yet you marvel at it even from so far away: what will the divine light seem to you once you have seen it in its own place? [29] This thought allows nothing base to settle in the mind, nothing low, nothing cruel. It declares that the gods are witnesses of all things; it bids us seek their approval, prepare ourselves for what is to come, and set eternity before us. Whoever has grasped this in his mind dreads no armies, is not terrified by the trumpet, is driven to fear by no threats. [30] Why should he not fear death, who hopes for it? Even the man who judges that the soul endures only as long as it is held by the bonds of the body, and that once released it is at once scattered, still acts so that even after death he may be useful to others. For though he himself has been snatched from our sight, still
'his valor lives on in our minds, and the honor of his people returns to us again and again.'
Consider how much good models of virtue do for us: you will find that the presence of great men is no less useful than the memory of them. Farewell.