Seneca · a new plain-English translation from the Latin
[1] You're going to give me a great deal of trouble, and without knowing it you're pushing me into a serious dispute and a real headache, by asking me such little questions—the kind where I can neither disagree with our own school without losing its goodwill, nor agree with it without losing my own conscience. You ask whether it's true, as the Stoics hold, that wisdom is a good but being wise is not a good. First I'll set out what the Stoics think; then I'll dare to state my own opinion.
[2] Our school holds that whatever is good is a body, because whatever is good acts, and whatever acts is a body. What is good benefits us; but to benefit, it must do something; if it does something, it is a body. They say wisdom is a good; it follows that they must also say it is corporeal. [3] But they don't think that being wise belongs to the same category. It is incorporeal, an accident of something else—namely of wisdom—and so it neither does anything nor benefits anything. 'What then,' someone says, 'don't we say that being wise is good?' We do say it, but referring it back to the thing it depends on, that is, to wisdom itself.
[4] Hear now what others say against this position, before I myself step aside and take a seat on the other side. 'In that case,' they say, 'living happily is not a good either. Like it or not, you'll have to say that the happy life is a good but living happily is not a good.' [5] And here is another objection raised against our school: 'You want to be wise; therefore being wise is something to be sought; if it is to be sought, it is good.' Our people are forced to twist their words and insert one syllable into 'to be sought' that ordinary speech won't allow. I'll insert it myself, if you'll permit me. 'What must be sought,' they say, 'is what is good; what is worth having is what falls to us once we have attained the good. It isn't sought as a good in itself, but it accompanies the good once sought.'
[6] I don't agree, and I judge that our people fall into this position only because they're already bound by their first premise and aren't allowed to change their formula. We generally give great weight to what everyone assumes, and among us it counts as evidence of truth that something seems so to everyone; for instance, we conclude that the gods exist partly from the fact that the notion of gods is implanted in everyone, and there is no nation anywhere so cast outside law and custom that it doesn't believe in some gods. When we discuss the eternity of souls, the agreement of humankind—whether fearing the underworld or worshipping it—carries no small weight with us. I use that same common conviction here: you will not find anyone who doesn't think both wisdom and being wise are good.
[7] I won't do what the defeated usually do and appeal to the crowd; let's begin fighting with our own weapons instead. Whatever happens to someone—is it outside the one it happens to, or in that one? If it is in the one to whom it happens, it is as much a body as that one is. For nothing can happen without contact, and whatever makes contact is a body; nothing can happen without action, and whatever acts is a body. If it is outside, then once it has happened it has withdrawn; whatever has withdrawn has motion; whatever has motion is a body. [8] You expect me to say next that running is no different from a race, or being warm no different from heat, or shining no different from light. I grant that these are different things, but not of a different order. If health is indifferent, then being healthy is indifferent too; if beauty is indifferent, so is being beautiful. If justice is a good, so is being just; if baseness is an evil, then being base is an evil too—just as surely as, if bleary eyes are an evil, having bleary eyes is an evil. So you can see that neither can exist without the other: whoever is wise, is wise; whoever is wise, is wise. It is so far beyond doubt that the one is exactly like the other that some people think the two are one and the same thing. [9] But I would gladly ask this: since everything is either bad, good, or indifferent, which category does being wise fall into? They deny it is a good; it is certainly not an evil; it follows that it is a middling thing. But we call something middling and indifferent when it can befall the bad just as much as the good—like money, beauty, high birth. But this—being wise—cannot befall anyone except a good person; therefore it is not indifferent. And yet it is not an evil either, since it cannot befall a bad person; therefore it is a good. Whatever only a good person has is good; being wise is had only by the good; therefore it is good. [10] 'It's an accident,' they say, 'of wisdom.' Very well—this thing you call being wise: does it produce wisdom, or is it produced by it? Whichever way it goes, either way it is a body; for both what is made and what makes are bodies. If it's a body, it's a good; for the only thing keeping it from being good was its supposed incorporeality.
[11] The Peripatetics hold that there is no difference between wisdom and being wise, since each implies the other. Do you think anyone is wise unless he possesses wisdom? Do you think anyone who is wise fails to possess wisdom? [12] The old dialecticians drew this distinction, and it passed down from them to the Stoics. Let me explain what it is. A field is one thing, having a field another—why not, since having a field belongs to the one who has it, not to the field itself. So too wisdom is one thing, being wise another. I think you'll grant that these are two things: the thing possessed, and the one who possesses it. Wisdom is possessed; the wise person possesses it. Wisdom is a mind brought to perfection, or to its highest and best state; for it is the art of living. What is being wise? I can't call it 'a perfect mind,' but rather that which befalls the one who has a perfect mind; so one thing is a good mind, and another is, so to speak, having a good mind.
[13] 'There are,' they say, 'natures of bodies—this is a man, this is a horse; and these are then followed by movements of the mind that express those bodies in statements. These have a certain property of their own, separate from bodies—for instance, I see Cato walking: the senses show this, the mind believes it. What I see is a body, on which both my eyes and my mind are fixed. Then I say: Cato is walking. What I am now saying is not a body,' they say, 'but a kind of statement about a body, which some call an utterance, others a proposition, others a saying. So when we say "wisdom," we understand something corporeal; when we say "he is wise," we are speaking about the body. There's a great difference between naming a thing and speaking about it.'
[14] Let's suppose for now that these are two distinct things (I haven't yet declared my own view): what's to stop the one from being distinct yet nonetheless a good? I said a moment ago that a field is one thing, having a field another. Why not? For the one who has it and the thing had exist in different natures: the one is land, the other a person. But in the case we're discussing, both share the same nature—both the one who has wisdom and wisdom itself. [15] Moreover, in the first case the thing possessed is one thing and the possessor another; here the possessor and the thing possessed are one and the same. A field is possessed by legal right, wisdom by nature; the field can be alienated and handed over to another, wisdom never leaves its owner. So there's no basis for comparing things so unlike each other.
I had begun to say that these two things could exist and both still be good, just as wisdom and the wise person are two things and you concede that each is good. Just as nothing prevents both wisdom and the one who possesses wisdom from being good, so nothing prevents both wisdom and possessing wisdom—that is, being wise—from being good. [16] I want to be wise precisely so that I may be wise. What then? Is that not a good, without which the other is not a good either? You yourselves say that wisdom, if given without any use, would not be worth accepting. What is the use of wisdom? Being wise: this is the most precious thing in it, and take it away and wisdom becomes worthless. If torments are evils, then being tormented is an evil—so much so that torments would not be evils at all if you removed what follows from them. Wisdom is the settled state of a perfected mind; being wise is the exercise of a perfected mind. How can the exercise of something fail to be good, when that thing is not good at all without its exercise? [17] I ask you whether wisdom is to be sought: you admit it is. I ask whether the exercise of wisdom is to be sought: you admit that too. For you say you would not accept wisdom if you were forbidden to use it. Whatever is to be sought is good. Being wise is the exercise of wisdom, just as speaking is the exercise of eloquence, and seeing the exercise of eyes. So being wise is the exercise of wisdom, and the exercise of wisdom is to be sought; therefore being wise is to be sought; and if it is to be sought, it is good.
[18] But I've long since condemned myself, imitating the very people I'm accusing, spending words on something obvious. Who can doubt that if heat is an evil, then being hot is an evil; if cold is an evil, then being cold is an evil; if life is a good, then living is a good? All these questions circle around wisdom without touching its core; but we ought to dwell in its core. [19] Even if one feels like wandering off, wisdom offers wide and spacious excursions: let us ask about the nature of the gods, about the nourishment of the stars, about the varied courses of the constellations—whether our own movements are moved by theirs, whether the impulse behind all bodies and souls comes from that source, and whether even the things we call accidental are in fact bound by fixed law, so that nothing in this universe tumbles along at random or outside order. These questions have already moved away from the shaping of character, but they lift the mind and raise it to the grandeur of the very things they deal with; whereas the questions I was just discussing shrink and depress the mind, and, contrary to what you suppose, don't sharpen it but thin it out. [20] I beg you—shall we spend, on some question that is perhaps false and certainly useless, the same careful attention we owe to greater and better things? What good will it do me to know whether wisdom is one thing and being wise another? What good will it do me to know that the one is good and the other not? Let me be reckless, let me risk this wager: may wisdom fall to you, and being wise to me. We'll come out even. [21] Better that you show me the road that leads to these things. Tell me what I should avoid, what I should pursue, what studies will steady my wavering mind, how I can drive off the things that strike and harass me from the side, how I can hold my own against so many misfortunes, how I can get rid of the disasters that have burst in upon me, and how to deal with those I've burst in upon myself. Teach me how to bear hardship without groaning and prosperity without another's resentment, and how not to wait for the final, inevitable release but to make my own escape, whenever I judge the moment right. [22] Nothing seems to me more shameful than wishing for death. For if you want to live, why do you wish to die? And if you don't want to live, why ask the gods for what they already gave you at birth? That you will die at some point is settled even against your will; that you may die when you wish is in your own hands. The one is necessary; the other is permitted.
[23] I recently read—shamefully, by heaven—the opening of an otherwise eloquent man's work: 'And so,' he says, 'may I die as soon as possible.' Madman, you're wishing for something already yours! 'And so may I die as soon as possible'—perhaps you grew old repeating those very words; otherwise, what's the holdup? No one is holding you back: escape by whatever route you like; choose any part of nature you please and order it to provide you an exit. These, after all, are the very elements that govern this universe—water, earth, air—all of them causes of living just as much as roads to death. [24] 'And so may I die as soon as possible': what do you mean by 'as soon as possible'? What day are you setting for it? It can happen sooner than you're wishing for. These are the words of a feeble mind, wheedling for pity with this kind of curse: whoever merely wishes for death does not truly want to die. Ask the gods for life and health; if you've decided to die, this is the reward death offers—that you get to stop wishing for it.
[25] These are the things we should be handling, my dear Lucilius, these the things that should shape our minds. This is wisdom, this is being wise—not chasing after empty little disputes with a hollow subtlety. Fortune has set you so many real questions, and you haven't yet solved them—and already you're quibbling over trifles? How foolish, to be polishing your sword once the signal for battle has sounded. Put down these toy weapons; you need the real, decisive ones. Tell me how no sorrow, no dread, may disturb my mind, how I can pour out this weight of secret desires. Let's get something done. [26] 'Wisdom is a good, being wise is not a good': this is how we end up denying that we are wise at all, how this whole pursuit gets mocked as busywork over trifles.
What if you knew that people also debate whether future wisdom is a good? For is there any doubt, I ask you, that the granary doesn't yet feel the harvest to come, nor does childhood, for all its strength or vigor, sense the adulthood that is coming? Meanwhile, future health does the sick man no good at all, any more than rest, still many months away, refreshes the man who is right now running and struggling. [27] Who doesn't know that the very fact something is future means it is not yet good? For whatever is good must be of benefit, and only what is present can be of benefit. If it doesn't benefit, it isn't good; if it does benefit, it already exists. I will be wise one day; this will be a good once it happens; meanwhile it is not. Something must first exist before it can have a particular quality. [28] How, I ask you, can something that is as yet nothing already be good? And how could you want better proof that a thing doesn't exist than by saying 'it is going to exist'? For clearly what is coming has not yet arrived. Spring is coming: I know that means it's winter now. Summer is coming: I know that means it isn't summer yet. I have the strongest proof that what is future is not yet present. [29] I hope to be wise, but meanwhile I am not wise; if I already had that good, I would already be free of this evil. That I will one day be wise is proof enough that I am not wise yet. I cannot be in that good and in this evil at the same time; the two do not meet, and evil and good are not both present in the same person at once.
[30] Let's hurry past these clever trifles and rush toward the things that can actually help us. No one who's anxiously calling a midwife for his laboring daughter stops to read through the festival edict and the order of the games; no one running toward his burning house pauses to check a game board to see how a trapped piece might escape. [31] But by heaven, news comes pouring in on you from every side—your house on fire, your children in danger, your homeland under siege, your property being plundered—add to that shipwrecks, earthquakes, and whatever else is frightening; and in the middle of all that, distracted by nothing but things meant to amuse the mind, do you have leisure to spare? You ask what the difference is between wisdom and being wise? You're tying and untying knots while such a weight hangs over your head? [32] Nature has not given us so generous and free a stretch of time that we can afford to waste any of it. And see how much even the most careful people lose: illness takes some of it from each of us, the illness of our loved ones takes more; necessary business takes some, public duties take more; sleep divides our life with us. Out of this span of time, so narrow, so swift, so busy carrying us away—what good does it do to spend the greater part of it on nonsense? [33] Add to this that the mind grows used to entertaining itself rather than healing itself, and turns philosophy into amusement when it is meant to be medicine. I don't know what the difference is between wisdom and being wise—but I do know it makes no difference to me whether I know that or not. Tell me: once I've learned what the difference between wisdom and being wise is, will I then be wise? Why then do you keep me stuck among the vocabulary of wisdom rather than among its actual works? Make me braver, make me more secure, make me a match for fortune, make me its master. And I can be its master, if I direct everything I learn toward that one end. Farewell.