Letters From a Stoic (4 page)
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Authors: Seneca
LETTER II
J
UDGING
from what you tell me and from what I hear, I feel that you show great promise.
You do not tear from place to place and unsettle yourself with one move after another.
Restlessness of that sort is symptomatic of a sick mind.
Nothing, to my way of thinking, is a better proof of a well ordered mind than a man’s ability to stop just where he is and pass some time in his own company.
Be careful, however, that there is no element of discursiveness and desultoriness about this reading you refer to, this reading of many different authors and books of every description.
You should be extending your stay among writers whose genius is unquestionable, deriving constant nourishment from them if you wish to gain anything from your reading that will find a lasting place in your mind.
To be everywhere is to be nowhere.
People who spend their whole life travelling abroad end up having plenty of places where they can find hospitality but no real friendships.
The same must needs be the case with people who never set about acquiring an intimate acquaintanceship with any one great writer, but skip from one to another, paying flying visits to them all.
Food that is vomited up as soon as it is eaten is not assimilated into the body and does not do one any good; nothing hinders a cure so much as frequent changes of treatment; a wound will not heal over if it is being made the subject of experiments with different ointments; a plant which is frequently moved never grows strong.
Nothing is so useful that it can be of any service in the mere passing.
A multitude of books only gets in one’s way.
So if you are unable to read all the books in your possession, you have enough when you have all the books you are able to read.
And if you say, ‘But I feel like opening different books at different times’, my answer will be this: tasting one dish after another is the sign of a fussy stomach, and where the foods are dissimilar and diverse in range they lead to contamination of the system, not nutrition.
So always read well-tried authors, and if at any moment you find yourself wanting a change from a particular author, go back to ones you have read before.
Each day, too, acquire something which will help you to face poverty, or death, and other ills as well.
After running over a lot of different thoughts, pick out one to be digested thoroughly that day.
This is what I do myself; out of the many bits I have been reading I, lay hold of one.
My thought for today is something which I found in Epicurus (yes, I actually make a practice of going over to the enemy’s camp – by way of reconnaissance, not as a deserter!).
‘A cheerful poverty,’ he says, ‘is an honourable state.’ But if it is cheerful it is not poverty at all.
It is not the man who has too little who is poor, but the one who hankers after more.
What difference does it make how much there is laid away in a man’s safe or in his barns, how many head of stock he grazes or how much capital he puts out at interest, if he is always after what is another’s and only counts what he has yet to get, never what he has already.
You ask what is the proper limit to a person’s wealth?
First, having what is essential, and second, having what is enough.
Y
OU
have sent me a letter by the hand of a ‘friend’ of yours, as you call him.
And in the next sentence you warn me to avoid discussing your affairs freely with him, since you are
not even in the habit of doing so yourself; in other words you have described him as being a friend and then denied this, in one and the same letter.
Now if you were using that word in a kind of popular sense and not according to its strict meaning, and calling him a ‘friend’ in much the same way as we refer to candidates as ‘gentlemen’ or hail someone with the greeting ‘my dear fellow’ if when we meet him his name slips our memory, we can let this pass.
But if you are looking on anyone as a friend when you do not trust him as you trust yourself, you are making a grave mistake, and have failed to grasp sufficiently the full force of true friendship.
Certainly you should discuss everything with a friend; but before you do so, discuss in your mind the man himself.
After friendship is formed you must trust, but before that you must judge.
Those people who, contrary to Theophrastus’ advice, judge a man after they have made him their friend instead of the other way round, certainly put the cart before the horse.
Think for a long time whether or not you should admit a given person to your friendship.
But when you have decided to do so, welcome him heart and soul, and speak as unreservedly with him as you would with yourself.
You should, I need hardly say, live in such a way that there is nothing which you could not as easily tell your enemy as keep to yourself; but seeing that certain matters do arise on which convention decrees silence, the things you should share with your friend are all your worries and deliberations.
Regard him as loyal, and you will make him loyal.
Some men’s fear of being deceived has taught people to deceive them; by their suspiciousness they give them the right to do the wrong thing by them.
Why should I keep back anything when I’m with a friend?
Why shouldn’t I imagine I’m alone when I’m in his company?
There are certain people who tell any person they meet things that should only be confided to friends, unburdening
themselves of whatever is on their minds into any ear they please.
Others again are shy of confiding in their closest friends, and would not even let themselves, if they could help it, into the secrets they keep hidden deep down inside themselves.
We should do neither.
Trusting everyone is as much a fault as trusting no one (though I should call the first the worthier and the second the safer behaviour).
Similarly, people who never relax and people who are invariably in a relaxed state merit your disapproval – the former as much as the latter.
For a delight in bustling about is not industry – it is only the restless energy of a hunted mind.
And the state of mind that looks on all activity as tiresome is not true repose, but a spineless inertia.
This prompts me to memorize something which I came across in Pomponius.
‘Some men have shrunk so far into dark corners that objects in bright daylight seem quite blurred to them.’ A balanced combination of the two attitudes is what we want; the active man should be able to take things easily, while the man who is inclined towards repose should be capable of action.
Ask nature: she will tell you that she made both day and night.
I
VIEW
with pleasure and approval the way you keep on at your studies and sacrifice everything to your single-minded efforts to make yourself every day a better man.
I do not merely urge you to persevere in this; I actually implore you to.
Let me give you, though, this one piece of advice: refrain from following the example of those whose craving is for attention, not their own improvement, by doing certain
things which are calculated to give rise to comment on your appearance or way of living generally.
Avoid shabby attire, long hair, an unkempt beard, an outspoken dislike of silverware, sleeping on the ground and all other misguided means to self-advertisement.
The very name of philosophy, however modest the manner in which it is pursued, is unpopular enough as it is: imagine what the reaction would be if we started dissociating ourselves from the conventions of society.
Inwardly everything should be different but our outward face should conform with the crowd.
Our clothes should not be gaudy, yet they should not be dowdy either.
We should not keep silver plate with inlays of solid gold, but at the same time we should not imagine that doing without gold and silver is proof that we are leading the simple life.
Let our aim be a way of life not diametrically opposed to, but better than that of the mob.
Otherwise we shall repel and alienate the very people whose reform we desire; we shall make them, moreover, reluctant to imitate us in anything for fear they may have to imitate us in everything.
The first thing philosophy promises us is the feeling of fellowship, of belonging to mankind and being members of a community; being different will mean the abandoning of that manifesto.
We must watch that the means by which we hope to gain admiration do not earn ridicule and hostility.
Our motto, as everyone knows, is to live in conformity with nature: it is quite contrary to nature to torture one’s body, to reject simple standards of cleanliness and make a point of being dirty, to adopt a diet that is not just plain but hideous and revolting.
In the same way as a craving for dainties is a token of extravagant living, avoidance of familiar and inexpensive dishes betokens insanity.
Philosophy calls for simple living, not for doing penance, and the simple way of life need not be a crude one.
The standard which I accept is this: one’s life should be a compromise between the ideal and the popular
morality.
People should admire our way of life but they should at the same time find it understandable.
‘Does that mean we are to act just like other people?
Is there to be no distinction between us and them?’ Most certainly there is.
Any close observer should be aware that we are different from the mob.
Anyone entering our homes should admire us rather than our furnishings.
It is a great man that can treat his earthenware as if it was silver, and a man who treats his silver as if it was earthenware is no less great.
Finding wealth an intolerable burden is the mark of an unstable mind.
But let me share with you as usual the day’s small find (which today is something that I noticed in the Stoic writer Hecato).
Limiting one’s desires actually helps to cure one of fear.
‘Cease to hope,’ he says, ‘and you will cease to fear.’ ‘But how,’ you will ask, ‘can things as diverse as these be linked?’ Well, the fact is, Lucilius, that they are bound up with one another, unconnected as they may seem.
Widely different though they are, the two of them march in unison like a prisoner and the escort he is handcuffed to.
Fear keeps pace with hope.
Nor does their so moving together surprise me; both belong to a mind in suspense, to a mind in a state of anxiety through looking into the future.
Both are mainly due to projecting our thoughts far ahead of us instead of adapting ourselves to the present.
Thus it is that foresight, the greatest blessing humanity has been given, is transformed into a curse.
Wild animals run from the dangers they actually see, and once they have escaped them worry no more.
We however are tormented alike by what is past and what is to come.
A number of our blessings do us harm, for memory brings back the agony of fear while foresight brings it on prematurely.
No one confines his unhappiness to the present.
I
SEE
in myself, Lucilius, not just an improvement but a transformation, although I would not venture as yet to assure you, or even to hope, that there is nothing left in me needing to be changed.
Naturally there are a lot of things about me requiring to be built up or fined down or eliminated.
Even this, the fact that it perceives the failings it was unaware of in itself before, is evidence of a change for the better in one’s character.
In the case of some sick people it is a matter for congratulation when they come to realize for themselves that they are sick.
I should very much like, then, to share this all so sudden metamorphosis of mine with you.
Doing so would make me start to feel a surer faith in the friendship that exists between us, that true friendship which not hope nor fear nor concern for personal advantage ever sunders, that friendship in which and for which people are ready to die.
I can give you plenty of examples of people who have not been lacking a friend but friendship, something that can never happen when mutual inclination draws two personalities together in a fellowship of desire for all that is honourable.
Why cannot it happen?
Because they know that everything – and especially their setbacks – is shared between them.
You can’t imagine how much of an alteration I see each day bringing about in me.
‘Send me, too,’ you will be saying, ‘the things you’ve found so effectual.’ Indeed I desire to transfer every one of them to you; part of my joy in learning is that it puts me in a position to teach; nothing, however outstanding and however helpful, will ever give me any pleasure if the knowledge is to be for my benefit alone.
If wisdom were offered me on the one condition that I should
keep it shut away and not divulge it to anyone, I should reject it.
There is no enjoying the possession of anything valuable unless one has someone to share it with.
I shall send you, accordingly, the actual books themselves, and to save you a lot of trouble hunting all over the place for passages likely to be of use to you, I shall mark the passages so that you can turn straight away to the words I approve and admire.
Personal converse, though, and daily intimacy with someone will be of more benefit to you than any discourse.
You should really be here and on the spot, firstly because people believe their eyes rather more than their ears, and secondly because the road is a long one if one proceeds by way of precepts but short and effectual if by way of personal example.
Cleanthes would never have been the image of Zeno if he had merely heard him lecture; he lived with him, studied his private life, watched him to see if he lived in accordance with his own principle.
Plato, Aristotle and a host of other philosophers all destined to take different paths, derived more from Socrates’ character than from his words.
It was not Epicurus’ school but living under the same roof as Epicurus that turned Metrodorus, Hermarchus and Polyaenus into great men.
And yet I do not summon you to my side solely for the sake of your own progress but for my own as well, for we shall be of the utmost benefit to each other.
Meanwhile, since I owe you the daily allowance, I’ll tell you what took my fancy in the writings of Hecato today.
‘What progress have I made?
I am beginning to be my own friend.’ That is progress indeed.
Such a person will never be alone, and you may be sure he is a friend of all.
