Chapter V: Seneca. Died 65 A.d

Lucius Annæus Seneca, the greatest name in the stoic school of philosophy, and the first of Latin moralists, was born at Corduba (Cordova) almost contemporaneously with the beginning of the Christian era. His family, like that of Ovid, was of the equestrian order. He was of a weakly constitution; and bodily feebleness, as with many other great intellects, served to intensify if not originate, the activity of the mind. At Rome, with which he early made acquaintance, he soon gained great distinction at the bar; and the eloquence and fervour he displayed in the Senate before the Emperor Caligula excited the jealous hatred of that insane tyrant. Later in life he obtained a prætorship, and he was also appointed to the tutorship of the young Domitius, afterwards the Emperor Nero. On the accession of that prince, at the age of seventeen, to the imperial throne, Seneca became one of his chief advisers.

Unfortunately for his credit as a philosopher, while exerting his influence to restrain the vicious propensities of his old pupil, he seems to have been too anxious to acquire, not only a fair proportion of wealth, but even an enormous fortune, and his villas and gardens were of so splendid a kind as to provoke the jealousy and covetousness of Nero. This, added to his alleged disparagement of the prince’s talents, especially in singing and driving, for which Nero particularly desired to be famous, was the cause of his subsequent disgrace and death. The philosopher prudently attempted to anticipate the will of Nero by a voluntary surrender of all his accumulated possessions, and he sought to disarm the jealous suspicions of the tyrant by a retired and unostentatious life. These precautions were of no avail; his death was already decided. He was accused of complicity in the conspiracy of Piso, and the only grace allowed him was to be his own executioner. The despair of his wife, Pompeia Paulina, he attempted to mitigate by the reflection that his life had been always directed by the standard of a higher morality. Nothing, however, could dissuade her from sharing her husband’s fate, and the two faithful friends laid open their veins by the same blow.

Advanced age and his extremely meagre diet had left little blood in Seneca’s veins, and it flowed with painful slowness. His tortures were excessive and, to avoid the intolerable grief of being witnesses of each other’s suffering, they shut themselves up in separate apartments. With that marvellous intrepid tranquillity which characterised some of the old sages, Seneca calmly dictated his last thoughts to his surrounding friends. These were afterwards published. His agonies being still prolonged, he took hemlock; and this also failing, he was carried into a vapour-stove, where he was suffocated, and thus at length ceased to suffer.

In estimating the character of Seneca, it is just that we should consider all the circumstances of the exceptional time in which his life was cast. Perhaps there has never been an age or people more utterly corrupt and abandoned than that of the period of the earlier Roman Cæsars and that of Rome and the large cities of the empire. Allowing the utmost that his detractors have brought against him, the moral character of the author of the _Consolations_ and _Letters_ stands out in bright relief as compared with that of the immense majority of his contemporaries of equal rank and position, who were sunk in the depths of licentiousness and of selfish indifference to the miseries of the surrounding world. That his public career was not of so exalted a character altogether as are his moral precepts, is only too patent to be denied and, in this shortcoming of a loftier _ideal_, he must share reproach with some of the most esteemed of the world’s luminaries. If, for instance, we compare him with Cicero or with Francis Bacon, the comparison would certainly be not unfavourable to Seneca. The darkest stigma on the reputation of the great Latin moralist is his connivance at the death of the infamous Agrippina, the mother of his pupil Nero. Although not to be excused, we may fairly attribute this act to conscientious, if mistaken, motives. His best apology is to be found in the fact that, so long as he assisted to direct the counsels of Nero, he contrived to restrain that prince’s depraved disposition from those outbreaks which, after the death of the philosopher, have stigmatised the name of Nero with undying infamy.

The principal writings of Seneca are:--

1. _On Anger._ His earliest, and perhaps his best known, work.

2. _On Consolation._ Addressed to his mother, Helvia. An admirable philosophical exhortation.

3. _On Providence; or, Why evils happen to good men though a divine Providence may exist._

4. _On Tranquillity of Mind._

5. _On Clemency._ Addressed to Nero Cæsar. One of the most meritorious writings of all antiquity. It is not unworthy of being classed with the humanitarian protests of Beccaria and Voltaire. The stoical distinction between clemency and pity (_misericordia_), in book ii., is, as Seneca admits, merely a dispute about words.

6. _On the Shortness of Life._ In which the proper employment of time and the acquisition of wisdom are eloquently enforced as the best employment of a fleeting life.

7. _On a Happy Life._ In which he inculcates that there is no happiness without virtue. An excellent treatise.

8. _On Kindnesses._

9. _Epistles to Lucilius._ 124 in number. They abound in lessons and precepts in morality and philosophy, and, excepting the _De Irâ_, have been the most read, perhaps, of all Seneca’s productions.

10. _Questions on Natural History._ In seven books.

Besides these moral and philosophic works, he composed several tragedies. They were not intended for the stage, but rather as moral lessons. As in all his works, there is much of earnest thought and feeling, although expressed in rhetorical and declamatory language.

What especially characterises Seneca’s writings is their remarkably _humanitarian_ spirit. Altogether he is imbued with this, for the most part, very modern feeling in a greater degree than any other writer, Greek or Latin. Plutarch indeed, in his noble _Essay on Flesh Eating_, is more expressly denunciatory of the barbarism of the Slaughter House, and of the horrible cruelties inseparably connected with it, and evidently felt more deeply the importance of exposing its evils. The Latin moralist, however, deals with a wider range of ethical questions, and on such subjects, as, _e.g._, the relations of master and slave, is far ahead of his contemporaries. His treatment of _Dietetics_, in common with that of most of the old-world moralists, is rather from the spiritual and ascetic than from the purely humanitarian point of view. “The judgments on Seneca’s writings,” says the author of the article on Seneca in Dr. Smith’s _Dictionary of Greek and Latin Biography_, “have been as various as the opinions about his character, and both in extremes. It has been said of him that he looks best in quotations; but this is an admission that there is something worth quoting, which cannot be said of all writers. That Seneca possessed great mental powers cannot be doubted. He had seen much of human life, and he knew well what man is. His philosophy, so far as he adopted a system, was the stoical; but it was rather an eclecticism of stoicism than pure stoicism. His style is antithetical, and apparently laboured; and where there is much labour there is generally affectation. Yet his language is clear and forcible--it is not mere words--there is thought always. It would not be easy to name any modern writer, who has treated on morality and has said so much that is practically good and true, or has treated the matter in so attractive a way.”

Jerome, in his _Ecclesiastical Writers_, hesitates to include him in the catalogue of his saints only because he is not certain of the genuineness of the alleged literary correspondence between Seneca and St. Paul. We may observe, in passing, on the remarkable coincidence of the presence of the two greatest teachers of the old and the new faiths in the capital of the Roman Empire at the same time; and it is possible, or rather highly probable, that St. Paul was acquainted with the writings of Seneca; while, from the total silence of the pagan philosopher, it seems that he knew nothing of the Pauline epistles or teaching. Amongst many testimonies to the superiority of Seneca, Tacitus, the great historian of the empire, speaks of the “splendour and celebrity of his philosophic writings,” as well as of his “amiable genius”--_ingenium amœnum_. (_Annals_, xii., xiii.) The elder Pliny writes of him as “at the very head of all the learned men of that time.” (xiv. 4.) Petrarch quotes the testimony of Plutarch, “that great man who, Greek though he was freely confesses ‘that there is no Greek writer who could be brought into comparison with him in the department of _morals_.’”

The following passage is to be found in a letter to Lucilius, in which, after expatiating on the sublimity of the teaching of the philosopher Attalus in inculcating moderation and self-control in corporeal pleasures, Seneca thus enunciates his _dietetic_ opinions:--

“Since I have begun to confide to you with what exceeding ardour
I approached the study of philosophy in my youth, I shall not be
ashamed to confess the affection with which Sotion [his preceptor]
inspired me for the teaching of Pythagoras. He was wont to
instruct me on what grounds he himself, and, after him, Sextius,
had determined to abstain from the flesh of animals. Each had a
different reason, but the reason in both instances was a grand
one (_magnifica_). Sotion held that man can find a sufficiency
of nourishment without blood shedding, and that cruelty became
habitual when once the practice of butchering was applied to the
gratification of the appetite. He was wont to add that ‘It is our
bounden duty to limit the materials of luxury. That, moreover,
variety of foods is injurious to health, and not natural to our
bodies. If these maxims [of the Pythagorean school] are true, then
to abstain from the flesh of animals is to encourage and foster
_innocence_; if ill-founded, at least they teach us frugality
and simplicity of living. And what loss have you in losing your
cruelty? (Quod istic crudelitatis tuæ damnum est?) I merely deprive
you of the food of lions and vultures.’

“Moved by these and similar arguments, I resolved to abstain from
flesh meat, and at the end of a year the habit of abstinence was
not only easy but delightful. I firmly believed that the faculties
of my mind were more active,[25] and at this day I will not take
pains to assure you whether they were so or not. You ask, then,
‘Why did you go back and relinquish this mode of life?’ I reply
that the lot of my early days was cast in the reign of the emperor
Tiberius. Certain foreign religions became the object of the
imperial suspicion, and amongst the proofs of adherence to the
foreign cultus or superstition was that of abstinence from the
flesh of animals. At the entreaties of my father, therefore, who
had no real fear of the practice being made a ground of accusation,
but who had a hatred of philosophy,[26] I was induced to return to
my former dietetic habits, nor had he much difficulty in persuading
me to recur to more sumptuous repasts....

“This I tell,” he proceeds, “to prove to you how powerful are the
early impetuses of youth to what is truest and best under the
exhortations and incentives of virtuous teachers. We err partly
through the fault of our guides, who teach us _how to dispute_, not
_how to live_; partly by our own fault in expecting our teachers
to cultivate not so much the _disposition of the mind_ as the
faculties of the intellect. Hence it is that in place of a love
of wisdom there is only a love of words (Itaque quæ _philosophia_
fuit, facta _philologia_ est).”--_Epistola_ cviii.[27]

Seneca here cautiously reveals the jealous suspicion with which the first Cæsars viewed all foreign, and especially quasi-religious, innovations, and his own _public_ compliance, to some extent, with the orthodox dietetic practices. Yet that in private life he continued to practise, as well as to preach, a radical dietary reformation is sufficiently evident to all who are conversant with his various writings. The refinement and gentleness of his ethics are everywhere apparent, and exhibit him as a man of extraordinary sensibility and feeling.

As for _dietetics_, he makes it a matter of the first importance, on which he is never weary of insisting. “_We must so live, not as if we ought to live for, but as though we could not do without, the body._” He quotes Epikurus: “_If you live according to nature, you will never be poor; if according to conventionalism, you will never be rich. Nature demands little; fashion_ (opinio) _superfluity_.” In one of his letters he eloquently describes the riotous feasting of the period which corresponds to our festival of Christmas--another illustration of the proverb, “History repeats itself”:--

“December is the month,” he begins his letter, “when the city
[Rome] most especially gives itself up to riotous living
(_desudat_). Free licence is allowed to the public luxury. Every
place resounds with the gigantic preparations for eating and
gorging, just as if,” he adds, “the whole year were not a sort of
_Saturnalia_.”

He contrasts with all this waste and gluttony the simplicity and frugality of Epikurus, who, in a letter to his friend Polyænus, declares that his own food does not cost him sixpence a day; while his friend Metrodorus, who had not advanced so far in frugality, expended the whole of that small sum:--

“Do you ask if that can supply due nourishment? Yes; and pleasure
too. Not, indeed, that fleeting and superficial pleasure which
needs to be perpetually recruited, but a solid and substantial
one. Bread and pearl-barley (_polenta_) certainly is not luxurious
feeding, but it is no little advantage to be able to receive
pleasure from a simple diet of which no change of fortune can
deprive one.... Nature demands bread and water only: no one is poor
in regard to those necessaries.”[28]

Again, Seneca writes:--

“How long shall we weary heaven with petitions for superfluous
luxuries, as though we had not at hand wherewithal to feed
ourselves? How long shall we fill our plains with huge cities? How
long shall the people slave for us unnecessarily? How long shall
countless numbers of ships from every sea bring us provisions for
the consumption of a single month? An Ox is satisfied with the
pasture of an acre or two: one wood suffices for several Elephants.
Man alone supports himself by the pillage of the whole earth and
sea. What! Has Nature indeed given us so insatiable a stomach,
while she has given us so insignificant bodies? No: it is not the
hunger of our stomachs, but insatiable covetousness (_ambitio_)
which costs so much. The slaves of the belly (as says Sallust) are
to be counted in the number of the lower animals, not of men. Nay,
not of them, but rather of the dead.... You might inscribe on their
doors, ‘These have anticipated death.’”--(_Ep._ lx.)

The extreme difficulty of abstinence is oftentimes alleged:--

“It is disagreeable, you say, to abstain from the pleasures of
the customary diet. Such abstinence is, I grant, difficult at
first. But in course of time the desire for that diet will begin
to languish; the incentives to our unnatural wants failing, the
stomach, at first rebellious, will after a time feel an aversion
for what formerly it eagerly coveted. The desire dies of itself,
and it is no severe loss to be without those things that you have
ceased to long for. Add to this that there is no disease, no
pain, which is not certainly intermitted or relieved, or cured
altogether. Moreover it is possible for you to be on your guard
against a threatened return of the disease, and to oppose remedies
if it comes upon you.”--(_Ep._ lxxviii.)

On the occasion of a shipwreck, when his fellow-passengers found themselves forced to live upon the scantiest fare, he takes the opportunity to point out how extravagantly superfluous must be the ordinary living of the richer part of the community:--

“How easily we can dispense with these superfluities, which, when
necessity takes them from us, we do not feel the want of....
Whenever I happen to be in the company of richly-living people I
cannot prevent a blush of shame, because I see evident proof that
the principles which I approve and commend have as yet no sure
and firm faith placed in them.... A warning voice needs to be
published abroad in opposition to the prevailing opinion of the
human race: ‘You are out of your senses (_insanitis_); you are
wandering from the path of right; you are lost in stupid admiration
for superfluous luxuries; you value no one thing for its proper
worth.’”--(_Ep._ lxxxvii.)

Again:--

“I now turn to you, whose insatiable and unfathomable gluttony
(_profunda et insatiabilis gula_) searches every land and every
sea. Some animals it persecutes with snares and traps, with
hunting-nets [the customary method of the _battue_ of that period],
with hooks, sparing no sort of toil to obtain them. Excepting
from mere caprice or daintiness, there is no peace allowed to any
species of beings. Yet how much of all these feasts which you
obtain by the agency of innumerable hands do you even so much as
touch with your lips, satiated as they are with luxuries? How much
of that animal, which has been caught with so much expense or
peril, does the dyspeptic and bilious owner taste? Unhappy even in
this! that you perceive not that you hunger more than your belly.
Study,” he concludes his exhortation to his friend, “not to know
_more_, but to know _better_.”

Again:--

“If the human race would but listen to the voice of reason, it
would recognise that [fashionable] cooks are as superfluous as
soldiers.... Wisdom engages in all useful things, is favourable to
peace, and summons the whole human species to concord.”--(_Ep._ xc.)

“In the simpler times there was no need of so large a supernumerary
force of medical men, nor of so many surgical instruments or of
so many boxes of drugs. Health was simple for a simple reason.
Many dishes have induced many diseases. Note how _vast a quantity
of lives one stomach absorbs_--devastator of land and sea.[29] No
wonder that with so discordant diet disease is ever varying....
Count the cooks: you will no longer wonder at the innumerable
number of human maladies.”--(_Ep._ xcv.)

We must be content with giving our readers only one more of Seneca’s exhortations to a reform in diet:--

“You think it a great matter that you can bring yourself to live
without all the apparatus of fashionable dishes; that you do not
desire wild boars of a thousand pounds weight or the tongues of
rare birds, and other portents of a luxury which now despises whole
carcases,[30] and chooses only certain parts of each victim. I
shall admire you then only when you scorn not plain bread, when
you have persuaded yourself that herbs exist not for other animals
only, but for man also--if you shall recognise that vegetables are
sufficient food for the stomach into which we now stuff valuable
lives, as though it were to keep them for ever. For what matters
it what it receives, since it will soon lose all that it has
devoured? The apparatus of dishes, containing the spoils of sea and
land, gives you pleasure, you say.... The splendour of all this,
heightened by art, gives you pleasure. Ah! those very things so
solicitously sought for and served up so variously--no sooner have
they entered the belly than one and the same foulness shall take
possession of them all. Would you contemn the pleasures of the
table? Consider their final destination” (_exitum specta_).[31]

If Seneca makes _dietetics_ of the first importance, he at the same time by no means neglects the other departments of _ethics_, which, for the most part, ultimately depend upon that fundamental reformation; and he is equally excellent on them all. Space will not allow us to present our readers with all the admirable _dicta_ of this great moralist. We cannot resist, however, the temptation to quote some of his unique teaching on certain branches of humanitarianism and philosophy little regarded either in his own time or in later ages. Slaves, both in pagan and Christian Europe, were regarded very much as the domesticated non-human species are at the present day, as born merely for the will and pleasure of their masters. Such seems to have been the universal estimate of their _status_. While often superior to their lords, nationally and individually, by birth, by mind, and by education, they were at the arbitrary disposal of too often cruel and capricious owners:--

“Are they slaves?” eloquently demands Seneca. “Nay, they
are men. Are they slaves? Nay, they live under the same roof
(_contubernales_). Are they slaves? Nay, they are humble friends.
Are they slaves? Nay, they are fellow-servants (_conservi_), if
you will consider that both master and servant are equally the
creatures of chance. I smile, then, at the prevalent opinion
which thinks it a disgrace for one to sit down to a meal with
his servant. Why is it thought a disgrace, but because arrogant
_Custom_ allows a master a crowd of servants to stand round him
while he is feasting?”

He expressly denounces their cruel and contemptuous treatment, and demands in noble language (afterwards used by Epictetus, himself a slave):--

“Would you suppose that he whom you call a slave has the same
origin and birth as yourself? has the same free air of heaven with
yourself? that he breathes, lives, and dies like yourself?”

He denounces the haughty and insulting attitude of masters towards their helpless dependants, and lays down the precept: “So live with your dependant as you would wish your superior to live with you.” He laments the use of the term “slaves,” or “servants” (_servi_), in place of the old “domestics” (_familiares_). He declaims against the common prejudice which judges by the _outward_ appearance:--

“That man,” he asserts, “is of the stupidest sort who values
another either by his dress or by his condition.” Is he a slave?
He is, it may be, _free in mind_. He is the _true_ slave who is a
slave to cruelty, to ambition, to avarice, to pleasure. “Love,”
he declares, insisting upon humanity, “cannot co-exist with
fear.”--(_Ep._ xlviii.)

He is equally clear upon the ferocity and barbarity of the gladiatorial and other shows of the _Circus_, which were looked upon by his contemporaries as not only interesting spectacles, but as a useful school for war and endurance--much for the same reason as that on which the “sports” of the present day are defended. Cicero uses this argument, and only expresses the general sentiment. Not so Seneca. He speaks of a chance visit to the Circus (the gigantic Colosseum was not yet built), for the sake of mental relaxation, expecting to see, at the period of the day he had chosen, only innocent exercises. He indignantly narrates the horrid and bloody scenes of suffering, and demands, with only too much reason, whether it is not evident that such evil examples receive their righteous retribution in the deterioration of character of those who encourage them:--

“Ah! what dense mists of darkness do power and prosperity cast
over the human mind. He [the magistrate] believes himself to be
raised above the common lot of mortality, and to be at the pinnacle
of glory, when he has offered so many crowds of wretched human
beings to the assaults of wild beasts; when he forces animals of
the most different species to engage in conflict; when in the
full presence of the Roman populace he causes torrents of blood
to flow, a fitting school for the future scenes of still greater
bloodshed.”[32]

In his treatise _On Clemency_, dedicated to his youthful pupil Nero, he anticipates the very modern theory--_theory_, for the prevalent _practice_ is a very different thing--that _prevention_ is better than _punishment_, and he denounces the cruel and selfish policy of princes and magistrates, who are, for the most part, concerned only to punish the criminals produced by unjust and unequal laws:--

“Will not that man,” he asks, “appear to be a very bad father
who punishes his children, even for the slightest causes, with
constant blows? Which preceptor is the worthier to teach--the one
who scarifies his pupils’ backs if their memory happens to fail
them, or if their eyes make a slight blunder in reading, or he
who chooses rather to correct and instruct by admonition and the
influence of shame?... You will find that those crimes are most
often committed which are most often punished.... Many capital
punishments are no less disgraceful to a ruler than are many deaths
to a physician. Men are more easily governed by mild laws. The
human mind is naturally stubborn and inclined to be perverse, and
it more readily follows than is forced. The disposition to cruelty
which takes delight in blood and wounds is the characteristic of
wild beasts; it is to throw away the human character and to pass
into that of a denizen of the woods.”

Speaking of giving assistance to the needy, he says that the genuine philanthropist will give his money--

“Not in that insulting way in which the great majority of those who
wish to seem merciful disdain and despise those whom they help, and
shrink from contact with them, but as one mortal to a fellow-mortal
he will give as though out of a treasury that should be common to
all.”[33]

Next to the _De Clementiâ_ and the _De Irâ_ (“On Anger”), his treatise _On the Happy Life_ is most admirable. In the abundance of what is unusually good and useful it is difficult to choose. His warning (so unheeded) against implicit confidence in authority and tradition cannot be too often repeated:--

“There is nothing against which we ought to be more on our guard
than, like a flock of sheep, following the crowd of those who have
preceded us--going, as we do, not where we ought to go, but where
men have walked before. And yet there is nothing which involves
us in greater evils than following and settling our faith upon
authority--considering those dogmas or practices best which have
been received heretofore with the greatest applause, and which have
a multitude of great names. We live not according to reason, but
according to mere fashion and tradition, from whence that enormous
heap of bodies, which fall one over the other. It happens as in a
great slaughter of men, when the crowd presses upon itself. Not
one falls without dragging with him another. The first to fall are
the cause of destruction to the succeeding ranks. It runs through
the whole of human life. No-one’s error is limited to himself
alone, but he is the author and cause of another’s error.... We
shall recover our sound health if only we shall separate ourselves
from the herd, for the crowd of mankind stands opposed to right
reason--the defender of its own evils and miseries.[34] ... Human
history is not so well conducted, that the better way is pleasing
to the mass. The very fact of the approbation of the multitude is
a proof of the badness of the opinion or practice. Let us ask what
is _best_, not what is _most customary_; what may place us firmly
in the possession of an everlasting felicity, not what has received
the approbation of the vulgar--the worst interpreter of the
truth. Now I call “the vulgar” _the common herd of all ranks and
conditions_” (_Tam chlamydatos quam coronatos_).--(_De Vitâ Beatâ_
i. and ii.)

Again:--

“I will do nothing for the sake of opinion; everything for the sake
of conscience.”

He repudiates the doctrines of Egoism for those of Altruism:--

“I will so live, as knowing myself to have come into the world for
others.... I shall recognise the _world_ as my proper country.
Whenever nature or reason shall demand my last breath I shall
depart with the testimony that I have loved a good conscience,
useful pursuits--that I have encroached upon the liberty of no one,
least of all my own.”

Very admirable are his rebukes of unjust and insensate anger in regard to the non-human species:--

“As it is the characteristic of a madman to be in a rage with
lifeless objects, so also is it to be angry with dumb animals,[35]
inasmuch as there can be no injury unless _intentional_. Hurt
us they can--as a stone or iron--_injure_ us they cannot.
Nevertheless, there are persons who consider themselves insulted
when horses that will readily obey one rider are obstinate in
the case of another; just as if they are more tractable to some
individuals than to others of _set purpose_, not from custom or
_owing to treatment_.”--(_De Irâ_ ii., xxvi.)

Again, of anger, as between human beings:--

“The faults of others we keep constantly before us; our own we hide
behind us.... A large proportion of mankind are angry, not with the
_sins_, but with the _sinners_. In regard to reported offences;
_many speak falsely to deceive, many because they are themselves
deceived_.”

Of the use of self-examination, he quotes the example of his excellent preceptor, Sextius, who strictly followed the Pythagorean precept to examine oneself each night before sleep:--

“Of what bad practice have you cured yourself to-day? What vice
have you resisted? In what respect are you the better? Rash anger
will be moderated and finally cease when it finds itself daily
confronted with its judge. What, then, is more useful than this
custom of thoroughly weighing the actions of the entire day?”

He adduces the feebleness and shortness of human life as one of the most forcible arguments against the indulgence of malevolence:--

“Nothing will be of more avail than reflections on the nature of
mortality. Let each one say to himself, as to another, ‘What good
is it to declare enmity against such and such persons, as though
we were born to live for ever, and to thus waste our very brief
existence? What profit is it to employ time which might be spent
in honourable pleasures in inflicting pain and torture upon any of
our fellow-beings?’ ... Why rush we to battle? Why do we provoke
quarrels? Why, forgetful of our mortal weakness, do we engage in
huge hatreds? Fragile beings as we are, why will we rise up to
crush others?... Why do we tumultuously and seditiously set life
in an uproar? Death stands staring us in the face, and approaches
ever nearer and nearer. That moment which you destine for another’s
destruction perchance may be for your own.... Behold! death comes,
which makes us all equal. Whilst we are in this mortal life, let
us cultivate humanity; let us not be a cause of fear or of danger
to any of our fellow-mortals. Let us contemn losses, injuries,
insults. Let us bear with magnanimity the brief inconveniences of
life.”

Again, in dealing with the weak and defenceless:--

“Let each one say to himself, whenever he is provoked, ‘What right
have I to punish with whips or fetters a slave who has offended me
by voice or manner? Who am I, whose ears it is such a monstrous
crime to offend? Many grant pardon to their enemies; shall I not
pardon simply idle, negligent, or garrulous slaves?’ Tender years
should shield childhood--their sex, women--individual liberty, a
stranger--the common roof, a domestic. Does he offend now for the
first time? Let us think how often he may have pleased us.”--(_De
Irâ_ iii., passim.)

As to the conduct of life:--

“We ought so to live, as though in the sight of all men. We ought
so to employ our thoughts, as though someone were able to inspect
our inmost soul--and there is one able. For what advantages it that
a thing is hidden from men; nothing is hidden from God. (_Ep._ 83.)
... Would you propitiate heaven? Be good. He worships the gods, who
imitates [the higher ideal of] them. How do we act? What principles
do we lay down? That we are to refrain from human bloodshed? Is it
a great matter to refrain from injuring him to whom you are bound
to do good? The whole of human and divine teaching is summed up in
this one principle--we are all members of one mighty body. Nature
has made us of one kin (_cognatos_), since she has produced us
from the same elements and will resolve us into the same elements.
She has implanted in us love one for another, and made us for
living together in society. She has laid down the laws of right
and justice, by which ordinance it is more wretched to injure than
to be injured; and by her ordering, our hands are given us to help
each the other.... Let us ask what things _are_, not what they _are
called_. Let us value each thing on its own merits, without thought
of the world’s opinion. Let us love temperance; let us, before all
things, cherish justice.... Our actions will not be right unless
the will is first right, for from that proceeds the act.”

Again:--

“The will will not be right unless the _habits_ of mind are right,
for from these results the will. The habits of thought, however,
will not be at the best unless they shall have been based upon _the
laws of the whole of life_; unless they shall have tried all things
by the test of truth.”--(_Ep._ xcv.)

Excellent is his advice on the choice of books and of reading:--

“Be careful that the reading of many authors, and of every sort of
books, does not induce a certain vagueness and uncertainty of mind.
We ought to linger over and nourish our minds with, writers of
assured genius and worth, if we wish to extract something which may
usefully remain fixed in the mind. A multitude of books distracts
the mind. Read always, then, books of approved merit. If ever you
have a wish to go for a time to other kinds of books, yet always
return to the former.”[36]--(_Ep._ ii.)

In his 88th Letter Seneca well exposes the folly of a learning which begins and ends in _mere words_, which has no real bearing on the conduct of life and the instruction of the _moral_ faculties:--

“In testing the value of books and writers, let us see whether
or no they teach _virtue_.... You inquire minutely about the
wanderings of Ulysses rather than work for the prevention of error
in your own case. We have no leisure to hear exactly how and where
he was tossed about between Italy and Sicily.... The tempests of
the soul are ever tossing us, and evildoing urges us into all the
miseries of Ulysses.... Oh marvellously excellent education! By
it you can measure circles and squares, and all the distances of
the stars. There is nothing that is not within the reach of your
geometry. Since you are so able a mechanician, measure the human
mind. Tell me how great it is, how small it is (_pusillus_). You
know what a straight line is. What does it profit you, if you
know not what is straight (_rectum_) in life.”[37] What then? Are
liberal studies of no avail? For other things much; for virtue
nothing.... They do not lead the mind to virtue--they only clear
the way.

“Humanity forbids us to be arrogant towards our fellows; forbids us
to be grasping; shows itself kind and courteous to all, in word,
deed, and thought; thinks no evil of another, but rather loves its
own highest good, chiefly because it will be of good to another.
Do liberal studies [always] inculcate these maxims? No more than
they do simplicity of character and moderation; no more than they
do frugality and economy of living; no more than they do mercy,
which is as sparing of another’s blood as it is of its own, and
recognises that man is not to use the services of his fellows
unnecessarily or prodigally.

“Wisdom is a great, a vast subject. It needs all the spare time
that can be given to it.... Whatever amount of natural and moral
questions you may have mastered, you will still be wearied with the
vast abundance of questions to be asked and solved. So many, so
great, are these questions, all superfluous things must be removed
from the mind, that it may have free scope for exercise. Shall I
waste my life in mere words (_syllabis_)? Thus does it come about
that the learned are more anxious to talk than to live. Mark what
mischief _excessive_ subtlety of mind produces, and how dangerous
it may be to truth.”--(_Ep._ lxxxviii.)

Elsewhere he indignantly demands:--

“What is more vile or disgraceful than a learning which catches at
popular applause (_clamores_)?”--(_Ep._ lii.)

Anticipating the ultimate triumph of Truth, he well says:--

“No virtue is really lost--that it has to remain hidden for a time
is no loss to itself. A day will come which will publish the truth
at present neglected and oppressed by the malignity (_malignitas_)
of its age. He who thinks the world to be of his own age only, is
born for the few. Many thousands of years, many millions of people,
will supervene. Look forward to that time. Though the envy of
your own day shall have condemned you to obscurity, there will
come those who will judge you without fear or favour. If there is
any reward for virtue from fame, that is imperishable. The talk of
posterity, indeed, will be nothing to us. Yet it will revere us,
even though we are insensible to its praise; and it will frequently
consult us.... What now deceives has not the elements of duration.
Falsehood is thinly disguised; it is transparent, if only you look
close enough.”--(_Ep._ lxix.)

In his _Questions on Nature_, in which he often shows himself to have been much in advance of his contemporaries, and, indeed, of the whole mediæval ages, in scientific acumen, he takes occasion to reprobate the common practice of glorifying the lives and deeds of worthless princes and others, and exclaims in the modern spirit:--

“How much better to try to extinguish the evils of our own age than
to glorify the bad deeds of others to posterity! How much better
to celebrate the works of Nature [_deorum_] than the piracies of
a Philip or Alexander and of the rest who, become illustrious
by the calamities of nations, have been no less the pests of
mankind than an inundation which devastates a whole country, or a
conflagration in which a large proportion of living creatures is
consumed.”--(_Quæst. Nat._ iii.)

It will be sufficiently apparent, from what we have presented to our readers, that Seneca, though nominally of the Stoic school, belonged in reality to no special sect or party. _Nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri._ Bound to the words of no one master, he sought for truth everywhere. The authority whom he most frequently quotes with approval is Epicurus, the arch-enemy of Stoicism. Wiser and more candid than the great mass of sectaries, he scorns the tactics of partisanship. He justly recognises the fact that the “luxurious egoists have not derived their impulse or sanction from Epicurus; but, abandoned to their vices, they disguise their selfishness in the name of his philosophy.” He professes his own conviction to be “against the common prejudice of the popular writers of my own school, that the teaching of Epicurus was just and holy, and, on a close examination, essentially grave and sober.... I affirm this, that he is ill-understood, defamed, and depreciated.” (_De Vitâ Beatâ_, xii, xiii.)

It will also be sufficiently clear that the ethics of Seneca consist of no mere trials of skill in logomachy; in finely-drawn distinctions between words and names, as do so large a proportion both of modern and ancient dialectics. If so daring a heresy may possibly be forgiven us, we would venture to suggest that the authorities of our schools and universities might, with no inconsiderable advantage, substitute judicious excerpts from the _Morals_ of Seneca for the _Ethics_ of Aristotle; or, as Latin literature is now in question, even for the _De Officiis_ of Cicero. This, however, is perhaps to indulge Utopian speculation too greatly. The mediæval spirit of scholasticism is not yet sufficiently out of favour at the ancient schools of Aquinas and Scotus.