Seneca Drives US
A Few More Reflections on Seneca's On the Shortness of Life
I’ve finished another reading of Seneca’s beautiful little book On the Shortness of Life. It’s a sign of a great book when after a second, third, or fourth reading it is still great or even greater than it was upon the first reading, and Seneca’s book manifests this sign or passes this test.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Younger was a Stoic statesman, dramatist, satirist, and philosopher of Ancient Rome who lived (ca. 4 BC - AD 65) in the Meridian of Time, that is, during the time of Christ. He was born in Hispania, the Iberian Peninsula, or what is now Spain, and he studied philosophy and rhetoric in Rome. As a young man, he suffered from much illness, including asthma, for about a decade. Under the reign of Emperor Claudius, Seneca was exiled to Corsica (where he resided for eight years), and then later he returned to become a tutor and advisor to Nero. Because of his alleged complicity in a conspiracy to assassinate Nero, Seneca was forced into suicide. (see also here)
These are the essays or chapters in this little book:
“On the Shortness of Life”
“Consolation to Helvia”
“On Tranquillity of Mind”
Seneca’s works are filled with Stoic doctrines and tributes to other ancient philosophers and statesmen. Of Seneca and Plutarch, Michel de Montaigne (see also here) wrote:
Those two authors are in agreement over most useful and true opinions; they were both fated to be born about the same period; both to be the tutors of Roman Emperors; both came from foreign lands and both were rich and powerful. Their teachings are some of the cream of philosophy and are presented in a simple and appropriate manner. Plutarch is more uniform and constant: Seneca is more diverse and comes in waves. Seneca stiffens and tenses himself, toiling to arm virtue against weakness, fear and vicious appetites; Plutarch seems to judge those vices to be less powerful and to refuse to condescend to hasten his step or to rely on a shield. Plutarch holds to Plato’s opinions, which are gentle and well-suited to public life: Seneca’s opinions are Stoic and Epicurean, farther from common practice but in my judgement more suited to the individual and firmer. It seems that Seneca bowed somewhat to the tyranny of the Emperors of his day, for I hold it for certain that his judgement was under duress when he condemned the cause of those great-souled murderers of Caesar; Plutarch is a free man from end to end. Seneca is full of pithy phrases and sallies; Plutarch is full of matter. Seneca enflames you and stirs you: Plutarch is more satisfying and repays you more. Plutarch leads us: Seneca drives us. - Montaigne's Essays, Book II, Essay 10"
In connection with Montaigne’s remarks regarding Seneca and Plutarch, I’m grateful that after we finish reading and discussing The Epic of Gilgamesh this week in the Provo Great Books Club (see here and here), we will begin another study of a few of Plutarch’s Lives.
I already introduced Seneca’s On the Shortness of Life on my podcast “The Torch,” but as I’ve continued to read “Consolation to Helvia” and “On Tranquillity of Mind,” I’ve rediscovered so many gems in Seneca’s work that I would like to read more. I would also like to know more about Seneca’s influence on Montaigne, which may be something that Pierre Manent addresses in his book that I have also begun to read, Montaigne: La Vie sans Loi (Montaigne: Life without Law).
In essence, Seneca praises virtue and the conquest of vice, he praises both the active life of public service and the contemplative life devoted to what he calls “liberal studies,” and he shares many great insights on the human mind and noble thoughts. Just to further whet your appetite, here are a few delightful morsels from the essays in this edition of Seneca’s On the Shortness of Life:
“Everlasting misfortune does have one blessing, that it ends up by toughening those whom it constantly afflicts.”
“It was nature’s intention that there should be no need of great equipment for a good life: every individual can make himself happy. External goods are of trivial importance and without much influence in either direction: prosperity does not elevate the sage and adversity does not depress him. For he has always made the effort to rely as much as possible on himself and to derive all delight from himself.”
“No man has been shattered by the blows of Fortune unless he was first deceived by her favours.’
“I’ve come across people who say that there is a sort of inborn restlessness in the human spirit and an urge to change one’s abode; for man is endowed with a mind which is changeable and unsettled: nowhere at rest, it darts about and directs its thoughts to all places known and unknwon, a wanderer which cannot endure repose and delights chiefly in novelty. This will not surprise you if you consider its original source. It was not made from heavy, earthly material, but came down from that heavenly spirit: but heavenly things are by nature always in motion, fleeing and driven on extremely fast. Look at the planets which light up the world: not one is at rest. The sun glides constantly, moving on from place to place, and although it revolves with the universe its motion is nevertheless opposite to that of the firmament itself: it races through all the signs of the zodiac and never stops; its motion is everlasting as it journeys from one point to another. All the planets forever move round and pass by: as the constraining law of nature has ordained they are borne from point to point. When through fixed periods of years they have completed their courses they will strat again upon their former circuits. How silly then to imagine that the human mind, which is formed of the same elements as divine beings, objects to movement and change of abode, while the divine nature finds delight and even self-preservation in continual and very rapid change.”
“For how little have we lost, when the two finest things of all will accompany us wherever we go, universal nature and our individual virtue. Believe me, this was the intention of whoever formed the universe, whether all-powerful god, or incorporeal reason creating mighty works, or divine spirit penetrating all things from greatest to smallest with even pressure, or fate and the unchanging sequence of causation - this, I say, was the intention, that only the most worthless of our possessions should come into the power of another. Whatever is best for a human being lies outside human control: it can be neither given nor taken away. The world you see, nature’s greatest and most glorious creation, and the human mind which gazes and wonders at it, and is the most splendid part of it, these are our own everlasting possessions and will remain with us as long as we ourselves remain. So, eager and upright, let us hasten with bold steps wherever circumstances take us, and let us journey through any countries whatever: there can be no place of exile within the world since nothing within the world is alien to men...”
“… From whatever point on earth’s surface you look up to heaven the same distance lies between the realms of gods and men. Accordingly, provided my eyes are not withdrawn from that spectacle, of which they never tire; provided I may look upon the sun and the moon and gaze at the other planets; provided I may trace their risings and settings, their periods and the causes of their travelling faster or slower, provided I may behold all the stars that shine at night - some fixed, others not travelling far afield but circling within the same area; some suddenly shooting forth, and others dazzling the eye with scattered fire, as if they are falling, or gliding past with a long trail of blazing light; provided I can commune with these and, so far as humans may, associate with the divine, and provided I can keep my mind always directed upwards, striving for a vision of kindred things - what does it matter what ground I stand on?”
“But there is no evil in poverty, as anyone knows who has not yet arrived at the lunatic state of greed and luxury, which ruin everything. For how little is needed to support a man! And who can lack this if he has any virtue at all?”
“No man is despised by another unless he is first despised by himself. An abject and debased mind is susceptible to such insult; but if a man stires himself to face the worst of disasters and defeats the evils which overwhelm others, then he wears those very sorrows like a sacred badge. For we are naturally disposed to admire more than anything else the man who shows fortitude in adversity.”
“So this is how you must think me me - happy and cheerful as if in the best of circumstances. For they are best since my mind, without any preoccupation, is free for its own tasks, now delighting in more trivial studies, now in its eagerness for the truth rising up to ponder its own nature and that of the universe. It seeks to know first about lands and their location, then the nature of the encompassing sea and its tidal ebb and flow. Then it studies all the awesome expance which lies between heaven and earth - this nearer space turbulent with thunder, lightning, gales of wind, and falling rain, snow and hail. Finally, having scoured the lower areas it bursts through to the heights and enjoys the noblest sight of divine things and, mindful of its own immortality, it ranges over all that has been and will yet be throughout all ages.”
“I imagine many people could have achieved wisdom if they had not imagined they had already achieved it, if they had not dissembled about some of their own characteristics and turned a blind eye to others.”
“Who has dared to tell himself the truth?”
“For the human mind is naturally mobile and enjoys activity.”
“For just as some people spend the day in sun-bathing, exercise and the care of their bodies, and for athletes it is of the highest practical importance to spend most of their time cultivating the strength of their limbs, to which alone they have devoted themselves, so for you, who are training your mind for the contests of public life, by far the finest approach is regular practice. For when one intends to make himself useful to his fellow-citizens and fellow-men, he is at the same time getting practice and doing good if he throwns himself heart and soul into the duty of looking after both the community and the individual.”
“Yet Socrates was in the thick of it: he comforted the gloomy city fathers, encouraged those who were despairing of the state, reproached the rich who now feared their own wealth for a tardy repentance of their dangerous greed; and to those willing to imitate him he was a walking inspiration, as he moved about, a free spirit among thirty masters. Yet this was the man that Athens herself put to death in prison, and Freedom could not bear the freedom of the man who had openly scoffed at a whole troop of tyrants.”
“Then we must appraise the actual things we are attempting and match our strength to what we are going to undertake… you must set your hands to tasks which you can finish or at least hope to finish…”
“You must consider whether your nature is more suited to practical activity or to quit study and reflection, and incline in the direction your natural faculty and disposition take you. Isocrates forcibly pulled Ephorus away from the forum, thinking he would be better employed in writing history. Inborn dispositions do not respond well to compulsion, and we labout in vain against nature’s opposition.”
“But nothing delights the mind so much as fond and loyal friendship.”
“For whether we agree with the Greek poet that ‘Sometimes it is sweet to be mad,’ or with Plato that ‘A man sound in mind knocks in vain at the doors of poetry,’ or with Aristotle that ‘No great intellect has been without a touch of madness,’ only a mind that is deeply stirred can utter something noble and beyond the power of others. When it has scorned everyday and commonplace thoughts and risen aloft on the wings of divine inspiration, only then does it sound a note nobler than mortal voice could utter. As long as it remains in its senses it cannot reach any lofty and difficult height: it must desert the usual track and race away, champing the bit and hurrying its driver in its course to a height it would have feared to scale by itself.”
Perhaps this is what Montaigne meant when he wrote that “Plutarch leads us: Seneca drives us.”