Letters from a Stoic by Seneca

Summary

A practical guide to preparing for and dealing with adversity. You have little control over external factors, but complete control over internal ones.

Key Takeaways

• The summum bonum or ‘supreme ideal’ is a combination of four qualities:
  • Wisdom (or moral insight)
  • Courage
  • Self-control 
  • Justice (or upright dealing)
• You should be extending your stay among writers whose genius is unquestionable.
  • Philosophy wields an authority of her own; she doesn’t just accept time, she grants one it.
• To be everywhere is to be nowhere.
• 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. 
• For a delight in bustling about is not industry – it is only the restless energy of a hunted mind.
• Men learn as they teach.
  • ‘A person teaching and a person learning,’ he said, ‘should have the same end in view: the improvement of the latter.’
• Making noble resolutions is not as important as keeping the resolutions you have made already. You have to persevere and fortify your pertinacity until the will to good becomes a disposition to good.
• ‘If you shape your life according to nature, you will never be poor; if according to people’s opinions, you will never be rich.’
• It’s only when you’re breathing your last that the way you’ve spent your time will become apparent.
• Where you arrive does not matter so much as what sort of person you are when you arrive there.
• It is one thing, however, to remember, another to know. 
• Each man has a character of his own choosing; it is chance or fate that decides his choice of job.
• Straightforwardness and simplicity are in keeping with goodness.
• The harmful consequences of inactivity are dissipated by activity.
• Everything hangs on one’s thinking.
  • A man is as unhappy as he has convinced himself he is.
• To want to know more than is sufficient is a form of intemperance.
• To govern was to serve, not to rule.
• The importance of human ingenuity over wisdom (to societal development): The person who discovers that sort of thing is the kind of person who makes it his business to be interested in just that sort of thing.
• So long, in fact, as you remain in ignorance of what to aim at and what to avoid, what is essential and what is super­fluous, what is upright or honourable conduct and what is not, it will not be travelling but drifting.
• Freedom cannot be won without sacrifice. If you set a high value on her, everything else must be valued at little.
• The thingswhich goad man into destroying man: 
  • Hope
  • Envy
  • Hatred
  • Fear
  • Contempt 
• To expect punishment is to suffer it; and to earn it is to expect it.
• How to control excessive studying (and no doing): We mustn’t take on more than we can manage. You shouldn’t attempt to absorb all you want to – just what you’ve room for; simply adopt the right approach and you will end up with room for all you want. The more the mind takes in the more it expands.
• How men can prove that their words are their own: let them put their preaching into practice.
• Where prosperity has spread luxury over a wide area of society, people start by paying closer attention to their personal turnout.
• We therefore should keep to the path which nature has mapped out for us and never diverge from it. For those who follow nature everything is easy and straightforward, whereas for those who fight against her life is just like rowing against the stream.
• Retreat from the things that attract us and rouse ourselves to meet the things that actually attack us.

What I got out of it

Seneca’s Letters from a Stoic isn’t as impactful as his On The Shortness Of Life but covers more areas in life. It’s a practical guide to dealing with adversity and the notion that “everything hangs on one’s thinking.”

It reminded me (in parts) of Hagakure, the Analects of Confucius and the Tao Te Ching.

Some things that stuck with me:

• Indulge the body just so far as suffices for good health. I’ve noticed in my own life that my mind can be dominated by thoughts of eating, specific types of food, toilet breaks, drinking specific drinks, if I let it. At the same time, if I indulge, I always regret it later. I’ve found it better to keep the body 90% satisfied than 100%.
• Seneca recommends living in poorer/less luxurious circumstances every now and then to serve as a reminder of “is this what one used to dread?”. I’ve found this useful too, both physically and emotionally.
• Seneca mentions throughout the book the need to train and practice to prepare for the crisis that will inevitably hit us. This reminded me of Nassim Taleb’s Antifragile and the notion that nothing lasts forever. By extension, I think it’s our duty to prepare people we are responsible for (family, friends, colleagues) and not just ourselves.
• The distinction between remembering/memorizing and knowing/internalizing, and the notion that (true) wisdom lies not in books but in practice. By extension:
  • Be a practitioner and work with practitioners over talkers (walk the walk, not just talk the talk). This aligns with the Japanese way of teaching arts, crafts and skills.
  • “To want to know more than is sufficient is a form of intemperance.” It’s better to read 10 masterpieces 10 times than to read 100 random books 1 time. Slow down, focus on quality input, ponder, practice, internalize and teach.
  • You make something your own by teaching. Teach more, study less.
  • Philosophers: find useful bits of their writing (for your life) that can be applied practically, then put “words into works”. 
  • “Isn’t it the height of folly to learn inessential things when time’s so desperately short!” Focus on utility and practicality.
• Reminder: speak less, speak slower.
• “Each man has a character of his own choosing; it is chance or fate that decides his choice of job.” 
• “The harmful consequences of inactivity are dissipated by activity.”

Summary & Quotes

Introduction

Seneca’s Life

His father, Marcus Annaeus Seneca, was an imperial procurator who became an authority on rhetoric, the art of public speaking and debate.

His interest was drawn at an early age to Pythagorean mysticism and various cults of eastern origin then gaining adherents in Rome, before his acceptance, in large part, of the Stoic philosophy.

The only solace for him in these eight long years of loneliness and near despair was the reception given to the poems, tragedies and essays to friends which he continued composing during his banishment.

The new regime opened well and ‘Nero’s first five years’ were later spoken of as a period of unequalled good govern­ment, the emperor Trajan even calling them the finest period in the history of imperial Rome. For this Rome was indebted to Seneca and an army officer named Burrus.

The campaign against him generally centred on the apparent contrast – it has been a stock criticism of Seneca right down the centuries – between his philosophical teachings and his practice.

What counts, he says, is one’s attitude to wealth, which is the wise man’s servant and the fool’s master; he, like any good Stoic, could lose all he had at any moment without being a whit less happy.

According to some, a true Stoic, like Cato under the Republic, would have stayed on in political life to the bitter end.

Certain other Stoics, indeed, stood up to emperors and were rewarded for their opposition to misrule with martyrdom. Seneca chose to spend what time was left to him in philosophy, and the reader may be left to decide, in fairness not forgetting his chronic ill health, whether his ‘lack of moral courage outside the study’ in this or earlier events detracts from his achievements.

Seneca, all the same, may well be history’s most notable example of a man who failed to live up to his principles. This does not prevent him from being an outstanding figure of his age.

Seneca and Philosophy 

The Stoics saw the world as a single great community in which all men are brothers, ruled by a supreme providence which could be spoken of, almost according to choice or context, under a variety of names or descriptions including the divine reason, creative reason, nature, the spirit or purpose of the universe, destiny, a personal god, even (by way of concession to traditional religion) ‘the gods’. 

It is man’s duty to live in conformity with the divine will, and this means, firstly, bringing his life into line with ‘nature’s laws’, and secondly, resigning himself completely and uncomplainingly to whatever fate may send him. Only by living thus, and not setting too high a value on things which can at any moment be taken away from him, can he discover that true, unshake­able peace and contentment to which ambition, luxury and above all avarice are among the greatest obstacles.

The summum bonum or ‘supreme ideal’, is usually summarized in ancient philosophy as a combination of four qualities: 

• Wisdom (or moral insight)
• Courage
• Self-control 
• Justice (or upright dealing)

‘The shortest route to wealth is the contempt of wealth.’

The duties it inculcated – courage and endurance, self-control and self-reliance, upright conduct and just dealing, simple and unluxurious habits, rationality, obedience to the state – were self-evident to many Romans, corresponding quite closely to the traditional idea of virtus.

Seneca and Literature

‘Seneca,’ Quintilian tells us, ‘turned his hand to practically everything which can be made the subject of study – speeches, poems, letters, dialogues all surviving.’

The exploitation of such figures as antithesis, alliteration, homeoteleuta and all manner of other plays upon words, paradox and oxymoron, apposition and asyndeton, the use of cases and prepositions in uncommon connotations, all contribute to the twin aims of brevity and sparkle.

Letters

Letter II

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.

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.

It is not the man who has too little who is poor, but the one who hankers after more.

Letter III 

If you are looking at 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.

After friendship is formed you must trust, but before that you must judge.

Regard him as loyal, and you will make him loyal.

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).

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 spineless inertia.

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.

Letter V 

No one confines his unhappiness to the present.

Letter VI 

Personal converse, though, and daily intimacy with someone will be of more benefit to you than any discourse.

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.

Letter VII 

You ask me to say what you should consider particularly important to avoid. My answer is this: a mass crowd. It is something to which you cannot entrust yourself yet without risk.

When a mind is impressionable and has none too firm a hold on what is right, it must be rescued from the crowd: it is so easy for it to go over to the majority.

The right thing is to shun both courses: you should neither become like the bad because they are many, nor be an enemy of the many because they are unlike you. Retire into yourself as much as you can. Associate with people who are likely to improve you. Welcome those whom you are capable of improving. The process is a mutual one: men learn as they teach.

Equally good is the answer given by the person, whoever it was (his identity is uncertain), who when asked what was the object of all the trouble he took over a piece of craftsmanship when it would never reach more than a very few people, replied: ‘A few is enough for me; so is one; and so is none.’

A nice expression used by Epicurus in a letter to one of his colleagues. ‘I am writing this,’ he says, ‘not for the eyes of the many, but for yours alone: for each of us is audience enough for the other.’

Letter VIII 

Cling, therefore, to this sound and whole ­some plan of life: indulge the body just so far as suffices for good health. It needs to be treated somewhat strictly to prevent it from being disobedient to the spirit.

‘To win true freedom you must be a slave to philosophy.’

Letter IX

The difference here between the Epicurean and our own school is this: our wise man feels his troubles but overcomes them, while their wise man does not even feel them. We share with them the belief that the wise man is content with himself. Nevertheless, self-sufficient though he is, he still desires a friend, a neighbour, a companion.

There is the same difference between having gained a friend and actually gaining a friend as there is between a farmer harvesting and a farmer sowing.

A person who starts being friends with you because it pays him will similarly cease to be friends because it pays him to do so. If there is anything in a particular friendship that attracts a man other than the friendship itself, the attraction of some reward or other will counterbalance that of the friendship.

Letter XI 

There is a need, in my view, for someone as a standard against which our characters can measure themselves. Without a ruler to do it against you won’t make the crooked straight.

Letter XV 

The life of folly is empty of gratitude, full of anxiety: it is focused wholly on the future.’

So continually remind yourself, Lucilius, of the many things you have achieved. When you look at all the people out in front of you, think of all the ones behind you. If you want to feel appreciative where the gods and your life are concerned, just think how many people you’ve outdone. Why be concerned about others, come to that, when you’ve outdone your own self?

Letter XVI

It is clear to you, I know, Lucilius, that no one can lead a happy life, or even one that is bearable, without the pursuit of wisdom, and that the perfection of wisdom is what makes the happy life, although even the beginnings of wisdom make life bearable. Yet this conviction, clear as it is, needs to be strengthened and given deeper roots through daily reflection; making noble resolutions is not as important as keeping the resolutions you have made already. You have to persevere and fortify your pertinacity until the will to good becomes a disposition to good.

Another saying of Epicurus: ‘If you shape your life according to nature, you will never be poor; if according to people’s opinions, you will never be rich.’ Nature’s wants are small, while those of opinion are limitless.

Give up pointless, empty journeys, and whenever you want to know whether the desire aroused in you by something you are pursuing is natural or quite unseeing, ask yourself whether it is capable of coming to rest at any point; if after going a long way there is always something remaining farther away, be sure it is not something natural.

Letter XVIII 

Great men’s teaching: set aside now and then a number of days during which you will be content with the plainest of food, and very little of it, and with rough, coarse clothing, and will ask yourself, ‘Is this what one used to dread?’

If you want a man to keep his head when the crisis comes you must give him some training before it comes. This was the aim of the men who once every month pretended they were poor, bringing themselves face to face with want, to prevent their ever being terrified by a situation which they had frequently rehearsed.

No one is worthy of a god unless he has paid no heed to riches. I am not, mind you, against your possessing them, but I want to ensure that you possess them without tremors; and this you will only achieve in one way, by convincing your­self that you can live a happy life even without them, and by always regarding them as being on the point of vanishing.

Letter XXVI 

It’s only when you’re breathing your last that the way you’ve spent your time will become apparent.

Letter XXVII 

I’m not so shameless as to set about treating people when I’m sick myself I’m talking to you as if I were lying in the same hospital ward, about the illness we’re both suffering from, and passing on some reme­dies. So listen to me as if I were speaking to myself.

Of this one thing make sure against your dying day – that your faults die before you do.

A good character is the only guarantee of everlasting, carefree happiness.

Letter XXVIII 

‘How can you wonder your travels do you no good, when you carry yourself around with you? You are saddled with the very thing that drove you away.

If you want to know why all this running away cannot help you, the answer is simply this: you are running away in your own company. You have to lay aside the load on your spirit. Until you do that, nowhere will satisfy you.

Where you arrive does not matter so much as what sort of person you are when you arrive there.

A consciousness of wrongdoing is the first step to salvation.

Letter XXXIII

One tree by itself never calls for admiration when the whole forest rises to the same height.

It is for this reason that we give children proverbs and what the Greeks call chriae to learn by heart, a child’s mind being able to take these in at a stage when anything more would be beyond its capacity. But in the case of a grown man who has made incontestable progress it is disgraceful to go hunting after gems of wisdom, and prop him­self up with a minute number of the best-known sayings, and be dependent on his memory as well; it is time he was standing on his own feet. He should be delivering himself of such sayings, not memorizing them. It is disgraceful that a man who is old or in sight of old age should have a wisdom deriving solely from his notebook.

It is one thing, however, to remember, another to know. To remember is to safeguard something entrusted to your memory, whereas to know, by contrast, is actually to make each item your own, and not to be depen­dent on some original and be constantly looking to see what the master said.

How much longer are you going to be a pupil? From now on do some teaching as well. Why, after all, should I listen to what I can read for myself?

I shall use the old road, but if I find a shorter and easier one I shall open it up. The men who pioneered the old routes are leaders, not our masters.

Letter XXXVIII 

You are quite right in urging that we should exchange letters oftener. The utmost benefit comes from talk because it steals little by little into the mind. Lectures prepared beforehand and delivered before a listening audience are more resounding but less intimate. Philosophy is good advice, and no one gives advice at the top of his voice.

Letter XL 

Nothing can be well-regu­lated if it is done in a breakneck hurry.

Language, moreover, which devotes its attention to truth ought to be plain and unadorned.

Be a slow-speaking person.

Letter XLI 

No one should feel pride in anything that is not his own.

You ask what that is? It is his spirit, and the perfection of his reason in that spirit. For man is a rational animal. Man’s ideal state is realized when he has fulfilled the purpose for which he was born.

Letter XLVII 

How about reflecting that the person you call your slave traces his origin back to the same stock as yourself, has the same good sky above him, breathes as you do, lives as you do, dies as you do? It is as easy for you to see in him a free human as for him to see a slave in you.

Treat your inferiors in the way in which you would like to be treated by your own superiors.

Whenever it strikes you how much power you have over your slave, let it also strike you that your own master has just as much power over you.

Each man has a character of his own choosing; it is chance or fate that decides his choice of job.

You needn’t, my dear Lucilius, look for friends only in the City or the Senate; if you keep your eyes open, you’ll find them in your own home. Good material often lies idle for want of something to make use of it; just give it a trial.

Show me a man who isn’t a slave; one is a slave to sex, another to money, another to ambition; all are slaves to hope or fear.

To be really respected is to be loved; and love and fear will not mix.

Letter XLVIII 

Straightforwardness and simplicity are in keeping with goodness.

Isn’t it the height of folly to learn inessential things when time’s so desperately short!

Letter LIII 

It’s the person who’s awakened who recounts his dream, and acknowledging one’s failings is a sign of health. So let us rouse ourselves, so that we may be able to demonstrate our errors. But only philosophy will wake us; only philosophy will shake us out of that heavy sleep. Devote yourself entirely to her.

There’s no excuse for your pursuing philosophy merely in moments when occasional lows. If you were sick you would take a rest from attending to your personal affairs and drop your practice in the courts. And during a spell of improvement in your condition you wouldn’t look on any client as being so important that you’d undertake his case in court; no, you’d devote your entire attention to recovering from your illness in the quickest possible time.

Philosophy wields an authority of her own; she doesn’t just accept time, she grants one it.

Philosophy, likewise, tells all other occupations: ‘It’s not my intention to accept whatever time is left over from you; you shall have, instead, what I reject.’

There is one thing, too, in which the wise man actually surpasses any god: a god has nature to thank for his immunity from fear, while the wise man can thank his own efforts for this.

Philosophy’s power to blunt all the blows of circumstance is beyond belief.

Letter LIV 

He escapes necessity because he wills what necessity is going to force on him.

Letter LV 

Soft living imposes on us the penalty of debility; we cease to be able to do the things we’ve long been grudging about doing.

The place one’s in, though, doesn’t make any contribution to peace of mind: it’s the spirit that makes everything agreeable to oneself.

One good reason, too, why we should endure the absence patiently is the fact that every one of us is absent to a great extent from his friends even when they are around.

Letter LVI 

There is no such thing as ‘peaceful stillness’ except where reason has lulled it to rest. Night does not remove our worries; it brings them to the surface. All it gives us is a change of anxieties. For even when people are asleep they have dreams as troubled as their days. The only true serenity is the one which represents the free development of a sound mind. Look at the man whose quest for sleep demands absolute quiet from his spacious house.

Rest is sometimes far from restful.

When great military commanders notice indiscipline among their men they suppress it by giving them some work to do, mounting expeditions to keep them actively employed. People who are really busy never have enough time to become skittish. And there is nothing so certain as the fact that the harmful consequences of inactivity are dissipated by activity.

Letter LXIII 

You have buried someone you loved. Now look for someone to love. It is better to make good the loss of a friend than to cry over him.

Nothing makes itself popular quite so quickly as a person’s grief. When it is fresh it attracts people to its side, finds someone to offer it consolation; but if it is perpetuated it becomes an object of ridicule – deservedly, too, for it is either feigned or foolish.

Letter LXV

I shared yesterday with a bout of illness. It claimed the morning but it let me have the afternoon. So I started off by doing some reading to see what energy I had. Then, as it proved up to this, I ventured to make further demands on it – or perhaps I should say concessions to it – and did some writing. I was at this with more than my customary concen­tration, too, what with the difficulty of the subject and my refusal to give in, until some friends of mine put a stop to it, applying force to restrain me as if I were an invalid who was recklessly overdoing things. The pen gave place to talk.

Our Stoic philosophers, as you know, maintain that there are two elements in the universe from which all things are derived, namely cause and matter. Matter lies inert and inactive, a substance with unlimited potential, but destined to remain idle if no one sets it in motion; and it is cause (this meaning the same as reason) which turns matter to whatever end it wishes and fashions it into a variety of different products.

All art is an imitation of nature. So. apply what I was saying about the universe to man’s handiwork. Take a statue: it had the matter to be worked on by the sculptor and it had the sculptor to give configuration to the matter – bronze, in other words, in the case of the statue, being the matter and the craftsman the cause.

Stoics believe that there is only one cause – that which brings things into being. Aristotle thinks that the term ’cause’ can be used in three different ways. 

1. ‘The first cause,’ he says, ‘ is matter – without it nothing can be brought into existence. 
2. The second is the craftsman
3. The third is form, which is impressed on every single piece of work as on a statue.’
   • This last is what Aristotle calls the idos. 
4. ‘And,’ he says, ‘there is a fourth as well, the purpose of the whole work.‘

To these four causes Plato adds a fifth in the model – what he himself calls the idea – this being what the sculptor had constantly before his eyes as he executed the intended work.

As Plato has it, then, there are five causes: the material, the agent, the form, the model and the end; and finally we get the result of all these.

The universe as well, according to Plato, has all these elements. The maker is God; matter is the material; the form is the general character and layout of the universe as we see it; the model naturally enough is the pattern which God adopted for the creation of this stupendous work in all its beauty; the end is what God had in view when he created it, and that – in case you are asking. what is the end God has in view – is goodness.

If they take the view that everything in the absence of which a thing can not be brought into being is a cause of its creation, they have failed to name enough. 

• They should be including time in their list of causes – nothing can come into being without time. 
• They should be including place – a thing will certainly not come into being if there is nowhere for this to happen. 
• They should be including motion – without this nothing either comes into existence or goes out of existence; without motion there is no such thing as art and no such thing as change.

In any event that assertion on the part of Plato and Aristotle that the universe in its entirety, the whole, completed work of creation, is a cause is not in keeping with their usual acuteness as thinkers. There is a very great difference between a creation and its cause.

Greater power and greater value reside in that which creates (in this case God) than in the matter on which God works.

Letter LXXVII 

An ordinary journey will be incomplete if you come to a stop in the middle of it, or any­where short of your destination, but life is never incomplete if it is an honourable one. At whatever point you leave life, if you leave it in the right way, it is a whole.

Assume the authority which at present lies with others. Surely you can adopt the spirited attitude of that boy and say, ‘No slave am I!’ At present, you unhappy creature, slave you are, slave to your fellow men, slave to circumstance and slave to life (for life itself is slavery if the courage to die be absent).

Every life without exception is a short one.

As it is with a play, so it is with life – what matters is not how long the acting lasts, but how good it is. It is not important at what point you stop. Stop wherever you will – only make sure that you round it off with a good ending.

Letter LXXVIII 

There are times when even to live is an act of bravery.

Let me tell you the things that provided me with con­solation in those days:

• Comforting thoughts (provided they are not of a discreditable kind) contribute to a person’s cure; anything which raises his spirits benefits him physically as well.
• My friends also made a considerable contribution to my return to health. I found a great deal of relief in their cheering remarks, in the hours they spent at my bedside and in their conversations with me.

My own advice to you – and not only in the present illness but in your whole life as well is this: refuse to let the thought of death bother you: nothing is grim when we have escaped that fear. There are three upsetting things about any illness: the fear of dying, the physical suffering and the interruption of our pleasures.

The fear is due to the facts of nature, not of illness. Diness has actually given many people a new lease of life; the experience of being near death has been their preservation.

You will die not because you are sick but because you are alive. That end still awaits you when you have been cured.

In illness the suffering is always bearable so long as you refuse to be affected by the ultimate threat.

Everything hangs on one’s thinking.

A man is as unhappy as he has convinced himself he is.

There are two things, then, the recollecting of trouble in the past as well as the fear of troubles to come, that I have to root out: the first is no longer of any concern to me and the second has yet to be so.

“There may be pleasure in the memory of even these events one day.” – Virgil

What in fact most people do is pull down on their own heads what they should be holding up against; when something is in imminent danger of falling on you, the pressure of it bearing heavily on you, it will only move after you and become an even greater weight to support if you back away from it; if instead you stand your ground, willing yourself to resist, it will be forced back.

Another thing which will help is to tum your mind to other thoughts and that way get away from your suffering. Call to mind things which you have done that have been upright or courageous; run over in your mind the finest parts that you have played.

As Posidonius said, ‘In a single day there lies open to men of learning more than there ever does to the unenlightened in the longest of lifetimes.’

Letter LXXXIII 

What really ruins our characters is the fact that none of us looks back over his life. We think about what we are going to do, and only rarely of that, and fail to think about what we have done, yet any plans for the future are dependent on the past.

Letter LXXXVI 

“In Spring’s the time for sowing beans; then, too, The crumbling furrows, Clover, welcome you, And millet, too, receives her yearly care.” – Virgil

I leave you to conclude: from this whether the crops mentioned are to be planted at the same time as each other, and whether in each case they’re to be sown in spring. As I write, it’s June, getting on for July now, too, and I’ve seen people harvesting beans and sowing millet on the same day.

Letter LXXXVIII

I have no respect for any study whatsoever if its end is the making of money. Such studies are to me unworthy ones. They involve the putting out of skills to hire, and are only of value in so far as they may develop the mind without occupying it for long.

Why ‘liberal studies ‘ are so called is obvious: it is because they are the ones considered worthy of a free man. But there is really only one liberal study that deserves the name – because it makes a person free – and that is the pursuit of wisdom. Its high ideals, its steadfastness and spirit make all other studies puerile and puny in comparison.

Literary scholarship concerns itself with research into language, or history if a rather broader field is preferred, or, extending its range to the very limit, poetry. Which of these paves the way to virtue? Attentiveness to words, analysis of syllables, accounts of myths, laying down the principles of prosody? What is there in all this that dis­pels fear, roots out desire or reins in passion?

The geometrician teaches me how to work out the size of my estates – rather than how to work out how much a man needs in order to have enough.

What use is it to me to be able to divide a piece of land into equal areas if I’m unable to divide it with a brother? What use is the ability to measure out a portion of an acre with an accuracy extending even to the bits which elude the measuring rod if I’m upset when some high-handed neighbour encroaches slightly on my property?

I look for the best and am prepared for the opposite.

‘So we don’t,’ you may ask, ‘in fact gain anything from the liberal studies?’ As far as character is concerned, no, but we gain a good deal from them in other directions – just as even these admittedly inferior arts which we’ve been talking about, the ones that are based on use of the hands, make important contributions to the amenities of life although they have nothing to do with character.

Why then do we give our sons a liberal education? Not because it can make them morally good but because it prepares the mind for the acquisition of moral values.

In this connection I feel prompted to take a look at individual qualities of character.

• Bravery is the one which treats with contempt things ordinarily inspiring fear, despising and defying and demolishing all the things that terrify us and set chains on human freedom. Is she in any way fortified by liberal studies? 
• Take loyalty, the most sacred quality that can be found in a human breast, never corrupted by a bribe, never driven to betray by any form of compulsion, crying: ‘Beat me, bum me, put me to death, I shall not talk  – the more the torture probes my secrets the deeper I’ll hide them!’ Can liberal studies create that kind of spirit? 
• Take self-control, the quality which takes command of the pleasures; some she dismisses out of hand, unable to tolerate them; others she merely regulates, ensuring that they are brought within healthy limits; never approaching pleasures for their own sake, she realizes that the ideal limit with things you desire is not the amount you would like to but the amount you ought to take. 
• Humanity is the quality which stops one being arrogant towards one’s fellows, or being acrimonious. In words, in actions, in emotions she reveals herself as kind and good-natured towards all. To her the troubles of anyone else are her own, and anything that benefits herself she welcomes primarily because it will be of benefit to someone else. 
• Do the liberal studies inculcate these attitudes? No, no more than they do simplicity, or modesty and restraint, or frugality and thrift, or mercy, the mercy that is as sparing with another’s blood as though it were its own, knowing that it is not for man to make wasteful use of man.

There’s no attaining morality without food either, but there’s no connection between morality and food. The fact that a ship can’t begin to exist without the timbers of which it’s built doesn’t mean that the timbers are of ‘help’ to it. There’s no reason for you to assume that, X being something without which Y could never have come about, Y came about as a result of the assistance of X.

For wisdom does not lie in books. Wisdom publishes not words but truths – and I’m not sure that the memory isn’t more reliable when it has no external aids to fall back on. There is nothing small or cramped about wisdom.

To want to know more than is sufficient is a form of intemperance.

Letter XC 

Who can doubt, my dear Lucilius, that life is the gift of the immortal gods, but that living well is the gift of philosophy?

With dumb animals, indeed, the ones who dominate the group are either the biggest or the fiercest.

To govern was to serve, not to rule.

It was human ingenuity, not wisdom, which discovered all that. I disagree with him again where he maintains that it was wise men who discovered iron and copper mining (when the earth had been scorched by a forest fire and had melted to produce a flow from surface veins of ore). The person who discovers that sort of thing is the kind of person who makes it his business to be interested in just that sort of thing.

The things that are essential are acquired with little bother; it is the luxuries that call for toil and effort. Follow nature and you will feel no need of craftsmen. It was nature’s desire that we should not be kept occupied thus. She equipped us for everything she required us to contend with.

“No farmers tilled ploughed fields; merely to mark The line of boundaries dividing land Between its owners was a sin; men shared Their findings, and the earth herself then gave all things more freely unsolicited.” – Virgil

For nature does not give a man virtue: the process of becoming a good man is an art.

Letter XCI 

It would be some relief to our condition and our frailty if all things were as slow in their perishing as they were in their coming into being: but as it is, the growth of things is a tardy process and their undoing is a rapid matter.

States stood firm through civil war as well as wars external collapse without a hand being raised against them. How few nations have made of their prosperity a lasting thing! This is why we need to envisage every possibility and to strengthen the spirit to deal with the things which may conceivably come about. Rehearse them in your mind: exile, torture, war, shipwreck.

All the terms of our human lot should be before our eyes; we should be anticipating not merely all that commonly happens but all that is conceivably capable of happening, if we do not want to be overwhelmed and struck numb by rare events as if they were unprecedented ones; fortune needs envisaging in a thoroughly comprehensive way.

Time and again we hear the news of the annihilation of a whole city, and how small a fraction of mankind are we who hear such news often! So let us face up to the blows of circumstance and be aware that whatever happens is never as serious as rumour makes it out to be.

Time will sweep away the very traces of every one of those cities of whose splendour and magnificence you nowadays hear.

It is not only the works of human hands that waste away, nor only structures raised by human skill and industry that the passing days demolish. Mountain massifs crumble away, whole regions have sub­sided, the waves have covered landmarks once far out of sight of the sea.

The works of nature herself suffer. So it is only right that we should bear the over­throw of cities with resignation. They stand just to fall.

A setback has often cleared the way for greater prosperity. Many things have fallen only to rise to more exalted heights.

It must come to see that there is nothing fortune will shrink from, that she wields the same authority over emperor and empire alike and the same power over cities as over men.

‘Teach me,’ he said, ‘the easy things,’ to which his instructor answered, ‘These things are the same for everyone, equally difficult for all.’ Well, imagine that nature is saying to you, ‘Those things you grumble about are the same for everyone. I can give no one anything easier. But anyone who likes may make them easier for himself‘ How? By viewing them with equanimity.

The utterances of the unenlightened are as noises emanat­ing from the belly.

Letter CIV 

What good does it do you to go overseas, to move from city to city? If you really want to escape the things that harass you, what you’re needing is not to be in a different place but to be a different person.

However much you possess there’s someone else who has more, and you’ll be fancying yourself to be short of things you need to the exact extent to which you lag behind him.

Another thing that you’ll regard as something to be valued is success in public life; in which case you’re going to feel resentment when so-and-so is elected consul (or when so-and-so is re-elected for that matter), and be jealous when­ ever you see a person’s name appearing too often in the honours-lists.

Peace itself will supply you with new fears.

Preserve a sense of proportion in your attitude to everything that pleases you, and make the most of them while they are at their best. At one moment chance will carry off one of them, at another moment another; but the falling of the leaves is not difficult to bear, since they grow again, and it is no more hard to bear the loss of those whom you love and regard as brightening your existence; for even if they do not grow again they are replaced. ‘But their successors will never be quite the same.’ No, and neither will you. Every day, every hour sees a change in you, although the ravages of time are easier to see in others; in your own case they are far less obvious, because to you they do not show.

So long, in fact, as you remain in ignorance of what to aim at and what to avoid, what is essential and what is super­fluous, what is upright or honourable conduct and what is not, it will not be travelling but drifting.

Does it surprise you that running away doesn’t do you any good? The things you’re running away from are with you all the time.

The miser, the swindler, the bully, the cheat, who would do you a lot of harm by simply being near you, are actually inside you. Move to better company: 

• Live with the Catos, with Laelius, with Tubero. 
• If you like Greek company too, attach yourself to Socrates and Zeno: the one would teach you how to die should it be forced upon you, the other how to die before it is forced upon you. 
• Live with Chrysippus, live with Posidonius; they will give you a knowledge of man and the universe; they will tell you to be a practical philosopher: not just to entertain your listeners to a clever display of language, but to steel your spirit and brace it against whatever threatens.

Who hasn’t noticed how much easier they are in the actual doing? It’s not because they’re hard that we lose confidence; they’re hard because we lack the confidence.

Freedom cannot be won without sacrifice. If you set a high value on her, everything else must be valued at little.

I’ll give you some rules to observe that will enable you to live in greater safety.

Think of the things which goad man into destroying man: you’ll find that they are 

• Hope
• Envy
• Hatred
• Fear
• Contempt 

Contempt is the least important of the lot, so much so that a number of men have actually taken shelter behind it for protection’s sake. For if a person feels contempt for some­ one, he tramples on him, doubtless, but he passes on. No one pursues an unremitting and persistent policy of injury to a man for whom he feels nothing but contempt.

Coming to hope, so long as you own nothing likely to arouse the greed or grasping instincts of others, so long as you possess nothing out of the ordinary (for people covet even the smallest things if they are rare or little known), you’ll have nothing to worry about from the hopes of grasping characters. 

Envy you’ll escape if you haven’t obtruded yourself on other people’s notice, if you haven’t flaunted your possessions, if you’ve learnt to keep your satisfaction to yourself.

Hatred either comes from giving offence, and that you’ll avoid by refraining from deliberately provok­ing anyone, or is quite uncalled for: here your safeguard will be ordinary tact.

As regards not being feared, a moderate fortune and an easy-going nature will secure you that. People should see that you’re not a person it is dangerous to offend: and with you a reconciliation should be both easy and dependable.

To be feared is to fear: no one has been able to strike terror into others and at the same time enjoy peace of mind himself there remains contempt. The person who has made contempt his ally, who has been despised because he has chosen to be despised, has the measure of it under his control. Its disadvantages are negatived by the possession of respected qualities and of friends having in­fluence with some person with the necessary influence. Such influential friends are people with whom it is well worth having ties, without being so tied up with them that their protection costs you more than the original danger might have done.

But nothing will help quite so much as just keeping quiet, talking with other people as little as possible, with yourself as much as possible.

Nobody will keep the things he hears to himself, and nobody will repeat just what he hears and no more. Neither will anyone who has failed to keep a story to himself keep the name of his informant to himsel£

To expect punishment is to suffer it; and to earn it is to expect it.

Whenever he talks about someone else’s misdeed he thinks of his own, which seems to him all too inadequately hidden, all too inadequately blotted out of people’s memories. A guilty person sometimes has the luck to escape detection, but never to fed sure of it.

Letter CVII 

Everyone faces up more bravely to a thing for which he has long prepared himself, sufferings, even, being withstood if they have been trained for in advance. Those who are unprepared, on the other hand, are panic­ stricken by the most insignificant happenings. We must see to it that nothing takes us by surprise. And since it is invariably unfamiliarity that makes a thing more formidable than it really is, this habit of continual reflection will ensure that no form of adversity finds you a complete beginner.

Letter CVIII 

I’m going to tell you how this enthusiasm for learning, with which I can see you’re on fire, is to be brought under control if it isn’t going to stand in its own way. What is wanted is neither haphazard dipping nor a greedy onslaught on knowledge in the mass. The whole will be reached through its parts, and the burden must be adjusted to our strength. We mustn’t take on more than we can manage. You shouldn’t attempt to absorb all you want to – just what you’ve room for; simply adopt the right approach and you will end up with room for all you want. The more the mind takes in the more it expands.

‘A person teaching and a person learning,’ he said, ‘should have the same end in view: the improvement of the latter.’

“The poor lack much, the greedy everything. The greedy man does no one any good, but harms no person more than his ownself” – Publilius Syrus

The same things stated in prose are listened to with less attention and have much less impact. When a rhythm is introduced, when a fine idea is compressed into a definite metre, the very same thought comes hurtling at one like a missile launched from a fully extended arm.

Things tend, in fact, to go wrong; part of the blame lies on the teachers of philosophy, who today teach us how to argue instead of how to live, part on their students, who come to the teachers in the first place with a view to developing not their character but their intellect. The result has been the transformation of philosophy, the study of wisdom, into philology, the study of words.

The object which we have in view, after all, makes a great deal of difference to the manner in which we approach any subject.

The wine which is poured out first is the purest wine in the bottle, the heaviest particles and any cloudiness settling to the bottom. It is just the same with human life. The best comes first.

“Life’s finest days, for us poor human beings, fly first.” Why finest? 

• Because what is to come is uncertain. 

• Because while we are young we are able to learn; when the mind is quick to learn and still susceptible to training we can turn it to better ends. 
• Because this is a good time for hard work, for studies as a means of keeping our brains alert and busy and for strenuous activities as a means of exercising our bodies; the time remaining to us afterwards is marked by relative apathy and indolence, and is all the closer to the end.

What we hear the philosophers saying and what we find in their writings should be applied in our pursuit of the happy life. We should hunt out the helpful pieces of teaching, and the spirited and noble-minded sayings which are capable of immediate practical application – not far-fetched or archaic expressions or extravagant metaphors and figures of speech – and learn them so well that words become works.

Let me indicate here how men can prove that their words are their own: let them put their preaching into practice.

Letter CXIV 

People’s speech matches their lives.

If the spirit is sound, if it is properly adjusted and has dignity and self-control, the intellect will be sober and sensible too, and if the former is tainted the latter will be infected as well.

Where prosperity has spread luxury over a wide area of society, people start by paying closer attention to their personal turnout.

Once a person’s spirit has acquired the habit of disdaining what is customary and regards the usual as banal, it starts looking for novelty in its methods of expression as well.

There are no fixed rules of style. They are governed by the usage of society and usage never stands still for any length of time.

See, then, that the spirit is well looked after. Our thoughts and our words proceed from it. We derive our demeanour and expression and the very way we walk from it. If the spirit is sound and healthy our style will be firm and forceful and virile, but if the spirit tumbles all the rest of our person­ality comes down in ruins with it.

Letter CXII 

The man who lives extravagantly wants his manner of living to be on everybody’s lips as long as he is alive. He thinks he is wasting his time if he is not being talked about.

You needn’t be surprised to discover so much individuality where the vices are concerned. Vices are manifold, take countless different forms and are incapable of classification.

Devotion to what is right is simple, devotion to what is wrong is complex and admits of infinite variations. It is the same with people’s characters; in those who follow nature they are straightforward and uncomplicated, and differ only in minor degree, while those that are warped are hopelessly at odds with the rest and equally at odds with themselves. 

But the chief cause of this disease, in my opinion, is an attitude of disdain for a normal existence.

We therefore, Lucilius, should keep to the path which nature has mapped out for us and never diverge from it. For those who follow nature everything is easy and straightforward, whereas for those who fight against her life is just like rowing against the stream.

Letter CXXIII 

‘Bad bread, yes!’ you’ll say. Wait, then: it’ll soon turn into good bread. Hunger will make you find even that bread soft and wheaty. One shouldn’t, accord­ingly, eat until hunger demands.

A stomach firmly under control, one that will put up with hard usage, marks a considerable step towards independence.

In the same way as people who’ve been to a concert carry about with them the melody and haunting quality of pieces they’ve just heard, interfering with their thinking and preventing them from concentrating on any­ thing serious, so the talk of snobs and parasites sticks in our ears long after we’ve heard it. And it’s far from easy to eradicate these haunting notes from the memory; they stay with us, lasting on and on, coming back to us every so often. This is why we must shut our ears against mischievous talk, and as soon as it starts, too; once such talk has made its entry and been allowed inside, it becomes a good deal bolder.

What madness it is to deny yourself everything and so build up a fortune for your heir, a policy which has the effect of actually turning a friend into an enemy, through the very amount that you’re going to leave him, for the more he’s going to get the more gleeful he’s going to be at your death.

How much better to pursue a straight course and eventually reach that destination where the things that are pleasant and the things that are honourable formally become, for you, the same.

We can achieve this if we realize that there are two classes of things attracting or repelling us. 

• We are attracted by wealth, pleasures, good looks, political advancement and various other welcoming and enticing pros­pects.
• We are repelled by exertion, death, pain, disgrace and limited means. 
• It follows that we need to train ourselves not to crave for the former and not to be afraid of the latter. 
• Let us fight the battle the other way round – retreat from the things that attract us and rouse ourselves to meet the things that actually attack us.

The path that leads to pleasures is the downward one; the upward climb is the one that takes us to rugged and difficult ground. Here let us throw our bodies forward, in the other direction rein them back.