The Wisdom of the Stoics: Selections from Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius

EPISTLES

Of Writing and Speaking

No man takes satisfaction in a flux of words without choice, where the noise is more than the value. Nay, let a man have words never so much at will, he will no more speak fast than he will run, for fear his tongue should get before his wit.

The speech of a philosopher should be, like his life, composed, without pressing or stumbling, which is fitter for a mountebank than a man of sobriety and business.

You say well that in speaking the very ordering of the voice (to say nothing of the actions, counten­ances, and other circumstances accompanying it) is a consideration worthy of a wise man.

He that has a precipitate speech is commonly violent in his manners. And besides that, there is in it much of vanity and emptiness.

Truth and morality should be delivered in words plain, and without affectation; for, like remedies, unless they stay with us, we are never the better for them.

A wantonness and effeminacy of speech denotes luxury, and self-indulgence, for the wit follows the mind: if the latter be sound, composed, temperate, and grave, the wit is dry and sober too; but if the one is corrupted, the other is likewise unsound.

A finical temper is read in the very gestures and clothes. If a man be choleric and violent, it is also discovered in his motions. An angry man speaks short and quick. The speech of an effeminate man is loose and melting. A quaint and solicitous way of speaking is the sign of a weak mind; but a great man speaks with ease and freedom, and with more assurance, though less care.

Speech is the index of the mind.

It does not become a man to be delicate. As it is in drink, the tongue never trips till the mind be overborne, so it is with speech; so long as the mind is whole and sound, the speech is masculine and strong, but if one fails, the other follows.

Some are raised and startled at words, as a horse is at a drum, and indulge the very passion of the speaker. Others are moved with the beauty of things; and when they hear anything bravely urged against death or fortune, they do secretly wish for some occasion of experimenting that generosity in themselves. But not one of a thousand of them that carries the resolution home with him that he had conceived. It is an easy matter to excite an aud­itory to the love of goodness, having already the foundation and seeds of virtue within themselves; so that it is but awakening the consideration of it, where all men are agreed beforehand upon the main. Who is so sordid as not to be roused at such a speech as this: “The poor man wants many things, but the covetous man wants all.” Can any flesh forbear being delighted with this saying, though a satire against his own vice?

In the matter of composition, I would write as I speak, with ease and freedom, for it is more friendly as well as more natural.

If I put my thoughts in good sense, the matter of ornament I shall leave to the orators.

Of authors, be sure to make a choice of the best; and to stick close to them. And though you take up others by and by, reserve some select ones however for your study and retreat. In your reading, you will every day meet with some consolation and support against poverty, death, and other calamities incident to human life. Extract what you like, and then single out some particular from the rest, for that day’s meditation.

And so it fares with our studies; so long as they lie whole, they pass into the memory without affecting the understanding; but upon meditation they become our own, and supply us with strength and virtue.

There are some writings that stir up some generous resolutions, and do, as it were, inspire a man with a new soul. They display the blessings of a happy life, and possess me at the same time with admiration and hope. They give me a veneration for the oracles of antiquity, and a claim to them as a common heritage; for they are the treasure of man­kind, and it must be my duty to improve the stock, and transmit it to posterity.

I do not pretend all this while to be the master of truth, but I am yet a most obstinate inquisitor after it. I am no man’s slave; but as I ascribe much to great men, I challenge something to myself. Our forefathers have left us not only their invention, but matter also for farther inquiry.

Is not this a fine time for us to be fiddling and fooling about words? How many useful and neces­sary things are there, that we are first to learn, and, secondly, to imprint in our minds. For it is not enough to remember and to understand, unless we do what we know.

Sometimes, all of a sudden, in the middle of my meditations, my ears are struck with the shout of a thousand people together, from some spectacle or other; the noise does not all discompose my thought; it is no more to me than the dashing of waves, or the wind in a wood; but possibly sometimes it may divert them. “Good Lord,” think I, “if men would but exercise their brains as they do their bodies; and take as much pains for virtue as they do for plea­sure!”. For difficulties strengthen the mind as well as labor does the body.

Upon these thoughts I betake myself to my philosophy; and then, methinks, I am not well unless I put myself into some public employment; not for the honor or the profit of it, but only to place myself in a station where I may be serviceable to my country and to my friends. But when I come, on the other side, to consider the uneasiness, the abuses, and the loss of time, that attend public affairs, I get me home again as fast as I can, and take up a resolution of spending the remainder of my days within the privacy of my own walls.

How great a madness is it to set our hearts upon trifles; especially to the neglect of the most serious offices of our lives, and the most important end of our being!

How miserable, as well as short, is their life, that compass with great labor what they possess with greater; and hold with anxiety what they acquire with trouble!

But we are governed in all things by opinion, and everything is to us as we believe it.

The Knowledge of Virtue

Be true to yourself, and examine yourself whether you be of the same mind to-day that you were yesterday; for that is a sign of perfect wisdom.

It is for young men to gather knowledge, and for old men to use it: and assure yourself that no man gives a fairer account of his time than he that makes it his daily study to make himself better.

There is no age better adapted to virtue than that which comes by many experiments, and long sufferings, to the knowledge of it: for our lusts are then weak, and our judgment strong; and wisdom is the effect of time.

We are led to the understanding of virtue by the congruity we find in such and such actions to nature and right reason; by the order, grace, and constancy of them, and by a certain majesty and greatness that surpass all other things. From hence proceeds a happy life, to which nothing comes amiss; but, on the contrary, everything succeeds to our very wish.

Shall I tell you now, in a word, the sum of human duty? Patience, where we are to suffer; and prudence in things we do.

That only may properly be said to be the long life that draws all ages into one; and that a short one that forgets the past, neglects the present, and is solicitous for the time to come.

We are best with dangers; and therefore a wise man should have his virtues in continual readiness to encounter them. Whether poverty, loss of friends, pains, sickness, or the like, he still maintains his post; whereas a fool is surprised at everything, and afraid of his very succors; either he makes no resistance at all, or else he does it by halves. He will neither take advice from others, nor look to himself: he reckons upon philosophy as a thing not worth his time; and if he can but get the reputation of a good man among the common people, he takes no farther care, but accounts that he has done his duty.

There are not many men that know their own minds but in the very instant of willing anything. We are for one thing to-day, another thing to-morrow; so that we live and die without coming to any resol­ution; still seeking elsewhere that which we may give ourselves, that is to say, a good mind.

The time will come when we shall wonder that mankind should be so long ignorant of things that lay so open and so easy to be made known. Truth is offered to all; but we must yet content ourselves with what is already found; and leave some truths to be retrieved by after ages. The exact truth of things is only known to God: but it is yet lawful for us to inquire, and to conjecture, though not with too much confidence, not yet altogether without hope.

The short of the question betwixt you and me is this, “Whether a man had better part with himself, or something else that belongs to him?” And it is easily resolved, in all competitions betwixt the goods of sense and fortune, and those of honor and conscience. Those things which all men covet are but specious outsides; and there is nothing in them of substantial satisfaction. Nor is there anything so hard and terrible in the contrary.

A wise man either repels or elects, as he sees the matter before him, without fearing the ill which he rejects, or admiring what he chooses. He is never surprised; but in the midst of plenty he prepares for poverty, as a prudent prince does for war in the depth of peace. Our condition is good enough, if we make the best of it; and our felicity is in our own power.

We say commonly, that every man has his weak side: but give me leave to tell you, that he that masters one vice may master all the rest. He that subdues avarice may conquer ambition.

Justice is a natural principle. I must live thus with my friend, thus with my fellow-citizen, thus with my companion: and why? because it is just; not for design or reward: for it is virtue itself, and nothing else, that pleases us. There is no law extant for keeping the secrets of a friend, or for not breaking faith with an enemy; and yet there is just cause of complaint if a body betray a trust. If a wicked man call upon me for money that I owe him, I will make no scruple of pouring it into the lap of a common prostitute, if she be appointed to receive it. For my business is to return the money, not to order him how he shall dispose of it. I must pay it upon demand to a good man when it is expedient, and to a bad when he calls for it.

There is not so disproportionate a mixture in any creature as that is in man, of soul and body. There is intemperance joined with divinity, folly with severity, sloth with activity, and uncleanness with purity: but a good sword is never the worse for an ill scabbard. We are moved more by imaginary fears than truths; for truth has a certainty and foundation; but in the other, we are exposed to the license and conjecture of a distracted mind; and our enemies are not more imperious than our pleasures.

We set our hearts upon transitory things, as if they themselves were everlasting; or we, on the other side, to possess them forever. Why do we not rather advance our thoughts to things that are eternal, and contemplate the heavenly original of all beings? Why do we not, by the divinity of reason, triumph over the weakness of flesh and blood?

The sovereign good of man is a mind that sub­jects all things to itself, and is itself subject to nothing: his pleasures are modest, severe, and reserved: and rather the sauce or the diversion of life than the entertainment of it. It may be some question whether such a man goes to heaven, or heaven comes to him: for a good man is influenced by God himself, and has a kind of divinity within him. What if one good man lives in pleasure and plenty, and another in want and misery? It is no virtue to contemn superfluities, but necessities: and they are both of them equally good, though under several circumstances, and in different stations.

Who is there that, upon sober thoughts, would not be an honest man, even for the reputation of it. Virtue you shall find in the temple, in the field, or upon walls, covered with dust and blood, in the defence of the public. Pleasures you shall find sneaking in the stews, sweating-houses, powdered and painted, etc. Not that pleasures are wholly to be disclaimed, but to be used with moderation, and to be made subservient to virtue. Good manners always please us; but wickedness is restless, and perpetual­ly changing; not for the better, but for variety. We 

are torn to pieces betwixt hopes and fears; by which means Providence (which is the greatest blessing of Heaven) is turned into a mischief. Wild beasts, when they see their dangers, fly from them: and when they have escaped them they are quiet: but wretched man is equally tormented, both with things past and to come; for the memory brings back the anxiety of our past fears, and our foresight anticipates the future; whereas the present makes no man miserable. If we fear all things that are possible, we live without any bounds to our miseries.