Delphic Maxims 53

Σοφοῖς χρῶ 

Consult the wise 

IMAGE: Giorgione, Three Philosophers (c. 1509) 

Stockdale on Stoicism 43

Prison life became a crazy mixture of an old regime and a new one.

The old was the political prison routine mainly for dissenters and domestic enemies of the state. It was designed and run by old-fashioned Third-World Communists of the Ho Chi Minh cut. It revolved around the idea of "repentance" for "crimes" of anti-social behavior. American prisoners, street criminals, and domestic political enemies of the state were all in the same prison. 

We never saw a "POW camp" like in the movies. The Communist jail was part psychiatric clinic and part reform school. North Vietnamese protocol called for making all their inmates demonstrate shame, bowing to all guards, heads low, never looking at the sky. It meant frequent sessions with your interrogator, if for no other reason than to check your attitude. And if judged "wrong," then you were maybe down the torture chute of confession of guilt, of apology, and then the inevitable payoff—the atonement. 

The new regime, superimposed on the above, was for Americans only. It was a propaganda factory, supervised by young, English-speaking, bureaucratic army officers with quotas to fill, quotas set by the political arm of the government: press interviews with visiting left-wing Americans, propaganda films to shoot (starring intimidated people they called "American Air Pirates"), and so on. 

—from James B. Stockdale, Master of My Fate: A Stoic Philosopher in a Hanoi Prison 

Sayings of Ramakrishna 241

So long as one does not become simple like a child, one does not get Divine Illumination. 

Forget all the worldly knowledge that you have acquired, and become as ignorant about it as a child, and then you will get the knowledge of the True. 

IMAGE: Hugh Cameron, Buttercups and Daisies (1881) 

Seneca, Moral Letters 66.4

"What then," you say, "is there no difference between joy and unyielding endurance of pain?" 
 
None at all, as regards the virtues themselves; very great, however, in the circumstances in which either of these two virtues is displayed. In the one case, there is a natural relaxation and loosening of the soul; in the other there is an unnatural pain. 
 
Hence these circumstances, between which a great distinction can be drawn, belong to the category of indifferent things, but the virtue shown in each case is equal. Virtue is not changed by the matter with which it deals; if the matter is hard and stubborn, it does not make the virtue worse; if pleasant and joyous, it does not make it better. 
 
Therefore, virtue necessarily remains equal. For, in each case, what is done is done with equal uprightness, with equal wisdom, and with equal honor. Hence the states of goodness involved are equal, and it is impossible for a man to transcend these states of goodness by conducting himself better, either the one man in his joy, or the other amid his suffering. 
 
And two goods, neither of which can possibly be better, are equal. For if things which are extrinsic to virtue can either diminish or increase virtue, then that which is honorable ceases to be the only good. If you grant this, honor has wholly perished. 
 
And why? Let me tell you: it is because no act is honorable that is done by an unwilling agent, that is compulsory. Every honorable act is voluntary. Alloy it with reluctance, complaints, cowardice, or fear, and it loses its best characteristic—self-approval.
 
That which is not free cannot be honorable; for fear means slavery. The honorable is wholly free from anxiety and is calm; if it ever objects, laments, or regards anything as an evil, it becomes subject to disturbance and begins to flounder about amid great confusion. For on one side the semblance of right calls to it, on the other the suspicion of evil drags it back. 
 
Therefore, when a man is about to do something honorable, he should not regard any obstacles as evils, even though he regards them as inconvenient, but he should will to do the deed, and do it willingly. For every honorable act is done without commands or compulsion; it is unalloyed and contains no admixture of evil. 

—from Seneca, Moral Letters 66 
 
This is the sort of passage that can only make sense in the context of a profound Stoic insight, that the human good depends in essence upon the excellence of our own thoughts and deeds, whatever the accidents of circumstance might be. Yet once this truth is grasped, one cannot help but undergo a remarkable transformation, a “Stoic Turn” of character, where the priorities of value are forever altered. 
 
It may initially seem odd to say that all virtues are equal, when one man is being virtuous while playing with his children, and another man is being virtuous while resisting torture. Surely both men are good in kind, but is not the latter superior to the former in degree? The bearing of pain is seen to be so much nobler than finding rest in pleasure. 
 
And yet we are failing to distinguish between the act itself, which proceeds from within, and the conditions for the act, which are offered from without. However different those circumstances, my choice to respond with integrity and conviction is always the same in merit, and so I have acted to the fullness of my humanity whenever and wherever I take my stand; I can’t make this any “more” virtuous, since it already perfects my nature at that time and place. 
 
Yes, going for a walk is a mundane deed, and going to war is an extraordinary deed, and there is certainly a vast difference of degree in the weight of such events. Nevertheless, these acts share an identical inner dignity if they proceed from a knowledge of the true and a love of the good. It is high time I reevaluate my measure of the greater and the lesser, finding worth in the depth of my commitment rather than in the breadth of the setting. 
 
This will seem quite ridiculous to some, though that is because they continue to define character by its trappings. The trick is to stop believing that bigger is always better, and to discover how the best is often to be found in the humblest of packages. The strength of conscience is the only benchmark, and the limit is reached when understanding and love are pure and simple. 
 
While people will often speak of certain actions as being more or less important in this life, each choice, regardless of its sweep, expresses the totality of a particular person, and each choice is also equally necessary to the workings of the whole—the smallest nail is as significant as the mightiest king. 
 
Like some highbrow historian, I can stack up all kinds of consequences to an action, and I can argue its effects on countless other lives. Still, the only thing that can make the action good or bad, virtuous or vicious, is the individual freedom with which it was done, and that makes a lowly herdsman on the Asian steppes as noteworthy as a Caesar or a Napoleon. Scholars should pay more attention to morality than to economics. 
 

I know an elderly woman who has spent the last thirty years in silent mourning for the loss of her husband. She showed me why this is no less of an achievement than enduring the brutal torture of Prometheus. There is the same nobility in both the common and the uncommon. 

—Reflection written in 7/2013 

IMAGE: Peter Paul Rubens, Prometheus Bound (c. 1612) 

Stoic Snippets 237

The healthy eye ought to see all visible things and not to say, "I wish for green things," for this is the condition of a diseased eye. 

And the healthy hearing and smelling ought to be ready to perceive all that can be heard and smelled. 

And the healthy stomach ought to be with respect to all food just as the mill with respect to all things which it is formed to grind. 

And accordingly the healthy understanding ought to be prepared for everything which happens; but that which says, "Let my dear children live," and "Let all men praise whatever I may do," is an eye which seeks for green things, or teeth which seek for soft things. 

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 10.35 

Ralph Waldo Emerson 7

Solvency is maintained by means of the national debt, on the principle, "If you will not lend me the money, how can I pay you?" 

—from Ralph Waldo Emerson, English Traits 

IMAGE: by James Gillray (1786) 

Dhammapada 371

Meditate, O Bhikshu, and be not heedless! 

Do not direct your thought to what gives pleasure, that you may not for your heedlessness have to swallow the red-hot iron ball in hell, and that you may not cry out when burning, "This is pain!" 

Seneca, Moral Letters 66.3

Therefore, the power and the greatness of virtue cannot rise to greater heights, because increase is denied to that which is superlatively great. You will find nothing straighter than the straight, nothing truer than the truth, and nothing more temperate than that which is temperate. Every virtue is limitless; for limits depend upon definite measurements. Constancy cannot advance further, any more than fidelity, or truthfulness, or loyalty. 
 
What can be added to that which is perfect? Nothing, otherwise that was not perfect to which something has been added. Nor can anything be added to virtue, either, for if anything can be added thereto, it must have contained a defect. Honor, also, permits of no addition; for it is honorable because of the very qualities which I have mentioned. What then? Do you think that propriety, justice, lawfulness, do not also belong to the same type, and that they are kept within fixed limits? The ability to increase is proof that a thing is still imperfect. 
 
The good, in every instance, is subject to these same laws. The advantage of the state and that of the individual are yoked together; indeed, it is as impossible to separate them as to separate the commendable from the desirable. Therefore, virtues are mutually equal; and so are the works of virtue, and all men who are so fortunate as to possess these virtues.
 
But, since the virtues of plants and of animals are perishable, they are also frail and fleeting and uncertain. They spring up, and they sink down again, and for this reason they are not rated at the same value; but to human virtues only one rule applies. For right reason is single and of but one kind. Nothing is more divine than the Divine, or more heavenly than the heavenly. Mortal things decay, fall, are worn out, grow up, are exhausted, and replenished. Hence, in their case, in view of the uncertainty of their lot, there is inequality; but of things Divine the nature is one. Reason, however, is nothing else than a portion of the divine spirit set in a human body. 
 
If reason is Divine, and the good in no case lacks reason, then the good in every case is Divine. And furthermore, there is no distinction between things Divine; hence there is none between goods, either. Therefore, it follows that joy and a brave unyielding endurance of torture are equal goods; for in both there is the same greatness of soul relaxed and cheerful in the one case, in the other combative and braced for action.
 
What? Do you not think that the virtue of him who bravely storms the enemy's stronghold is equal to that of him who endures a siege with the utmost patience? Great is Scipio when he invests Numantia, and constrains and compels the hands of an enemy, whom he could not conquer, to resort to their own destruction. Great also are the souls of the defenders – men who know that, as long as the path to death lies open, the blockade is not complete, men who breathe their last in the arms of liberty. 
 
In like manner, the other virtues are also equal as compared with one another: tranquility, simplicity, generosity, constancy, equanimity, endurance. For underlying them all is a single virtue—that which renders the soul straight and unswerving. 

—from Seneca, Moral Letters 66 
 
The problem with relativism is that while it claims to admit of degrees of more or less, it lacks a standard of an absolute by which to measure those very degrees. It would be much like trying to sell fresh meat and produce without the use of a scale, or, for that matter, without agreeing on a currency to pay for it. 
 
We are similarly confused about the concept of perfection, for in our befuddlement we assume that it is impossible for anything to even approach an ideal, and so we settle for lazing about in bland mediocrity. I suggest it would best if we simply admitted our true motive, which is to have an excuse from the burden of responsibility, and thereby a license for indulgence. 
 
If we are speaking of a perfection that encompasses all of being, and so admits of no absence whatsoever, then such a superiority can only be attributed to the infinite Divine. Yet each type of finite creature, with its own distinct identity, possesses its own particular perfection, which is the fulfillment of its nature, as but one part within the whole of Nature. 
 
“Well, nobody’s perfect!” Distinguish. What hinders a man from being the most excellent man he can possibly be? Only his own judgements and actions. Given his freedom, he is indeed made with the power to fail, though such failures are themselves opportunities to continue making progress toward the goal. Providence has arranged it so that each step of becoming better is a slow but steady advancement to embracing the best.
 
In this way, it is within our reach to be virtuous, and hence to be happy, and this is what constitutes a human perfection. Do not confuse what is difficult with what is impossible, for the most difficult things are oftentimes the most important things. It is an encouraging compliment, and not a harsh insult, to remind someone of the incredible capacity for good already present within him. 
 
Virtue, therefore, as action habitually in agreement with Nature, is the pinnacle of who we are. As such, nothing further can be added to virtue, as it performs everything necessary for achieving peace of mind, and anything lesser receives its value to us from the presence of an all-encompassing character. This is further true of honor, rightly understood as the due merit that follows from virtue, and it can indeed be said of all the things we call good in our lives. 
 
Now even as all creatures are changeable and perishable, the powers of reason and will share more fully in the Divine, and thus they participate in a perfect unity, indicating how all effects are bound together by their cause. Accordingly, each human virtue is something like a reflection of the perfection and the simplicity of God. Any man of wisdom and humility knows how he was made in a certain image and likeness. 
 
My religious friends will surely object here, because such an account seems to ignore the role of grace. I wish to remind them that reason and faith are not properly in conflict, and any discussion of what we ultimately believe in theology must be in harmony with what we first know from philosophy. The presence of any supernatural agency would never work against the natural virtues, but it would rather work with them; please remain open to the harmony of Athens and Jerusalem. I do not presume to prove the ways of Providence. 
 
In any case, where the virtues are present within us, they are all of a one, and none of them are in themselves individually superior or inferior, because they are all expressions of the same human excellence. List the nine billion names of God, and you are still pointing to the same God; provide any tabulation of the virtues you wish, and the distinctions are but aspects of a single essence. 
 

Finally, the presence of virtue in one need never be at the expense of virtue in another. Since happiness is in what we do, not in what is done to us, every person on Earth can live well—there is more than enough to go around for all of us. By extension, the good for the individual and for society as a whole are also naturally in harmony, and both the Roman and the Numantian can leave this world assured that they fought with integrity, whichever side of a war they happened to be on. Anything else is an illusion begotten of needless divisions. 

—Reflection written in 7/2013 

IMAGE: Robinet Testard, The Cardinal Virtues (c. 1510) 

The Liberal Arts 31

Johann König, Painting and Sculpture among the Seven Liberal Arts (c. 1620) 

The Basel Dance of Death 4

Matthäus Merian, The Basel Dance of Death: The Empress (1616) 

"I dance before you, Lady Empress, 
Dance after me, the dance is mine. 
Your courtiers have left you, 
Death has here snuck upon you as well." 

"My proud body had much pleasure, 
I lived as an emperor's wife. 
Now I am forced to this dance. 
All spirit and joy have been taken from me." 

Sayings of Publilius Syrus 143

Avoid the sweet which is likely to become bitter. 

IMAGE: Adriaen Brouwer, The Bitter Draught (c. 1635) 

Seneca, Moral Letters 66.2

Now, though Claranus and I have spent very few days together, we have nevertheless had many conversations, which I will at once pour forth and pass on to you.
 
The first day we investigated this problem: how can goods be equal if they are of three kinds? 
 
For certain of them, according to our philosophical tenets, are primary, such as joy, peace, and the welfare of one's country. 
 
Others are of the second order, molded in an unhappy material, such as the endurance of suffering, and self-control during severe illness. We shall pray outright for the goods of the first class; for the second class we shall pray only if the need shall arise. 
 
There is still a third variety, as, for example, a modest gait, a calm and honest countenance, and a bearing that suits the man of wisdom. Now how can these things be equal when we compare them, if you grant that we ought to pray for the one and avoid the other? 
 
If we would make distinctions among them, we had better return to the First Good, and consider what its nature is: the soul that gazes upon truth, that is skilled in what should be sought and what should be avoided, establishing standards of value not according to opinion, but according to nature—the soul that penetrates the whole world and directs its contemplating gaze upon all its phenomena, paying strict attention to thoughts and actions, equally great and forceful, superior alike to hardships and blandishments, yielding itself to neither extreme of fortune, rising above all blessings and tribulations, absolutely beautiful, perfectly equipped with grace as well as with strength, healthy and sinewy, unruffled, undismayed, one which no violence can shatter, one which acts of chance can neither exalt nor depress—a soul like this is virtue itself.
 
There you have its outward appearance, if it should ever come under a single view and show itself once in all its completeness. But there are many aspects of it. They unfold themselves according as life varies and as actions differ; but virtue itself does not become less or greater. 
 
For the Supreme Good cannot diminish, nor may virtue retrograde; rather is it transformed, now into one quality and now into another, shaping itself according to the part which it is to play. Whatever it has touched it brings into likeness with itself, and dyes with its own color. It adorns our actions, our friendships, and sometimes entire households which it has entered and set in order. Whatever it has handled it forthwith makes lovable, notable, admirable. 

—from Seneca, Moral Letters 66 
 
People will often say they wish to do the “good” or the “right” thing, vaguely accepting it as some sort of highest human standard, and yet they then attach so many conditions and exceptions to it that the very concept becomes meaningless. The moral relativism so especially in fashion these days isn’t really a coherent theory at all, since it is grounded in a contradiction, but it is rather a practical consequence of foolishly assuming the premise that the beneficial is only to be found in whatever happens to be convenient or gratifying at the moment. 
 
Or, as Plato would put it, we believe something to be good because it is subjectively desirable, not that something is desirable because it is objectively good. This is one of those contrasts we must come to terms with if we wish to procced in life, and which side we end up on will make a world of difference. 
 
Now while philosophers do like to distinguish and categorize, this should not deter us from embracing the good as being supremely one. While it expresses itself in many aspects and manifestations, that which is the fulfillment of a nature is also that which binds it together and grants its highest purpose. It is not subject to any other ends, and it may not be compromised for any further gains. The good is the absolute measure of human action, and it cannot be relative to what is inferior. 
 
The three “classes” of good things, as often presented by the Stoics, are hardly a dilution of this integrity, and they simply distinguish between different layers, so speak, of application. 
 
First is virtue itself, and the happiness it brings, which is the innate perfection of any creature endowed with reason and will. It is inherently good for a man to find joy in being prudent, brave, temperate, and just. 
 
Second is the presence of hardship, which is certainly not in itself a good, but does become good when it is transformed into a means for the exercise of the virtues. It is consequently good for a man to bear sickness, or poverty, or contempt if this practice strengthens his character. 
 
Third is the presence of certain attractive qualities, which are properly matters to which we should be indifferent, however much we may prefer them. We speak of them as being good if they happen to accompany or reflect an inner nobility, though they can just as easily appear in the company of vice. 
 
I often turn to the passage where Seneca describes the First Good, as it combines a profound meaning with a noble style. When I wish to describe the sort of person I admire the most, and the sort of person I yearn to be, these words embody what is best about us, and encourage me to find what is great in our condition, however sullied it may seem during the darker times. 
 
While the good proclaims itself in many ways, and under wildly varying accidents, it stands firm as always being one and the same. The good does not admit to degrees, for it is complete and self-sufficient, even as its instances can admit of containing more or less. The good cannot be added too, and it cannot be reduced, for in its perfection it is purely simple. As that which is preeminent in human nature, it bows to nothing but the Divine from which it springs. 
 
The Stoics regularly speak of the way the totality of Nature is constantly being transformed, while the Logos that guides it remains firm and constant. So it is with the virtue within us, and the countless ways we are called to practice it. 

—Reflection written in 7/2013 

IMAGE: Andrea Mantegna, Triumph of the Virtues (1502) 

Maxims of Goethe 41

Error is quite right as long as we are young, but we must not carry it on with us into our old age. 

Whims and eccentricities that grow stale are all useless, rank nonsense.  

Ellis Walker, Epictetus in Poetical Paraphrase 49

XLIX. 

Avoid, if possible, th' impertinence
Of those who prostitute their eloquence:
Who with a long harangue from desk or stage
Both the rich mobile, and poor engage:
For what advantage are you like to gain,
By hearing some one a whole hour declaim,
While Alexander's justice he commends,
For murd'ring all his best and trustiest friends?
How are you better'd by a tun'd discourse
Of Phalaris's bull, or Sinon's horse?
Or a description that's design'd to shew
The various colours of the heavenly bow,
In a discourse almost as long as it,
Which the vile trifling scribbler takes for wit?
What wisdom can you learn from Circe's hogs?
From Hecuba turn'd bitch, or Seylla's dogs?
From weeping Niobe transform'd to stone,
Or bloody Tereus feeding on his son?
But if in manners you're oblig'd to attend,
Because perhaps the author is you friend;
Or if that tyrant, custom, bring you there,
Be grave, but not morose, nor too severe,
Nor play the critic, nor be apt to jeer;
Nor by detraction seek inglorious praise;
Nor seem to weep, when he your joy would raise;
Nor grin, nor swear, when some sad passion tries
To draw the brinish humour from your eyes;
Nor to the company disturbance cause,
By finding fault, or clamorous applause;
Be sober and sedate, nor give offence
Or to yourself, or to the audience. 

Delphic Maxims 52

Εὔχου δυνατά 

Pray for things possible 

Seneca, Moral Letters 66.1

Book 2  

Letter 66: On various aspects of virtue 

I have just seen my former schoolmate Claranus for the first time in many years. You need not wait for me to add that he is an old man; but I assure you that I found him hale in spirit and sturdy, although he is wrestling with a frail and feeble body. 
 
For Nature acted unfairly when she gave him a poor domicile for so rare a soul; or perhaps it was because she wished to prove to us that an absolutely strong and happy mind can lie hidden under any exterior. Be that as it may, Claranus overcomes all these hindrances, and by despising his own body has arrived at a stage where he can despise other things also. The poet who sang 
 
“Worth shows more pleasing in a form that's fair,”
 
is, in my opinion, mistaken. For virtue needs nothing to set it off; it is its own great glory, and it hallows the body in which it dwells. 
 
At any rate, I have begun to regard Claranus in a different light; he seems to me handsome, and as well-set-up in body as in mind. A great man can spring from a hovel; so can a beautiful and great soul from an ugly and insignificant body. 
 
For this reason Nature seems to me to breed certain men of this stamp with the idea of proving that virtue springs into birth in any place whatever. Had it been possible for her to produce souls by themselves and naked, she would have done so; as it is, Nature does a still greater thing, for she produces certain men who, though hampered in their bodies, none the less break through the obstruction.
 
I think Claranus has been produced as a pattern, that we might be enabled to understand that the soul is not disfigured by the ugliness of the body, but rather the opposite, that the body is beautified by the comeliness of the soul. 

—from Seneca, Moral Letters 66 
 
This one of my favorite Letters by Seneca, precisely because it throws a monkey wrench into the workings of everything we are constantly commanded to hold dear. Please forgive me if I dwell upon it for too long. 
 
I don’t know who this Claranus might have been, though I have had the privilege to know some fine folks who rather closely fit his description, and their example was an inspiration for me to reconsider how I chose to distinguish the beautiful from the ugly. It has even gradually come to the point where what I find most immediately “attractive” about someone is all within the content of character. 
 
Even as a young pup, my hero in the now long-forgotten sci-fi drama Space: 1999 was Professor Victor Bergman, not one of the square-jawed blokes who had fistfights with the menacing aliens of the week. This wasn’t just because he was intelligent, but also because he was so remarkably patient and kind. 
 
Most of the people I cross paths with, however much they may claim to possess refinement and class, will reduce the value of a person to the appearances of the body. If they happen to praise the powers of the mind, they are interested only in how being clever can get them more gratification, hardly in being reflective and thoughtful. While they don’t necessarily know it, they are the acolytes of David Hume and Friedrich Nietzsche, who taught us that reason should be a slave to the passions. As Plato said, they have flipped themselves upside down. 
 
Take special note, therefore, when you come across the man who is weak in the flesh but mighty in the spirit, for here Nature has chosen to highlight the glory of the virtues by contrasting it to the weakness of matter. It is as if there is a flashing sign pointing to him, reminding us to properly distinguish the greater from the lesser, the divine from the mortal. Without the distraction of a pretty face or a strong arm, the best of human nature, the defining essence, is more readily exposed. 
 
With Seneca, I may at first feel it unfair that a good man should suffer from injury or disease, yet I then realize how his willingness to rise above his fragility is the very opportunity for him to act with greater excellence, and it is the very example that Providence has given me for my own life. Mortality is not an existential threat—it is a challenge to attain a victory of constancy through any and every circumstance. 
 
Just in case I am confused about the true source of human merit, there are people in my life who possess a mark of inner beauty, while completely lacking in any outer adornments. They are the proof of how beauty is fundamentally moral, not physical. Fortune may grant me a healthy body, or she may grant me a diseased one, and neither one will determine whether I choose to act with righteousness or with wickedness. 

—Reflection written in 7/2013 

Justice Triumphing

Francesco Solimena, Allegory of Justice Triumphing over War and Wealth (c. 1685) 

Sayings of Ramakrishna 240

As in a pane of glass on which quicksilver has been laid, one can see his face reflected, so in the chaste heart of a totally abstinent man is reflected the image of the Almighty. 

IMAGE: Mary Cassatt, Woman with a Sunflower (1905) 

William Hogarth, A Rake's Progress 8

On a surface level, we can now say that Tom has reaped what he sowed, and his vices have finally brought him to Bethlem, London's infamous "hospital" for the insane. In Twelve Step programs, the old-timers will often warn about the three places that await us if we don't address our compulsions: prisons, asylums, and morgues. There is a bitter wisdom to this prediction, and while the method may seem crude, there is nothing quite like being scared straight. 

And though I could say that Tom gets what he deserved, on a deeper level the scene fills me with sorrow, and inspires me to compassion. There but for the grace of God go I. For all of his mistakes, Tom still possesses the dignity of a man, and I now find myself less concerned about blaming him than on how we go about treating those who struggle with their own inner demons in this life. 

Most modern viewers will note the barbarism of Hogarth's "ignorant" times, and yet I have experienced more than enough of how we still cast aside those we deem to be criminal, deranged, or undesirable. The poor lie in the streets, the addicted are thrown into cells, and the sick find no comfort unless they can pay for it handsomely. 

Tom Rakewell just wanted more money, after all, and in this he seems no different than the decadent world that raised him up. If Fortune had acted only slightly differently, he would still be back in his fancy parlor, instead of rotting in the madhouse. Would we consider Tom a success in life if he had, by chance, continued living the high life, despite the blackness remaining within his soul? 

For me, this final installment in the series asks me to ponder how the world of the asylum sadly reflects the insanity of the world at large, Tom is no longer the object of pity—our whole crooked society is the object of pity. 

The rich ladies come to view the freaks for their amusement. An astronomer and a cartographer have lost their minds seeking the secrets of the stars and the solution to calculating longitude. A tailor brandishes his measuring tape, though it is not clear if he knows what he is measuring. One man pretends to be the Pope, while another, probably engaged in a lewd act, pretends to be the King. A zealot has surrendered his reason to the frenzy of religion. A dog barks at a depressed and suicidal fellow, a noose still around his neck from the last attempt to take his own life. 

And through it all, there is one figure of hope, one standard of unconditional love who offers her care to the bitter end. Sarah Young still stands by his side, having gained absolutely nothing in her circumstances, but having gained absolutely everything in her character. 

William Hogarth, A Rake's Progress VIII: The Madhouse (1734) 

Stoic Snippets 236

Let it not be in any man's power to say truly of you that you are not simple or that you are not good; but let him be a liar whoever shall think anything of this kind about you; and this is altogether in your power. 

For who is he that shall hinder you from being good and simple? 

Do you only determine to live no longer unless you shall be such. For neither does reason allow you to live, if you are not such. 

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 10.32 

IMAGE: Jean Geoffroy, The Prayer of the Humble (1893)