"You are showing me what the doleful keys are; show me rather how, in the midst of adversity, I may keep from uttering a doleful note.
"The mathematician teaches me how to lay out the dimensions of my estates; but I should rather be taught how to lay out what is enough for a man to own.
"He teaches me to count, and adapts my fingers to avarice; but I should prefer him to teach me that there is no point in such calculations, and that one is none the happier for tiring out the book-keepers with his possessions – or rather, how useless property is to any man who would find it the greatest misfortune if he should be required to reckon out, by his own wits, the amount of his holdings.
"What good is there for me in knowing how to parcel out a piece of land, if I know not how to share it with my brother? What good is there in working out to a nicety the dimensions of an acre, and in detecting the error if a piece has so much as escaped my measuring-rod, if I am embittered when an ill-tempered neighbor merely scrapes off a bit of my land? The mathematician teaches me how I may lose none of my boundaries; I, however, seek to learn how to lose them all with a light heart.
" 'But,' comes the reply, 'I am being driven from the farm which my father and grandfather owned!' Well? Who owned the land before your grandfather? Can you explain what people (I will not say what person) held it originally? You did not enter upon it as a master, but merely as a tenant. And whose tenant are you? If your claim is successful, you are tenant of the heir.
"The lawyers say that public property cannot be acquired privately by possession; what you hold and call your own is public property – indeed, it belongs to mankind at large. O what marvelous skill! You know how to measure the circle; you find the square of any shape which is set before you; you compute the distances between the stars; there is nothing which does not come within the scope of your calculations.
"But if you are a real master of your profession, measure me the mind of man! Tell me how great it is, or how puny! You know what a straight line is; but how does it benefit you if you do not know what is straight in this life of ours?"
--Seneca the Younger, Moral Letters to Lucilius, 88 (tr Gummere)
It has taken me many years to become slightly less of a sloppy reader, and therefore slightly less of a sloppy thinker. I have long had the weakness of assuming false dichotomies, of perceiving a conflict between things where one did not actually exist. In my own case, the problem of seeing imaginary dilemmas is as much emotional as it is intellectual.
If you told me that man was a rational animal, I would conclude that you meant that man was not emotional. If you told me that the heart has its reasons which reason knows not, I would insist that you were taking reason out of the picture entirely.
A few years back, a student and I read this very passage from Seneca together. She became very angry. "Well, that Seneca has just decided that music and mathematics don't matter! He thinks that only ethics matters, and all the other knowledge should just be discarded!"
I was, for once, able to smile patiently, take a deep breath, and carefully work through the text with her. Here was a false dichotomy.
Especially within the whole context of Letter 88, that isn't what Seneca is claiming. He isn't telling us that a knowledge of music or mathematics is useless. He's only telling us that all of those things are only really useful when we use them to live well.
I suspect I could have been a decent musician, but I never made the necessary connection. I never really understood that playing all those scales, over and over again, would help me in expressing beauty.
I also suspect I could have been a decent student of mathematics, but I never made the necessary connection. I never really understood that learning all of those theorems, over and over again, would help me in expressing truth.
Music should never be about technical skill for its own sake. I recall seeing Berklee students at my favorite music store, Daddy's Junky Music, ripping away on electric guitars. I was always impressed by the skill, and I was always disappointed when I asked them what it meant.
Mathematics should never be about crunching numbers for its own sake. I recall observing students at a local math club, posturing with their ability to solve complex equations. I was always impressed by the skill, and I was always disappointed when I asked them what it meant.
Music and Mathematics are hardly the problem. Using our gifts and and abilities rightly is the problem.
Will you use your knowledge of musical harmonies to inform others in beauty, or will you use them to impress yourself?
Will you use the measures and standards of mathematics to teach truth, or will you use them to impress yourself?
I ask myself, each and every day, how whatever I am doing is helping me to live with greater dignity, and how I might be helping others live with greater dignity.
Have I learned to play "Stairway to Heaven" on the guitar? Excellent. Now how has has that made life better?
Have I learned how to prove the Pythagorean Theorem? Excellent. Now how has that made life better?
How will music help us to be happy? How will mathematics help us to be just? Let us put all things in the right perspective.
Written 1/2010
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