"You talk one way," objects
our adversary, "and live another."
You most spiteful of creatures, you who
always show the bitterest hatred to the best of men, this reproach was flung at
Plato, at Epicurus, at Zeno.
For all these declared how they ought
to live, not how they did live. I speak of virtue, not of myself, and when I
blame vices, I blame my own first of all. When I have the power, I shall live
as I ought to do.
Spite, however deeply steeped in venom,
shall not keep me back from what is best. That poison itself with which you
bespatter others, with which you choke yourselves, shall not hinder me from
continuing to praise that life which I do not, indeed, lead, but which I know I
ought to lead, from loving virtue and from following after her, albeit a long
way behind her and with halting gait. . . .
—Seneca
the Younger, On the happy life,
Chapter 18 (tr Stewart)
The sort
of critic who looks first to your weakness will also be quite ready to consider
you a hypocrite. While a man who struggles and fails is at least sincere in his
goals, the hypocrite knows full well that he is a fraud, but sees nothing wrong
with this. The show of noble appearance is simply another means for him to get the
base things that he wants. I do wonder how often we quickly assume hypocrisy in
others because we are so familiar with it from ourselves.
I must
always remember that the malice in people’s hearts appears to them, in however
twisted a way, to be a good. The adversaries that Seneca faces are not so
different from the adversaries we all face every day, because what they all
share in common is the belief that the only way they can make themselves better
is to make less of others. It proceeds from the ignorance that for one person
to win, another must lose. I once foolishly thought I just had the bad luck of
only running into such people in my neck of the woods, but I learned that such
an error could be found anywhere and everywhere.
It is
easy to meet hatred from others with hatred from myself, but the bitter irony
is that while another may have called me inferior, I will only make myself inferior
by responding in kind, and I will really become that hypocrite if I preach
virtue but pursue vice. Like any passion divorced from sound judgment, spite
becomes infectious. Just as he is called to find the good in any circumstance,
the Stoic must transform evil done to
him into good done by him.
Other
people may try to keep me from improvement, but that is on them. I will be the
only one who decides if I will spit poison. When I am reminded that I am not
good enough, and another takes pleasure in having targeted a weakness, I can
tell myself that what I know I must seek never needs to be hindered by what
others might think or say. The progress of a good life will continue only as
long as I don’t let myself be distracted by spite.
Written in 3/2002
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