Seneca, On the Happy Life 39: Living Without Spite

"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