. . . The great Socrates, or anyone
else who had the same superiority to and power to withstand the things of this
life, would say, “I have no more fixed principle than that of not altering the
course of my life to suit your prejudices. You may pour your accustomed talk
upon me from all sides. I shall not think that you are abusing me, but that you
are merely wailing like poor little infants.”
This is what the man will say who
possesses wisdom, whose mind, being free from vices, bids him to reproach
others, not because he hates them, but in order to improve them.
And to this he will add, "Your
opinion of me affects me with pain, not for my own sake but for yours, because
to hate perfection and to assail virtue is in itself a resignation of all hope
of doing well. You do me no harm; neither do men harm the gods when they
overthrow their altars. But it is clear that your intention is an evil one and
that you will wish to do harm even where you are not able.
“I bear with your prating in the same
spirit in which Jupiter, best and greatest, bears with the idle tales of the
poets, one of whom represents him with wings, another with horns, another as an
adulterer staying out all night, another as dealing harshly with the gods,
another as unjust to men, another as the seducer of noble youths whom he
carries off by force, and those, too, his own relatives, another as a parricide
and the conqueror of another's kingdom, and that of his father's.”
The only result of such tales is that
men feel less shame at committing sin if they believe the gods to be guilty of
such actions. . . .
—Seneca
the Younger, On the happy life,
Chapter 26 (tr Stewart)
A life
dedicated to pleasure and position, which is of necessity a life that is also
subservient to what is outside of us, will be a life of conformity. Once I
begin, in even the most cursory manner, to think in terms of Nature instead of
Fortune, it becomes apparent how often principle gives way to prejudice. Instead
of asking how to do something in a way that is right, we assume something is
right because of the way it is already done. The surrender to fashion means the
surrender of reason, and it will immediately dismiss what is uncommon and
unpopular.
To
borrow a modern phrase, don’t take it personally. Some people will try to
ridicule anything that is different from their established orthodoxy, and
degrading others is the only way they know to make themselves feel better.
Their ignorance and malice does not have to become my ignorance and malice.
For some, a correction or a rebuke can only be an insult. I, however, can choose
to help, not to harm, and to allow myself to be helped in turn, not to feel
resentment. I can let an argument be weighed by what is sound, not by what is
preferred.
I know I
am starting down the right path when the pain I feel no longer comes from my
own loss, but from the loss of others. Socrates once said that a better man can
not be harmed by a worse man, because even as the worse man increases his own
vice, he can never take away the virtue of a better man. I should worry less
about how others are vainly trying to hurt me, and far more about helping them
not to hurt themselves.
Some
will try to blame what is Divine, however it may be understood, for their own
weaknesses. If they only reflected upon this clearly for a moment, they would
understand that the Divine is, by its very definition, that which is perfect
and lacking in nothing, the source by which all other things become good. God
cannot be hurt by insult or abuse, and whenever we reject God to excuse
ourselves from accountability we only insult or abuse ourselves.
In like
manner, the man who seeks to be god-like, for all of his flaws, does not need
to fear the malice of others. He should continually improve himself, and wish
to see others transform their own hatred into love.
Written in 1/2002
Image: Josef Abel, Socrates Teaching His Disciples (c. 1801)
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