Letter 45: On sophistical argumentation
You complain that in your part of the world there is a scant supply of books. But it is quality, rather than quantity, that matters; a limited list of reading benefits; a varied assortment serves only for delight.
He who would arrive at the appointed end must follow a single road and not wander through many ways. What you suggest is not traveling; it is mere tramping.
"But," you say, "I should rather have you give me advice than books."
Still, I am ready to send you all the books I have, to ransack the whole storehouse. If it were possible, I should join you there myself; and were it not for the hope that you will soon complete your term of office, I should have imposed upon myself this old man's journey; no Scylla or Charybdis or their storied straits could have frightened me away.
I should not only have crossed over, but should have been willing to swim over those waters, provided that I could greet you and judge in your presence how much you had grown in spirit.
You complain that in your part of the world there is a scant supply of books. But it is quality, rather than quantity, that matters; a limited list of reading benefits; a varied assortment serves only for delight.
He who would arrive at the appointed end must follow a single road and not wander through many ways. What you suggest is not traveling; it is mere tramping.
"But," you say, "I should rather have you give me advice than books."
Still, I am ready to send you all the books I have, to ransack the whole storehouse. If it were possible, I should join you there myself; and were it not for the hope that you will soon complete your term of office, I should have imposed upon myself this old man's journey; no Scylla or Charybdis or their storied straits could have frightened me away.
I should not only have crossed over, but should have been willing to swim over those waters, provided that I could greet you and judge in your presence how much you had grown in spirit.
—from Seneca, Moral Letters 45
We do not have any of the letters from Lucilius, but working from Seneca’s replies, I can imagine what they might have contained. I would like to hope I have a little something in common with the young man.
Lucilius desperately wishes to increase in wisdom and virtue, though he struggles with many of the same obstacles I find in my own life, and I smile when I read about him making naïve mistakes so similar to my own. He still gets caught up in the diversions and vanities of the world, which is why he needs the patient guidance of an older and wiser mentor.
I am all too familiar with the urge to acquire more and more books, as if just possessing them will give me a veneer of insight. Though I have finally kicked the habit, for many years I meticulously kept an ever-growing list of “classics” I felt I needed to become familiar with in order to be properly educated.
Now there is something to be said for a canon of literature, a shared intellectual tradition, yet my error was in merely skimming over the many volumes.
I knew a little bit from here, and a little bit from there, while studying nothing with the necessary depth. Collecting can become a sort of addiction, working from the assumption that more is better. In hindsight, I now see how a careful attention to only a handful of texts would have served me much better.
I was doing exactly what Lucilius was doing: tramping instead of traveling, wandering about aimlessly and superficially picking at piles, when I should have been focused on finding my direction.
What good will the books do me, if the lofty ideas are not applied in daily practice? I can have a library stacked to the ceiling, and it will all go to waste without a commitment to genuine friendship.
Seneca is offering Lucilius something far more valuable than the written word—he is providing an example of how understanding must translate into love.
We do not have any of the letters from Lucilius, but working from Seneca’s replies, I can imagine what they might have contained. I would like to hope I have a little something in common with the young man.
Lucilius desperately wishes to increase in wisdom and virtue, though he struggles with many of the same obstacles I find in my own life, and I smile when I read about him making naïve mistakes so similar to my own. He still gets caught up in the diversions and vanities of the world, which is why he needs the patient guidance of an older and wiser mentor.
I am all too familiar with the urge to acquire more and more books, as if just possessing them will give me a veneer of insight. Though I have finally kicked the habit, for many years I meticulously kept an ever-growing list of “classics” I felt I needed to become familiar with in order to be properly educated.
Now there is something to be said for a canon of literature, a shared intellectual tradition, yet my error was in merely skimming over the many volumes.
I knew a little bit from here, and a little bit from there, while studying nothing with the necessary depth. Collecting can become a sort of addiction, working from the assumption that more is better. In hindsight, I now see how a careful attention to only a handful of texts would have served me much better.
I was doing exactly what Lucilius was doing: tramping instead of traveling, wandering about aimlessly and superficially picking at piles, when I should have been focused on finding my direction.
What good will the books do me, if the lofty ideas are not applied in daily practice? I can have a library stacked to the ceiling, and it will all go to waste without a commitment to genuine friendship.
Seneca is offering Lucilius something far more valuable than the written word—he is providing an example of how understanding must translate into love.
—Reflection written in 2/2013
No comments:
Post a Comment