They say, “The wise man is called unperturbed in the sense in which pomegranates are called mellow—not that there is no hardness at all in their seeds, but that the hardness is less than it was before.”
That view is wrong; for I am not referring to the gradual weeding out of evils in a good man, but to the complete absence of evils; there should be in him no evils at all, not even any small ones. For if there are any, they will grow, and as they grow will hamper him. Just as a large and complete cataract wholly blinds the eyes, so a medium-sized cataract dulls their vision.
If by your definition the wise man has any passions whatever, his reason will be no match for them and will be carried swiftly along, as it were, on a rushing stream—particularly if you assign to him, not one passion with which he must wrestle, but all the passions. And a throng of such, even though they be moderate, can affect him more than the violence of one powerful passion.
He has a craving for money, although in a moderate degree. He has ambition, but it is not yet fully aroused. He has a hot temper, but it can be appeased. He has inconstancy, but not the kind that is very capricious or easily set in motion. He has lust, but not the violent kind. We could deal better with a person who possessed one full-fledged vice, than with one who possessed all the vices, but none of them in extreme form.
He has a craving for money, although in a moderate degree. He has ambition, but it is not yet fully aroused. He has a hot temper, but it can be appeased. He has inconstancy, but not the kind that is very capricious or easily set in motion. He has lust, but not the violent kind. We could deal better with a person who possessed one full-fledged vice, than with one who possessed all the vices, but none of them in extreme form.
—from Seneca, Moral Letters 85
Those who will only focus on the degrees of less or more, lacking any reference to what is absolute, are paradoxically seeking an estimation without the standard of a measure. If everything is relative, then nothing is ever tied down.
This is, of course, the preferred state of affairs whenever we wish to give ourselves handy excuses. The result, unfortunately, is that the indulgence of our trivial foibles becomes the breeding ground for our crippling vices. For the man of comfort this sounds like austere nonsense, while for the man of character it is the way to freedom.
My attempts at becoming better will be, quite literally, pointless without always keeping in mind the noble end of what is best, a lesson I did not learn from some dusty old book, or dream up while my head was up in the clouds. No, I speak from hard experience when I say that an action divorced from the understanding of what is ideal will always leave me running around in circles, trapped within my own deficiencies.
Given the powerful force of habit, the changes will not happen overnight, but each step forward, however pitiful it may at first appear, is a worthy achievement. If I overlook some vice, because it feels so insignificant in the bigger picture, I have forever denied myself a place in that bigger picture.
We are rightly shocked at one brutal murder or at a vast scheme of financial fraud, and yet just as harmful is the steady accumulation of those supposedly little sins, those bitter words or those white lies, making up in frequency for what they lack in scale. And it doesn’t stop there, since each tiny drop of wickedness will gradually erode the integrity of a whole conscience.
I wonder if I should prefer to have many minor flaws, or one enormous flaw? The question is academic, for I am falling short in either case, and I am gifted with the ability to improve myself if I so wish.
I am delusional when I say that I can tolerate myself being slightly ignorant, and a tad cowardly, and barely intemperate, and occasionally unfair, as if virtue could be divided into convenient parts. I either have it or I don’t. Some who strive with intense conviction are rewarded with the prize, and others who are still struggling at the task are making valiant headway—both are honorable, though only one has achieved the goal.
The critic will claim that “nobody’s perfect”, which, like every aphorism, requires a distinction; I am grateful to the Thomists for teaching me that. While a man is a finite creature, and so cannot contain within himself the infinite perfection of the Creator, it remains within his power to fulfill his particular nature. We should righty discuss the limits of that nature, and how much he must rely upon what is above him, but it would be contradictory to say that a thing is designed to fail at its innate purpose.
No, regardless of the circumstances beyond his control, if the virtuous man is doing it right, then he is simply doing it right. Even as he retains the option of suddenly abandoning his resolve for tomorrow, he has lived up to his duty for today. In this sense, as Aristotle said, no man is completely good or happy until his death, for the work is still ongoing, and must be continually renewed for every moment.
Those who will only focus on the degrees of less or more, lacking any reference to what is absolute, are paradoxically seeking an estimation without the standard of a measure. If everything is relative, then nothing is ever tied down.
This is, of course, the preferred state of affairs whenever we wish to give ourselves handy excuses. The result, unfortunately, is that the indulgence of our trivial foibles becomes the breeding ground for our crippling vices. For the man of comfort this sounds like austere nonsense, while for the man of character it is the way to freedom.
My attempts at becoming better will be, quite literally, pointless without always keeping in mind the noble end of what is best, a lesson I did not learn from some dusty old book, or dream up while my head was up in the clouds. No, I speak from hard experience when I say that an action divorced from the understanding of what is ideal will always leave me running around in circles, trapped within my own deficiencies.
Given the powerful force of habit, the changes will not happen overnight, but each step forward, however pitiful it may at first appear, is a worthy achievement. If I overlook some vice, because it feels so insignificant in the bigger picture, I have forever denied myself a place in that bigger picture.
We are rightly shocked at one brutal murder or at a vast scheme of financial fraud, and yet just as harmful is the steady accumulation of those supposedly little sins, those bitter words or those white lies, making up in frequency for what they lack in scale. And it doesn’t stop there, since each tiny drop of wickedness will gradually erode the integrity of a whole conscience.
I wonder if I should prefer to have many minor flaws, or one enormous flaw? The question is academic, for I am falling short in either case, and I am gifted with the ability to improve myself if I so wish.
I am delusional when I say that I can tolerate myself being slightly ignorant, and a tad cowardly, and barely intemperate, and occasionally unfair, as if virtue could be divided into convenient parts. I either have it or I don’t. Some who strive with intense conviction are rewarded with the prize, and others who are still struggling at the task are making valiant headway—both are honorable, though only one has achieved the goal.
The critic will claim that “nobody’s perfect”, which, like every aphorism, requires a distinction; I am grateful to the Thomists for teaching me that. While a man is a finite creature, and so cannot contain within himself the infinite perfection of the Creator, it remains within his power to fulfill his particular nature. We should righty discuss the limits of that nature, and how much he must rely upon what is above him, but it would be contradictory to say that a thing is designed to fail at its innate purpose.
No, regardless of the circumstances beyond his control, if the virtuous man is doing it right, then he is simply doing it right. Even as he retains the option of suddenly abandoning his resolve for tomorrow, he has lived up to his duty for today. In this sense, as Aristotle said, no man is completely good or happy until his death, for the work is still ongoing, and must be continually renewed for every moment.
—Reflection written in 1/2014
IMAGE: Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Proserpine (1874)
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