To the soul belongs the self-multiplying Logos.
IMAGE: Hendrick ter Brugghen, Heraclitus (1628)
The Death of Marcus Aurelius
Wednesday, April 1, 2026
Seneca, Moral Letters 85.15
Besides, he is not prevented from helping others, even at the time when constraining circumstances press him down. Because of his poverty he is prevented from showing how the State should be handled; but he teaches, nonetheless, how poverty should be handled. His work goes on throughout his whole life.
Thus no fortune, no external circumstance, can shut off the wise man from action. For the very thing which engages his attention prevents him from attending to other things. He is ready for either outcome: if it brings goods, he controls them; if evils, he conquers them.
So thoroughly, I mean, has he schooled himself that he makes manifest his virtue in prosperity as well as in adversity, and keeps his eyes on virtue itself, not on the objects with which virtue deals. Hence neither poverty, nor pain, nor anything else that deflects the inexperienced and drives them headlong, restrains him from his course.
Do you suppose that he is weighed down by evils? He makes use of them. It was not of ivory only that Phidias knew how to make statues; he also made statues of bronze. If you had given him marble, or a still meaner material, he would have made of it the best statue that the material would permit.
Thus no fortune, no external circumstance, can shut off the wise man from action. For the very thing which engages his attention prevents him from attending to other things. He is ready for either outcome: if it brings goods, he controls them; if evils, he conquers them.
So thoroughly, I mean, has he schooled himself that he makes manifest his virtue in prosperity as well as in adversity, and keeps his eyes on virtue itself, not on the objects with which virtue deals. Hence neither poverty, nor pain, nor anything else that deflects the inexperienced and drives them headlong, restrains him from his course.
Do you suppose that he is weighed down by evils? He makes use of them. It was not of ivory only that Phidias knew how to make statues; he also made statues of bronze. If you had given him marble, or a still meaner material, he would have made of it the best statue that the material would permit.
—from Seneca, Moral Letters 85
When they tell me that I’m going to need to get all kinds of other stuff before I can ever do any of the good stuff, I fear there is some confusion about the nature of the good, and thus an unhealthy fixation on hoarding more stuff.
A preference for comfort and convenience is surely reasonable, but I grow suspicious when a pursuit of the easy way becomes an excuse to hesitate on committing to the right way. If acting on my conscience requires no risk, and cannot involve the prospect of some other loss, then I should hardly dare to call it a conscience.
You say it is impossible to act with charity without first being rich? Or that a danger to my own security releases me from caring for my neighbor? I would ask you to consider whether the virtues are about spending money or about spending ourselves. Even if I don’t have the means to buy you a new car, I always have the means to offer you unconditional love, and that is, after all, the force that really makes the world go around.
I can be prudent, brave, temperate, and just under any circumstances, and I would dare to suggest that there are times when the richest opportunities for excellence can actually arise from situations of poverty instead of prosperity.
With my priorities in order, I can be happy with more or with less, because character is about quality, and not about quantity. With the end clearly in sight, I can take both privilege and adversity as benefits, because everything in this whole wide world becomes a means to living well.
The inspired artist, like Phidias, will gladly work in a variety of mediums to express his message. I knew a man who one day ran out of blocks of wood for whittling, and I then found him hard at work on a bar of soap. I still have the greatest admiration for the clever fellow who realized he did not need briar root to craft a pipe, because he could smoke his tobacco out of a corncob. Once we are at peace within ourselves, we are at peace with whatever Fortune throws our way.
Draw wisdom out of ignorance. Build fortitude in the face of cowardice. Increase temperance in times of deprivation. Practice justice whenever and wherever you have been wronged. Affluence isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
When they tell me that I’m going to need to get all kinds of other stuff before I can ever do any of the good stuff, I fear there is some confusion about the nature of the good, and thus an unhealthy fixation on hoarding more stuff.
A preference for comfort and convenience is surely reasonable, but I grow suspicious when a pursuit of the easy way becomes an excuse to hesitate on committing to the right way. If acting on my conscience requires no risk, and cannot involve the prospect of some other loss, then I should hardly dare to call it a conscience.
You say it is impossible to act with charity without first being rich? Or that a danger to my own security releases me from caring for my neighbor? I would ask you to consider whether the virtues are about spending money or about spending ourselves. Even if I don’t have the means to buy you a new car, I always have the means to offer you unconditional love, and that is, after all, the force that really makes the world go around.
I can be prudent, brave, temperate, and just under any circumstances, and I would dare to suggest that there are times when the richest opportunities for excellence can actually arise from situations of poverty instead of prosperity.
With my priorities in order, I can be happy with more or with less, because character is about quality, and not about quantity. With the end clearly in sight, I can take both privilege and adversity as benefits, because everything in this whole wide world becomes a means to living well.
The inspired artist, like Phidias, will gladly work in a variety of mediums to express his message. I knew a man who one day ran out of blocks of wood for whittling, and I then found him hard at work on a bar of soap. I still have the greatest admiration for the clever fellow who realized he did not need briar root to craft a pipe, because he could smoke his tobacco out of a corncob. Once we are at peace within ourselves, we are at peace with whatever Fortune throws our way.
Draw wisdom out of ignorance. Build fortitude in the face of cowardice. Increase temperance in times of deprivation. Practice justice whenever and wherever you have been wronged. Affluence isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
—Reflection written in 1/2014
IMAGE: Jozsef Dorffmeister, Phidias Sculpting the Bust of Zeus (1802)
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