Simplicius, Commentary on Epictetus 12.1

As when a ship lies in port, and you go out for fresh water, you happen to meet with shellfish, or salads upon the coast; this is an accidental advantage, and beside your main purpose, but still you thoughts must be fixed upon the ship, and it should be your great care to attend the master’s call: that so, when he gives you the signal, you may quit all readily, and not be bound, and carried away by violence, as sheep must be served. 

So here in the affairs of the world, if it be your fortune, instead of fish or salad, to light upon a beloved wife or child, which give an agreeable relish to life, none of these matters must be suffered to detain you. 

But when the master gives you the signal, all must be left, and the best of your way made to the ship. But if you are in years, be sure you never stir far from the ship, for fear you be out of the way, when the master calls. 

Comment: 

He has by a short but ingenious discourse, endeavored to draw us off from the pursuit of those external advantages, upon which we are used to set so great a value, by showing us, that all these things are neither in our disposal, nor any such happiness as can be properly called ours. 

But now, lest this argument of his should be so far mistaken, or wrested beyond its true purpose, as to be thought to debar us of marriage, and other innocent enjoyments and satisfactions, and absolutely to forbid us the having any thing at all to do with the world and its advantages, he acquaints us in the next place, what things those are, which he allows the enjoyment of, and with what limitations we ought to enjoy them: 

That we should leave ourselves and them at the disposal of God, and resign all this to His Providence, without reserve; and then, in such an humble dependence as this is, to use them moderately, and to value them as they deserve: that our concern is due in the greatest measure, to the necessities of life, and such as human nature cannot subsist without. 

Which Epictetus here has expressed, by a ship’s watering: meaning by this, food, and raiment, and dwelling, and such other things, as they, who look no farther than just needful supplies, satisfy themselves withal. These things, therefore, are allowed to be a part of our care, provided it be but in the second place, and with subordination to a higher good. 

As for such things, as are not absolutely necessary, but only the conveniences of life, as a wife, children, estate, and the like, these he calls accidental advantages, and beside our main purpose; and therefore they are allowed the third place in our esteem. 

When a bountiful Providence bestows these upon us, we are to receive and use them seasonably; but be sure to keep our mind ever fixed upon our chief and most desirable good. 

But as for pleasures, and riches, and honors, and preferments, and such other impertinencies, he will not so much as admit these into the number of his accidental advantages, but supposes them inconsistent with a strictly rational and virtuous conversation. 

For these are what, he told us before, must be wholly laid aside: but the enjoyments of marriage, and such other conveniences of human nature, he advised to have suspended for a time only, while men were young and inexperienced in the study of virtue, that so their first beginnings might meet with no interruption, but take good root, and fasten upon the mind. 

And for this reason, when men have made some progress, and are arrived to such a degree of perfection, as may qualify them to use these with safety, then he allows them to enjoy them, provided still it be in the quality of an additional advantage, and not a principal design. . . . 

Dio Chrysostom, On Training for Public Speaking 2

So let us consider the poets: I would counsel you to read Menander of the writers of Comedy quite carefully, and Euripides of the writers of Tragedy, and to do so, not casually by reading them to yourself, but by having them read to you by others, preferably by men who know how to render the lines pleasurably, but at any rate so as not to offend. For the effect is enhanced when one is relieved of the preoccupation of reading. 

And let no one of the more "advanced" critics chide me for selecting Menander's plays in preference to the Old Comedy, or Euripides in preference to the earlier writers of Tragedy. For physicians do not prescribe the most costly diet for their patients, but that which is salutary. 

Now it would be a long task to enumerate all the advantages to be derived from these writers; indeed, not only has Menander's portrayal of every character and every charming trait surpassed all the skill of the early writers of Comedy, but the suavity and plausibility of Euripides, while perhaps not completely attaining to the grandeur of the tragic poet's⁠ way of deifying his characters, or to his high dignity, are very useful for the man in public life; and furthermore, he cleverly fills his plays with an abundance of characters and moving incidents, and strews them with maxims useful on all occasions, since he was not without acquaintance with philosophy. 

But Homer comes first and in the middle and last, in that he gives of himself to every boy and adult and old man just as much as each of them can take. 

Lyric and elegiac poetry too, and iambics and dithyrambs are very valuable for the man of leisure, but the man who intends to have a public career and at the same time to increase the scope of his activities and the effectiveness of his oratory, will have no time for them. 

But the historians for many reasons the statesman must read attentively, because, even apart from the speeches they contain, it is most essential that the statesman, the man who chooses to conduct public affairs, should be acquainted with measures and successes and failures, which happen not only in accordance with reasonable expectation, but also at times contrary thereto, to both men and states. 

And the reason for this statement is that it is the man with the widest knowledge of what had happened to others who will best carry out his own undertakings, and, so far as it is possible, safely, while every reverse he will bear nobly because of the fact that even in his successes he was never unaware of the possibility of a change to the opposite fortune. 

As for Herodotus, if you ever want real enjoyment, you will read him when quite at your ease, for the easy-going manner and charm of his narrative will give the impression that his work deals with stories rather than with actual history. 

But among the foremost historians I place Thucydides, and among those of second rank Theopompus;⁠ for not only is there a rhetorical quality in the narrative portion of his speeches, but he is not without eloquence nor negligent in expression, and the slovenliness of his diction is not so bad as to offend you. 

As for Ephorus,⁠ while he hands down to us a great deal of information about events, yet the tediousness and carelessness of his narrative style would not suit your purpose. 

Maxims of Goethe 95

The importunity of young dilettanti must be borne with goodwill; for as they grow old they become the truest worshippers of Art and the Master. 

IMAGE: Joshua Reynolds, A Meeting of the Society of Dilettanti (1777) 

Dio Chrysostom, On Training for Public Speaking 1

Although I had often praised your character as that of a good man who is worthy to be first among the best, yet I never admired it before as I do now. 

For that a man in the very prime of life and second to no one in influence, who possesses great wealth and has every opportunity to live in luxury by day and night, should in spite of all this reach out for education also and be eager to acquire training in eloquent speaking, and should display no hesitation even if it should cost toil, seems to me to give proof of an extraordinarily noble soul and one not only ambitious, but in very truth devoted to wisdom. 

And for that matter the best of the ancients said that they went on learning not only in the prime of life but also as they grew old.⁠ And you, as it seems to me, are altogether wise in believing that a statesman needs experience and training in public speaking and in eloquence. For it is true that this will prove of very great help toward making him beloved and influential and esteemed instead of being looked down upon. 

For when men are afraid, what does more to inspire them than the spoken word? And when they wax insolent and uplifted in spirit, what more effectively brings them down and chastens them? What has greater influence in keeping them from indulging their desires? Whose admonitions do they endure more meekly than the man's whose speech delights them? 

Time and again, at any rate, there may be seen in our cities one group of men spending, handing out largess, adorning their city with dedications, but the orators who support these measures getting the applause, as though they and not the others had brought these things about. 

For this same reason the poets of the earliest times, who received their gift of poetry from the gods, never spoke of either the strong or the beautiful as being "looked upon as gods," but reserved this praise for the orators. So it is because you not only have observed all this, but are also endeavoring to put it into practice that I commend and admire you.

And I acknowledge on my own behalf a gratitude beyond the ordinary because you have believed that I could be useful to you in carrying out this purpose and this endeavor. For up to the present, as one of the writers of old said that he was "a good enough prophet for his own self," so I too considered that I should do well enough for myself in oratory, though barely even that. 

But you elate me and persuade me to take courage, in the hope that I can be of use to one who not only has attained so high a degree of culture, but is also as gifted as yourself. And perhaps I could, just as a boy or some aged herdsman might, be useful to a strong and vigorous wayfarer in pointing out a shorter road or a beaten track of which he did not happen to know. 

But to cut my preface short,⁠ I must at once endeavour to carry out your instructions.

For a mere lad, now, or a young man who wishes to withdraw from political life and devote himself to training and to the acquisition of forensic ability, there is need of a different regimen in both tasks and activities. 

But you are not unacquainted with the task, nor are you able to forsake the political career, nor is it the eloquence and effectiveness of a pleader in the courts of law of which you stand in need, but rather that which is alike fitting and sufficient for a statesman. 

So first of all, you should know that you have no need of toil or exacting labor; for although, when a man has already undergone a great deal of training, these contribute very greatly to his progress, yet if he has had only a little, they will lessen his confidence and make him diffident about getting into action; just as with athletes who are unaccustomed to the training of the body, such training weakens them if they become fatigued by exercises which are too severe. 

But just as bodies unaccustomed to toil need anointing and moderate exercise rather than the training of the gymnasium, so you in preparing yourself for public speaking have need of diligence which has a tempering of pleasure rather than laborious training. 

Jacob's Ladder 14

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Jacob's Dream (c. 1729) 

Jacob Wrestling with the Angel 25

Salvator Rosa, Jacob Wrestling with the Angel (c. 1660) 

Frippisms 10

Gradually extend the parameters of your competence. 

Seneca, Moral Letters 87.13

Be of good cheer; there is only one knot left for you to untangle, though it is a knot for a Hercules: “Good does not result from evil. But riches result from numerous cases of poverty; therefore, riches are not a good.” 
 
This syllogism is not recognized by our school, but the Peripatetics both concoct it and give its solution. Posidonius, however, remarks that this fallacy, which has been bandied about among all the schools of dialectic, is refuted by Antipater as follows:
 
“The word ‘poverty’ is used to denote, not the possession of something, but the non-possession or, as the ancients have put it, deprivation, (for the Greeks use the phrase ‘by deprivation,’ meaning ‘negatively’). ‘Poverty’ states, not what a man has, but what he has not. 
 
“Consequently, there can be no fulness resulting from a multitude of voids; many positive things, and not many deficiencies, make up riches.
 
“You have,” says he, “a wrong notion of the meaning of what poverty is. For poverty does not mean the possession of little, but the non-possession of much; it is used, therefore, not of what a man has, but of what he lacks.”
 
I could express my meaning more easily if there were a Latin word which could translate the Greek word which means “not-possessing.” Antipater assigns this quality to poverty, but for my part I cannot see what else poverty is than the possession of little. 
 
If ever we have plenty of leisure, we shall investigate the question: what is the essence of riches, and what the essence of poverty; but when the time comes, we shall also consider whether it is not better to try to mitigate poverty, and to relieve wealth of its arrogance, than to quibble about the words as if the question of the things were already decided. 

—from Seneca, Moral Letters 87 
 
Honestly, this section of the letter makes my head hurt. I’m afraid I’m not terribly clever when it comes to logical trickery, but I am relieved to see that Seneca also wants no part in such distractions. The fancy words become meaningless when they are separated from the actual things. 
 
The syllogism doesn’t sound terribly Stoic to me, so it comes as little surprise that it is a creation of the Peripatetics. Were the critics perhaps trying to attack a straw man? 
 
Whatever the original context, the problem is that poverty and wealth are still being presented as if they were in themselves good or evil, when the whole Stoic argument depends upon shifting our values to the content of character. The debate grows tiresome when this basic distinction is avoided, as the two sides merely talk past one another. 
 
If I only wanted to arrive at a preferred conclusion that riches are not goods, this might be a valid approach, though it would most certainly not be a sound one. First, we are still working from the false premise that poverty is an evil. Second, as Antipater explained, poverty is, strictly speaking, an absence, and it would be contradictory to suggest that something can arise out of nothing. 
 
To resolve the ambiguity about this demonstration, it would be necessary to define exactly what we mean by poverty and wealth, particularly with regard to the question of whether being poor means having very little or having nothing at all. With Seneca, I am inclined to doubt that we can ever speak of anything as a total privation, since an absence is always relative to some other presence, but are we running the risk of missing the forest for the trees? 
 
Make no mistake, while I am deeply interested in the metaphysical aspects of deprivation, is it not for our purposes sufficient to consider how poverty and wealth, as immediate experiences, influence our judgments about benefit and harm? If we are hampered by need, should we not strive to overcome it? If we are spoiled by affluence, should we not choose to reject it? 
 
Just as people disagree on a glass being half full or half empty, even as it remains entirely the same glass of water, I wonder if an ontology of negation can wait for the moment, until we first have established how to cope with a concrete hardship in our daily living. 

—Reflection written in 2/2014 

IMAGE: Bartoleme Esteban Murillo, The Young Beggar (c. 1650) 

Epictetus, Fragments 4

Crows pick out the eyes of the dead, when the dead have no longer need of them; but flatterers mar the soul of the living, and her eyes they blind. 

IMAGE: Caspar David Friedrich, The Tree of Crows (c. 1822) 

Netherlandish Proverbs 18

"To find the dog in the pot." 

Arriving too late for dinner, to find all the food has been eaten. 

Delphic Maxims 104

Πρᾶττε συντόμως 

Act swiftly 

IMAGE: John Trumbull, The Death of Paulus Aemilius at the Battle of Cannae (1773) 

Seneca, Moral Letters 87.12

Posidonius thinks that the syllogism should be framed as follows: “Things which bestow upon the soul no greatness or confidence or freedom from care are not goods. But riches and health and similar conditions do none of these things; therefore, riches and health are not goods.” 
 
This syllogism he then goes on to extend still further in the following way: “Things which bestow upon the soul no greatness or confidence or freedom from care, but on the other hand create in it arrogance, vanity, and insolence, are evils. But things which are the gift of Fortune drive us into these evil ways. Therefore, these things are not goods.”
 
“But,” says the objector, “by such reasoning, things which are the gift of Fortune will not even be advantages.” 
 
No, advantages and goods stand each in a different situation. An advantage is that which contains more of usefulness than of annoyance. But a good ought to be unmixed and with no element in it of harmfulness. 
 
A thing is not good if it contains more benefit than injury, but only if it contains nothing but benefit. Besides, advantages may be predicated of animals, of men who are less than perfect, and of fools. 
 
Hence the advantageous may have an element of disadvantage mingled with it, but the word “advantageous” is used of the compound because it is judged by its predominant element. The good, however, can be predicated of the wise man alone; it is bound to be without alloy. 

—from Seneca, Moral Letters 87 
 
Nevertheless, however accommodating we wish to be, it is never wise to use our words carelessly. As much as it may offend the Peripatetics, Posidonius offers us a more precise set of distinctions: 
 
For something to be a good, it must be of benefit in itself, without any qualifications. 
 
For something to be an evil, it must be of harm in itself, without any qualifications. 
 
For something to be an advantage, it must offer a greater opportunity for benefit than for harm. 
 
For something to be a disadvantage, it must offer a greater opportunity for harm than for benefit. 
 
By such standards, which avoid any uncertainty or ambiguity, virtue is our sole human good, vice is our sole human evil, and all other circumstances will become either advantages or disadvantages to us, depending on whether they are employed in the service of virtue or of vice. 
 
Sometimes the semantics isn’t “just” semantics. We run the grave risk of a creeping definition, where a relative advantage is easily confused with an absolute good, and so we slowly begin to view conditional qualities as if they possessed an unconditional worth. Before too long, things like money or health are treated with a total reverence they hardly deserve. 
 
The first syllogism explains this clearly enough. Money and health do not, of their own accord, make us better, which is why we should not rightly refer to them as goods. 
 
The second syllogism may appear to be pushing the envelope, even for a Stoic, but if examined closely, it simply draws some further conclusions from the previous claim. While money and health do not, of their own accord, make us worse, they still have an uncanny way of encouraging us to make poor choices for ourselves. 
 
I suppose it only remains to be seen if these circumstances ought to be treated as advantages or as disadvantages, yet because their utility is entirely contingent, I will once again have to say, “It depends.” How are they influencing my judgments? 
 
Is Posidonius being a bit too pessimistic here? Do wealth and comfort usually turn out to be disadvantages, where the potential harm outweighs the potential benefits? This is a particular, and not a universal question, but in speaking from my own experience, that sounds about right. Though a man of far greater character may find it to be otherwise, such men are rather hard to come by. Posidonius is calling the odds as he sees them.
 
The critic is placing far too much value in the “gifts” of Fortune, to the point where he conflates the perfect with the imperfect. The good life will be pure and simple, regardless of the trimmings. 

—Reflection written in 2/2014 

IMAGE: Pieter de Hooch, A Woman with a Pair of Scales (c. 1664) 

Abandoned Places 72

Nature 74

Stockdale on Stoicism 60

No men avoid this initial terrible fear that only their imaginations can generate and few, if any, avoid the initial hesitant step of grudgingly giving ground while taking measure of their predicament. 

Finding himself sinking into the quagmire of complicity, hardly a man exists who does not wish he had stood up and blown the "enough’s enough" whistle sooner than he did. For self-respect—and in the long term sense, for mental health—the sooner he blows the whistle, the better.

If a person had delivered up your body to some passer by, you would certainly be angry. And do you feel no shame in delivery up your mind to any reviler, to be disconcerted and confounded?

It is better to die of hunger, exempt from guilt and fear, than to live in affluence with perturbation.

If a man’s sense of honor, his good faith, and his prudence are not destroyed, then he too is preserved; but if any of these perish or be taken by storm, then he too perishes with them.

Once the neophyte political prisoner realizes that experiencing pain is not as bad as its anticipation, a kind of equanimity and pride comes over him. He knows that it is the unpunished complicity, not the tortured compliance, that tears a man apart. 

He casts aside the error of involving himself with externals, of depending on "what is not up to him," on another’s sympathy, gullibility, or the price for making a "deal." 

He uses both the rational and irrational elements of his soul—both part of the same to the Stoic—to see his proper role in the unfolding drama. 

He accommodates himself to fate. He makes a declaration to himself and to the prison regime that, regarding his choices, he is "free." 

He has arrived at the point where the "strategic" side of Stoicism, the accommodation to fate and mind over matter, can bring him peace.

—from James B. Stockdale, Epictetus' Enchiridion: Conflict and Character 

IMAGE: Evelyn De Morgan, Hope in a Prison of Despair (1887) 

Owls 23

 

Henry David Thoreau 19

The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them. 

—from Henry David Thoreau, Journals (14 July, 1852) 

IMAGE: James Goodwyn Clonney, In the Woodshed (1838) 

Ralph Waldo Emerson 24

I wish to write such rhymes as shall not suggest a restraint, but contrariwise the wildest freedom. 

—from Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals (27 June, 1839) 

IMAGE: Paul Emile Chabas, Dancing Nymphs (1899) 

Sayings of Ramakrishna 293

How does the soul stay in the body? 

As the piston stays in a syringe. 

Seneca, Moral Letters 87.11

I think that the reasoning of Posidonius is better: he holds that riches are a cause of evil, not because, of themselves, they do any evil, but because they goad men on so that they are ready to do evil. 
 
For the efficient cause, which necessarily produces harm at once, is one thing, and the antecedent cause is another. It is this antecedent cause which inheres in riches; they puff up the spirit and beget pride, they bring on unpopularity and unsettle the mind to such an extent that the mere reputation of having wealth, though it is bound to harm us, nevertheless affords delight.
 
All goods, however, ought properly to be free from blame; they are pure, they do not corrupt the spirit, and they do not tempt us. They do, indeed, uplift and broaden the spirit, but without puffing it up. 
 
Those things which are goods produce confidence, but riches produce shamelessness. The things which are goods give us greatness of soul, but riches give us arrogance. And arrogance is nothing else than a false show of greatness. 
 
“According to that argument,” the objector says, “riches are not only not a good, but are a positive evil.” 
 
Now they would be an evil if they did harm of themselves, and if, as I remarked, it were the efficient cause which inheres in them; in fact, however, it is the antecedent cause which inheres in riches, and indeed it is that cause which, so far from merely arousing the spirit, actually drags it along by force. 
 
Yes, riches shower upon us a semblance of the good, which is like the reality and wins credence in the eyes of many men. The antecedent cause inheres in virtue also; it is this which brings on envy—for many men become unpopular because of their wisdom, and many men because of their justice. 
 
But this cause, though it inheres in virtue, is not the result of virtue itself, nor is it a mere semblance of the reality; nay, on the contrary, far more like the reality is that vision which is flashed by virtue upon the spirits of men, summoning them to love it and marvel thereat. 

—from Seneca, Moral Letters 87 
 
I find myself in the odd situation of being inspired by a philosopher whose books I have never read, which is perhaps something like falling in love with a girl you have never met. 
 
Posidonius, I am told, wrote on a wide range of subjects, much like Aristotle, and while he was a firm supporter of the Stoic tradition, he did not hesitate to employ the teachings from a variety of other schools. This immediately endears him to me, for we should always embrace the truth, wherever we happen to find it. 
 
Yet none of his works have survived, and we are left with only references and fragments. Though I am fascinated when Seneca or Cicero discuss his thinking, usually with great respect, I grow frustrated when I cannot go straight to the source, and I imagine what it would be like if someone actually discovered his writings, perhaps safely tucked away under some rubble in Asia Minor. I feel much the same way about Panaetius. 
 
I am pleased to see how Posidonius tried to resolve the problem of the good by distinguishing the different aspects of causality. Even as the source of any action is from the agent itself, there are also the conditions that came before it, which set the grounds, so to speak, for that change to take place. Our own choices are the efficient causes of what we do, and yet various circumstances will influence these decisions, by making one path or the other seem more appealing. 
 
I will speculate that Posidonius intended the antecedent cause to be a type of material cause, though I may well be mistaken. In any case, it serves a similar purpose, by providing the occasion. 
 
Now contrary to what the determinists might claim, the environment does not make the man, but it will certainly give him an emphatic nudge. If you put a bottle of Bushmills in front of me, I will be sorely tempted to drink it all in one sitting. If you show me a picture of the lost love of my life, I will instinctively feel intense pain, and I will be sorely tempted to put a sad record on the turntable and begin brooding. 
 
Yet these are merely temptations, and they do not compel me to do anything whatsoever. Neither the bottle nor the photograph is good or evil for me—it is my judgments about the bottle and the photograph that are good or evil for me. 
 
The injury proceeds from the error in my estimation, and yet it is also my responsibility to avoid those situations that are likely to weaken my resolve. Do I have the excellence within me to be surrounded by luxury? If I believe it to be so, then I can take up the challenge, but if there is any doubt about my capacity, then it is best to leave it be. 
 
Since the benefit or the harm of riches is relative to our character, we cannot speak of money as good or evil in any absolute sense. External things will often present an appearance of worth, at which point I must remind myself why their value hinges upon my internal disposition toward virtue or vice. Seek out that which makes the task easier, and avoid that which makes the burden heavier. 
 
Observe how this applies to every circumstance, such that even something as noble as the wisdom or justice in one can also be twisted into an excuse for envy by another. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I again refer you to the argument on virtue in the Meno: do not confuse the conditional with the unconditional. 
 
Posidonius was willing to grant how the concepts of good and evil can be applied equivocally, as antecedent causes, as long as we understand why they unequivocally rest in the quality of our thinking, as efficient causes. This willingness to seek an agreement between different point of view, by qualifying the various senses of a term, reminds me of another one of my philosophical heroes, Thomas Aquinas. 

—Reflection written in 2/2014 

Snippets from the Handbook 6

Therefore let your will to avoid have no concern with what is not in man's power; direct it only to things in man's power that are contrary to nature. 

But for the moment you must utterly remove the will to get; for if you will to get something not in man's power you are bound to be unfortunate; while none of the things in man's power that you could honorably will to get is yet within your reach. 

Impulse to act and not to act, these are your concern; yet exercise them gently and without strain, and provisionally. 

—Epictetus, The Handbook 2 

Jottings on Marcus 8

Through not observing what is in the mind of another a man has seldom been seen to be unhappy; but those who do not observe the movements of their own minds must of necessity be unhappy. 

—from Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 2.8 

For so many years, I couldn't get any sleep, because I was always worried about what she might be thinking. 

It only began to get better when I attended to the quality of my own judgments, and I learned a bit about how to discern between the good and the evil within myself. 

The ugly impressions will still present themselves, but now I firmly remind them why they belong to me, and not to her. 

This works far better than drinking whiskey or counting sheep. 

IMAGE: Edvard Munch, Sleepless Night: Self-portrait in Inner Turmoil (1920) 

Owls 22

IMAGE by Ray Brown 

Seneca, Moral Letters 87.10

“That which, while we are desiring to attain it, involves us in many evils, is not a good. But while we are desiring to attain riches, we become involved in many evils; therefore, riches are not a good,” 
 
“Your first premise,” they say, “contains two meanings; one is: we become involved in many evils while we are desiring to attain riches. But we also become involved in many evils while we are desiring to attain virtue. One man, while travelling in order to prosecute his studies, suffers shipwreck, and another is taken captive.
 
“The second meaning is as follows: that through which we become involved in evils is not a good. And it will not logically follow from our proposition that we become involved in evils through riches or through pleasure; otherwise, if it is through riches that we become involved in many evils, riches are not only not a good, but they are positively an evil. You, however, maintain merely that they are not a good.
 
“Moreover,” the objector says, “you grant that riches are of some use. You reckon them among the advantages; and yet on this basis they cannot even be an advantage, for it is through the pursuit of riches that we suffer much disadvantage.”
 
Certain men answer this objection as follows: “You are mistaken if you ascribe disadvantages to riches. Riches injure no one; it is a man’s own folly, or his neighbor’s wickedness, that harms him in each case, just as a sword by itself does not slay; it is merely the weapon used by the slayer. Riches themselves do not harm you, just because it is on account of riches that you suffer harm." 

—from Seneca, Moral Letters 87 
 
My head has now been stuffed with this philosophy nonsense for so long, that I find certain passages to be downright humorous, as if they were egghead versions of the classic “Who’s on First?” skit by Abbott and Costello. 
 
For me, this letter is full of such hilarious exchanges, where the Peripatetic remains tied to the notion that “things” must either be good or bad, and he cannot conceive of the Stoic insight that the value is not in the circumstance, but only in the use of the circumstance. 
 
The Stoic: “If money were really a good in itself, it would never be an occasion for evil. And yet you only have to spend some time in a room full of bankers to see how easily it is abused.” 
 
The Peripatetic: “So now you’re going to tell me that walking is evil, because I might trip and fall while I’m on my way to school? Should I never get on a boat, because there’s a chance it will sink?” 
 
The Stoic: “The walking and the sailing are to be treated as indifferent, with the benefit or the harm being relative to the virtue or the vice within us.” 
 
The Peripatetic: “But you’re the one who said that riches aren’t a good, and if they aren’t a good, then they have to be an evil. So, which one is it?” 
 
The Stoic: “It’s neither, until we choose to make something of it.” 
 
The Peripatetic: “Ah, that makes it appear very bad. Are you claiming that money is always bad?” 
 
The Stoic: “I didn’t say that.” 
 
The Peripatetic: “Then money must be a good, which is what I I’ve been saying from the beginning.” 
 
The Stoic: “No, it depends. It doesn’t have to be good, and it doesn’t have to be evil.” 
 
The Peripatetic: “Well, it sounds like you are pointing out all of the downsides, as if there aren’t any upsides.” 
 
The Stoic: “I am conscious of both, just as I know how a sword can become a tool to defend, or a tool to oppress.” 
 
The Peripatetic: “Oh, so now you want to ban all the swords too? What kind of weirdo are you?” 
 
And so on . . . 
 
In the simplest of terms, the critic won’t distinguish between the merits of what we do and the conditions under which we do it, between the dignity on the inside and the trappings on the outside. 
 
He is not yet willing to think beyond the standards of acquisition, possession, and consumption, like a yuppie who defines himself by his stock portfolio, his wine cellar, and his squash club membership. 

—Reflection written in 2/2014 

All Nature Has a Feeling

"All Nature Has a Feeling" 

John Clare (1793-1864) 

All nature has a feeling: woods, fields, brooks
Are life eternal: and in silence they
Speak happiness beyond the reach of books;
There's nothing mortal in them; their decay
Is the green life of change; to pass away
And come again in blooms revivified.
Its birth was heaven, eternal is its stay,
And with the sun and moon shall still abide
Beneath their day and night and heaven wide. 

IMAGE: J.M.W. Turner, Buttermere Lake (1798)