LIAM MILBURN: Reflections on Seneca: The Happy Life

Reflections on Seneca:

The Happy Life

Liam Milburn

Seneca the Younger’s work, On the happy life, has long been a great comfort and encouragement to me when times have been hard, or when I have strayed from the right path.  Writing to his brother Gallio, he reminds us how the search for genuine happiness must be the measure by which we judge all other things. He uses the truths of the Stoic tradition, as well as the fullness of all Ancient wisdom, to help the reader consider what we must do to live well, and how to avoid living poorly.

Over more than two decades, I would choose a passage from one of the Stoic philosophers in the early morning, read through it with great care, and usually write down my own thoughts and experiences on the topic at hand. These were never really intended for publication, but rather helped me to manage my own day with as much serenity and dignity as I could muster.

In the end, many of the passages and comments were joined together in A Stoic breviary: Classical wisdom in daily practice, in the hope that a handful of others might also benefit from the original philosophers. The Stoic Reflections series, based upon certain themes, were something of a further supplement.

I eventually found that, quite by accident, I had over time written a full commentary, often quite a few different times, on the complete texts of Epictetus’ Handbook, Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, and Seneca the Younger’s On the happy life. Since these three texts have always been at the heart of my own Stoic adventures, I offer them separately for your consideration as well.

1. Where to go, and how to get there?

All men, brother Gallio, wish to live happily, but are dull at perceiving exactly what it is that makes life happy: and so far is it from being easy to attain the happiness that the more eagerly a man struggles to reach it the further he departs from it, if he takes the wrong road; for, since this leads in the opposite direction, his very swiftness carries him all the further away.

We must therefore first define clearly what it is at which we aim: next we must consider by what path we may most speedily reach it, for on our journey itself, provided it be made in the right direction, we shall learn how much progress we have made each day, and how much nearer we are to the goal towards which our natural desires urge us.

But as long as we wander at random, not following any guide except the shouts and discordant clamors of those who invite us to proceed in different directions, our short life will be wasted in useless roamings, even if we labor both day and night to get a good understanding. . . .

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 1 (tr Stewart)

Nothing could be more important, yet nothing can seem so confusing. Everything depends upon it, so we will try anything to achieve it. It is so clear that I desire it above all else, and sometimes so obscure as to what it might be. I need to know where I wish to go, and how I should get there, and this reveals why philosophy is hardly just a luxury, but an absolute necessity.

We all know that happiness is the highest good we aim for, even as we might offer radically different accounts of its nature. I have found that we are often tempted to only provide what we think are a list of synonyms, each just another label that does not truly define what it means to be happy. Joy, contentment, peace of mind, well-being, bliss, success, security, being fulfilled, pleasure, enlightenment, purpose, meaning, ecstasy, salvation.

 Note, however, that each of these terms can have a different association, and can lead us down very different paths. If, for example, I consider happiness a function of pleasure, or if I consider happiness to be a function of wisdom, these will lead to quite distinct ways of living.

In a time when various forms of skepticism, subjectivism, and relativism are the fashion of the moment, when we insist that we can really never know anything for certain, that truth depends on my own beliefs, and that nothing is therefore really true or false in itself, it is tempting to give the answer that happiness is just different for everyone.

This sounds terribly deep, but is actually a desperate cop-out. It is telling me that something is defined by being nothing at all, and instead of isolating what is common to all instances of something, it separates all the ways the instances are dissimilar. We may well have many different definitions of happiness, but this does not tell me which of them is true. We may all experience happiness in ways particular to our own personality and circumstances, but this does not tell me what is universally shared by all these experiences.

I don’t, however, usually see people grappling with the different senses of what happiness could be at all, and instead I suggest that so many of us just ignore the question altogether. We know we want this most wonderful of things, but we are simply uncertain how to proceed in figuring out what it is, or how to pursue it. Perhaps we sometimes do this out of dismissive arrogance, but I think we do it just as often out of fear. I have often found myself not only afraid of an effort, but also terrified of what I may learn about myself if I were to follow through with that effort.

As soon as I perceive that some things seem to make me happy, I am also admitting that there are opposite things that will make me miserable. If I am wandering around blindly and without direction, with no sense of what I am doing or why I am doing it, all my choices and actions are in vain. Without a measure of meaning and a sense of purpose, my life will quite literally be directionless.

I have been lost in the woods, and I have been lost in the big city. I have even been lost in a single building. It took me a whole year to figure out how to navigate the rabbit warren of my high school. I have even felt lost in time looking at a schedule, where the question wasn’t just where I should be, but when I should be there. In each case, it was only finding a way to position myself that got me out the mess. Where was I now, where did I need to be going, and what was the best route to get there?

It will hardly make any difference if I just tell myself I need to try harder, if I don’t even know the right way to do something. Exerting more effort going in the wrong direction will only get me further from where I need to be than if I stood around feeling confused.

I have sometimes gotten out of being lost with my own wits, by using a compass, or looking at the sun, or making a mental image of my steps, or just finding a map with that comforting “you are here” dot. At other times I have swallowed my pride and asked for help. This isn’t as simple as it sounds, because ten different people may give me ten different answers. Which answer is the best one? Do I listen to the majority opinion, or do I consider which source seems to be the best informed? How can I tell?

I learned fairly quickly, not through the theory of the classroom, but through the obstacles of daily life, that I would need to find that essential but elusive purpose, and discover a way to point me in the right direction.

2. The beaten path

. . . Let us not therefore decide whether we must tend, and by what path, without the advice of some experienced person who has explored the region which we are about to enter, because this journey is not subject to the same conditions as others; for in some the distinctly understood track and inquiries made of the natives make it impossible for us to go wrong, but here the most beaten and frequented tracks are those which lead us most astray.

Nothing, therefore, is more important than that we should not, like sheep, follow the flock that has gone before us, and thus proceed not where we ought, but where the rest are going. . . .

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy Life, Chapter 1 (tr Stewart)

When in Rome, they say, do as the Romans do. It is an almost immediate instinct for us to conform to the socially approved standard. I think this has less to do with our own conscious judgment than it does with a basic instinct to just be accepted.

This is quite reasonable when it comes to matters of custom and culture. I once deeply offended an Indian host by eating with wrong hand, and at another time I was criticized by a Russian for not finishing my entire glass of vodka. I adapted fairly quickly, though the second experience was quite painful on the next day.

There are beaten paths for many things. It is only reasonable to learn skills by example, and to travel with the flow. I cannot count the number of practices I’ve learned just by watching other people do them first. Observing a maniacal friend playing the mandolin, at a lightning speed I thought would set the instrument on fire, was far more helpful than all those instructional books or chord charts, and it was only the fine model of my own teachers, over many years, that ever made me an even barely competent teacher. We usually become better by being the best of mimics.

Seneca suggests that this is not so true when it comes to the path toward happiness. What we see around us might not be so exemplary, and what others do might not provide the best guidance. These are no longer matters of custom and culture, but matters of right and wrong.

I suspect the many will often be led astray because the most visible and outspoken folks will lure us down a false path. The herd then follows. Consider how often you have thought of a charming and respected person as a role model, and then asked yourself if that was the best move you could have made. Allure and position do not make the man.

Unlike custom and culture, where we may humbly show our respect by following, the act of living in happiness, and of living well, requires our own independent thinking, and the act of our own deliberate choice. No one can ever do this job for us, or command us to do it, because we have to take that first completely autonomous step: we are our own masters, and responsible for ourselves. We must each make that first plunge entirely on our own.

I distinctly recall being ensnared, time and time again, by the appearance of character, and being convinced that someone or something was worth following, simply because so many other people were standing in line to get approval.

I was once entranced by a professor who told me all about how academics was a dedication to service, but then he suddenly left for a far better paying job, abandoning all of his graduate students in mid-stream.

I was once convinced that a very popular parish priest could do no harm, and I was deeply moved by his appeals to marital fidelity, until I found he’d been sleeping with women in his parish.

Human nature can be a fickle thing, and we get it wrong more often than we get it right. That professor was just a man, and that priest was just a man, and I cannot claim to be any better. What surprised me about myself was how easily I fell for an image, and for the popularity that came with it. I wasn’t judging for myself, but I was letting other people do the judging for me.

Whatever is popular gives me an easy excuse, to shut of my own conscience and depend upon another. I think there is a real difference between someone who serves, because he knows what he does, and someone who merely follows, because he is led by the nose.

The beaten path, the one all of the self-important people draw attention to, should immediately be suspect. This is not out of any elitism, but out of the recognition that weakness loves company. Users and abusers know that we are struggling, so they will give us easy answers to difficult problems. They are selling us a product, and they think that we will buy it because we are uncertain and afraid.

The problem with following the herd in matters of ethics isn’t about dismissing the opinions of others. It’s all about choosing not to think for ourselves. Submitting without judgment will be our doom. Embracing liberty with a sincere conscience will be our redemption.

The right teacher, the right role model, will never tell you what you must do. He will point you toward what you must decide for yourself. You will recognize him right away, because he is not selling you anything. He gives you himself, and asks only that you humbly and sincerely be yourself.

3. The lemmings were pushed

. . . Now nothing gets us into greater troubles than our subservience to common rumor, and our habit of thinking that those things are best which are most generally received as such, of taking many counterfeits for truly good things, and of living not by reason but by imitation of others.

This is the cause of those great heaps into which men rush till they are piled one upon another. In a great crush of people, when the crowd presses upon itself, no one can fall without drawing someone else down upon him, and those who go before cause the destruction of those who follow them.

You may observe the same thing in human life: no one can merely go wrong by himself, but he must become both the cause and adviser of another's wrong doing. It is harmful to follow the march of those who go before us, and since everyone had rather believe another than form his own opinion, we never pass a deliberate judgment upon life, but some traditional error always entangles us and brings us to ruin, and we perish because we follow other men's examples: we should be cured of this if we were to disengage ourselves from the herd; but as it is, the mob is ready to fight against reason in defense of its own mistake.

Consequently the same thing happens as at elections, where, when the fickle breeze of popular favor has veered round, those who have been chosen consuls and praetors are viewed with admiration by the very men who made them so. That we should all approve and disapprove of the same things is the end of every decision that is given according to the voice of the majority.  

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 1 (tr Stewart)

Seneca’s distrust of popular opinion may seem disturbing in our supposedly democratic age, but I have never seen his argument as being based upon any inherent superiority or inferiority of the few or the many. Rather, it rests upon a very concrete observation about the individual choices that each one of us makes, and why it is so much easier to conform than it is to think for oneself. The draw of comfort and security can be strong, and it sometimes seems that doing nothing, and blending in with the crowd, is safer and easier than doing something, and risking exclusion.

Now the inaction of avoiding a judgment will most often be far more dangerous than the action of making a judgment, but it may certainly not seem so at the time. The Stoic, of course, is quite aware of the danger of following impressions, and not reflecting upon their meaning, and the Stoic is also attuned to the power impressions have over us when we turn off our thinking.

What some people call “groupthink” is hardly the domain of the rich or the poor, the educated or the uneducated, the chattering classes or the unwashed masses. I have seen groups of all sizes and kinds, where the pull of conformity drowns out any critical voice, from the roar of the sports arena to the refined intimacy of a fancy cocktail party. Our actions never exist in isolation. We both allow ourselves to be easily influenced, and we also easily influence others in turn.

I was once taking a friend from out of town through a neighborhood of Boston called the North End, which is known for its many fine Italian restaurants. It came time to eat, and my friend seemed drawn to a place with a long line out front. It was fascinating to see how the appearance of demand seemed to breed even greater demand. His wife referred us to a restaurant guide, and insisted we follow the opinion of the best food critics.

I suggested a small place off the main road, for the simple reason that I had eaten there a dozen times over the years, and had always been impressed by the cooking. Until they took their first bite, they were deeply apprehensive of the humble interior and wobbly tables.

They still mention that meal to me many years later. “How did you know to go there? What was the secret?”

There was no secret wisdom at all, but I just knew what I liked, and I was not interested in what the mobs of tourists or the snobs in the media told me was best.

There is a surreal irony, both beautiful and ridiculous, in the way we consider lemmings as symbols of blind conformity. We have all heard, for example, that they will commit mass suicide to control their populations. Naturalists roll their eyes at this, and point out that while lemmings will indeed migrate in large groups, and that some may die during such travels, they are hardly taking their own lives.

Instead, the myth about suicidal lemming conformity is itself the result of our own foolish human conformity. Like so many other American children, I had seen an old Disney documentary called White Wilderness, which offered actual footage of the lemmings appearing to hurl themselves off of a cliff. The filmmakers, however, had actually imported the lemmings, herded them around, used some clever editing shots, and then apparently even thrown a few off the cliff themselves. The lemmings were pushed.

It took the manipulation of an image on a screen to convince a generation of young people that lemmings killed themselves, and those people told others, who told others, and before we know it, the crush of conformity, the power of the herd, is now about us, and not about those little animals. This is why Seneca warns us that we risk deluding ourselves when we blindly follow every example. . . .

4. Rising above the vulgar

When we are considering a happy life, you cannot answer me as though after a division of the house, "this view has most supporters;" because for that very reason it is the worse of the two: matters do not stand so well with mankind that the majority should prefer the better course. The more people do a thing, the worse it is likely to be.

Let us therefore inquire, not what is most commonly done, but what is best for us to do, and what will establish us in the possession of undying happiness, not what is approved of by the vulgar, the worst possible exponents of truth.

By "the vulgar" I mean both those who wear woolen cloaks and those who wear crowns; for I do not regard the color of the clothes with which they are covered. I do not trust my eyes to tell me what a man is: I have a better and more trustworthy light by which I can distinguish what is true from what is false. Let the mind find out what is good for the mind.

If a man ever allows his mind some breathing space and has leisure for communing with himself, what truths he will confess to himself, after having been put to the torture by his own self! . . .

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 2 (tr Stewart)

It is too easy to confuse what is popular with what is right, because we are quickly carried away with impressions, because it requires far less effort to conform than to judge for oneself, and because there is a lazy comfort in in the security of the group.

I have observed that a faction will often define itself even more by a hatred of the opposition than a love of its own platform, and how much there can be a certain malicious and exclusive glee in being part of “us” rather than part of “them”.

I was fortunate enough to only spend a short time of my life tempted by the mentality of the herd, first in matters of politics, and then in matters of religion. The appeal quickly faded, because it all seemed more like acting in a play than about living a life. I learned quickly that herd loyalty is far more emotional than it is rational, and that the perspectives could change at a moment’s notice, with the whims of fashion and the empty promises of demagogues.

Standing back from the quarrels, one could see that the different sides were all selling much the same pabulum, masked in slightly different flavors. The obedience to the tribe had silenced a commitment to shared humanity.

The vulgarity Seneca describes can be seen anywhere and everywhere, and it is hardly defined by class or status. I have listened to oil workers in Oklahoma worship their flags and guns just as often as I have listened to suburban professionals in Boston exclude anyone who is not as properly diverse as they believe themselves to be. What makes such displays vulgar is the exercise of ignorance and vanity clothed in the appearance of enlightenment.

I am best served to remember that a man is not defined by how he would wish to appear to me, but by the merit of what he truly thinks and of what he actually does. If I can peel away all the images and trappings, if I can look beneath the manipulations and the hypocrisy, I will be left with nothing but the identity of my own human nature, of a being ruled by reflection and understanding, and how that is ordered to the Nature of all other things. Anything beyond this becomes a diversion.

If I do not allow myself to be distracted by the confusion of all the accidents, by status, possessions, or popularity, I can come to perceive the essence, the identity of a being that exists solely to live by the knowledge of what is true and the love of what is good. The rest must fall away, revealing only that purity, which is at the very root of our freedom and happiness.

5. To take a Stoic Turn

. . . He will say, "Whatever I have hitherto done I wish were undone. When I think over what I have said, I envy dumb people. Whatever I have longed for seems to have been what my enemies would pray to befall me.

“Good heaven, how far more endurable what I have feared seems to be than what I have lusted after. I have been at enmity with many men, and have changed my dislike of them into friendship, if friendship can exist between bad men: yet I have not yet become reconciled to myself.

“I have striven with all my strength to raise myself above the common herd, and to make myself remarkable for some talent. What have I effected except to make myself a mark for the arrows of my enemies, and show those who hate me where to wound me?

“Do you see those who praise your eloquence, who covet your wealth, who court your favor, or who vaunt your power? All these either are, or, which comes to the same thing, may be your enemies. The number of those who envy you is as great as that of those who admire you; why do I not rather seek for some good thing that I can use and feel, not one that I can show?

“These good things which men gaze at in wonder, which they crowd to see, which one points out to another with speechless admiration, are outwardly brilliant, but within are miseries to those who possess them.”

— Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 2 (tr Stewart)

What begins to happen when I look past everything that is extraneous to only the things that are essential? I won’t just see myself and my world from a slightly different angle, but in many cases I will actually begin seeing it in a completely opposite manner.

Once I consider my happiness through my nature, and not from my circumstances, so many aspects of the good and the bad will be flipped in my judgment. The things I once desired become repugnant, and what I was once proud of is now a source of shame. The goal is no longer about providing more for myself, but rather making more of myself, not appearing good, but rather being good, and not ruling the world, but ruling my own attitude about the world. The shift is starting to think from the inside out, instead of from the outside in.

I have myself found no clearer instance of this than our estimation of friends. As soon as I acquire friends because of what they will do for me, such a relationship is entirely relative and changeable. The difference between a friend and an enemy will become as razor thin as the perception of convenience or inconvenience. I believe Seneca is quite right to question whether friendship can even exist between bad men, for in one sense, everyone is an enemy, someone waiting to be used or opposed, to be treated as a means and never as an end.

I once knew a fellow who had been married three times, and he was quite proud of the fact that the third was a charm. He was happy to explain that he had figured out, through the experience of the first two wives, how to speak and act in following the path of least resistance, and to receive what he expected. His proof of this was the first two wives hadn’t lasted very long, but the he was now approaching a major anniversary with the last one. “I won’t marry again if this one turns out not to work after all,” he said. “It just won’t be worth it for me.”

I was prudent enough to bite my tongue, but I understood his thinking entirely, as I had seen it so often before. The third wife had indeed lasted the longest, but this was proof of nothing other than that she had pleased him the longest. If she ceased to please him, then that relationship would also be over; she would become as mocked and ridiculed as her predecessors. For now, however, she and her children would be the perfect family on all the holiday cards and vacation photos.

I know I am on the right path with the Stoic Turn when I understand that desiring everything praised and admired on the outside will be the death of me on the inside. It isn’t the many things in this world, all of them beautiful in themselves, or the many people I will meet, all of them worthy of love in themselves, that are the problem, but the manner in which I approach them that will make all the difference. As soon as I define myself by what I possess and control, I have enslaved my character to appearance and utility.

6. What to reach for?

Let us seek for some blessing, which does not merely look fine, but is sound and good throughout alike, and most beautiful in the parts which are least seen: let us unearth this. It is not far distant from us; it can be discovered.

All that is necessary is to know whether to stretch out your hand: but, as it is, we behave as though we were in the dark, and reach out beyond what is nearest to us, striking as we do so against the very things that we want.

However, that I may not draw you into digressions, I will pass over the opinions of other philosophers, because it would take a long time to state and confute them all: take ours.

When, however, I say "ours”, I do not bind myself to any one of the chiefs of the Stoic school, for I too have a right to form my own opinion. I shall, therefore, follow the authority of some of them, but shall ask some others to discriminate their meaning: perhaps, when after having reported all their opinions, I am asked for my own, I shall impugn none of my predecessors' decisions, and shall say, "I will also add somewhat to them.” . . . 

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 3 (tr Stewart)

I fondly remember my newborn son reaching out his hand, and, like every new father, I held out my own hand. He clenched onto my finger like a vise, and he would not let go. I was very happy to oblige, and I could not even conceive of pulling myself free.

I know, the experts tell me that a newborn can’t see, has no sense of self, most certainly can’t smile, and will grasp onto anything that comes his way. All of this, modern science explains, is just a biological reaction.

That is as it may well be, but such a biological reaction tells us most everything about how we will all continue to grow, in body, in mind, and in spirit. In the end, that same instinct defines everything about us. We all seek what is good, in whatever way we can. It was no accident that the only thing that dragged my son away from my finger was his mother’s milk.

He is now much older, and he reaches still. He no longer reaches for my hand when he feels fear, and he no longer reaches for his mother’s embrace when he desires comfort. He is becoming his own man; he reaches for purpose and meaning in everything that he does, but now he is learning to decide for himself. He can see, he can feel, he can understand, and perhaps most apparently, he can smile and he can frown.

I will refuse, to the bitter end, to define my children by the social, political, religious, and economic clubs they belong to. I will ask them to define themselves by their own reason, and certainly not by whether they have pleased me, or whether they have succeeded in the eyes of the world. I hope I can only help them to not reach out blindly into the dark, but to have a sense to see clearly what is really worth holding on to.

The truth about our lives isn’t distant or obscure; it’s right there in front if us, within us, if we only choose to see who we are. I was quite amazed to see the privilege given to some of my wealthy peers, many hundreds of thousands of dollars in entitlements, and the disadvantage suffered by some of my poorer peers, many hundreds of thousand of dollars in need. The very problem, from day one, was that we all assumed those many hundreds of thousands of dollars would make any difference whatsoever. I ask myself, most every day, whether the presence of wealth would have made me any better, or the presence of need actually made me any worse?

Those are not the things to reach for. Reach for what is near, reach for the truth clear within the mind, and the love clear within the heart. Do not reach for a career, or a ten year plan, or a twenty year plan, but reach for an immediate living plan. Reach for what is entirely within your power, to be a decent human being, who seeks the truth without bias, and who loves his neighbor without prejudice.

Through all of this, avoid “–isms”. Seneca considers himself a Stoic, but he will most certainly not define himself by this or that school, or movement, or fashionable trend. He will find the truth wherever it may be found, not at the expense of one, but for the fulfillment of all.

7. Follow Nature

. . . Meanwhile I follow Nature, which is a point upon which every one of the Stoic philosophers are agreed: true wisdom consists in not departing from Nature and in molding our conduct according to her laws and model.

A happy life, therefore, is one which is in accordance with its own nature, and cannot be brought about unless in the first place the mind be sound and remain so without interruption, and next, be bold and vigorous, enduring all things with most admirable courage, suited to the times in which it lives, careful of the body and its accessories, yet not troublesomely careful.

It must also set due value upon all the things which adorn our lives, without over-estimating any one of them, and must be able to enjoy the bounty of Fortune without becoming her slave.

You understand without my mentioning it that an unbroken calm and freedom ensue, when we have driven away all those things which either excite us or alarm us: for in the place of sensual pleasures and those slight perishable matters which are connected with the basest crimes, we thus gain an immense, unchangeable, equable joy, together with peace, calmness and greatness of mind, and kindliness: for all savagery is a sign of weakness.

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 3 (tr Stewart)

Now surely this appeal to Nature seems to be the perfect cop-out. Whatever could that possibly mean? We live in a time where metaphysics is about crystals and past lives, where ethics is about the whims of social propriety, and where happiness is just about feeling good about ourselves. Nature becomes an all-inclusive term for whatever we happen to want at the moment.

The Ancients in general, and the Stoics in particular, were far more specific in this regard; they understood Nature not as a vague idea, but as a clearly defined principle. Aristotle was never the most poetic of philosophers, but he explained it as follows in Book II of the Physics:

Nature is a source or cause of being moved and of being at rest, in that to which it belongs primarily, in virtue of itself, and not in virtue of another.

The nature of anything is simply what it does according to its very identity. A heavy thing, by nature, will fall, and a light thing, by nature, will rise. A plant will grow, an animal will sense, and a man will think.

There is no deep mystery here, no obscurity, and no speaking in tongues. Ask yourself what it means to be a human being, and then consider what such a being does to complete itself. A man is composed of matter, as all sensible things are. He has a principle of nutrition, growth, and reproduction, as all living things do. Finally, he has a mind and the power of free choice, which allow him to understand his world and his own actions, and to determine his actions for himself. Now that which is more complete is greater than what which is less complete, and it is more complete for anything to rule itself than to be ruled.

No hemming and hawing is required. It is immediately clear that a man is not the sum of his accidents, but rather the fulfillment of his essence. I was never put on this Earth to be determined by what is outside of myself, but to determine, by my own judgment, how I will make something of myself.

However much I feel pleasure or pain, that is not the life of a man, but the life of a beast.

However much I possess or do not possess, that is not the life of a man, but the life of an accountant’s ledger.

However much I am loved or despised, that is not the life of a man, but the life of an opinion poll.

Yet once I possess a clear understanding of the good inherent in all things, and I have acted with that knowledge, I am now a man. My humanity is intact.

This requires a willingness to see things as they are in themselves, and not as I would want them to be. It requires a willingness to act for the sake of both myself and others, not for my sake at the expense of others. It requires seeing my own nature as part of all things, of all of Nature, and not seeing myself as being above all things.

The soundness of my mind is wisdom. The soundness of my choices is courage. The soundness of my passions is temperance. The soundness of my respect for others is justice.

Happiness is not the pleasure that comes from conquest or gratification, but the joy that proceeds from thinking and acting with Nature, and never acting against it. That is freedom, that is contentment, and that is peace.

I am not, by my own nature, a savage beast, but a person, one whose very nature tells him how he must live. I must choose to consider all of Fortune rightly, and never allow Fortune to rule me.

8. Discerning the highest good

Our highest good may also be defined otherwise, that is to say, the same idea may be expressed in different language. Just as the same army may at one time be extended more widely, at another contracted into a smaller compass, and may either be curved towards the wings by a depression in the line of the center, or drawn up in a straight line, while, in whatever figure it be arrayed, its strength and loyalty remain unchanged; so also our definition of the highest good may in some cases be expressed diffusely and at great length, while in others it is put into a short and concise form.

Thus, it will come to the same thing, if I say "The highest good is a mind which despises the accidents of fortune, and takes pleasure in virtue.” Or "It is an unconquerable strength of mind, knowing the world well, gentle in its dealings, showing great courtesy and consideration for those with whom it is brought into contact."

Or we may choose to define it by calling that man happy who knows good and bad only in the form of good or bad minds, who worships honor, and is satisfied with his own virtue, who is neither puffed up by good fortune nor cast down by evil fortune, who knows no other good than that which he is able to bestow upon himself, whose real pleasure lies in despising pleasures. . . .

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 4 (tr Stewart)

The ignorant man cares neither for words nor for meaning. The scholar often cares for words at the expense of meaning. The true philosopher loves words because they indicate meaning.

There isn’t always one right wording, since varying forms of definitions will express different aspects and strengths, and different degrees of breadth and depth. Arrange your army in whatever formation you wish, but it is still the same army.

I would always enjoy reading Aristotle on happiness with students, and though his philosophy is from a different tradition than that of the Stoics, I was pleased to see how some students would have that moment of insight, where however we ordered the words, it became clear to them that happiness was essentially measured by what we did, and not by what happened to us.

Aristotle, for example, offers a very precise definition:

Happiness is the activity of a rational soul, according to complete virtue, and determined over a complete life.

Now all of that is quite a mouthful, and can certainly seem confusing and obscure. More academically inclined students may take this apart, and relate all the pieces to the overall argument of the chapter, that happiness is always an end and never a means, and that it must therefore be something complete and self-sufficient, or that we can come to know what is good for a human being by considering the function of human nature. Such discussions are the sorts of things that inspire us bookish teachers, especially if we can dabble in the subtleties of the original Greek.

Every so often I would have the pleasure of such an involved and lively discussion, though one of my favorite moments came when I noticed a quiet and reserved student staring out the window and smiling. I wanted to pull her into the conversation. I asked her if any of the definition was helpful.

“Yes, because it sounds like he’s really just saying two things. Happiness is about living, and it’s about living well.” The budding Greek scholars were suddenly silent, because the unassuming student had it all in a nutshell.

Notice also, of course, how this is hardly much different from a Stoic view, or from the different wordings that Seneca suggests. Happiness proceeds from the excellence of my actions, and not from my circumstances. This is why the happy man is strong from within. He expresses love and concern for his neighbors, out of the very conviction that his character will define him. We might consider many different parts and aspects of a happy life, but it remains one and the same thing throughout.

I was once part of a similar sort of discussion, this one not even in the formal context of a class, where we were trying to come to an agreeable definition of honor. Seneca uses it, for example, in one of his possible definitions. Now honor seems quite a noble word, but it can be used in very different ways.

The conversation was quickly unraveling, because some people thought seeking honor was an expression of good moral character, and others thought it was the pursuit of vanity. It took someone only a moment to clarify what was shared, and where there was divergence: “Honor is about respect or credit. Now a good man is honorable if he acts out of respect for his own conscience. A bad man is honorable if he lets his life be determined only by the respect other people give him.”

I don’t think Seneca, or any Stoic, or any philosopher, could have put it any better. Let what is good in life proceed from yourself, and not what you receive from the world.

9. Beyond fear or desire

. . . If you choose to pursue this digression further, you can put this same idea into many other forms, without impairing or weakening the meaning.

For what prevents our saying that a happy life consists in a mind which is free, upright, undaunted, and steadfast, beyond the influence of fear or desire, which thinks nothing good except honor, and nothing bad except blame, and regards everything else as a mass of mean details which can neither add anything to nor take anything away from the happiness of life, but which come and go without either increasing or diminishing the highest good?

A man of these principles, whether he wills it or not, must be accompanied by a continual cheerfulness, a high happiness, which comes indeed from on high because he delights in what he has, and desires no greater pleasures than those which his home affords.

Is he not right in allowing these to turn the scale against petty, ridiculous and short-lived movements of his wretched body? On the day on which he becomes proof against pleasure he also becomes proof against pain.

See, on the other hand, how evil and guilty a slavery the man is forced to serve who is dominated in turn by pleasures and pains, those most untrustworthy and passionate of masters. . . .

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 4 (tr Stewart)

I need only reflect on how much of my life has been foolishly determined by fear and desire, in avoiding pain and in seeking pleasure, to recognize the root of my weakness. It is not the feelings of pleasure and pain that are flawed in themselves, but rather allowing myself to be ruled by them. The Stoic does not deny his passions, but he understands how to put them in their proper place. Being steadfast proceeds not from brute strength, or from any heartless indifference, but simply from learning to care more for what is superior, and less for what is inferior.

It is my own estimation that will make all the difference. We are surely all familiar with that liberating sense, when we hardly desire something that we know is bad for us, and we hardly fear something that we know can never hurt us. I am not drawn to accumulating many possessions, or seeking the company of untrustworthy people, because I know there is nothing good in them. I have learned not to fear being alone, because I know I always have myself.

I must apply that same standard to anything and everything that is part of my circumstances. I have no power over them, and should therefore hardly worry about their coming and going. I do have power over my own judgments, values, and choices, and I can remember that my own good rests only in the exercise of my character. Pleasure and pain will be as they will be, but the effect they may have depends only upon how much I care for them.

Becoming upright in my own principles is the source of my freedom from hurt and want, which in turn yields the fruits of joy and cheerfulness. I have known many people who struggle to be good, and who are sometimes angry or dissatisfied with their failures; I have often counted myself as such a man. I have, however, yet to meet someone who has rightly made the Stoic Turn who does not also display the deepest contentment under all types of conditions. This is not because he is oblivious to pleasure and pain, but because he has learned to gauge their meaning and importance.

The slavery that follows from being mastered by our passions is only a servitude of our own choices, and we are, in turn, the only sources of our own emancipation.

10. Escaping into freedom

. . . We must, therefore, escape from them into freedom.

This nothing will bestow upon us except contempt of Fortune. But if we attain to this, then there will dawn upon us those invaluable blessings, the repose of a mind that is at rest in a safe haven, its lofty imaginings, its great and steady delight at casting out errors and learning to know the truth, its courtesy, and its cheerfulness.

In all of these we shall take delight, not regarding them as good things in themselves, but as proceeding from the proper good of man.

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 4 (tr Stewart)

We often think of freedom in terms of being free from something, of having a limitation removed. We can also think of freedom in terms of being free in something, of embracing a responsibility or commitment. I find both of these aspects helpful in the practice of Stoicism, because each of these is only fully possible through the other.

I must learn not to depend upon Fortune, but I must cast aside what is unreliable and fleeting by also pursuing what is truly fulfilling and constant. I am not just defined by what is bad for me, by what I should avoid, but also by what is good for me, by what I should seek. It is only the complete embrace of Nature that allows me to escape from Fortune.

As a child, being told what I shouldn’t do sometimes frustrated me. A begrudging compliance could only be transformed into a willful commitment when I understood what I should do, and why it was worth doing. That I should not lie, cheat, or steal only completely made sense if I also knew that I needed to love. If I need to run away from one thing, I also need something else to be running toward. Don’t just tell me how not to be bad, but show me how to be good.

Learning to be accountable for my own thoughts and deeds brings with it many benefits. It brings with it a place of rest, a peace of mind, and a sense of profound contentment. The satisfaction of feeling good is, however, not itself the end, but a consequence of that purpose, of being good. The very reason a life virtue is satisfying is precisely because I am not seeking satisfaction alone, divorced from any right responsibility and action.

One of the greatest trials of my life was caring for someone who, it turned out, had developed only half of a conscience. Right or wrong were measured solely by pursuing praise and avoiding blame from others, and were determined entirely by external rewards and punishments. I was met with a blank stare if I suggested that doing right was its own reward.

The whole experience taught me that things in life are never good just because they are pleasant, but they are rightly pleasant because they are good. Once I have my own wires crossed regarding the good and the pleasant, I am caring only for a freedom from consequences, and not a freedom in character.

11. A man, not a rock

Since I have begun to make my definitions without a too strict adherence to the letter, a man may be called "happy" who, thanks to reason, has ceased either to hope or to fear. But rocks also feel neither fear nor sadness, nor do cattle, yet no one would call those things happy which cannot comprehend what happiness is.

With them you may class men whose dull nature and want of self-knowledge reduces them to the level of cattle, mere animals. There is no difference between the one and the other, because the latter have no reason, while the former have only a corrupted form of it, crooked and cunning to their own hurt. . . .

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 5 (tr Stewart)

A rock has a body, like a man, but the body of a rock has no life, no feeling, and no thought. An animal has a body with life and with feeling, like a man, but the life and feeling of an animal is not ordered and guided by understanding.

Now the rock or the beast are hardly flawed in their lack of feeling or understanding, because the presence of awareness or mind is not a part of their natures. We should consider something deficient not when any characteristic is absent, but when a characteristic is absent that rightly ought to be present. A rock and an animal are not made to think, and we do not blame them when they fail to do so. A human being, on the other hand, chooses to cast away his very identity when he chooses not to think.

I must remember, therefore, that the happy life, where I am no longer troubled by hope or by fear, does not proceed from not thinking about hopes and fears, but comes rather from understanding them rightly, and no longer allowing myself to be ruled by them. Once I know what is good for me, I will no longer be burdened by hope for the things beyond my power, and once I know what is bad for me, I will no longer be burdened by fear of the things beyond my power. I have become impervious to both, because I care for neither.

While the rock or the animal simply cannot think at all, a thoughtless man is still able to think, but neglects or perverts that power. I see all the injustice and hurt around me, each and every day, that follows from failing to reflect upon the meaning and purpose of our actions. I am myself delinquent, however, if my judgment is itself condescending or dismissive, because I can be well aware of how and why I have been thoughtless myself. It is indeed wrong for us to be thoughtless, but it is also right for us to then correct this by perceiving the causes.

I have been thoughtless when I have cared for myself at the expense of others. I partly recognize my own worth, but I have divorced it from the good of the whole, and I have removed my nature from all of Nature.

I have been thoughtless when I have defined myself by all the circumstances around me, and not by my own choices and actions. I have placed good and evil in everything on the outside, and I have conversely neglected to respect myself.

I have been thoughtless when I have grown tired of effort, disappointment, or loss, and I choose to simply shut myself down. When feeling and thinking seem to hurt, it may appear that it is best not to feel or think at all.

In whatever way my decision has been disordered, by dismissing others, by dismissing myself, or by dismissing both myself and others, I have abandoned a necessary reflection on who I am, and why I am here. This is the greatest of all human losses, because it is the loss of humanity itself.

When I am no longer thinking about how I am living, there is no longer any worth in living. It is only the recovery of consciousness that will restore life.

12. Tickled day and night

. . . For no one can be styled happy who is beyond the influence of truth, and consequently a happy life is unchangeable, and is founded upon a true and trustworthy discernment; for the mind is uncontaminated and freed from all evils only when it is able to escape not merely from wounds but also from scratches, when it will always be able to maintain the position which it has taken up, and defend it even against the angry assaults of Fortune.

For with regard to sensual pleasures, though they were to surround one on every side, and use every means of assault, trying to win over the mind by caresses and making trial of every conceivable stratagem to attract either our entire selves or our separate parts, yet what mortal that retains any traces of human origin would wish to be tickled day and night, and, neglecting his mind, to devote himself to bodily enjoyments?

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 5 (tr Stewart)

I have learned to see the conditions of my life as always being subject to change, sometimes slow and subtle, sometimes sudden and drastic, but almost always in ways I could never have expected. If someone had told me thirty years ago what I would end up seeing, what I would be asked to live through, or where I would be now, I would surely have laughed it off.

Hindsight now allows me to view such things more openly and broadly, but I must still admit to feeling very uncertain about what can still come. Nothing about the world around me should be taken as a given, and anything can be completely different in the briefest moment.

Because the world will never be the same from day to day does not, however, mean that there cannot be something unchanging and constant about my own thinking and living. What can remain stable about myself, if I only so choose, is standing firm in my sense of what is right and wrong, and the way in which I go about estimating anything and everything in my circumstances.

The happy man is not himself literally unmoving, since he himself always acts, but rather he does not allow those actions to be determined by the whims of good or bad Fortune. He rules himself, and he navigates his own way through both calm and stormy seas. He knows what he is about, and he knows that, whether he will live for a long or a short time, no one can take that from him.

The details hardly matter anymore, but what I once saw as the happiest moment of my life was not really happy, because it was just about a deeply pleasant convergence of events. What I later saw as the most miserable moment of my life was not really miserable, because it was just about a deeply unpleasant convergence of events. I felt loved in one, and abandoned in another. I now see that I would have been much better served to be the same man at both times, instead of becoming two totally different men.

Whenever I pursued a path of life where I longed for pleasure and ran from pain, I was always so sure that I was firmly in control of what I did. It seemed easy to pick one and reject the other, but I had already unwittingly abandoned any possibility of self-mastery. This had occurred because I estimated my value by what happened, not by what I did with what happened.

I love how Seneca compares constant pleasure seeking to being constantly tickled. A pleasant sensation quickly gives way to the recognition that we are powerless in the face of it, that we no longer control ourselves, but that we are letting ourselves be controlled. The constancy of character surrenders to the flux of feelings.

As a child, my father tried to teach me how to not feel ticklish. “It’s simple,” he said. “Don’t think of someone else tickling you, but imagine you’re tickling yourself.” I never could quite get the hang of that particular ability, which seemed like some profound Zen wisdom or Jedi mind trick, but I do understand the principle in so many aspects of life. Rule what is unchanging within yourself, or let yourself be ruled by everything that changes.

13. Pleasures of the mind

"But," says our adversary, "the mind also will have pleasures of its own." Let it have them, then, and let it sit in judgment over luxury and pleasures; let it indulge itself to the full in all those matters which give sensual delights.

Then let it look back upon what it enjoyed before, and with all those faded sensualities fresh in its memory let it rejoice and look eagerly forward to those other pleasures which it experienced long ago, and intends to experience again, and while the body lies in helpless repletion in the present, let it send its thoughts onward towards the future, and take stock of its hopes.

All this will make it appear, in my opinion, yet more wretched, because it is insanity to choose evil instead of good. Now no insane person can be happy, and no one can be sane if he regards what is injurious as the highest good and strives to obtain it.

The happy man, therefore, is he who can make a right judgment in all things. He is happy who in his present circumstances, whatever they may be, is satisfied and on friendly terms with the conditions of his life. That man is happy, when his reason recommends to him the whole posture of his affairs.

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 6 (tr Stewart)

The “adversary” here is the Epicurean. You need not worry about the history of it all right here, but you already know him, as the one who tells you to maximize your pleasure, and to minimize your pain.

Back then, it was Epicurus and his followers who defined you as a creature of desire. Hume, Bentham, and Mill kept that standard going. We now no longer need fancy philosophers to tell us that whatever feels good, is good. We now have corporate advertising to do that thinking for us, and which convinces us that the more of their products we consume, the happier we will be.

It would be a mistake to misrepresent the Epicurean as a mindless glutton, just as it would a mistake to misrepresent the Stoic as an emotionless mind. While the Epicurean doesn’t denigrate thinking, and the Stoic doesn’t denigrate feeling, the important difference between them is one of priority.

For the Epicurean, man’s highest good is about pleasure, about good feeling, and all other things must be ordered to that end. For the Stoic, man’s highest good is about virtue, about right action, and all other things must be ordered to that end. In the simplest sense, it’s about the difference between feeling good and being good.

There are times when Seneca can find common ground with the Epicureans, but in this most basic matter his opposition is very clear. Man is indeed a creature that feels pleasure and pain, but without the mind to judge soundly between what is true or false, what is right or wrong, no life can be considered good, or happy.

But surely, the Epicurean might say, the reason we pursue thinking is because it provides us with pleasure, and the mind therefore becomes the means by which we acquire those feelings of satisfaction?

I always suspect that Seneca takes something very seriously when his style becomes sarcastic, and this passage is no exception. By all means, he tells us, treat your intellect simply as a tool to pursue pleasure. What will your judgment tell you? You will look back at the faded pleasures you have lost, and you will entertain ridiculous hopes of somehow getting them again. In the meantime, you are stuck in the middle, between memory and expectation. All this time, your mind will be reminding you how shallow those feelings really are, and how they were never really satisfying at all, because they always left you wanting more and more.

The mind, Seneca tells us, would hardly ever recommend the life of pleasure as worthwhile, because the mind would clearly discern how empty and foolish such a life truly is. Only an insane man, a mindless man, would ever want to acquire what does him harm, and the most basic common sense teaches us that the pursuit of passion divorced from knowledge will never do us any good.

I need to think only of the most damaging choices I have ever made, and what they all shared in common was that they were all about feeling right, not doing right. If I had used my mind rightly, I would have spotted the difference right away. I would have been at peace with myself and with my world, not tossed around by my circumstances.

I once met a fellow who insisted he knew me better than I knew myself, and told me that the only reason I was so interested in philosophy was because it made me feel good. “Hey, I think it’s fun to get drunk and have sex, you think it’s fun to read a book. You and I aren’t really that different.” I smiled and bought him a drink, wondering within myself how long he could keep this up until he hit rock bottom.

No, he and I were quite different, not because we liked to do different things, but because we were starting from two opposing premises about what made life worth living. We had our heads and our guts stacked differently.

14. Pleasure and virtue 1

Even those very people who declare the highest good to be in the belly, see what a dishonorable position they have assigned to it: and therefore they say that pleasure cannot be parted from virtue, and that no one can either live honorably without living cheerfully, nor yet live cheerfully without living honorably.

I do not see how these very different matters can have any connection with one another. What is there, I pray you, to prevent virtue existing apart from pleasure? Of course the reason is that all good things derive their origin from virtue, and therefore even those things, which you cherish and seek for, come originally from its roots.

Yet, if they were entirely inseparable, we should not see some things to be pleasant, but not honorable, and others most honorable indeed, but hard and only to be attained by suffering.

Add to this, that pleasure visits the basest lives, but virtue cannot co-exist with an evil life. Yet some unhappy people are not without pleasure, no, it is owing to pleasure itself that they are unhappy; and this could not take place if pleasure had any connection with virtue, whereas virtue is often without pleasure, and never stands in need of it. Why do you put together two things which are unlike and even incompatible one with another?. . .

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 7 (tr Stewart)

Let us please not assume that pleasure and virtue are in a necessary conflict with one another, but let us also please not assume that they are one and the same thing. Seneca, like any good Stoic, does not wish to deny us any pleasure in life, and he certainly does not wish us any pain. He just wants us to never confuse pleasure and virtue. They are certainly related to one another, but they are not interchangeable.

Whether we recognize it or not, we live in a very Epicurean age. Ask most anyone what it means to be happy, and he will likely tell you that it’s all about a pleasant feeling. I have long since learned not to bicker about this, but to quietly practice my life in a very different way.

I am a bit troubled when someone tells me that he is happy with his wife because she always makes him feel good. I wonder if he is being honest with himself, because love is most certainly not always fun. I also wonder if he has defined love by what is done to him, and not by what he does.

I remain convinced that a good man will ultimately find a certain pleasure, in my estimation the deepest pleasure there can ever be, in the knowledge that he has lived well. Yet he requires no rewards, and no recognition. He does not do what is right because it makes him feel good, but only because it is right. The satisfaction is a consequence, and not the end itself. He may well feel pain in so many other ways, and he may suffer terribly, but he does not confuse the awareness of his own character with the gratification of his desires.

The value of any feeling is only as good as the awareness and action from which it proceeds. I have known many people, myself included, who have felt pleasure without being good at all, or have been good without feeling any pleasure at all. Some of the most disgusting people seem to enjoy their depravity, at least for the moment, and some of the best people will gladly suffer the greatest pain.

I have never thought of myself as a brave man, or even really as a good man; I have long been in that greyness where I somehow know enough what I should do, but I usually don’t know enough to actually do it.

I was once waiting for a taxi, in a part of town I probably shouldn’t have been in to begin with. Down the street, I saw a bunch of fellows pushing someone around, and grabbing at the pockets of his jacket. I desperately wanted to look the other way, but something clicked in me. I walked over, and played the best Boston Irishman I could. There was much cussing and bravado on my part, though I am a pale, weak, and sickly creature.

What happened next was what I suspected would happen, but not what I wanted to happen. The original victim scuttled off, but now I was the victim. They wanted blood, and they got it. I was pushed down before I could even think, my head hit the pavement, and I felt foot after foot kicking me all over. I curled into a ball, and it hurt like hell.

They grew tired of their kicking, and wandered off after some choice words, and the placing of a big glob of warm spit on my face.

How did I feel? Did any of it give me pleasure? Not at all. My body hurt in a way I had never felt before, and my ego was ground into the dirt beyond recognition.

I would still like to think that I did something good, and that I wasn’t just being prideful. Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that this was the case. Nothing about it felt good at all, in any way whatsoever. It still doesn’t feel good, and it’s one of about a dozen experiences I’ve had that still give me nightmares many years later.

There are many times in life where we are called to live well, while still knowing full well that we’re not going to enjoy it. A wise man, my old priest and confessor, once put this in the simplest of terms: “Don’t expect the world to make your life pleasant. Expect yourself to try and make the world right.”

15. Pleasure and virtue 2

. . . Virtue is a lofty quality, sublime, royal, unconquerable, untiring. Pleasure is low, slavish, weakly, perishable; its haunts and homes are the brothel and the tavern. You will meet virtue in the temple, the marketplace, the senate house, manning the walls, covered with dust, sunburnt, horny-handed. You will find pleasure skulking out of sight, seeking for shady nooks at the public baths, hot chambers, and places which dread the visits of the magistrates, soft, effeminate, reeking of wine and perfumes, pale or perhaps painted and made up with cosmetics.

The highest good is immortal: it knows no ending, and does not admit of either satiety or regret. For a right-thinking mind never alters or becomes hateful to itself, nor do the best things ever undergo any change, but pleasure dies at the very moment when it charms us most. It has no great scope, and therefore it soon cloys and wearies us, and fades away as soon as its first impulse is over.

Indeed, we cannot depend upon anything whose nature is to change. Consequently it is not even possible that there should be any solid substance in that which comes and goes so swiftly, and which perishes by the very exercise of its own functions, for it arrives at a point at which it ceases to be, and even while it is beginning always keeps its end in view.

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 7 (tr Stewart)

I have never been an uptight or prudish person, a moral curmudgeon or an ideological stick in the mud. I do not believe that passions must be denied in order to live my life well, and I am saddened whenever I see people who hate their own appetites, thinking they can only be good if they are cold, joyless, and heartless. I have never agreed with the morality of Immanuel Kant.

I hardly knew what to say when a very proper man once told me that he had many children because it was his duty to God and to society. “What about all the wonderful pleasure there is in making them,” I asked with a grin, “and all the wonderful pleasure there is in sharing your life with them?” He was aghast. Marriage, he told me, was about making more babies, even it was deeply dirty and distasteful to do so.

At the same time, I have little patience for the lecher, the glutton, or the money-grubber. I recently somehow struggled my way through a conversation with a man who offered me a list of all the attractive celebrities he wanted to have sex with. It hardly occurred to him that they might not wish to sleep with him, of course, but I did mange to ask him why this was so desirable. “Hey, I’ll have my fun, even if I have to put a bag over her head, and maybe I’ll get some alimony out of it!” He found it funny, and I found it disgusting.

The good life is never about denying pleasure for its own sake, or seeking pleasure for its own sake. Pleasure is, in itself, indifferent. Some feelings are good, because they follow from good actions, and some feelings are bad, because they follow from bad actions. I am not just a beast, and I am not just a mind in a vat. I am a human being because I can think about what is good, and also understand why some things are indeed worth enjoying.

Seneca may appear a bit uptight here, but hard experience has taught me that he is right on the mark. I distinctly recall my senior year in college, and all of the things I did because they just seemed fun. The shame was not in the fun, but in what I did to get there.

A few weeks before I graduated, I was sitting in the sleaziest bar you can imagine, with all of my supposed friends completely drunk, and the lost love of my life giving an erotic backrub to a complete stranger. I felt sick, not just because I had too much to drink, or because my girl was a tramp, but because I suddenly saw who I was becoming.

I told myself that I would, of course, return to a life of propriety the next day, but that was an illusion. I would simply continue to use and abuse others, not in the crudeness of a watering hole, but in the fancy environment of a professional life. The trappings were different, but the lifestyle was the same.

I always remind myself that there is a difference between love and lust. The former gives, and the latter only takes. The different places and different situations Seneca describes are defined by the presence or absence of love and lust.

The pathetic irony has always been that I may seek to possess, consume, or enjoy, but as soon as I have done so, I immediately want more. Pleasure itself will never satisfy, because it is itself never complete. Lust craves, but Love rests.

16. The guide and the companion

What answer are we to make to the reflection that pleasure belongs to good and bad men alike, and that bad men take as much delight in their shame as good men in noble things?

This was why the ancients bade us lead the highest, not the most pleasant life, in order that pleasure might not be the guide but the companion of a right-thinking and honorable mind; for it is Nature whom we ought to make our guide: let our reason watch her, and be advised by her.

To live happily, then, is the same thing as to live according to Nature: what this may be, I will explain. If we guard the endowments of the body and the advantages of Nature with care and fearlessness, as things soon to depart and given to us only for a day; if we do not fall under their dominion, nor allow ourselves to become the slaves of what is no part of our own being; if we assign to all bodily pleasures and external delights the same position which is held by auxiliaries and light-armed troops in a camp; if we make them our servants, not our masters—then and then only are they of value to our minds. . . .

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 8 (tr Stewart)

Again, happiness isn’t measured by pleasure or pain, because both the good man and the wicked man will each feel different sorts of pleasures, for different sorts of reasons. Seneca understands that the very exercise of philosophy will collapse if there is no higher way to determine whether feelings are good or bad.

There are many things in life that will always be there with us, but some of them will accompany us as companions, while others will lead us a guides. Some will walk next to us, and others will go out ahead. A life lived in harmony with Nature will be one where these different roles are rightly distinguished, where I allow my reason to be my guide, and where my pleasures are my companions. It will be the judgment of the former that will determine the benefit of the latter.

So it must be in all things, such that all of the conditions of my life are directed by the guidance of the mind. I may receive a pleasure of the body, or some wealth, or the esteem of others, but I will know what to make of these changing situations if I know where I should be going, and how I should be living. Fortune is fickle, and as soon as I depend upon her, I am enslaved to her. Nature offers a deeper permanence of meaning to all of these things that are passing, and the apprehension of Nature provides a constancy of purpose.

For many years, I enjoyed the pleasures of cigarettes, because I craved the numbing relaxation that came along with the consumption of nicotine. It didn’t take me long to perceive how this was harmful to both my body and to my mind. The constant shortness of breath that soon became a ritual of morning hacking, and the mental obsession with getting to that next smoke caused me hurt, but I could only think of being consumed by that brief feeling where the world cut into me just a little but less. It was killing my body, and enslaving my thinking, because I was making pleasure my master, and not my companion.

No amount of brute willpower or clever cures ever really worked for me, until I had the sense to apply Stoic practice to my daily addiction. After many years of wallowing, I stopped smoking cigarettes from one day to another, and the only thing that worked for me was a form of making my reason lead the way, and letting my feelings walk alongside.

After a prudent pause, I did something that flew in the face of contemporary fashion, and I took an interest in the art of smoking a pipe. Now our unbridled hatred of tobacco tells us that the evil weed must be removed entirely from society, but the untrendy Stoic in me thought of it a bit differently.

I found that I could actually enjoy the occasional pipe of fine tobacco, not greedily drawing the smoke into my lungs, but sipping at it in contemplation. For me, this was no different than the man who can find enjoyment in a single tumbler of fine whiskey, and who does not need to guzzle a whole bottle of rotgut.

Nothing given by Nature is evil, but only our abuse of things is evil. What makes moderation so distinct from excess or denial is the understanding of whether my mind rules a pleasure, or whether the pleasure rules me. It is no different with, food, drink, sex, money, fame, or power.

I would never suggest simply replacing cigarettes with a pipe as a remedy, because fixing ourselves has nothing to do with how much of something we enjoy, or of what certain kind, or in what specific manner. It has everything to do with discerning the greater and the lesser.

17. Falling back upon oneself

. . . A man should be unbiased and not to be conquered by external things: he ought to admire himself alone, to feel confidence in his own spirit, and so to order his life as to be ready alike for good or for bad fortune.

Let not his confidence be without knowledge, nor his knowledge without steadfastness. Let him always abide by what he has once determined, and let there be no erasure in his doctrines. It will be understood, even though I need not say it, that such a man will be tranquil and composed in his demeanor, high-minded and courteous in his actions.

Let reason be encouraged by the senses to seek for the truth, and draw its first principles from there. Indeed, it has no other base of operations or place from which to start in pursuit of truth: it must fall back upon itself.

Even the all-embracing universe, and God who is its guide, extends Himself forth into outward things, and yet altogether returns from all sides back to Himself. . . .

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 8 (tr Stewart)

There is a grave danger, especially in our age of egoism, of misunderstanding self-reliance, what it truly means to fall back upon oneself. The crucial distinction, I think, must come from whether we see ourselves as a source of good, or as the end of good. A decent man recognizing that he is responsible for himself, and depending upon his own character, acts for the sake of all of Nature. He shares his good with others. A wicked man, in contrast, believing that the world is responsible to him, and depending upon his own desires, acts as if Nature exists for his sake. He expects to receive all other goods.

It is tragic, of course, that the selfishness of the arrogant man is hardly strong or confident at all. Such selfishness is weak, because it expects and demands that the world provide for him. The arrogant man does not rely on himself, but relies on everything else. He is actually a slave to Fortune, and not its master.

True self-reliance means trusting only on one’s own merits, and only such a life can rise above the shifting circumstances of Fortune. It is an attitude of service, and not of being served. The beauty of this is that I will only become great within myself when I do not expect the world to treat me greatly, and I will immediately become weak within myself when I offer the world my list of conditions and demands.

I have learned to suspect someone may be self-serving, instead of self-reliant, when his words and actions reveal a desire for leverage over others. He defines his success by things he has conquered, or expects to conquer, rather than by conquering himself. He is quick to criticize and blame his neighbor, but he does not criticize or blame himself. His words often go sideways, and they are rarely direct. His strength is not in being content with his own thoughts and deeds, but in making the thoughts and deeds of others appear to be weak.

We may express this concept in whatever philosophical or religious manner we wish, but there is something Divine about true self-reliance. The Ancients often spoke of the degrees of perfection in terms of how much or how little something moved itself, by its level of sufficiency. By such a standard, God is pure perfection, because He depends upon nothing beyond himself, and by comparison a self-reliant and self-sufficient man, who always falls back upon himself, shares and participates in that which is Godlike.

18. Agreement, unity, and virtue

. . . Let our mind do the same thing: when, following its bodily senses it has by means of them sent itself forth into the things of the outward world, let it remain still their master and its own.

By this means we shall obtain a strength and an ability which are united and allied together, and shall derive from it that reason which never halts between two opinions, nor is dull in forming its perceptions, beliefs, or convictions.

Such a mind, when it has ranged itself in order, made its various parts agree together, and, if I may so express myself, harmonized them, has attained to the highest good, for it has nothing evil or hazardous remaining, nothing to shake it or make it stumble.

It will do everything under the guidance of its own will, and nothing unexpected will befall it, but whatever may be done by it will turn out well, and that, too, readily and easily, without the doer having recourse to any underhand devices. For slow and hesitating action are the signs of discord and want of settled purpose.

You may, then, boldly declare that the highest good is singleness of mind: for where agreement and unity are, there also must the virtues be. It is the vices that are at war one with another.

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 8 (tr Stewart)

As a child, I was often frightened and confused by how hectic, aggressive, and confrontational the world was. I also began to see rather quickly how often people liked to deceive, and that I would need some way to make sense of all that smoke and mirrors.

In kindergarten, one fellow dealt with it all by simply never speaking. Another screamed and cried every day. A third learned to push first, and ask questions later. I attempted something a little different. When I felt alone, uncertain, or hurt by others, I would imagine my “home base”, those few dozen square feet of space where I always felt safe. I usually visualized it as my small bedroom, surrounded by my favorite toys and books, or the family parlor back in Austria, surrounded by the people who comforted me. I saw it as that which was reliable, what I could always return to after I struggled through everything out here that was so unreliable.

The home base grew from the image of a location to a state of mind, a way of thinking about whatever felt threatening. However much I felt surrounded and blocked in, I could still remember that there was that bit of me that couldn’t be hurt or conquered. I recognized this instinct as a something Stoic only many years later, by which time I had also learned that my own happiness or misery rose and fell with how much or how little I depended on my unassailable home.

The home base always had two constant features. First, I was in charge, and nothing could enter that was not invited. Second, there was no place for discord or conflict within its bounds. The whole moral physics, so to speak, of the place was grounded in a love of unity and balance. Now while many people in the world assured me there would have to be winners and losers in the war of achievement, I knew I need not apply this to myself.

Just as there can never be good relations between people who fight with one another, so no man can be virtuous if he fights with himself. The virtuous man certainly doesn’t need to isolate himself from the world, because as long as he has his principles and his unity of purpose to guide him, he can throw himself into the world unafraid. His impregnable fortress is never far, because he carries it within himself.

19. Virtue always as an end 1

"But," says our adversary, "you yourself only practice virtue because you hope to obtain some pleasure from it." In the first place, even though virtue may afford us pleasure, still we do not seek after her on that account: for she does not bestow this, but bestows this to boot, nor is this the end for which she labors, but her labor wins this also, although it be directed to another end.

 As in a tilled field, when ploughed for corn, some flowers are found amongst it, and yet, though these posies may charm the eye, all this labor was not spent in order to produce them—the man who sowed the field had another object in view, he gained this over and above it—so pleasure is not the reward or the cause of virtue, but comes in addition to it. Nor do we choose virtue because she gives us pleasure, but she gives us pleasure also if we choose her.

The highest good lies in the act of choosing her, and in the attitude of the noblest minds, which when once it has fulfilled its function and established itself within its own limits has attained to the highest good, and needs nothing more. For there is nothing outside of the whole, any more than there is anything beyond the end. . . .

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 9 (tr Stewart)

The ancient Epicureans, or the modern Utilitarians, or the sensualists of any time or place, might still insist that we desire virtue because we understand that it leads to what is pleasurable. We can simply employ our reason, they claim, to see that being a bad man is actually not very satisfying at all, and that being a good man will give us the satisfaction we crave. By all means, the argument goes, practice virtue, but in the knowledge of why we should practice it.

Seneca will still not budge in this matter, because I suspect he recognizes the gravity of what is at stake. There can be no confusion as to whether good actions or good feelings are the complete goal, and there can be no circularity in stating that not all pleasures are desirable, while at the same time saying actions are desirable precisely because they are pleasurable. The fundamental issue is whether the highest good of human nature, toward which all other goods are ordered, is defined by how we live, or by how we feel.

Remember that the Stoic does not deny us pleasure, or ask that it be removed from our lives. The Stoic will gladly embrace the reality that a good man can fell pleasure through his virtue, and that such pleasure can be of the most wonderful and the most beautiful sort. What matters is not only what we do and what we feel, but why we do what we do, and how our actions and passions are rightly related.

I often think not only of whether I should help my neighbor, but also of why I should help my neighbor, and toward what end my deeds are ordered. Perhaps I want my neighbor’s gratitude, or a favor in return down the line, or the respect of the community, or maybe just that warm and fuzzy feeling that comes from having made a difference. I may or may not receive such benefits, but as soon as I have any of them in mind as my purpose, I haven’t really helped my neighbor at all, but done something for the sake of my own passions. The giving became a means to the receiving, and in this sense the giving became entirely accidental.

Virtue is only virtuous when it is for its own sake, just as love is only love for the sake of the beloved. Once I have passed the good on, so to speak, to something beyond itself, I have compromised and relativized both virtue and love.

Is the farmer right to enjoy the beauty of wild flowers in his cultivated field? Yes, but that is not why he should have cultivated the field. Is the worker right to enjoy praise and promotion for his efforts? Yes, but that is not why he should have worked hard. Is any man right to feel pleasure for having done the right thing? Yes, but that is not why he should have done the right thing. The pleasure is not the end itself, but something that can accompany the end. My own variation of Seneca’s lesson is that I should gladly enjoy a good life, but it hardly became good because I enjoyed it.

My own experience has taught me that I will sometimes initially feel a certain pain when I have followed my conscience, but that such pain will usually be replaced by rather unexpected pleasures when I can think through why anything I did really mattered. A worry about the things outside of my power gives way to an appreciation for the things within my power.

Yet as soon as I treat feeling itself as a cause of what is good in life, or as the end of what is good in life, I have thrown away any and all of the benefits. By deliberately seeking only an incomplete good, I have lost all of what is good.

20. Virtue always as an end 2

. . . You are mistaken, therefore, when you ask me what it is on account of which I seek after virtue, for you are seeking for something above the highest. Do you ask what I seek from virtue? I answer, herself, for she has nothing better. She is her own reward.

Does this not appear great enough, when I tell you that the highest good is an unyielding strength of mind, wisdom, magnanimity, sound judgment, freedom, harmony, beauty? Do you still ask me for something greater, of which these may be regarded as the attributes?

Why do you talk of pleasures to me? I am seeking to find what is good for man, not for his belly; why, cattle and whales have larger bellies than he.

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 9 (tr Stewart)

A wise woman I once knew liked to say, “we speak as if we were angels, but we live as if we were cattle.” We are sadly quite ready to make sweeping and noble claims of virtue in public, while at the same time pursuing base pleasures in private. We can only embrace what Seneca means here if we overcome that hypocritical temptation. Loving virtue for its own sake can’t just be expressed as a grand theory, but it must be lived as a daily practice.

This may seem inconceivable to many of us, but we can fully understand this from both ends, so to speak, from the cause, and from the consequence.

From the cause, consider simply what it means to be human. That same wise woman also told me there was a reason my head was at the top, and my guts were on the bottom. My nature isn’t merely to consume what is pleasant, but to live with an understanding of what is right and good. A human being only acts like a human being, and therefore is only fully himself, when everything he does is ordered by the knowledge of the truth and the love of the good.

From the consequence, consider the profound benefits of living this way. Nothing can be more stable, more serene, or more free than relying entirely upon the merits of my own thoughts, decisions, and actions. If I rely upon my virtue, which is completely within my own power, and no other conditions beyond it, I am truly my own master. Everything I desire is already mine, and nothing else can add or take from such harmony.

We may be baffled by such a practice, even as we mouth the words, because we are topsy-turvy, with our minds enslaved to our guts, and to the want of everything outside of us. It is only our flawed estimation, and the years of poor examples and bad habits, that keep us from genuine happiness.

I have always had a great love of all animals, as my family will confirm with exasperation, but as much as I admire a cow, or a whale, I will hardly respect a man for the size of his stomach.

21. Pleasure without honor

"You purposely misunderstand what I say," he says, "for I too say that no one can live pleasantly unless he lives honorably also, and this cannot be the case with dumb animals who measure the extent of their happiness by that of their food. I loudly and publicly proclaim that what I call a pleasant life cannot exist without the addition of virtue."

Yet who does not know that the greatest fools drink the deepest of those pleasures of yours? Or that vice is full of enjoyments, and that the mind itself suggests to itself many perverted, vicious forms of pleasure?

In the first place arrogance, excessive self-esteem, swaggering precedence over other men, a shortsighted, no, a blind devotion to his own interests, dissolute luxury, excessive delight springing from the most trifling and childish causes.

Also talkativeness, pride that takes a pleasure in insulting others, sloth, and the decay of a dull mind which goes to sleep over itself. . . .

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 10 (tr Stewart)

The sensualist may hope that he can have it both ways, and that he can live for pleasure while at the same time being decent. He may even insist, as does Seneca’s adversary, that the only pleasant life would of necessity also have to be a virtuous one.

I can understand such a temptation immediately, because it removes so many of the apparent troubles I face in being happy, especially the perception of conflicting standards. If I am to pursue pleasure, I will also find myself being a good person at the same time.

Centuries later, John Stuart Mill offered a similar argument. Pleasures, he said, should be judged by their quality, and not merely by their quantity. Hence the greatest pleasures will be those that fulfill the higher functions of man, and we will find that true satisfaction proceeds from being thoughtful, refined, and considerate. This is the context of his famous quote, "It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.”

At the level of theory, this would hardly make pleasure the highest good anymore, because pleasure is in turn measured and determined by the greater standard of wisdom and virtue. Seneca will return to this aspect of his argument shortly.

For the moment, and at the level of practice, it is surely sufficient to point out that a life of satisfaction will hardly have to be a decent one. Look out into the world, observe your neighbor, read the news, and you will promptly see that pleasure seekers are usually not honorable and decent people at all. Even when the sensualist is intelligent in his pursuit of satisfaction, he simply discovers more clever ways to gratify himself.

I see all the inhumanity around me, and I realize that what most of it has in common is the pursuit of what feels good at the expense of doing good. Arrogance, greed, lust, gluttony, laziness, anger, jealousy, or violence will all proceed when I put my pleasure first, and consider other people simply as a means for my pleasure. If I am to estimate everything through my passions, I choose to close myself off to everything except those passions. If I make my reason subservient to my feelings, my mind will not see things are they truly are, but as I wish them to be.

I think of all the times someone has done me wrong, and all the times I have done someone else wrong, and it is a rejection of the good of the person for the fulfillment of my own desire that usually binds them together.

I may put lipstick on a pig. I may add all the appearances of culture, refinement, good manners, and sophisticated tastes, but there is no way to elevate selfish lust. It is vain, arrogant, and thoughtless by its very nature, because it makes the world revolve around my feelings.

22. Measure the value of pleasure

. . . All these vices are dissipated by virtue, which plucks a man by the ear, and measures the value of pleasures before she permits them to be used; nor does she set much store by those which she allows to pass through, for she merely allows their use, and her cheerfulness is not due to her use of them, but to her moderation in using them.

"Yet when moderation lessens pleasure, it impairs the highest good."

You devote yourself to pleasures, I check them; you indulge in pleasure, I use it; you think that it is the highest good, I do not even think it to be good: for the sake of pleasure I do nothing, you do everything.

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 10 (tr Stewart)

When considered as the measure of happiness, pleasure itself will lead us only into the pursuit of selfish desire. Even if I have acted with the appearance of justice in order to increase my own power, or acted with the appearance of courage in order to bolster my reputation, or acted with the appearance of temperance at one moment for the sake greater satisfaction at another, I have still reduced right and wrong to the whims of my passions.

Nature does not revolve around how I feel, and I must consider my feelings by how my choices and deeds exist within the harmony of the whole. Virtue, action ordered by the knowledge of what is good and bad in things themselves, is the great arbiter and mediator, the guide that shows me how I should relate to all of the circumstances that accompany me in my life.

Sometimes the world may give me wealth, and sometimes it may give me poverty. Sometimes others will love me, and sometimes I will be despised. Perhaps most importantly, sometimes I will feel pleasure, and sometimes I will feel pain.

I must not take any of these things as good or bad in and of themselves, but I must rather ask myself how I should make use of them, and how I should manage and direct them, in order to live well. That is the measure of wisdom and virtue, the greatest good within my own nature, that informs me about what I should seek and what I should avoid.

I once gave up the offer of a much more pleasant job because I had already signed another contract, and later I once weaseled my way out of a different job because of the lure of a much better one. The first choice was less convenient, but it was the right one. The second choice was very convenient, but it was the wrong one. Everything will bring with it different degrees of pleasure and pain, but the only path to peace and contentment is resting in the knowledge that, whatever the circumstances, I have treated both others and myself with right respect. I still don’t regret the first decision at all, though I regret the second one all of the time.

Not all of my decisions will be useful or pleasant to my position in the world, but they should always be beneficial to the content of my character. This is what I owe to myself, and this is what I owe to others.

My own attempts at the practice of Stoicism have only gradually come to a point where I no longer look first to pleasure, wealth, power, or reputation as the standards by which I think, decide, or act. I no longer seek to pursue pleasure without condition, or to avoid pain without condition.

I seek to measure the value of pleasure and pain, to filter their effect upon me, through the constant of virtue. I should hardly be surprised anymore when a change in the quality of my estimation leads to real change in the quality of my living.

23. The Master becomes the slave

When I say that I do nothing for the sake of pleasure, I allude to that wise man, whom alone you admit to be capable of pleasure.

Now I do not call a man wise who is overcome by anything, let alone by pleasure. Yet, if engrossed by pleasure, how will he resist toil, danger, want, and all the ills that surround and threaten the life of man? How will he bear the sight of death or of pain? How will he endure the tumult of the world, and make head against so many most active foes, if he is conquered by so weak an antagonist?

He will do whatever pleasure advises him. Well, do you not see how many things it will advise him to do?

"It will not," says our adversary, "be able to give him any bad advice, because it is combined with virtue."

Again, do you not see what a poor kind of highest good that must be which requires a guardian to ensure its being good at all? And how is virtue to rule pleasure if she follows it, seeing that to follow is the duty of a subordinate, to rule that of a commander? Do you put that which commands in the background? . . .

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 11 (tr Stewart)

Whenever I have sought after pleasure, I have thought of myself as a powerful conqueror, and if I only tried hard enough, the world was there for the taking. There is indeed a certain feeling of achievement in getting what I want. This is an illusion. I am not getting what I want, but what I want is getting me.

The sensualist may be clever, cunning, and forceful in pursuing his goal, but he is not pulling the strings. He does not rule himself at all, but rather is ruled by his passions, and he is pushed and pulled by the external objects of his desires.

I think of all those images from literature and film where the mighty hunter realizes that he has become the hunted. That wonderful scene from Jurassic Park, when Muldoon succumbs to the raptors, comes to mind whenever I have sadly let myself be fooled: “Clever girl!” Admiral Ackbar from Return of the Jedi is not far behind: “It’s a trap!”

If a man allows himself to be determined by pleasure and pain, or by any of the circumstances of his life, he is hardly strong at all, but is actually quite weak. Change the condition, and you change him. Give him something from the outside, and he feels happy; take it away, and he is miserable. He laughs or cries depending on the direction of the wind.

But surely if my want for pleasure is accompanied by virtue, says the Epicurean, I will make good choices. The mouse will not fall for the cheese if he knows what’s good for him.

There’s the rub. As soon as I say that pleasure must be tempered by virtue, or that my desires must always be directed by wisdom, pleasure is no longer the highest good at all. Its value is now relative, because it depends upon another measure. The sensualist, while still insisting that happiness is pleasure, is beginning to sound more and more like a Stoic.

24. Ill at ease

. . . According to your school, virtue has the dignified office of preliminary tester of pleasures. We shall, however, see whether virtue still remains virtue among those who treat her with such contempt, for if she leaves her proper station she can no longer keep her proper name.

In the meanwhile, to keep to the point, I will show you many men beset by pleasures, men upon whom Fortune has showered all her gifts, whom you must admit to be bad men.

Look at Nomentanus and Apicius, who digest all the good things, as they call them, of the sea and land, and review upon their tables the whole animal kingdom. Look at them as they lie on beds of roses gloating over their banquet, delighting their ears with music, their eyes with exhibitions, their palates with flavors. Their whole bodies are titillated with soft and soothing applications, and lest even their nostrils should be idle, the very place in which they solemnize the rites of luxury is scented with various perfumes.

You will say that these men live in the midst of pleasures. Yet they are ill at ease, because they take pleasure in what is not good.

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 11 (tr Stewart)

The problem here boils down to whether virtue is to serve our appetites, or if our appetites are to serve virtue. If the standards of right and wrong depend upon desire, however, one will hardly have any right or wrong at all. Morality will shift and change based upon the convenience of our feelings, and we can clearly discern the root of the moral relativism that we see all around us.

I was once speaking to a fellow who insisted that cheating on his wife was actually doing her a favor. I wasn’t at all sure what to say when he explained that his trysts, which were only occasional, mind you, as if that made them any better, helped him to be more calm and relaxed, and that this made her life easier. There you have the sort of man whose conscience is in the service of his passions.

Seeing how the pleasure seeker lives has long saddened me, and I am also deeply ashamed whenever I have lived this way. The objects of desire may be sex, food, drink, luxury, money, reputation, or power, but regardless of what it is that may gratify us, we inevitably become selfish, manipulative, entitled, dishonest, and disloyal. In desiring to possess and consume, in serving myself, it becomes impossible for me to serve. Life becomes about grasping, not about giving.

Nomentanus and Apicius were apparently Roman gourmets, perhaps gourmands, perhaps most accurately gluttons, well known for their elaborate and luxurious tastes. We like to frown upon the decadence of the past, though we are hardly any better. I have had two moments of epiphany about our own excesses, both of which are indelibly burned into my memory.

The first was one of those rare moments when I found myself in the world of other half, in a fancy corporate office on one of the top floors of a skyscraper in Boston’s Financial District. The cost of the marble and fittings in the restrooms surely cost more than I would ever earn in my entire lifetime, and the catered food was worth more than at least a year of my own grocery budget. I was in awe, but the important people took it all for granted, and one griped that the champagne was far below his standards.

The second was just a normal shopping trip with my wife, and we came across a mother and her two children. The woman was speaking loudly on her cell phone, complaining to someone about her manicurist. An obese boy sat in in the shopping cart, wolfing down handfuls of chips from a large bag, leaving a trail of crumbs behind him on the floor. A slightly older girl, perhaps eleven or twelve, wearing tight lycra stamped with the word “juicy” on her bottom, was singing along to Miley Cyrus on her iPod.

I don’t wish to think of the world as being full of such mindless gorging, not so different from animals feeding at the trough, but such experiences make it difficult not to lose hope. I must think not of the symptoms, but of the cure, and I must remember that the solution is never to simply complain about others, whether it is about champagne, or manicures, or even gluttonous practices, but to improve myself.

The reason I am ill at ease, as Seneca says, when I pursue pleasure as an end is that I am trying to fill myself with things that are not really part of my nature at all. I am made to understand, not to conform. I am made to do good things, not to consume them. I am made to love, not to be gratified.

25. A merry madness

"They are ill at ease," he replies, "because many things arise which distract their thoughts, and their minds are disquieted by conflicting opinions."

I admit that this is true. Still, these very men, foolish, inconsistent, and certain to feel remorse as they are, do nevertheless receive great pleasure, and we must allow that in so doing they are as far from feeling any trouble as they are from forming a right judgment, and that, as is the case with many people, they are possessed by a merry madness, and laugh while they rave.

The pleasures of wise men, on the other hand, are mild, decorous, verging on dullness, kept under restraint and scarcely noticeable, and are neither invited to come nor received with honor when they come of their own accord, nor are they welcomed with any delight by those whom they visit, who mix them up with their lives and fill up empty spaces with them, like an amusing farce in the intervals of serious business. . . .

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 12 (tr Stewart)

Seneca’s adversary suggests that the pleasure seeker may be ill at ease simply because he is sometimes distracted or confused.  Seneca agrees, though he considers that the confusion is much deeper, and arises precisely because people have chosen to pursue a completely misguided end, which in turn arises from completely misguided judgment.

If I had read this passage as a much younger man, I would probably have scoffed at Seneca’s colorful distinction between those who seek pleasure and those who seek virtue. I might even have said that I would prefer to be the crazed buffoon than the uptight stick-in-the-mud, because at the very least the raving pleasure seeker might get a bit of fun out of the whole thing.

Seneca never minces his words, of course, which hardly makes him a writer who will appeal to the young and brash. With all the extreme images aside, experience has come to teach me precisely what he means.

I have now seen it all too often. Drunks sit in the bar, pretending to enjoy a happy hour, their faces devoid of any reflection or contentment. Junkies grasp violently at anything and everything as they come off of their high. Philanderers drive themselves insane in the pursuit of their prey. The captains of industry are obsessed with increasing their assets. The politicians struggle to be more liked. The proper professionals run around wildly in the hopes of improving their power and position. It happens in every walk of life, and it is indeed a form of madness. We ignore our better judgment in favor of gratification, though if we are given all the pleasures we seek, we are still ill at ease.

In contrast, the wise man, the man who pursues virtue as his end, will certainly appear to be bland, cold and unfeeling. He will certainly appear this way to the sensualist. I imagine that, seen from the outside in, this is why Stoicism is considered a philosophy without any emotion.

I must always remember, however, that the Stoic does not reject pleasure. He will receive it, he will enjoy it with calm and with moderation, but he will not make it his purpose or pursue it for its own sake. It is an addition to the value of his living, not the measure of his living. He will seem dull and boring because he is at peace with what is within himself, never frantic for acquiring what is outside of himself.

The wise man will hardly care if he is found amusing or interesting, and certainly not by the sort of people who follow a slavishness to externals. He will be happy to be himself, in the peace of his own nature, and he will immediately recognize and welcome any who are one the same path.

Happiness is not a frenzied rat race, not the struggle to gain more and more. It is the peace of living well, with however much or little Fortune may have given us.

26. A cloak for vices

. . . Let them no longer, then, join incongruous matters together, or connect pleasure with virtue, a mistake whereby they court the worst of men. The reckless profligate, always in liquor and belching out the fumes of wine, believes that he lives with virtue, because he knows that he lives with pleasure, for he hears it said that pleasure cannot exist apart from virtue.

Consequently he dubs his vices with the title of wisdom and parades all that he ought to conceal. So, men are not encouraged by Epicurus to run riot, but the vicious hide their excesses in the lap of philosophy, and flock to the schools in which they hear the praises of pleasure. They do not consider how sober and temperate —for so, by Hercules, I believe it to be—that "pleasure" of Epicurus is, but they rush at his mere name, seeking to obtain some protection and cloak for their vices.

They lose, therefore, the one virtue which their evil life possessed, that of being ashamed of doing wrong: for they praise what they used to blush at, and boast of their vices. Thus modesty can never reassert itself, when shameful idleness is dignified with an honorable name. The reason why that praise which your school lavishes upon pleasure is so hurtful, is because the honorable part of its teaching passes unnoticed, but the degrading part is seen by all.

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 12 (tr Stewart)

Seneca speaks his mind without hesitation, but he is not a close-minded or dismissive philosopher. He still disagrees in principle with the Epicurean theory that happiness is defined by pleasure, but he is also willing to see that Epicurus himself also preached temperance and moderation, and that the greater problem is how others misrepresent and abuse the Epicurean teachings.

It will hardly help us to distinguish right from wrong, without also trying to understand why people choose right from wrong. Seneca considers the sensualists, and he thinks he sees one of the ways their thinking has gone astray.

Perhaps I have been told all of my life that I must somehow be “good”, even if I’ve only been given some vague directions to behave myself and stay out of trouble, while at the same time I’ve been warned that I must not simply do things because they fulfill my appetites.

But now imagine that a philosopher comes along who tells me that virtue is really just whatever can give me the greatest pleasure. It hardly matters that Epicurus also told us to be moderate in our pleasures in order to be happy, because the teaching on the primacy of my appetites now seems to give me the excuse to do whatever I want. I take that first bit, and ignore all the rest.

Before I heard of this new philosophy, I might at least have felt ashamed of my vices, but now I revel in them. I believe I have been liberated from all the old restrictions by the illusion that something must be good only because I desire it. Epicurus may never have intended it, but a corruption of his philosophy has had the effect of making bad men even worse. Whatever there still was of a conscience to provide restraint, however unformed, has now been completely excised.

There have been many times in my life where I’ve been drawn to various forms of sensualism and relativism, usually under the counter-culture umbrella of “If it feels good, do it.” I’ve felt the pressure of uptight moralists many times, the ones who are all just about a heartless conformity to the rules, and I have felt smothered.

Yet I must be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. There must be freedom and joy in life, but that cannot be at the cost of my sense of responsibility and respect, or by making virtue a cloak for my vices. Things don’t become good because I desire them, but I should rather desire them because they are good, and this is why wisdom and virtue should rule over passion and pleasure. Love is never the same thing as lust.

27. Epicurus and the Stoic comrades

I myself believe, though my Stoic comrades would be unwilling to hear me say so, that the teaching of Epicurus was upright and holy, and even, if you examine it narrowly, strong: for this much talked of pleasure is reduced to a very narrow compass, and he bids pleasure submit to the same law which we bid virtue do—I mean, to obey Nature.

Luxury, however, is not satisfied with what is enough for nature. What is the consequence? Whoever thinks that happiness consists in lazy sloth, and alternations of gluttony and profligacy, requires a good patron for a bad action, and when he has become an Epicurean, having been led to do so by the attractive name of that school, he follows, not the pleasure which he there hears spoken of, but that which he brought there with him, and, having learned to think that his vices coincide with the maxims of that philosophy, he indulges in them no longer timidly and in dark corners, but boldly in the face of day.

I will not, therefore, like most of our school, say that the sect of Epicurus is the teacher of crime, but what I say is: it is ill spoken of, it has a bad reputation, and yet it does not deserve it. . . .

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 13 (tr Stewart)

I have never had much patience for any philosophy that is dogmatic and exclusive, since the truth should be acquired through reasoning, not by authority, and it should be something shared, not something fractured. This should apply especially to Stoicism, ordered as it is toward the harmony of all things, and not toward conflict.

I learned to deeply respect the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas precisely because he was a thinker who was always willing and able to see the different senses of meaning, and would always strive to point out what was common before he explained a disagreement. I was always saddened by the sort of Thomists who completely missed this point.

A respect for others means that we can begin with what is shared, and then use our own errors as a means to improvement. Seneca knows that there will be some Stoics, perhaps more interested in the name than the task, who prefer to condemn instead of understand. Seneca, however, is willing to give credit where credit is due.

Epicurus did indeed hold pleasure to be the highest good, but his conviction was that such pleasure must always be calm and moderate, and should obey Nature. If this is indeed the case, Seneca argues that passion must therefore actually follow reason and virtue, because any pleasure is qualified and conditioned by whether it is understood to be good or bad. Epicurus may have gotten the order of priority wrong in his thinking, but he modeled a very similar way of living in his practice.

This, of course, isn’t true of many of his followers, then and now, who would have reason and virtue as slaves to unbridled desire. To be fair, such a misunderstanding might be similar to that of an extreme Stoic who thinks that virtue is just toughness, or that possessions are evil, or that pleasure should be repressed.

I have always hoped to discover something bigger than myself in a philosophy, and not just impose my own preferences upon it.

28. What better guide?

. . . "Who can know this without having been admitted to its inner mysteries?" Its very outside gives opportunity for scandal, and encourages men's baser desires. It is like a brave man dressed in a woman's gown: your chastity is assured, your manhood is safe, your body is submitted to nothing disgraceful, but your hand holds a drum, like a priest of Cybele.

Choose, then, some honorable superscription for your school, some writing which shall in itself arouses the mind. That which at present stands over your door has been invented by the vices. He who ranges himself on the side of virtue gives thereby a proof of a noble disposition. He who follows pleasure appears to be weakly, worn out, degrading his manhood, likely to fall into infamous vices unless someone discriminates his pleasures for him, so that he may know which remain within the bounds of natural desire, which are frantic and boundless, and become all the more insatiable the more they are satisfied.

But come! Let virtue lead the way! Then every step will be safe. Too much pleasure is hurtful, but with virtue we need fear no excess of any kind, because moderation is contained in virtue herself. That which is injured by its own extent cannot be a good thing: besides, what better guide can there be than reason for beings endowed with a reasoning nature?

So if this combination pleases you, if you are willing to proceed to a happy life thus accompanied, let virtue lead the way, let pleasure follow and hang about the body like a shadow. It is the part of a mind incapable of great things to hand over virtue, the highest of all qualities, as a handmaid to pleasure.

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 13 (tr Stewart)

Even if the Epicureans had some hidden doctrines that might explain more about their teachings, a trait that was common to many Greek and Roman schools, Seneca insists that the outward appearance itself has already done the harm. It has been the draw of pleasure alone that has attracted followers. It will make little difference if some virtue on the inside is cloaked in a vice on the outside.

The analogy of the Galli, the eunuch priests of Cybele, refers to men who appeared in public like women. This reference may seem insensitive to our current cultural norms about gender, but a Roman reader would surely have seen that Seneca was pointing to the contrast between the external and the internal.

Seneca summarizes his entire core argument nicely here. Happiness must be something good in itself, and nothing good in itself would ever do us harm. But pleasure can do us great harm, and it can therefore never be the end of happiness. Only moderation can give balance and meaning to our pleasures, and moderation, in turn, is a part of virtue.

How can we come to this virtue? It is through the exercise of reason, which can perceive what is good by understanding the very nature of things themselves. Reason is the guide, and the passions should follow. Each is a necessary aspect of who we are, but they are aspects in a proper order.

The very fact that we are able to reflect upon the meaning of our existence, the nature of the good life, or the path to happiness is an immediate indication of our distinct human nature. I am a being with a body, with instincts and feelings, acting and being acted upon by the world around me. Yet what remains constant and at the core of that human experience is the power to think and to decide, to not merely be moved by other things, but to move my own actions through awareness.

We live in a very appetitive age, with so much of our attention directed at feelings and images. These are indeed part of our existence, but they are hardly the whole, and they are hardly the most vital part. A feeling must be measured by right to be good, and an image must be judged by truth to be understood.

This is the role of virtue, of excellence in action, which is the fulfillment of a being with a rational nature. It highlights the critical difference between a man who defines himself by how good he feels, and a man who defines himself by how well he acts.

29. Let virtue lead the way.

Let virtue lead the way and bear the standard. We shall have pleasure for all that, but we shall be her masters and controllers; she may win some concessions from us, but she will not force us to do anything.

On the contrary, those who have permitted pleasure to take the lead will have neither one nor the other.

For they lose virtue altogether, and yet they do not possess pleasure, but are possessed by it, and are either tortured by its absence or choked by its excess, being wretched if deserted by it, and yet more wretched if overwhelmed by it, like those who are caught in the shoals of the Syrtes and at one time are left on dry ground and at another tossed on the flowing waves.

This arises from an exaggerated want of self-control, and a hidden love of evil. For it is dangerous for one who seeks after evil instead of good to attain his object. . . .

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 14 (tr Stewart)

I often worry that too much of my life was wasted on wanting things that felt good, instead of being dedicated to doing things that are good. When I was a young fellow, I wanted to be loved. There were no takers. At that time in my life, where the only measure of right and wrong was how accepted I was, I felt horribly alone.

One day, at a party at an old friend’s house, I ended up sitting next to a girl I had met a few times before. I had certainly admired her from afar. She was quite attractive, and also incredibly bright. She suddenly licked my nose, and grinned at me.

Now what’s a fellow to do? I know what most men would say, but I am not an example of most men. I kissed her, I walked her home, and then I asked her out for a date at her door.

She laughed at me, but I told her that I meant what I had said. That was the beginning of my own grief. I was trying to be a gentleman, but my motives were still rooted in desire. The fault was never hers, because she was already who she was. The fault was mine, because I didn’t know who I was.

I allowed my desire to do my thinking for me. The next day, I found out that she had already been seeing a friend of mine. No worries, I thought, I will treat her better, and I will earn her love.

The next week, it was the University Chorale trip, and she came back bragging about the two fellows she’d played around with. I had no clue how to respond to that, but I tried to explain that I thought our relationship was between us, and that there would be no other playing.

A month later, she finally told me about her long-term boyfriend in New Zealand. I said it was either about him or about me, and she apparently chose me. I thought at the time it was about love, but I now know it was about my own selfishness.

Now any decent man, anyone in his right mind, would have immediately seen what was happening, and would have run to the hills. I was not thinking, however, but rather only feeling. I was not choosing, but rather only desiring. My gut had gotten a hold of my head. I did not possess what I desired, but my desires possessed me, and I had thrown out my own character in the bargain.

Over many years, I thought she had become my best friend, and I could not imagine my life without her. Yet I still recall the time I found her at a party, drunkenly wrapped around a fellow on a couch, and I still recall the time I wanted to propose marriage to her, but she didn’t answer the door, because she had another one of my friends in her bed.

Most men would blame her. I finally learned only to blame myself. I allowed my pleasure to rule me, because I never chose to make my virtue rule my pleasure. I longed for something through my passions, but getting what I wanted never satisfied me. There was never any happiness in all of the longing. I was constantly moved between being tortured by absence and choking on excess.

There is no such thing as winning or possessing another person. There is only loving another person. My own lack of self-control was the root of my own misery, and I ended up proving that Seneca was quite right. He who lets his virtue be ruled by his pleasure loses both his virtue and his pleasure.

30. Taming wild beasts

. . . As we hunt wild beasts with toil and peril, and even when they are caught find them an anxious possession, for they often tear their keepers to pieces, even so are great pleasures. They turn out to be great evils and take their owners prisoner. The more numerous and the greater they are, the more inferior and the slave of more masters does that man become whom the vulgar call a happy man.

I may even press this analogy further: as the man who tracks wild animals to their lairs, and who sets great store on "seeking with snares the wandering brutes to noose," and "making their hounds the spacious glade surround," that he may follow their tracks, neglects far more desirable things, and leaves many duties unfulfilled, so he who pursues pleasure postpones everything to it, disregards that first essential, liberty, and sacrifices it to his belly; nor does he buy pleasure for himself, but sells himself to pleasure.

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 14 (tr Stewart)

I remember a news story back in the 1980’s, though I hardly know where the facts ended and the urban legend began, about a yuppie family in Colorado that decided to adopt a wolf cub. They apparently saw themselves as being very progressive, and spoke proudly about participating in the harmony of nature.

The only problem was, that as that wolf cub grew older, he behaved exactly as any wolf would. One evening, the husband was trying to romance his wife, and the wolf attacked him. All the Windham Hill music and fancy California wines would not tame the wolf, because he was challenging the alpha male of the pack for breeding rights. You can take the wolf out of nature, but you can’t take nature out of the wolf.

Even the most domesticated animal is rarely “tamed”. My wife and I still have scars on our legs from an attack by one of our cats, who suddenly felt that we were threatening one of our other kittens. Her maternal protective instincts kicked in for some reason, and I can still vividly recall the feeling of warm blood pouring down my leg after she had done her business.

A man can certainly be a part of Nature, but he will never conquer it. Nature is not about fairies and buttercups. There will be loss, there will be pain, and there will be death. All of this is a part of how things should rightly be, and each aspect of the fullness of Nature plays its own distinct role. The role of man is to understand himself, to rule himself by his own character, and to die knowing that he has done right.

Now why should I hunt and pursue other things? I speak not of the entitled or the barbaric, some of whom believe that simply killing a wild animal somehow makes them better. I’m speaking about all of us, who are told and tempted to make ourselves better by conquest and consumption.

Pleasure is a fickle prey. I may seek my pleasure where I will, in sex, in alcohol or drugs, in power, or in my reputation. I am not immune because or my background or class. The beast I am after, the one I wish to tame, is actually after me, and it will end up dominating me.

How much of my time and effort have I dedicated to hunting for gratification, for possessions, for position? In turn, how much have I consequently neglected the nurturing of my own soul? Why do I permit myself to be ruled by a desire for the things outside of me, when my complete good is to be found inside of me? As Howard Jones, one of my old musical heroes, said: “Hunt the Self.”

31. That proverbial cake

"But what," asks our adversary, "is there to hinder virtue and pleasure being combined together, and a highest good being thus formed, so that honor and pleasure may be the same thing?"

Because nothing except what is honorable can form a part of honor, and the highest good would lose its purity if it were to see within itself anything unlike its own better part.

Even the joy which arises from virtue, although it is a good thing, yet is not a part of absolute good, any more than cheerfulness or peace of mind, which are indeed good things, but which merely follow the highest good, and do not contribute to its perfection, although they are generated by the noblest causes. . . .

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 15 (tr Stewart)

There are few things more tempting, and few things we will dedicate ourselves to more desperately and frantically, than trying to have it both ways. Being told that we can’t have our cake and eat it too seems to make us uncomfortable and squirmy. I have heard dozens of ridiculous semantic contortions that vainly try to explain away the logical principle of non-contradiction, and thereby insist that my cake can be both on my plate and in my belly at the same time.

I suspect that sometimes we know quite well that we cannot have or be two conflicting things, but we may desire the reality of one of them and merely the appearance of the other. I know that this is what I have meant when I think I can give equal value to both virtue and pleasure. Give me the gratification, but make it look like I’m being noble in getting it.

I cannot treat virtue and pleasure as being equally good, or as always being in agreement with one another, or as one and the same thing. Virtue, by its very definition as the excellence of our actions, is always unconditionally good, while pleasure is only conditionally good, dependent upon the value of the action from which it proceeds.  I have never gone wrong in my life by doing the right thing, but I have often gone wrong in my life by craving the wrong thing. That which is superior cannot be measured by what is inferior.

Living well may indeed give me a feeling of approval, and I have often found that the pleasure that can follows from a virtue is far more satisfying than the pleasure that can follow from a vice. This seems quite fitting, because the former is about our human fulfillment, while the latter is about our emptiness through dependence.

Yet as soon as I treat the pleasure as an end itself, and not merely as an associated consequence, I have already cast aside that very act of moral fulfillment. I cannot be doing the right thing for all the wrong reasons, or aim for what is good in itself when all I really seek is what feels good to me.  

There are many other things in life that can be good, but as a consequence and not as the cause. The relative always flows out from the absolute. I am not a good man because I am cheerful, friendly, or mild-mannered, but I will certainly be cheerful, friendly, and mild-mannered if I am a good man. I don’t become kind if someone respects me, but I can be respected if I am kind. Being wealthy won’t make me fair, but my fairness could make me wealthy.

In the relationship of virtue and pleasure, one will have to lead, and the other will have to follow. I often think of the passage from Matthew 6:24:

No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.

32. Liberty under the yoke

. . . Whoever on the other hand forms an alliance, and that, too, a one-sided one, between virtue and pleasure, clogs whatever strength the one may possess by the weakness of the other, and sends liberty under the yoke, for liberty can only remain unconquered as long as she knows nothing more valuable than herself.

For he begins to need the help of Fortune, which is the most utter slavery. His life becomes anxious, full of suspicion, timorous, fearful of accidents, waiting in agony for critical moments of time. You do not afford virtue a solid immovable base if you bid it stand on what is unsteady, and what can be so unsteady as dependence on mere chance, and the vicissitudes of the body and of those things that act on the body?

How can such a man obey God and receive everything which comes to pass in a cheerful spirit, never complaining of fate, and putting a good construction upon everything that befalls him, if he be agitated by the petty pin-pricks of pleasures and pains?

A man cannot be a good protector of his country, a good avenger of her wrongs, or a good defender of his friends, if he is inclined to pleasures. . . .

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 15 (tr Stewart)

The liberty Seneca speaks of is the power to rule oneself, that foundation upon which the whole structure of Stoic happiness is built. To be genuinely free is not to assert the power of the will over the world, but to take complete responsibility for our choices in the world.

The happy man should not expect to shape things in his own image, and Fortune will have her own way with what is under her authority. The happy man will rather improve himself regarding what is under his own authority, in the way that he judges, chooses, and acts. To permit my own happiness to depend upon my circumstances is to make those circumstances more valuable than myself, whether it is in the pursuit of pleasure, or of fame, or of power. These things are not mine, they do not concern me, and I enslave myself to them whenever I choose to pursue them. My weakness is then in the willful surrender of my self-reliance.

If I wish to build upon something unmoving, I need only look to Nature, and how she asks me to live within her order. I often notice how our frustration and complaints at the unfair ways of the world seem to become more exaggerated as we become more spoiled and entitled. This should be a clear sign that the things we think are gifts to our freedom are actually only burdens to our happiness. I need to change the focus of my attention.

Growing up in New England, I was baffled by the many luxurious vacation houses built on beaches that would soon be washed away by the elements. When I moved west, I noticed how greedy developers built family homes that soon succumbed to flooding or plunged into sinkholes. There is then often outrage and blame, even though people of common sense had known for centuries not to build on such poor land.

As one of my old philosophy professors, known for his especially painful sense of humor, would often say, “The yokes on you.”

33. Rise to that height . . .

. . . Let the highest good, then, rise to that height from which no force can dislodge it, where no pain can ascend, no hope, no fear, nor anything else that can impair the authority of the highest good.

There alone virtue can make her way; by her aid that hill must be climbed. She will bravely stand her ground and endure whatever may befall her not only resignedly, but even willingly.

She will know that all hard times come in obedience to natural laws, and like a good soldier, she will bear wounds, count scars, and when transfixed and dying will yet adore the general for whom she falls. She will bear in mind the old maxim, "Follow God." . . .

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 15 (tr Stewart)

The truly happy life will be one that is in a state of unassailable liberty. Like any proper Roman, Seneca employs the image of a soldier capturing and holding the high ground, though such a martial theme may not speak to everyone. One might also consider the analogy of how the ascent of a mountain provides a broader perspective, or how the undertaking of a journey builds awareness and commitment, or how the safety of one’s true home can offer comfort and stability from a painful world.

I once, only partly in jest, made use of the story of The Three Little Pigs to explain something similar to a group of fifth graders. They were young enough to still know the story, but also old enough to start reflecting on all the different things it could mean; they were at that wonderful point between the grammar and dialectic stages of learning.

There will be those things in the world that seem to threaten us, and those people in the world who want to hurt us. That would be the Wolf.

We worry about the dangers, and we wonder what barriers we can put between those dangers and ourselves. Those would be the pigs and their houses.

If we rely upon the weak and pliable defenses of Fortune, and we prepare ourselves poorly, we will succumb to our circumstances. Those would be the first two pigs and their houses made of straw and wood.

But if we build upon something immovable, and we are ready for whatever may befall us, we may count ourselves content in this life. That would be the last pig and his house of stone.

This perhaps reflects poorly upon me, but I always preferred the older versions of the tale, the ones that hadn’t been cleaned up, where the wolf tries to come down the chimney, is trapped in a pot of boiling hot water, and becomes lunch for the pig. Not only is the last pig safe, but the tables have also been turned.

Some people think that rising above our conditions involves simply denying the danger, ignoring what is real, or disposing of whatever burdens us. That is hardly virtue, but cowardice.

Seneca’s soldier fighting for the high ground is not running from the battle, but is in the midst of the carnage. It is not that he is immune to pain and death, but that he faces these things with character. He may fall in the battle, but it is not his body that is invulnerable. It is his soul that cannot be defeated, because he knows that his own virtue is that unconquerable highest good.

My virtue is my house of stone, because no one can take it from me.

To “follow God” is not the murderous ravings of the fanatic, who is driven by his own hatred and desire to conquer others, or the despair of the determinist, who has already surrendered to blind fate. For the Stoic, it means understanding that all of Nature follows a Divine order and purpose, and that I can freely choose to find my own peace within Nature by living well. This never depends upon what happens to me, but upon what I do.

In my own mind, I will often think about the squares of British infantry that stood against the French cavalry at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. It is hardly their final victory in the battle itself that inspires me, because I have much the same respect for the opposing French Cuirassiers.

Whatever image can help us to understand this ideal, I believe it requires the recognition that any true victory is over oneself, and not over another.

34. The liberty to obey

. . . On the other hand, he who grumbles and complains and bemoans himself is nevertheless forcibly obliged to obey orders, and is dragged away, however much against his will, to carry them out.

Yet what madness is it to be dragged rather than to follow? As great, by Hercules, as it is folly and ignorance of one's true position to grieve because one has not got something, or because something has caused us rough treatment, or to be surprised or indignant at those ills which befall good men as well as bad ones, I mean diseases, deaths, illnesses, and the other cross accidents of human life.

Let us bear with magnanimity whatever the system of the Universe makes it needful for us to bear. We are all bound by this oath: "To bear the ills of mortal life, and to submit with a good grace to what we cannot avoid."

We have been born into a monarchy: our liberty is to obey God.

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 15 (tr Stewart)

In our supposedly democratic and egalitarian age, we dislike the very idea of obeying. This is, I suspect, because we automatically assume that it proceeds only from fear or coercion. We avoid speeding in our cars, so the conventional wisdom goes, because we fear the sanction of receiving a ticket. We resent the intrusion, but we submit begrudgingly. This is why we feel liberated by breaking the law when no one is looking.

Like good Utilitarians, we may show kindness to others because we fear the sanction of social disapproval. We may not enjoy it, but we submit begrudgingly. This is why we feel liberated by mocking or dismissing others when they are not looking.

How many times have I slammed on the brakes when I see a police car? How many times have I found a sinister pleasure in gossiping about someone to whom I had just given a friendly smile moments earlier?

It doesn’t have to be that way. I can choose to drive safely, or show respect to my neighbor, not because I have to, but because I want to. I need not obey out of fear, but because I know that something is right. I can replace that resentment with willing love.

Nature will unfold according to her own laws, and things in this world will be as they are, often far beyond my power to determine. What remains for me is to decide how I will relate to everything that is around me. Will I freely join with Nature, or will I oppose and resist her? Will I work with or against the good in things? Will I take Fortune and all of my circumstances, whether painful or pleasant, with character and dignity, or will I demand and complain? Either way, I will be subject to Providence, but as a partner in one way, or as a prisoner in another.

Over the years, I had many students who resisted learning, who felt that they were merely being forced to jump through all the hoops of education. In many ways they were quite right, because so much of what we consider schooling has sadly become an exercise in conformity and submission.

I reminded them that the norms of our society, right or wrong, do indeed demand this of them, but they may now make of this whatever they choose. Are they willing to discover something in the situation, to freely decide to find something valuable in what is before them? I suggested they think less about bowing to their teachers, or running after the best grades, and simply become curious for their own sake, and to think for themselves. It was funny how all the grades and achievements took care of themselves, if only they made that willing commitment.

For many years, I have felt bound by the profound promises I made to my wife. Sometimes it has been a joy, and sometimes it has been a struggle. There has been great pleasure, and there has also been great pain, as there is in all walks of life. That commitment holds meaning not because I must follow, but because I choose to follow. I submit and obey not from a law of fear or force, but from a law of hope and love. I am bound, for better or for worse, because I wish to be bound.

We may not be too keen on the idea of monarchy these days, but when Seneca speaks of God as a king, he means it not as a tyrant to be feared, but as a benefactor to be loved.

35. Defining bad or good

True happiness, therefore, consists in virtue. And what will this virtue bid you to do? Not to think of anything as bad or good which is connected neither with virtue nor with wickedness. And in the next place, both to endure unmoved the assaults of evil, and, as far as is right, to form a god out of what is good.

What reward does she promise you for this campaign? An enormous one, and one that raises you to the level of the gods. You shall be subject to no restraint and to no want; you shall be free, safe, unhurt; you shall fail in nothing that you attempt; you shall be debarred from nothing; everything shall turn out according to your wish; no misfortune shall befall you; nothing shall happen to you except what you expect and hope for. . . .

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 16 (tr Stewart)

We constantly label things in our lives as “good” or “bad”. That promotion at the firm, the one that comes with a bigger salary, more vacation days, and the window office, is surely something good, or at least that’s what they told me back in Boston. The fact that my truck broke down, my dog died, and my girl left me is surely something bad, or at least that’s what they tell me in Oklahoma. 

Yet it has been precisely that sort of thinking that has made me miserable. It reduces to the scramble to acquire and avoid what is outside of us. That every thing in Nature, each with its own identity and purpose, is good in its own being is hopefully clear enough, but that things are as they are is neither here nor there when it comes to my own happiness. What is good or bad, as specific to my own human nature, concerns itself with one aspect alone: how well or how poorly am I thinking, choosing and acting? The value of anything and everything else for me depends entirely on whether I use those conditions to assist me in living in virtue, and to avoid living in vice.

The Stoic teaching of indifference tells us that we should never consider any circumstance of Fortune as itself beneficial or harmful, desirable or undesirable. Hard experience has long taught me that getting the raise, or winning the girl, can be just as much of a curse as it can be a blessing. It has less to do with what I have, than with what I do with what I have. Nor is absence any worse than presence, because an absence offers just as much of an opportunity for action.

Once I have changed the parameters of happiness to what is within my power, to how I can make good use of any situation for my own character, there is nothing further I could need, nothing that can hinder me, and nothing beyond my own wishes. I already have whatever I require, and whatever life can give, or can take away, is just another chance to live with prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice. Do right or wrong to me, and I will be the only one who decides whether I will do right or wrong in the face of it.

The doctors and the experts have many fancy names for it, but I have always just called it the Black Dog. As the years have gone by, the melancholic weight seems only to get worse, and I have wasted too much of my energy casting blame or cursing fate. It was only when I began to work with pain, and not against it, that I could learn to live with more freedom.

It hurt, but what was I going to do with that hurt? I began to seek out ways, seemingly insignificant at first, where I could do something good by means of that experience. It didn’t matter if anyone else knew, because I knew, and my own estimation is the key to my happiness. The victory only needed to be mine.

Fortune is itself never really good or bad at all, though what I choose to make of it can be very good or very bad. Once again, my old musical hero Howard Jones was probably thinking in Taoist or Buddhist terms, though they could just as well be Stoic, when he wondered: “Good luck? Bad luck? Who knows?”

36. Does it suffice?

. . . "What? Does virtue alone suffice to make you happy?" Why, of course, consummate and god-like virtue such as this not only suffices, but more than suffices, for when a man is placed beyond the reach of any desire, what can he possibly lack? If all that he needs is centered in himself, how can he require anything from without?

He, however, who is only on the road to virtue, although he may have made great progress along it, nevertheless needs some favor from fortune while he is still struggling among mere human interests, while he is untying that knot, and all the bonds which bind him to mortality.

What, then, is the difference between them? It is that some are tied more or less tightly by these bonds, and some have even tied themselves with them as well; whereas he who has made progress towards the upper regions and raised himself upwards drags a looser chain, and though not yet free, is yet as good as free.

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 16 (tr Stewart)

A good business sense, the same one that tells us the buyer should beware, reminds us that if something seems to good to be true, it probably is. Whenever the media says that the government is going to make things easier for me, or a Nigerian prince tells me he will share his millions of dollars, I should rightly be suspicious.

Now why should I believe these Stoics, who are insisting that happiness is so simple? It may actually be simple, but it isn’t always easy. It is simple, because all higher truths admit of simplicity, of being one, and not being divided. It is also difficult, however, because the weight of my habits and the pull of social custom tells me it can’t possibly be right. It only seems too good to be true because we are so out of touch with what is good and true.

In the world of business, full of liars and crooks, I can never assume that another person is reliable. In the world of happiness, which depends entirely upon myself, I am only as reliable as I let myself be. It was when we started being convinced that happiness was a commodity to buy and sell that it all became a confusing game. Life sadly ends up being more about the art of playing than the art of living.

My only opposition to the simplicity of happiness proceeds from the complexity of dependence, when I believe I need so many things I don’t really need at all. Those ties of dependence are easy to bind, but hard to break. I was already convinced of them as a child, and I still struggle with them as I slouch toward the end of things. For someone who has made the Stoic Turn, the goal may be completely clear, but it may also take some effort to get there.

Like Plato’s philosopher returning into the Cave, or some heretical Rabbi telling us that we need not worry about what we eat or wear, we will be deemed insane as soon as we try to strip away the illusions. I know I have begun to free myself from the ties that bind when I no longer care about being thought insane, and when I no longer worry about playing the game.

I can’t count the times I have made a sincere commitment to the fullness of life in the evening, and I then immediately begin to make excuses for myself the next morning. That only happens because I haven’t removed all the chains.

Yes, Nature will suffice. Whatever circumstances may befall me, I need only my own power of judgment and choice to live with excellence. It may, however, take me some time to untie the knots, and I will doubt and grumble as I wean myself from the habits of dependence. One day at a time.

37. Yelping at philosophy

If, therefore, any one of those dogs who yelp at philosophy were to say, as they are wont to do, "Why, then, do you talk so much more bravely than you live? Why do you check your words in the presence of your superiors, and consider money to be a necessary implement? Why are you disturbed when you sustain losses, and weep on hearing of the death of your wife or your friend? Why do you pay regard to common rumor, and feel annoyed by calumnious gossip?

“Why is your estate more elaborately kept than its natural use requires? Why do you not dine according to your own maxims? Why is your furniture smarter than it need be? Why do you drink wine that is older than yourself? Why are your grounds laid out? Why do you plant trees that afford nothing except shade? Why does your wife wear in her ears the price of a rich man's house? Why are your children at school dressed in costly clothes? Why is it a science to wait upon you at table? Why is your silver plate not set down anyhow or at random, but skillfully disposed in regular order, with a superintendent to preside over the carving of the food?"

Add to this, if you like, the questions, "Why do you own property beyond the seas? Why do you own more than you know of? It is a shame for you not to know your slaves by sight, for you must be very neglectful of them if you only own a few, or very extravagant if you have too many for your memory to retain." . . .

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 17 (tr Stewart)

That a man will not live up to an ideal does not reflect poorly on the ideal, but upon the man. As a being of judgment and choice, he can, and he will, fail, and the reality of such failure makes the dignity of the goal all the more important.

Yet notice how often we attack the person who points to the true and the good, instead of considering the value of the true and the good itself. We seem to like killing the messenger.

This is, of course, the material fallacy of ad hominem, of critiquing the arguer, not the argument, and it is so tempting because it diverts from the question at hand, while also allowing us a perverse sense of personal superiority. It is a favorite weapon of someone who believes that an argument is about winning a conflict, not about discovering a truth.

Seneca has been explaining why our happiness can never be about what happens to us, but derives from how well we live, and that it is virtue, and not merely pleasure, that defines the good life. Happiness comes from the inside, not from the outside. Instead of debating the merits of these claims, the critic wishes to draw attention to Seneca’s continued concern with external things.

Let us, for the sake of argument, assume that these claims are true. I believe a good Stoic, or any good philosopher, must respond with a certain degree of humility and gratitude. Yes, I don’t always live up to the standards I aspire to, and thank you, I’m glad you’ve reminded me of all the work I still need to do. Rome was not built in a day, and a man will only better himself by gradually rebuilding his habits. A certain sense of good humor can’t hurt, either: perhaps we can help one another improve together?

I try to look over these twenty character flaws with as much honesty and humility as I can muster, and I find myself quite regularly guilty of four of them. Anyone who knows me will recognize exactly which ones they are. That the remaining sixteen are largely off of my radar is due less to my credit than the fact that I have never really been wealthy or influential. That I can recognize my failings, and know what I must do to correct them, is already progress.

38. Better than the worst

. . . I will add some reproaches afterwards, and will bring more accusations against myself than you can think of.

For the present, I will make you the following answer: "I am not a wise man, and I will not be one in order to feed your spite, so do not require me to be on a level with the best of men, but merely to be better than the worst. I am satisfied, if every day I take away something from my vices and correct my faults.

“I have not arrived at perfect soundness of mind, indeed, I never shall arrive at it. I compound palliatives rather than remedies for my gout, and I am satisfied if it comes at rarer intervals, and does not shoot so painfully.

“Compared with your feet, which are lame, I am a racer."

I make this speech, not on my own behalf, for I am steeped in vices of every kind, but on behalf of one who has made some progress in virtue.

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 17 (tr Stewart)

A common characteristic of an arrogant man is his belief that he can really do no wrong. You may find him telling you that he might have been in error, but listen to his words closely. His flaw is hardly ever a flaw, because he says he acted with too much honesty, or kindness, or understanding, and in criticizing himself, he is actually praising himself for just being too good. Since he doesn’t really make mistakes, he then assumes other people must think in exactly the same way.

Seneca isn’t claiming to be without weaknesses, because he knows that every man is subject to failure. A good life is hardly a perfect state, but a constant process of learning, of growth, of improvement. It is never about being the best, but always about striving to be better. Each of us, as they say, will inevitably fall down, but the success is in getting up, dusting ourselves off, and trying again. The doing and the living is itself the goal.

We never really cure ourselves of making mistakes, because that would mean no longer being creatures moved by our own thinking and choices, though with effort we become better at managing our weaknesses. Sometimes the progress seems so slow, and sometimes we seem to slide backwards, but even the slightest effort, and the smallest improvement, is an essential part of the practice of living well.

A worse man is content to think he is already good, while a better man always struggles to raise himself higher. Remember that Socrates learned that he was wise because he could admit he was ignorant, just as any man who aspires to virtue recognizes all of his vices.

I sometimes feel that I carry with me the burden of far too many terrible choices, many that make me squirm in shame, some that seem downright irredeemable. There are weak times when I wish I could erase them, though a dose of Stoic common sense can usually sets me straight.

It is not only that they did happen, but also that every one of them played a necessary part in becoming who I now am, and in what good I have within me. Each was an opportunity to become better. That does not justify an error, but it allows me to transform an error into something good. While I cannot go back and remove a mistake, I can always continue making right out of something wrong.

39. Living without spite.

"You talk one way," objects our adversary, "and live another."

You most spiteful of creatures, you who always show the bitterest hatred to the best of men, this reproach was flung at Plato, at Epicurus, at Zeno.

For all these declared how they ought to live, not how they did live. I speak of virtue, not of myself, and when I blame vices, I blame my own first of all. When I have the power, I shall live as I ought to do.

Spite, however deeply steeped in venom, shall not keep me back from what is best. That poison itself with which you bespatter others, with which you choke yourselves, shall not hinder me from continuing to praise that life which I do not, indeed, lead, but which I know I ought to lead, from loving virtue and from following after her, albeit a long way behind her and with halting gait. . . .

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 18 (tr Stewart)

The sort of critic who looks first to your weakness will also be quite ready to consider you a hypocrite. While a man who struggles and fails is at least sincere in his goals, the hypocrite knows full well that he is a fraud, but sees nothing wrong with this. The show of noble appearance is simply another means for him to get the base things that he wants. I do wonder how often we quickly assume hypocrisy in others because we are so familiar with it from ourselves.

I must always remember that the malice in people’s hearts appears to them, in however twisted a way, to be a good. The adversaries that Seneca faces are not so different from the adversaries we all face every day, because what they all share in common is the belief that the only way they can make themselves better is to make less of others. It proceeds from the ignorance that for one person to win, another must lose. I once foolishly thought I just had the bad luck of only running into such people in my neck of the woods, but I learned that such an error could be found anywhere and everywhere.

It is easy to meet hatred from others with hatred from myself, but the bitter irony is that while another may have called me inferior, I will only make myself inferior by responding in kind, and I will really become that hypocrite if I preach virtue but pursue vice. Like any passion divorced from sound judgment, spite becomes infectious. Just as he is called to find the good in any circumstance, the Stoic must transform evil done to him into good done by him.

Other people may try to keep me from improvement, but that is on them. I will be the only one who decides if I will spit poison. When I am reminded that I am not good enough, and another takes pleasure in having targeted a weakness, I can tell myself that what I know I must seek never needs to be hindered by what others might think or say. The progress of a good life will continue only as long as I don’t let myself be distracted by spite.

40. Virtue, not poverty

. . . Am I to expect that evil speaking will respect anything, seeing that it respected neither Rutilius nor Cato?

Will anyone care about being thought too rich by men for whom Diogenes the Cynic was not poor enough? That most energetic philosopher fought against all the desires of the body, and was poorer even than the other Cynics, in that besides having given up possessing anything he had also given up asking for anything.

Yet they reproached him for not being sufficiently in want, as though it were poverty, not virtue, of which he professed knowledge.

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 18 (tr Stewart)

Rome had many base men, but it also had many great men. Rutilius Rufus found himself exiled for defending the citizens against the corruption of tax collectors, and Cato the Younger felt it better to die than to live in a state dominated by the arrogance of Julius Caesar. Like so many who stood for what they thought was right over what was convenient, they were vilified and condemned.

Diogenes of Sinope was well known for his extreme criticism of a society that he thought was dominated by a lust for wealth, power, and privilege. While many found his behavior shocking and scandalous, this apparently didn’t stop people from also insisting that he was never quite poor enough to live up to his own standards. One wonders how a man who lived in a barrel, and who discarded his only bowl after seeing another man drink from his hands, could possibly have given up anything more.

I recall reading two articles at roughly the same time, one of which argued that Teresa of Calcutta had failed to do enough for the dying, while the other claimed that she had done far too much to keep them from dying. I have heard my different leaders tell me that the problem with the poor in America is that they have too little to survive on, and also that they have far too much. An important person once told me that teachers were the most valuable assets to any society, but he also insisted that they were grossly overpaid.

The problem, I think, is that we are quick to criticize without any sound moral measure, without a sense of right and wrong to guide our judgments. Diogenes wasn’t trying to teach people how to be impoverished, but he was rather trying to teach them how to be virtuous; being poor was hardly itself the point, but being good was.

Mother Teresa would have been baffled by the criticisms of the social planners, because she thought that the dignity of every individual human being could hardly be judged by graphs and statistics. I myself am deeply confused when we demand that people make something of themselves, but then never give them the opportunities to do so; a man cannot pull himself up by his bootstraps if he has no chance to buy himself any boots. A teacher, or a student, or any person at all, should never be thought of as a commodity subject to the greed of the market, to be used only as far as they make us a profit.

Like an armchair quarterback, the critic will find something flawed about you, whatever you might do, because he simply likes to point out what is wrong. He has no room for what is right, because that would require that he be constructive, not destructive. It is always easier to dismiss a perceived evil than to embrace a true good.

The Stoic, like any decent man, begins and ends his estimation of anything by asking how it can encourage us in being virtuous, and how it can discourage us from being vicious.

His moral compass always points to the pole of virtue. It is never about being rich or poor, or being of one or another social, racial, or political persuasion, but about aiming at that excellence that fulfills our shared human condition. A man is not good because of what he does or doesn’t have, but by what he does with what he does or doesn’t have.

41. Departing from life

They say that Diodorus, the Epicurean philosopher, who within these last few days put an end to his life with his own hand, did not act according to the precepts of Epicurus, in cutting his throat.

Some choose to regard this act as the result of madness, others of recklessness. He, meanwhile, happy and filled with the consciousness of his own goodness, has borne testimony to himself by his manner of departing from life, has commended the repose of a life spent at anchor in a safe harbor, and has said what you do not like to hear, because you too ought to do it.

"I've lived, I've run the race which Fortune set me.". . .

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 19 (tr Stewart)

The issue of suicide was clearly as important and divisive for the Ancients as it is for us Moderns. Seneca himself ended up taking his own life, having been ordered to do so by Emperor Nero, who believed that Seneca had been involved in an assassination plot. Socrates, of course, at the order of the Athenians, drank the hemlock.

The question is not whether we will die, because it is in our nature to be mortal, or even when we will die, because how well we live surely takes precedence over how long we live. I suggest that what matters more is how and why we die, or when it might be right to sacrifice our lives, or allow our lives to end, or even to hasten that end.

The most helpful Stoic guidance for me comes from Musonius Rufus, when he offers this measure:

One who by living is of use to many has not the right to choose to die, unless by dying he may be of use to more. (Fragment 29)

I learned long ago never to be dismissive of those who consider taking their own lives, or conversely never to romanticize such an act. I have known a good number of people who have attempted it, and some who have succeeded, and there were a number of times many years ago when, tormented by the pain of the Black Dog, I stood there right at the edge myself.

I know that every life is worth living, and I understand that my own good is in the merit of my actions, not in some balance sheet of pleasure and pain. At the same time, I can consider how someone is feeling and thinking when he is faced with the prospect of jumping from a burning building.

I remind myself that I should never want to die, to cease to exist simply for its own sake, but that I should be gladly willing to suffer death if I must do so to have lived with virtue. It is my judgment and intention about my circumstances that will make all the difference between courage and cowardice.

I know nothing about the specific case of Diodorus, and so I can hardly judge it, but whether what he did was right or wrong, I think I see what Seneca admires in him. He knew above all else that he had done what life had asked him to do, and he was willing to embrace his own end in good conscience and on his own terms.

I am hardly an old man, but I learned recently that I was suffering from heart failure. I decided I would refuse certain treatments where I judged the burden or harm to be completely out of proportion to any benefits, and I asked that I not be resuscitated if and when my heart stopped beating. Some people I knew were horrified by this, and assumed I was giving up. Others nodded quietly in comprehension.

I will not choose to hasten my end, but I will not vainly resist it either. Such an attitude is only possible for me because I remain convinced that I should always choose quality over quantity. 

42. Crosses and lusts

. . .You argue about the life and death of another, and yelp at the name of men whom some peculiarly noble quality has rendered great, just as tiny curs do at the approach of strangers.

For it is to your interest that no one should appear to be good, as if virtue in another were a reproach to all your crimes. You enviously compare the glories of others with your own dirty actions, and do not understand how greatly to your disadvantage it is to venture to do so. For if they who follow after virtue are greedy, lustful, and fond of power, what must you be, who hate the very name of virtue?

You say that no one acts up to his professions, or lives according to the standard that he sets up in his discourses. What wonder, seeing that the words they speak are brave, gigantic, and able to weather all the storms that wreck mankind, whereas they themselves are struggling to tear themselves away from crosses into which each one of you is driving his own nail.

Yet men who are crucified hang from one single pole, but these who punish themselves are divided between as many crosses as they have lusts, but yet are given to evil speaking, and are so magnificent in their contempt of the vices of others that I should suppose that they had none of their own, were it not that some criminals when on the gibbet spit upon the spectators.

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 19 (tr Stewart)

There was a time when I would hardly think about the relationship between what was done to me and what I did. I would always complain bitterly, of course, when I felt that others were hurting me, but I would still seek satisfaction when I was hurting them. My selfishness and ignorance went hand in hand, because I refused to see that I was demanding I be exempt from the very same expectations I had for others, and I resented it deeply if someone else was actually better than me.

It took hitting bottom, something I complained about then but consider a blessing now, to even begin to change my ways. It is still very much a work in progress, but it begins with the connected insights that I do not become better when I think worse of others, but actually only make myself worse when I wish to drag them down. I have always been my own worst enemy.

I do indeed make it harder for others when I put obstacles in their way to a good life, and I would have seen that fairly easily if I had just switched places with them from my own perspective. Yet while they can still choose to struggle, to improve, to make themselves better in the face of my pettiness, I have already defeated myself. I have disparaged their virtue, but I have abandoned my own virtue by being exactly what I claim to hate.

The Roman practice of crucifixion was truly barbaric, because it was not just a punishment, or a means of execution, but a way of deliberately inflicting horrible suffering and humiliation on the victims. I am hardly any different when I inflict pain on others for my own satisfaction. Though I may string another man up, or nail him to a post, I bind myself to a new cross of self-torture over and over, every time I choose to act with malice and vice.

43. To climb a steep path

“Philosophers do not carry into effect all that they teach."

No, but they effect much good by their teaching, by the noble thoughts which they conceive in their minds; would, indeed, that they could act up to their talk. What could be happier than they would be?

But in the meanwhile, you have no right to despise good sayings and hearts full of good thoughts. Men deserve praise for engaging in profitable studies, even though they stop short of producing any results. Why need we wonder if those who begin to climb a steep path do not succeed in ascending it very high?

Yet, if you are a man, look with respect on those who attempt great things, even though they fall. It is the act of a generous spirit to proportion its efforts not to its own strength, but to that of human nature, to entertain lofty aims, and to conceive plans which are too vast to be carried into execution even by those who are endowed with gigantic intellects, who appoint for themselves the following rules:

"I will look upon death or upon a comedy with the same expression of countenance.

“I will submit to labors, however great they may be, supporting the strength of my body by that of my mind.

“I will despise riches when I have them as much as when I have them not; if they are elsewhere I will not be more gloomy, if they sparkle around me I will not be more lively than I should otherwise be.

“Whether Fortune comes or goes I will take no notice of her. I will view all lands as though they belong to me, and my own as though they belonged to all mankind. . . .”

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 20 (tr Stewart)

Wisdom will set the goal of the good life for us, and philosophy will be the companion to help us work toward the goal. Action will proceed from understanding, though it will do so by degrees, and it will sometimes fall short. No matter. The success is in the effort itself, and the steep path to the summit makes the climb all the more worthy and noble.

My mind will often race far ahead of my deeds, though this should hardly be a discouragement. I must set my sights high, but also be fully understanding of where I stand now and what I have the strength to do.

I find great comfort in Seneca’s rules, not only at those times I may succeed, but especially at those times when I fail.

I should have no fear of death, and I should even laugh at death, because it is hardly a dreadful thing. It should only serve to remind me of what is good, because to know that I can die at any moment is also to know that I must pursue the joy of virtue in every moment.

I should remember that the value of any of my efforts will be essentially defined by how I think about them. Where my estimation finds something good, there will be benefit, and where my estimation sees only bad, there will be harm. Nothing in this life is interesting or boring, valuable or useless, helpful or a hindrance, except in the way the mind chooses to understand it or not to understand it.

I should always define myself by what is within me, and not by what is outside of me. I should never wish to be rich, and I should never wish to be poor, because the presence or absence of possessions is not the fulfillment of my nature, or the measure of my happiness.

I should never look to Fortune as my guide, since what she gives and what she takes away are beyond my power. I should even cease to think of the difference between what belongs to me and what belongs to another. The true goods that Nature provides are to be shared by all, not gifted only to some.

44. Born for others

“. . . I will so live as to remember that I was born for others, and I will thank Nature on this account: for in what fashion could she have done better for me? She has given me alone to all, and all to me alone.

“Whatever I may possess, I will neither hoard it greedily nor squander it recklessly. I will think that I have no possessions so real as those that I have given away to deserving people. I will not reckon benefits by their magnitude or number, or by anything except the value set upon them by the receiver. I never will consider a gift to be a large one if it is bestowed upon a worthy object.

“I will do nothing because of public opinion, but everything because of conscience. Whenever I do anything alone by myself I will believe that the eyes of the Roman people are upon me while I do it.

“In eating and drinking my object shall be to quench the desires of Nature, not to fill and empty my belly. . . .”

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 20 (tr Stewart)

The principles of ethics are much richer and deeper than any politics or economics, because they are concerned not merely with the circumstances of power and wealth, but with the very purpose of our human nature.

So much of what we see around us tries to insist that man is made to acquire, to possess, to consume. The Stoic, however, stands by the basic truth that man is defined not by what comes to him, but by what he does. He is made, therefore, not to receive for himself, but to give of himself.

This flies in the face of accepted custom, and one cannot take a money seeker, a power broker, or a fame follower and merely dress him up like a Stoic. These views are incompatible, because they consider man as ordered toward opposing ends. I have slowly discovered that I only really began to appreciate life once I started to think of myself as a creature made not to dominate, but to love.

The value of anything is to be measured not by its financial worth, or by the profit of wealth or influence it can give to me, but by its moral worth, how it can be used to improve the character of both others and myself. Consider a man to be a good investor if he assists others in their happiness, and consider him rich if he owns his own deeds.

Once I begin to measure my actions through the approval or disapproval of others, I have already strayed from the path. I am here to care for others, and to live with them openly, but I am not ruled by their esteem. I only need to follow my awareness of right and wrong, as informed by Nature, to live the good life.

Though people all around me may want to devour more and more, Nature is always asking me to take and enjoy what I need, but never to want any more than I may need. I can only begin to see temperance and self-control as a great benefit when I no longer see myself as a consumer of good, but as an agent of good.

45. Being agreeable

“. . . I will be agreeable with my friends, gentle and mild to my foes. I will grant pardon before I am asked for it, and will meet the wishes of honorable men half way.

“I will bear in mind that the world is my native city, that its governors are the gods, and that they stand above and around me, criticizing whatever I do or say.

“Whenever either Nature demands my breath again, or reason bids me to dismiss it, I will quit this life, calling all to witness that I have loved a good conscience, and good pursuits, and that no one's freedom, my own least of all, has been impaired through me.”

He who sets up these as the rules of his life will soar aloft and strive to make his way to the gods: in truth, even if he fails, he fails in a high endeavor. . . .

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 20 (tr Stewart)

Think of how many times we have all heard that phrase, or used it ourselves: “Well, I’m a good person. Or at least I try to be.” In and of itself, it seems a perfectly decent thing to say. I have often wondered, however, what we all really mean when we say it.

For as long as I can remember, others have told me that I must be kind, caring, nice, respectful, or agreeable. As the admittedly sort of annoying fellow who has always asked “why?” as long as he could speak, I was regularly told that this was simply the proper and acceptable thing to do. “Be nice” becomes something we say quite often, but we don’t always reflect upon it. It also saddens me to see that we don’t even do it nearly as often as we might think.

I always feel like a terrible curmudgeon when I ask that “why?” question, though I do it not because I want people to be horrible to one another, but because I am looking for something to give us a good reason to love one another, something that will help us stay the course whenever difficulty may arise. For myself, I know I have struggled between being seen as good in order to get what I want from others, and being good to others regardless of how it is seen.

I often distinguish between two different senses of being “agreeable”, and it boils down to a very real difference between abuse and respect. I intend no exaggeration, but I do believe that if I act toward others with the profit of my own circumstances in mind, treating them as a means to my end, then I am a player, a manipulator, and yes, even an abuser. If I act toward others with their own good in mind, treating them as ends in themselves, then I may actually be practicing genuine respect.

Though I am, of course, only playing within the context of the English word, there is a contrast between being agreeable so that others will agree with me, and being agreeable because I am agreeing with Nature.

To be a good person, I must understand that my fellows are made just like me, sharing the same purpose, and worthy of the same dignity. I won’t always come across as likeable when I seek their happiness, but I should always desire what is good for them, however that may change my own selfish utility.

Accordingly, there is no “us” versus “them” in the order of Nature. There is only “all of us”. Whether we choose to accept it or not, we are all here in the service of Nature, and of the Divine that orders Nature.

To remember my mortality, memento mori, is a wonderful aid in this endeavor, because it isn’t all about me, but about how I, as one part, can help to serve the whole, the fulfillment of all the parts. I will end when Nature calls me back, or when my conscience tells me it is right to give myself for another. I have begun to expect no other reward beyond having run the race as best I can.

46. Sickly eyes

. . . But you, who hate both virtue and those who practice it, do nothing at which we need be surprised, for sickly eyes cannot bear the sun, nocturnal creatures avoid the brightness of day, and at its first dawning become bewildered and all betake themselves to their dens together.

Creatures that fear the light hide themselves in crevices. So croak away, and exercise your miserable tongues in reproaching good men.

Open wide your jaws, bite hard. You will break many teeth before you make any impression.

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 20 (tr Stewart)

Great sages, poets, and artists have long used the image of light as a symbol for the truth, and the image of the eye as a symbol for the mind. Just as light makes objects visible to the eye, so truth makes reality intelligible to the mind, and as the sun is the source of all light, the Divine is the source of all truth. Separated from light the eye is blind, and separated from truth the mind is ignorant.

Though the eye is made to see, and the mind is made to understand, there are many ways that either can be hindered. If another object is blocking my sight, I must move around it or away from it. If the eye is diseased, I must seek a cure. If my vision has become so accustomed to darkness, I must slowly adjust to the light.

When I was younger, my father would wryly remind me that I should be a child of light, not of darkness. I assumed he was referring to my staying out all hours of the night getting up to no good with the wrong sorts of people, and he was most certainly speaking of that. Yet I am also sure he meant it not just literally, but also figuratively. My being nocturnal was not just about the time of day, but also about my whole attitude.

Disappointment, pain, or fear have sometimes made me decide to close my eyes to what is true and good. It is a form of denial, perhaps, or of running away, but at such times I have also become bitter and negative. Everything may appear dark and grey, and so, as Seneca says, I croak, I exercise my miserable tongue, and I break my own teeth biting down.

The longer I cut myself off from what is true and good, from what Nature asks and provides, the more I wallow in darkness and ignorance, and the harder it becomes to return to the light. There were times when I had become so used to ignorance and resentment that wisdom and charity seemed to burn.

Being a pale Irish fellow, I figured out long ago that when the warm weather comes along, I just need to spend a day out in the sun. My skin will turn bright red, and I will feel uncomfortable for a time, but that toughens me up for the rest of the summer. I’ve had to do the same with my heart and mind a few times, to get them back to state where they can appreciate what is right and decent.

I have sadly seen too many people I love crawl into the dark over the years, and light now seems toxic to them. I often feel like I would want nothing more than to rouse them from the crevices, and help them to walk their way in the daytime, until their eyes can once again grow accustomed to brightness.

47. Despising fortune

"But how is it that this man studies philosophy and nevertheless lives the life of a rich man? Why does he say that wealth ought to be despised and yet possess it?

“That life should be despised, and yet live?

“That health should be despised, and yet guard it with the utmost care, and wish it to be as good as possible?

“Does he consider banishment to be an empty name, and say, ‘What evil is there in changing one country for another?’ and yet, if permitted, does he not grow old in his native land?

“Does he declare that there is no difference between a longer and a shorter time, and yet, if he is not prevented, lengthen out his life and flourish in a green old age?"

His answer is, that these things ought to be despised, not that he should not possess them, but that he should not possess them with fear and trembling. He does not drive them away from him, but when they leave him he says farewell to them without concern.

Where, indeed, can Fortune invest riches more securely than in a place from where they can always be recovered without any squabble with their trustee?

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 21 (tr Stewart)

I believe that one of the great misunderstandings about Stoicism, and about any philosophy that treats virtue as the measure of man, concerns what it means to “despise” money, or any of the gifts of Fortune.

When I love something, I recognize that it is good, and I desire it. Now I might assume that the only contrary to love can be hate, in which case I recognize that something is bad, and I avoid it. There is a third option, in that I recognize that something is in itself neither good not bad, and I should therefore neither desire it nor avoid it. This third view is the Stoic concept of indifference, and it is what Stoic texts mean when they speak of despising Fortune.

The question is not whether we will, or should, possess wealth, but whether we will care or worry about it for its own sake. This holds true for health, for the comforts of home, for a long life, and for anything else in our circumstances. These things may be given, or they may be taken away, but we are called throughout to think only of the ways we can use both their presence and absence to the improvement of moral character.

Some people might assume that if I am not deliberately seeking wealth, then I must be trying to avoid it. Other people might assume that if I happen to be wealthy, that must be something I am dedicated to. Neither needs to be the case. I often say that I have known rich men who are good men, but I have never known a man to be good because he is rich.

Now we all know that most people will appear more than happy to take advantage of an upturn in their fortunes. Give a man more money, and he will most likely start thinking about what to spend it on, where to invest, how to build his security and his comfort. But take the money away, and he will most likely worry and fret about losing everything. Both reactions are misguided, because both assume that value is in the possession, and both reactions offers no benefit, because both define happiness through the presence of something external.

The result is that all fortune, both from things we receive or lose, will not help a vicious man be happy, since he will use fortune poorly. Conversely, all fortune, both from things we receive or lose, will help a virtuous man be happy, since he will order fortune wisely.

It is also fitting that only someone virtuous will actually make a good steward or caretaker of wealth. He will understand that any benefits to be derived from Fortune are directed to the improvement of the soul, and not about lining his wallet.  He will not be troubled about returning what he had been given.

48. Preference, not love

. . . Marcus Cato, when he was praising Curius and Coruncanius and that century in which the possession of a few small silver coins was an offence which was punished by the Censor, himself owned four million sesterces; a less fortune, no doubt, than that of Crassus, but larger than of Cato the Censor.

If the amounts be compared, he had outstripped his great-grandfather further than he himself was outdone by Crassus, and if still greater riches had fallen to his lot, he would not have spurned them, for the wise man does not think himself unworthy of any chance presents.

He does not love riches, but he prefers to have them. He does not receive them into his spirit, but only into his house, nor does he cast away from him what he already possesses, but keeps them, and is willing that his virtue should receive a larger subject matter for its exercise.

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 21 (tr Stewart)

I can hardly make any profound judgments about Roman politics, and I am ignorant of all the subtleties of Seneca’s own political thinking. These references, however, are surely intended to ask the reader to consider the difference between good men who happen to be rich, and bad men who love being rich.

Cato the Younger, and his great-grandfather Cato the Elder, were both very wealthy men, but Seneca admired both of them greatly for their character. It is interesting that Cato the Younger praised Manius Curius Dentatus, a consul of the third century BC who was known for his great frugality, and who, legend tells us, once said he preferred eating his turnips to receiving political bribes, because he thought it better to rule rich men than to be one himself.

There seems quite a difference between the prosperous Cato and the thrifty Curius, but I suggest that we are meant to see that this hardly matters. Curius wasn’t good because he was poor, and Cato wasn’t bad because he was rich. They were both good men because they pursued virtue, regardless of how much they possessed.

No, the real contrast is between Cato and his contemporary, Crassus. While both men were rich, though Crassus was apparently richer, the similarity ends there. Cato, a follower of Stoicism, stood for the values of the Roman Republic against the First Triumvirate of Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus. Seneca viewed Cato as a man of moral principle, but Crassus was the Roman equivalent of a modern real estate mogul, who mixed his desire for personal profit with political power plays.

Cato and Crassus were similar in their circumstances, but radically different in their priorities. We have all seen the difference between those who use their wealth to serve others, and those who use others to serve their wealth.

A wise man does not love money, and he does not seek it for its own sake, though he may well choose to prefer it. This may well seem like a petty distinction of semantics, and we can use whatever terminology we like, but there is a real and critical difference between want and preference. The Stoic should want only virtue, and avoid only vice. He should be indifferent to all other things, and make use of them insofar as they help him to be virtuous and not vicious. Accordingly, I should only want to be a good man, not a rich man, or a powerful man, or a popular man.

But let us say all things are equal, and I could be a good man whether I was rich or poor. I will take either circumstance, but I would most likely prefer the option of wealth over poverty, health over sickness, a long life over a short life, many friends over no friends. These are all certainly more pleasant, and they might appear to offer me greater opportunities. Where a condition does not conflict with virtue, I will rightly have the free choice of a preference, but any preference must always be relative to and defer to virtue.

My own silly way of remembering this is that I can take it or leave it, but if I don’t have to leave it, I’ll gladly take it.

I propose that Curius was a virtuous man who preferred poverty, and Cato was a virtuous man who preferred wealth, while Cassius was a vicious man who wanted wealth. It all reduces to whether I love something external for itself, or if I love virtue and also welcome something external.

My own experience is that the absence of fortune may actually be preferable to the presence of fortune far more often than we think, and in this regard I am drawn more to Curius. I find I usually prefer turnips to the burden of wealth. But that is a reflection for another time.

49. Wisdom and wealth

Who can doubt, however, that the wise man, if he is rich, has a wider field for the development of his powers than if he is poor, seeing that in the latter case the only virtue which he can display is that of neither being perverted nor crushed by his poverty, whereas if he has riches, he will have a wide field for the exhibition of temperance, generosity, laboriousness, methodical arrangement, and grandeur.

The wise man will not despise himself, however short of stature he may be, but nevertheless he will wish to be tall. Even though he be feeble and one-eyed he may be in good health, yet he would prefer to have bodily strength, and that too, while he knows all the while that he has something which is even more powerful: he will endure illness, and will hope for good health.

For some things, though they may be trifles compared with the sum total, and though they may be taken away without destroying the chief good, yet they add somewhat to that constant cheerfulness which arises from virtue. . . .

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 22 (tr Stewart)

This is the sort of Stoic passage that, quite honestly, makes me a bit nervous at first. This concern ends up hardly being about Seneca’s argument at all, and is really about my own weakness.

For the wise man, wealth can become a means for greater good, and an opportunity to practice greater virtue. By having more at his disposal, he can do more for others, and he can exercise a greatness of character that would be impossible if he was poor. In poverty he may learn to order himself, but in plenty he can also give order to what is around him.

Things like wealth, health, or strength, though they are not in themselves the highest good, can certainly be preferred as a way of aiding us in practicing the highest good. The Stoic will embrace the chance to employ them, though because his goal is far greater, he will also gladly accept their loss.

I immediately see the soundness in the argument, but I question the soundness in myself. Everything here hinges upon the premise that a man of wealth and means must first be wise, he must seek to do good above all else, and he must recognize that his position is about service, not about being served. It requires something that seems quite difficult: possessing great fortune, but not loving great fortune.

How many such people can there truly be? I know I am not one of them. I know that even King Solomon, for all of his wisdom, succumbed to the temptations of wealth, idolatry, and lust.

The question is really much like the challenge of Plato’s Philosopher King. Because bad people are attracted to wealth and power, how can we assure that good people are inspired to give right purpose to wealth and power? How can we be certain they will not in turn be drawn into greed and lust themselves?

Some see political corruption, so they advocate the abolition of government. Others see the abuse of money, so they advocate the abolition of wealth. Yet instead of assuming the worst of men, can we not work to make the best of men? It isn’t wealth or power that is the problem, but the fact that we are greedy and selfish with our wealth and power. That is precisely why the Stoic argues that we must build character above all else, so that all other things in life can be used for benefit.

That I am skeptical about rich men being good means only that I know I am not good enough to be rich. I should see this is a call to become better, not to merely accept what is worse. I should never say that something cannot be found if I’ve always been looking for it in the wrong place. The solutions to the struggles of this life are not just economic, legal, or political, but are rather essentially moral. Inspire virtue in men first in order, and the rest will take care of itself.

50. Placing riches

. . . Riches encourage and brighten up such a man just as a sailor is delighted at a favorable wind that bears him on his way, or as people feel pleasure at a fine day or at a sunny spot in the cold weather.

What wise man, I mean of our school, whose only good is virtue, can deny that even these matters which we call neither good nor bad have in themselves a certain value, and that some of them are preferable to others? To some of them we show a certain amount of respect, and to some a great deal. Do not, then, make any mistake: riches belong to the class of desirable things.

"Why then," you say, "do you laugh at me, since you place them in the same position that I do?"

 Do you wish to know how different the position is in which we place them? If my riches leave me, they will carry away with them nothing except themselves. You will be bewildered and will seem to be left without yourself if they should pass away from you.

With me riches occupy a certain place, but with you they occupy the highest place of all. In the end, my riches belong to me, but you belong to your riches.

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 22 (tr Stewart)

We will indeed find good people who also happen to be wealthy, though we may not immediately recognize them. We are so used to being impressed with the appearance of prosperity that we often fail to look to the character beneath. The money itself isn’t really praiseworthy at all, but what someone may do with it certainly can be.

I had the honor of knowing a fellow who had made a massive fortune in business, and who once offered to write a blank check to a small college that was trying to recover from years of mismanagement.

There were certain conditions, however, and they were not negotiable. No, he wasn’t asking that a building be named after him, or for an honorary degree, or any tax perks. Instead, he asked that the gift, which could easily have ended up being in the tens of millions, be completely anonymous, that the top-heavy administration be cleaned up, that tuition remain low enough for working families to afford, that faculty and staff receive a fair wage, and that the school stick to its mission of helping young people learn to think, not just getting them entry-level jobs.

Each and every one of those requirements revealed character, because they came from a commitment to the true purpose of liberal arts learning and a respect for human dignity. It wasn’t just about giving money, but about using it to encourage human excellence.

The college administration refused his offer, and it was easy to see why. They surely felt that it threatened their own power, and they probably assumed the donor was interested in the same sort of empire building that they were. What they failed to see was that not everyone placed wealth in the same position that they did.

You will recognize in what sort of esteem a man holds money by looking beyond the possessions themselves. Remove all the trappings and look at the soul within him. What does he value, and what is his purpose? Does he rule over his property with wisdom and fairness, or does his property rule him through vanity and greed? If you took away all the prosperity, would you find just an empty shell of man, now completely lost without all his fine playthings, or would you find a commitment to character that doesn’t ebb and flow with the fickle circumstances of the world?

I have known both sorts of people, and I have gradually learned that our own dignity will rise or fall by whether we give priority to virtue or to possessions. Wealth that is not in the service of justice will only enslave us.

51. Honorably come by, and honorably spent

Cease, then, forbidding philosophers to possess money; no one has condemned wisdom to poverty.

The philosopher may own ample wealth, but will not own wealth that which has been torn from another, or which is stained with another's blood. His must be obtained without wronging any man, and without its being won by base means; it must be alike honorably come by and honorably spent, and must be such as spite alone could shake its head at.

Raise it to whatever figure you please, it will still be an honorable possession, if, while it includes much which every man would like to call his own, there be nothing which any one can say is his own.

Such a man will not forfeit his right to the favor of Fortune, and will neither boast of his inheritance nor blush for it if it was honorably acquired. Yet he will have something to boast of, if he throw his house open, let all his countrymen come among his property, and say, "If any one recognizes here anything belonging to him, let him take it."

What a great man, how excellently rich will he be, if after this speech he possesses as much as he had before! I say, then, that if he can safely and confidently submit his accounts to the scrutiny of the people, and no one can find in them any item upon which he can lay hands, such a man may boldly and unconcealedly enjoy his riches. . . .

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 23 (tr Stewart)

Never blame wealth for the abuses of bad men. Blame bad men for the abuses of wealth.

Fortune may offer us all sorts of benefits, but what will make all the difference is how we came to acquire them, and how we proceed to use them. Just as you will be able to discern a man’s character when he is in a state of loss, you will also be able to discern his character when he is in a state of plenty.

I suspect that some of us resent wealth because we do not have it, but the solution to this is recognizing that it isn’t the wealth that will ever make us happy. Others of us are disgusted by wealth because we see the vices of so many people who are given much, but the solution to this is recognizing that we should rather be disgusted by the vices.

Have we won fortune with justice, and are we spending it with justice? This means more than simply having worked hard, or worked cleverly, for a reward, and it means more than just having the appearance of respectability. Justice always demands that we never take more than we deserve, and we never give less than another deserves. Justice may even be tempered with mercy and charity, and we can then take less than we deserve, and give more than another deserves.

Too many of us take for granted what we inherit, we confuse earning with stealing, and we are wasteful with what we possess. We are outraged when someone takes what we think is ours, but we call it good business when we take what belongs to others. Now getting angry about this will change nothing, but starting to show love to my neighbor is the beginning of a cure.

I adore Seneca’s challenge to throw open our coffers to any rightful claimants, though I wonder who would do so with integrity. We fear our rivals and competitors because we know full well that we have wronged them. Though our gains are often ill-gotten, nothing need stop us from giving back what we have taken. It starts with changing our own thinking about what is true and good, and proceeds through action inspired by giving and receiving honorably.

52. Giving to good men

. . . The wise man will not allow a single ill-won penny to cross his threshold, yet he will not refuse or close his door against great riches, if they are the gift of fortune and the product of virtue.

What reason has he for grudging them good quarters? Let them come and be his guests. He will neither brag of them nor hide them away: the one is the part of a silly, the other of a cowardly and paltry spirit, which, as it were, muffles up a good thing in its lap.

Neither will he, as I said before, turn them out of his house, for what will he say? Will he say, "You are useless," or "I do not know how to use riches?" As he is capable of performing a journey upon his own feet, but yet would prefer to mount a carriage, just so he will be capable of being poor, yet will wish to be rich; he will own wealth, but will view it as an uncertain possession which will someday fly away from him. He will not allow it to be a burden either to himself or to any one else.

He will give it—why do you prick up your ears? Why do you open your pockets?—he will give it either to good men or to those whom it may make into good men.

He will give it after having taken the utmost pains to choose those who are fittest to receive it, as becomes one who bears in mind that he ought to give an account of what he spends as well as of what he receives.

He will give for good and commendable reasons, for a gift ill bestowed counts as a shameful loss. He will have an easily opened pocket, but not one with a hole in it, so that much may be taken out of it, yet nothing may fall out of it.

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 23 (tr Stewart)

I imagine the Rome of Seneca’s time was quite similar to our own day and age, with people rushing about trying to gain as much money, status, and influence for themselves as they possibly could. Friends readily became nothing but tools for advancement, and profit held sway over justice. It would be easy to assume at first that Seneca is condoning such a life, simply because he is saying we may prefer to be rich, but his argument has always pointed in a very different direction, and he is as disturbed by greed and an attachment to wealth as much as any other Stoic.

Seneca’s discussion of money can be readily broadened to include any of the circumstances of Fortune, and is not just about how much we possess, but also about our relation to all of our external conditions. Vanity will encourage us to define ourselves by Fortune, but it is also cowardly to neglect Fortune. The key lies in treating Fortune rightly, never as an end, but always as an indifferent means, always expecting it to come and go, and ordering all of our efforts toward our only true end, wisdom and virtue alone.

My thinking on priorities will profoundly alter the way I receive things, and the way I give them away. Notice the humorous way the greedy man immediately thinks he is worthy of being given something, because he can conceive of no other purpose in the world.

Many people also think that the appearance of their own character depends on how much they give, and that they are seen to be doing it. But the quantities involved, and the esteem gained by giving, are never the point. The captain of industry is not better for giving millions of dollars than the minimum wage worker who puts a single dollar in the collection box. The only thing that could make them different is to whom they are giving, and why they are giving.

What do I hope to see, so to speak, as the return for my investment? Am I giving to increase my own position, or because it makes me feel satisfied with myself, or in expectation of a favor in return? If my answer is expressed in terms of other pieces of Fortune, this is not giving, but shuffling around those pieces on the board of the marketplace. I am only bartering and trading one circumstance for another.

But if my answer is expressed in genuinely human terms, in terms of how my gifts of Fortune can assist people to know the truth more fully and love the good more deeply, then I am on the right track. I should try to give of myself so that others can in turn be more fully themselves. The balance sheet of life is a moral one, not a financial one, and I should give to people who are already good, or who can be helped to become good.

Aristotle argued that every virtue, guided by wisdom, is a mean between the extremes of excess and deficiency. Generosity is by definition never selfish, and is also never blind or thoughtless. It rests between stinginess and wastefulness, and requires, as Seneca says, having an open pocket, but not a pocket with a hole. The good man cannot help but give, because his acts of virtue are all that he truly has, and he looks not to how much he spends, but how his spending helps others to be better.

53. The difficulties of giving

He who believes giving to be an easy matter, is mistaken. It offers very great difficulties, if we bestow our bounty rationally, and do not scatter it impulsively and at random.

I do this man a service, and I need a good turn done me by that one. I help this other, because I pity him. This man, again, I teach that he is not a fit object for poverty to hold down or degrade.

I shall not give some men anything, although they are in want, because, even if I do give to them they will still be in want. I shall proffer my bounty to some, and shall forcibly thrust it upon others. I also cannot be neglecting my own interests while I am doing this.

At no time do I make more people in my debt than when I am giving things away. "What?" say you, "do you give that you may receive again?" At any rate I do not give that I may throw my bounty away. What I give should be so placed that although I cannot ask for its return, yet it can be given back to me. . . .

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 24 (tr Stewart)

Back when I was still in Boston, working in social services, one of the priests who ran the agency was affectionately known for always being late in the morning. This wasn’t because he was lazy, but because he was still one of those priests who proudly wore his clerical collar, and this meant that he would be constantly approached by the needy and homeless in the streets for assistance. He took this duty seriously, and we would often not see him until the afternoon.

His method of offering help was, however, not what one might expect. If he was asked for money to get food or clothes, he would never give money, but offered to buy someone a meal, or provide him with new shoes and a coat.

This was his way of estimating character. He knew that those who became angry with him had other intentions in mind, but he would always encourage those who were willing, and even those who appeared hesitant. He would often take someone to breakfast, get to know him, and then suggest different options for finding shelter, meals, medical assistance, and work. Many of these people became our clients, and many became our friends.

The priest gave in charity, because he gave all of himself, even as the lawyers and bankers at the train stations looked the other way. He also realized that giving to others must be reasonable and responsible, always keeping in mind not just the act of giving, but how the gift would assist someone to be a better human being.

Sometimes, the people he met would be a bit dumbstruck, and awkwardly express that they would always be in his debt. Again, his words were perhaps unusual.

“Yes,” he would say, “You are in my debt. But you don’t need to give me anything. I hope that one day, however, when you have more, you choose to give to someone else, or maybe even to me, if you see me where you were just now.”

I think he understood he had an interest in how his generosity was used, just as Seneca did, and I know he was scolded for being selfish, just as Seneca was. “See! It turns out you just want to get something in return!”

Of course I have an interest, but it is not the interest of the greedy man. I should not wish to be wasteful, but to see benefit from what has been shared. For me, that benefit should be the knowledge that I have helped another to practice virtue, that I would like to see him share for himself, and that I would be glad if he also shared with me. I hope another man will act well toward me, as I acted well toward him, but I can hardly ever force him to do so. Love is a choice.

A bad man expects repayment, but a good man is only grateful to receive it. A bad man expects a return for his own profit, but a good man is happy to see the return in the profit of another. A gift is only a gift when it is freely offered, and never when it is demanded.

Seneca’s adversary earlier accused him of wanting to be rich, and now accuses him of wanting to be compensated. The response to the former also applies to the latter. I should never desire or expect to be wealthy, though I may prefer it. I should never desire or expect to be repaid, though I may prefer it. Self-interest can simply be for the self to do what is good, while selfishness is only to do what is good for the self.

54. A field of freehandedness

. . . A benefit should be invested in the same manner as a treasure buried deep in the earth, which you would not dig up unless actually obliged.

Why, what opportunities of conferring benefits the mere house of a rich man affords! For who considers generous behavior due only to those who wear the toga? Nature bids me do good to mankind—what difference does it make whether they be slaves or freemen, free-born or emancipated, whether their freedom be legally acquired or bestowed by arrangement among friends?

Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for a benefit. Consequently, money may be distributed even within one's own threshold, and a field may be found there for the practice of freehandedness, which is not so called because it is our duty towards free men, but because it takes its rise in a freeborn mind.

In the case of the wise man, this never falls upon base and unworthy recipients, and never becomes so exhausted as not, whenever it finds a worthy object, to flow as if its store was undiminished. . . .

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 24 (tr Stewart)

Those who are of the selfish sort treat any benefit simply as one half of an exchange, and will constantly demand their payment, with interest. I learned the hard way that friendship is often twisted into a transaction that continues only as long as there is a profitable return. Those who are of the giving sort will also invest, not for their own gain, but for the gain of others, and they seek assistance only when in need.

Similarly, he who lives by Fortune will only grant benefits to those who are fortunate, those who wear the toga, because he wishes to share in their worldly prosperity. The man who is poor, sick, or weak is of no interest to him. But he who lives by Nature, by the merit of his own good deeds alone, has a much wider field to work in, because each and every person is an opportunity for giving benefit. Any man, whatever his position or circumstance, is of interest and concern to him.

The concepts of benefit, favor, or patronage only take on sinister tones in the hands of sinister folks. I remember someone in Boston who was in principle a Republican, but would only contribute money to campaigns by Democrats. This was because the Republicans were rarely elected in that state, and they could hardly provide a civil service promotion in return for the support. That is how favors, and politics, get a bad name.

No, those worthy of a benefit are all of those who will employ it to improve their own character, rich or poor, healthy or sick, powerful or weak, though it will be most needed by those who are poor, sick, or weak. Its return is measured by how an act of charity will permit others the means for further acts of charity, and there is wisdom to the old saying that kindness should always be passed on. It may even return back to its source.

What Seneca calls freehandedness is not free because it is only given to other free men, but because it comes from the conviction of someone who is free in his own thinking, who is his own master, and therefore not bound like a slave to the service of his circumstances.

The good man will sow freely in his field, though he is a fool to sow on barren ground. He farms not merely for his profit, but to feed people, friends and strangers alike.

55. The student and the master

. . . You have, therefore, no grounds for misunderstanding the honorable, brave, and spirited language that you hear from those who are studying wisdom, and first of all observe this, that a student of wisdom is not the same thing as a man who has made himself perfect in wisdom.

The former will say to you, "In my talk I express the most admirable sentiments, yet I am still weltering amid countless ills. You must not force me to act up to my rules; at the present time I am forming myself, molding my character, and striving to rise myself to the height of a great example. If I should ever succeed in carrying out all that I have set myself to accomplish, you may then demand that my words and deeds should correspond."

But he who has reached the summit of human perfection will deal otherwise with you, and will say, "In the first place, you have no business to allow yourself to sit in judgment upon your betters."

I have already obtained one proof of my righteousness, in having become an object of dislike to bad men. However, to give you a rational answer, which I grudge to no man, listen to what I declare, and at what price I value all things.

Riches, I say, are not a good thing, for if they were, they would make men good. Now since that which is found even among bad men cannot be termed good, I do not allow them to be called so.

Nevertheless, I admit that they are desirable and useful and contribute great comforts to our lives.

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 24 (tr Stewart)

Those who despise a life measured by virtue will immediately condemn those of us who struggle to live well. They will attack our weakness, and not the strength of what we seek. They will tell us how often we fail, while ignoring the very thing we are working toward. They revel in our imperfection, even as we try to make ourselves better.

To say that the goal cannot be achieved because I have not yet achieved it is much like saying that a journey is pointless because it has not yet been completed. Do not be deceived. Those who discourage you from what is true and good in life do so precisely because they are convinced that the things they possess define them. They mock you because they think life is about wealth and recognition, they degrade you because they think that life is about power and influence, and they mistreat you because they think that life is about conflict and conquest.

They are misguided, because they assume that wealth or power are themselves good things, failing to see that they can only become good when directed by wisdom and virtue. Money can be very harmful, since it can be abused, but virtue is always beneficial, since it always gives right purpose to what is used.

Do not fight on their terms. Love them, and teach them what is right, in word and by example. You will often think that you have failed, but you have already succeeded within yourself just by acting with charity in the face of hatred.

I have absolutely no right to consider myself better than any other man, because I am not yet a good man. I hope and pray that I may one day be so. In the meantime, I would prefer assistance to rejection. I am learning, step by painful step, to extract myself from the illusion that being rich in the world will make me good in my soul.

Yet I have known others who are indeed wise and good, and they are priceless examples to follow. I have often found such people in the most unlikely of places. They are rarely recognized for what they are, because most of us are still working from a clouded perspective on life. You will see no glamor, no sales pitch, and no vanity. You will see only a humble and faithful commitment to character. You will see someone who cares about you for your sake, and nothing more.

Don’t condemn the student because he is not yet a master. The student is striving to be a master, simply by learning to rule himself. The student will know he has become a master when he sees everything through the eyes of Nature, not through the demands of Fortune. Then he may rightly say that he is better.

56. No unlucky days

Learn, then, since we both agree that riches are desirable, what my reason is for counting them among good things, and in what respects I should behave differently to you if I possessed them.

Place me as master in the house of a very rich man. Place me where gold and silver plate is used for the commonest purposes. I shall not think more of myself because of things, which even though they are in my house, they are yet not a part of me.

Take me away to the wooden bridge and put me down there among the beggars. I shall not despise myself because I am sitting among those who hold out their hands for alms. For what can the lack of a piece of bread matter to one who does not lack the power of dying?

Well, then? I prefer the magnificent house to the beggar's bridge. Place me among magnificent furniture and all the appliances of luxury. I shall not think myself any happier because my cloak is soft, because my guests rest upon purple.

Change the scene. I shall be no more miserable if my weary head rests upon a bundle of hay, or if I lie upon a cushion from the circus, with all the stuffing on the point of coming out through its patches of threadbare cloth.

Well, then? I prefer, as far as my feelings go, to show myself in public dressed in woolen and in robes of office, rather than with naked or half-covered shoulders. I should like every day's business to turn out just as I wish it to do, and new congratulations to be constantly following upon the former ones.

Yet I will not pride myself upon this. Change all this good fortune for its opposite, let my spirit be distracted by losses, grief, various kinds of attacks. Let no hour pass without some dispute. I shall not on this account, though beset by the greatest miseries, call myself the most miserable of beings, nor shall I curse any particular day, for I have taken care to have no unlucky days. . . .

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 25 (tr Stewart)

I must admit that I sometimes feel baffled by Seneca on virtue and fortune. I know that I must be indifferent to wealth, but I also know that I may prefer it, and it seems strange that I can both despise and desire one and the same thing. It isn’t just the terminology that can get in the way, but a sense that the entire process of moral judgment is a precarious balancing act between conscience and convenience.

I then recognize, however, that this appearance of tension arises only because I am still confused about the nature of what is valuable. Virtue and fortune do not differ in their degree, but they are rather completely different in kind, and if I think that I’m doing well by caring more about my character, and bit less about my possessions, I’m actually well off the mark. I should rather care only for my character, and nothing at all for my possessions. Now my circumstances will become useful or preferable only if they can assist my practice of virtue, and it is my proper use of them that will give them any value. The means must be totally subservient to the end.

My feelings may prefer wealth to poverty, or ease to difficulty, but this should in no way affect my happiness, which relies exclusively upon my own actions. If I believe I am slightly happier because I have a good job, or slightly more miserable because I am sick, then I misunderstand what it means to be happy, and I am mixing up preference and principle.

My happiness will depend upon whether I care about the right things. This revolves around understanding that my nature is defined by what I do, not by what happens to me. As soon as I can grasp this, I will no longer worry about my fortune for its own sake, and I will no longer try balancing conscience and convenience. I will hardly be miserable if I lose something that doesn’t matter to me.

For most of us, trying to give value to both virtue and circumstance results in an unfitting compromise, and quite often means the surrender of the former to the latter. There no can be no half measures. Stoic self-reliance will only seem heartless if our hearts are in the wrong place, and continue to love the wrong things.

I can then begin to realize that no circumstance is in itself good or bad, unless I make it so, and that no day is lucky or unlucky, because luck does not determine me, but rather I determine what I will do with luck. The Universe is hardly random, of course, since everything in Nature is in its place for a purpose, and what we call luck is really only in our perception. I will learn to see that any luck, any circumstance, whether or not I may prefer it, is always an opportunity for benefit. Not all luck will increase my fortune, but it can always be a means to improve my character.

57. A Conqueror or a captive?

. . . What, then, is the upshot of all this? It is that I prefer to have to regulate joys than to stifle sorrows. The great Socrates would say the same thing to you.

 "Make me," he would say, "the conqueror of all nations. Let the voluptuous car of Bacchus bear me in triumph to Thebes from the rising of the sun. Let the kings of the Persians receive laws from me. Yet I shall still feel myself to be a man even at the very moment when all around salute me as a god.

“Straightway, connect this lofty height with a headlong fall into misfortune. Let me be placed upon a foreign chariot that I may grace the triumph of a proud and savage conqueror. I will follow another's car with no more humility than I showed when I stood in my own.”

What then? In spite of all this, I would rather be a conqueror than a captive. I despise the whole dominion of Fortune, but still, if I were given my choice, I would choose its better parts. . . .

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 25 (tr Stewart)

I would indeed gladly choose pleasure over pain, comfort over suffering, but I can only free myself from slavery to preferences when I begin to see that all of my circumstances should be in the service of right action. Give me what is easier, but I should be just as willing, and just as proud, to face what is harder.

I have long been in awe and wonder at the Gospel scene of the Agony in the Garden. I imagine people of many faiths and cultures can surely appreciate both the pain and difficulty of such a decision, as well as the love and humility of the choice that was made. From Matthew 26:36-39:

Then Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, “Sit here, while I go yonder and pray.” And taking with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, he began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then he said to them, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here, and watch with me.” And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt.”

My own struggles have never been about the redemption of humanity, but they have been hard enough to bear. I made poor choices about attachments, and paid many years of consequences for them. They were life-defining mistakes. I often wish none of it had ever happened, but I then also realize that the pain was what led to the only things that are now good within me. Give me contentment over loss, but not at the expense of my soul.

As much as I might like to be driving the chariot of a conquering king, can I still learn to be a decent and happy man if I am paraded about as a vanquished captive? Can I be humble and righteous both in victory and in defeat?

Kipling always said it so well:

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same. . .

58. Spurs and curbs

. . . I shall make whatever befalls me become a good thing, but I prefer that what befalls me should be comfortable and pleasant, and unlikely to cause me annoyance. For you need not suppose that any virtue exists without labor, but some virtues need spurs, while others need the curb.

As we have to check our body on a downward path, and to urge it to climb a steep one, so also the path of some virtues leads downhill, that of others uphill.

Can we doubt that patience, courage, constancy, and all the other virtues that have to meet strong opposition, and to trample Fortune under their feet, are climbing, struggling, and winning their way up a steep ascent?

Why! Is it not equally evident that generosity, moderation, and gentleness glide easily downhill? With the latter we must hold in our spirit, lest it run away with us, with the former we must urge and spur it on.

We ought, therefore, to apply these energetic, combative virtues to poverty, and to riches those other more thrifty ones that trip lightly along, and merely support their own weight. This being the distinction between them, I would rather have to deal with those that I can practice in comparative quiet, than those that can only be a trial trial through blood and sweat.

"Wherefore," says the sage, "I do not talk one way and live another, but you do not rightly understand what I say. The sound of my words alone reaches your ears, but you do not try to find out their meaning."

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 25 (tr Stewart)

Sometimes I need to push myself forward, and sometimes I need to hold myself back. Virtue always consists in the mean or balance between too little and too much, and will therefore need either drive or restraint to find the mark.

I understand Seneca’s point immediately, because it is a common pattern. Just as it is easier to go downhill than it is to go uphill, there is less effort in withholding force than applying more. Now some virtues demand that we drive ourselves on, and others that we rein ourselves in. Fortitude, for example, requires that we push forward, while temperance requires that we pull back.

This can also apply to having greater or lesser gifts of fortune. Having more and spending less is a far easier thing than having less and acquiring more. A preference for the former should make perfect sense.

Here I confront a difficulty, though it has far less to do with the truth of Seneca’s general observation that the quirks of my own temperament. Aristotle argued that while the mean of virtue tends to be similar for all of us, the mean for a certain individual might rest in a rather different place, depending on disposition or habit. If I am already a forceful person, fortitude may require me to curb myself from recklessness rather than spur myself out of cowardice. If I am already satisfied with too little, temperance may require me to spur myself out of self-denial rather than curb myself from gluttony.

Now Seneca has repeatedly argued that wealth is preferable to poverty, because it is better to work with more than with less, and as a rule he is quite right. Yet I have found that my personal tendencies often seem to work in the opposite way. This isn’t because Seneca has it backwards, because, as Aristotle said, there will be exceptions on both sides of what is most common. I suspect I’m the one who has it a bit backwards.

I regularly find it harder to restrain myself from excess and easier to drive myself out of deficiency. When more is given to me, I usually make less of it, and when less is given to me, I have better success at making more of it. This hardly means I enjoy having less, but I meet a far greater resistance when I have more.

Some horses are easier to rein in and other horses are easier to drive on. I am that second kind of horse. I am happier with the wind in my face than at my back.

Perhaps if someone is already bit more practiced in virtue, someone like a Seneca, pulling back is easier than pushing forward. I am still a beginner, and work best when I struggle through something. Hopefully when I have found my right balance, I can start coasting instead of climbing. Right now, I will tend to fall flat on my face when I go downhill.

59. Prepared for the siege

"What difference, then, is there between me, who is a fool, and you, who are a wise man?"

All the difference in the world: for riches are slaves in the house of a wise man, but masters in that of a fool. You accustom yourself to them and cling to them as if somebody had promised that they should be yours forever, but a wise man never thinks so much about poverty as when he is surrounded by riches.

No general ever trusts so implicitly in the maintenance of peace as not to make himself ready for a war, which, though it may not actually be waged, has nevertheless been declared. You are rendered over-proud by a fine house, as though it could never be burned or fall down, and your heads are turned by riches as though they were beyond the reach of all dangers and were so great that Fortune has not sufficient strength to swallow them up.

You sit idly playing with your wealth and do not foresee the perils in store for it, as savages generally do when besieged, for, not understanding the use of siege artillery, they look on idly at the labors of the besiegers and do not understand the object of the machines which they are putting together at a distance.

And this is exactly what happens to you. You go to sleep over your property, and never reflect how many misfortunes loom menacingly around you on all sides, and soon will plunder you of costly spoils, but if one takes away riches from the wise man, one leaves him still in possession of all that is his: for he lives happy in the present, and without fear for the future. . . .

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 26 (tr Stewart)

Seneca has explained that fortune, which expands to include our money, power, and fame, will hardly define who we are, though our attitude toward fortune will make all the difference. The wise man never lets himself be entrapped by his surroundings, but depends only on the merits of his own thoughts and actions. It is when we attach ourselves to things, when we desire to form ourselves by what is outside of us, that we become fools.

The wise man has long prepared himself for the loss of any of his fortune, because its absence will make him no different than he already is. The fool thinks of nothing else, and so cannot even imagine himself separated from his position and his belongings.

I have known many people who are the fools Seneca describes, and at times I have been one of them myself. Having dedicated everything they are to their worldly achievements, there is nothing left underneath the layers of acquisitions, no self-reliance, no convictions, and no integrity. I have often thought of it like people who cannot conceive of their own appearance without cosmetics or fine clothes, and who would never leave home without such vain trappings.

The military analogy is an appropriate one, for the fool does not even recognize the enemy at all, and he has no idea what power is arrayed against him. He is weak and unprepared, because he will not know how to confront his emptiness when fortune, the foe he once assumed was always a friend, turns on him.

The lover of fortune may tell himself that he is secure, since he will make certain to always keep a hold of what he says he possesses. He cannot assure this, of course, because he is already a slave to his circumstances, and he has never really acquired anything at all, but let us, for the sake of argument, say that he manages to be rich, powerful, and praised for his whole life. Has he not now come out on top? As we used to say in the 1980’s, he who dies with the most toys wins.

What he does not understand is that the damage will not be done after he loses his fortune, but it was done long before, when he entered into her bondage. It may only become clear to him much later that he surrendered responsibility for himself the moment he sold his virtue for riches. Like any Faustian bargain, the true cost was tragically overlooked.

The outcome of the siege was decided well before it began, by whether I was prepared or unprepared to defend the content of my character.

60. Principles and prejudices

. . . 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.

61. Silence over show

. . . But although this conduct of yours does not hurt me, yet, for your own sake, I advise you, respect virtue. Believe those who having long followed her call, that what they follow is a thing of might, and daily appears mightier.

Reverence her as you would the gods, and reverence her followers as you would the priests of the gods, and whenever any mention of sacred writings is made, favor us with your tongues. Favor is not derived, as most people imagine, from applause, but commands silence, so that divine service may be performed without being interrupted by any words of evil omen. It is much more necessary that you should be ordered to do this so that whenever utterance is made by that oracle, you may listen to it with attention and in silence.

Whenever anyone beats a sistrum, pretending to do so by divine command, anyone proficient in grazing his own skin covers his arms and shoulders with blood from light cuts, anyone crawls on his knees howling along the street, or any old man clad in linen comes forth in daylight with a lamp and laurel branch and cries out that one of the gods is angry, you crowd round him and listen to his words, and each increases the other's dumb amazement by declaring him to be divinely inspired!

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 26 (tr Stewart)

There are times for making a joyful sound, but I have always thought that respect is best practiced in silence. This is not just a question of good manners, but rather an expression of humility in the face of what we hold dear. If I am full of sound and fury, I hear only my own words, and I draw attention only to my own spectacle. I am hardly pointing to what is greater than myself, and I am only trying to make myself greater. I am unable to listen over my own noise.

Virtue is worthy of reverence, because it is the path to our happiness. Virtue is also divine, not only in a poetic sense, but by participating in the unity of all that is good. Man improves himself through his own judgment and action, by so doing he plays his special part in the perfection of the whole of Nature, and thereby he shows his reverence to Providence.

We will recognize those who seek virtue by the way they empty themselves of all diversion, just as we will recognize those who shun virtue by the way they fill themselves with vanity. Part of my daily struggle is to listen more than I speak, to give more than I receive, and to show respect instead of demanding it.

Making a show of things can so easily become an act of arrogance. When I was in college, I remember that far too many of the students in the Honors Program were less interested in learning, and more interested in constantly speaking about how much they already knew. When I went to work, I saw the domination of those gifted at glorifying themselves. When I have tried to worship, I see far more performance than I do piety.

I have already wasted too much of my life deluded by appearances, and neglecting the improvement of my own heart and mind. I thought for too long that beautiful things, things worthy of admiration, had to be exciting to the senses and enticing to the passions. I was ignoring that a person is beautiful because of character, not because of display.

Practicing the art of silent reverence can be quite demanding in a world so full of flashy images, constantly telling us to pose and consume, but I find more and more that I can’t love virtue if I am distracted by mere impressions.

62. A trial of strength

Behold! From that prison of his, which by entering he cleansed from shame and rendered more honorable than any senate house, Socrates addresses you, saying:

“What is this madness of yours? What is this disposition, at war alike with gods and men, which leads you to defame virtue and to outrage holiness with malicious accusations? Praise good men, if you are able. If not, pass them by in silence. If indeed you take pleasure in this offensive abusiveness, fall foul of one another, for when you rave against Heaven, I do not say that you commit sacrilege, but you waste your time.

“I once afforded Aristophanes with the subject of a jest, and since then all the crew of comic poets have made me a mark for their venomous wit. My virtue has been made to shine more brightly by the very blows which have been aimed at it, for it is to its advantage to be brought before the public and exposed to temptation, nor do any people understand its greatness more than those who by their assaults have made trial of its strength.

“The hardness of flint is known to none so well as to those who strike it. I offer myself to all attacks, like some lonely rock in a shallow sea, which the waves never cease to beat upon from whatever quarter they may come, but which they cannot thereby move from its place, nor yet wear away, for however many years they may unceasingly dash against it.

“Leap upon me, rush upon me, I will overcome you by enduring your onset. Whatever strikes against that which is firm and unconquerable merely injures itself by its own violence. Therefore, seek some soft and yielding object to pierce with your darts.” . . .

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 27 (tr Stewart)

I have often felt very weak, because I have never been terribly good at defeating others, either in mind or in body. I am quite wrong to think this, however, since having power over others is hardly strength at all. Strength is actually in having power over oneself.

I once read a newspaper article about someone I had known in my younger days, who was quoted as saying: “I pursue every opportunity, and I take what I want.” This saddened me, because I expected better. Success is not in taking what I want, but in wanting to give so I can be better. Conquest is hardly the pursuit of a noble opportunity.

My feelings have always bruised far too easily, so I also thought I would not even be any good at ruling myself. My mistake was that I assumed being strong required hardening my emotions, or disposing of them entirely. I have seen many people I cared for do precisely that, and they became convinced they were strong because they were now cold and heartless.

No, it isn’t about not feeling, or not caring. It isn’t about stifling my emotions, but rather about allowing my reason to make the best use of those emotions. Socrates was attacked and abused over and over, and I have no doubt that he must have felt pain. What he managed to do was to take the offense, and to transform the attempt to harm him into a means for building his virtue.

I will only succumb to the feelings of being rejected or dismissed if I allow them to rule me. Throw an obstacle in the way of my judgment and choice, and yes, it will cause be pain, but it need not cause me harm. Like a muscle that is strengthened through repeated exercise, you only give me the chance to become stronger in my convictions. By doing wrong, you give me more opportunity to do right. If you must tempt me to be angry, or to strike back in return, I can decide all the more to love instead of hate. You have made yourself weaker, and helped me to be stronger, by foolishly trying to destroy me.

Can a bully steal my lunch money, can a friend abandon me, can a lawyer leave me penniless, and can a tyrant take my life? Of course, but those aren’t the things that matter. Socrates was not weak in prison because he lost his case, but rather he was strong in prison because his spirit was unconquerable.

63. Pimples and ulcers

. . . But have you leisure to peer into other men's evil deeds and to sit in judgment upon anybody? To ask how it is that this philosopher has so roomy a house, or that one has so good a dinner? Do you look at other people's pimples while yon yourselves are covered with countless ulcers? This is as though one who was eaten up by the mange were to point with scorn at the moles and warts on the bodies of the handsomest men.

Reproach Plato with having sought for money, reproach Aristotle with having obtained it, Democritus with having disregarded it, Epicurus with having spent it. Cast Phaedrus and Alcibiades in my own teeth, you who reach the height of enjoyment whenever you get an opportunity of imitating our vices!

Why do you not rather cast your eyes around yourselves at the ills that tear you to pieces on every side, some attacking you from without, some burning in your own chests? However little you know your own place, mankind has not yet come to such a place that you can have leisure to wag your tongues to the reproach of your betters.

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 27 (tr Stewart)

It often seems so easy to diminish others and to elevate ourselves, perhaps because we think the diminishing is the very means for the elevating. I know this not simply from observing others, but from being brutally honest about myself.

We rarely recognize our own hypocrisy, because we ignorantly but genuinely work from the premise that there are indeed different rules for ourselves and for others. We might feel ashamed to say this to others, but we hardly feel guilty about thinking it to ourselves.

If I have already begun by thinking that my own satisfaction is the measure of all things, I will never recognize myself in others, or be called to serve them, but I will rather see them only as a means to my own end. You must make yourself better, but I was already good to begin with. The pimple on your face is obviously an outrage, even as the ulcer on my own is actually quite handsome, thank you.

I can only overcome such a contradiction of character if I grasp the role of human nature within all of Nature. My own humanity, as a being made to know the truth and to love what is good, is never inherently in conflict with the humanity of others, which, for all of our different circumstances, is essentially the same as mine.

I will only cure myself when I look at another, and I see myself. I can only love when I am willing to humbly give of myself for others. I can only be just if I am able to offer respect no differently than I ask it to be given.

We often hear that we should not judge, but I suggest that we must rightly distinguish. To make a judgment is to determine the true from the false, and to make a judgment more specifically about morals is to determine the right from the wrong. Remove these, and you remove the very guides that inform all human actions. Relativism is an unintelligible excuse for neglecting objective accountability.

Instead, we abuse judgment when we pursue it with a double standard, and when we pursue it with malice. By all means, judge the good from the bad, but do not judge others any differently than you judge yourself. By all means, separate right from wrong, but do not correct others to make them look worse, but so that you might help them to become better. There is a world of difference between the man who judges with condemnation and the man who judges with compassion.

Above all else, I must never consider my responsibility for another before I have mastered my responsibility for myself. Specks in the eye or the temptations of adultery can certainly be harmful things, but they are hardly as harmful as when I expect others to do what I won’t do for myself.

64. A lofty standpoint

This you do not understand, and you bear a countenance that does not befit your condition, like many men who sit in the circus or the theater without having learned that their home is already in mourning.

But I, looking forward from a lofty standpoint, can see what storms are either threatening you, and will burst in torrents upon you somewhat later, or are close upon you and on the point of sweeping away all that you possess.

Why, though you are hardly aware of it, is there not a whirling hurricane at this moment spinning round and confusing your minds, making them seek and avoid the very same things, now raising them aloft and now dashing them below?

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 28 (tr Stewart)

The text of Seneca the Younger’s On the happy life abruptly ends here. I don’t know if the later sections were lost over the centuries, or if Seneca never finished them. I would certainly have liked to read more, but what has been given is already far more than enough. The philosopher has reminded me in so many ways to look at everything from a lofty standpoint, not with any sense of superiority, but with a broader perspective on how I should understand my own human condition in right relation to all other things.

If I view myself only narrowly, from the immediate confines of my fortune and amusements, I will never understand who I really am, why I am here, and what I have to live for. I will never grasp how much I have wasted, how I have harmed myself and done wrong to others, and how close I now am to having abandoned all of my blessings. I will be confused about what to love, and so I will pursue all the wrong things, and neglect all the right things. I will want what is bad for me, and therefore I will both crave it and curse it. I will just be throwing myself around blindly if I cannot distinguish between what is reliable and what is unreliable.

Yet if I seek the higher ground, and look at everything from above, what appeared jumbled and confounding will now reveal meaning and purpose. I will learn that I am not determined by my circumstances, but by the character of my own choices and actions. I will recognize that nothing external to me is good or bad unless I choose to make it so, and that every situation is an opportunity for becoming better. I will not replace a love for what is greater with a preference for what is lesser. I will embrace Nature as the measure of all that is good, and respect the place of all these things in the harmony of Providence.

I may have wanted to read more of Seneca’s book, but I don’t need to. So too in my own life, I may have wanted more time and more chances, but I don’t need them. What has been given is already far more than enough. I am very much mistaken if I think that living any longer, with more possessions, power, or recognition, will give me a better life. By all means, pass such things my way, but only my good use of them will make any difference at all. Even the briefest, simplest, most humble, and most unassuming life is sufficient to live with excellence. The good can die young, poor, and forgotten, because the good never need to become old, rich, and renowned.

I have been a teacher, a counselor, a bartender, a writer, and a quite reliable gofer, and sometimes I was even paid for it.

I have played music with an orchestra in a fancy concert hall, and with an Irish folk band behind chicken wire in the best dive bar in town.

I have paid for a new car in cash, and swept the house for loose change to buy lunch.

I bungled my way to a doctorate, and even became a questionably ordained minister. I display the diploma for the latter, but not for the former.

I wandered remote mountains in perfect contentment without seeing another soul for days, and I wandered the streets of big cities feeling completely alone surrounded by millions.

I have stood up to bullies and demagogues, and I have almost always lost the battles on their terms, but I have almost always won them on mine.

I have drunk the finest single malt from crystal, and rotgut from a paper bag. I learned that neither made me a better man, and often made me a worse one.

I briefly met Mother Teresa, and she spoke only a very few words to me that changed my life. I later met a murderer when I was working in prison ministry, who added a few more words that changed my life even more.

I have dug myself into the darkest holes, and grappled my way back up into warm sunlight. I have fallen down far too many times to count, but to this day I have always gotten back on my feet, however much the worse for wear.

Through it all, I became used to the Black Dog always nipping at my heels.

The most selfish person I ever knew broke my heart, and the most compassionate person I ever knew tried to help me mend it. 

I lost a child, and I tried to raise two more. I have no idea what will become of them, but I hope that they will always think for themselves, and that they will never lose their sense of what is good and beautiful.

Those were all quite wonderful, and sometimes even extraordinary, things to have. I am grateful for them, but I never needed them. I will welcome it if circumstance offers something else, but it would only be an encore. I don’t need more, I only need to make right of what I already am.

All I ever need to be happy is to make a decision, at any given moment, to depend upon the virtue of what I do, not upon what is done to me. Any kind of moment will suffice to do well.