Seneca was not merely a philosopher — he was a statesman, dramatist, and advisor in the brutal courts of imperial Rome. He wrote under pressure, under scrutiny, and often under threat. Yet his words remain startlingly alive.
There is a clarity in him — a fierceness without noise. He does not flatter the reader; he calls them upward. His wisdom is disciplined yet tender, demanding self-mastery while reminding us of our vastness and mortality.
Enjoy.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
The wise person, and likewise the seeker after wisdom, abides indeed within his body, yet with his better part is absent, turning his thoughts to higher things. Like one sworn into service, he thinks himself well paid if he but remains alive, and, due to his training, has neither love of life nor hatred of it, but endures this mortal time, though he knows of richer things to come.
Do you forbid me to gaze upon the universe? Do you pull me back from the whole and confine me to the part? Am I not to ask what are the beginnings of all things? Whose hand shaped the world? When all things were merged into one and weltering in inactive matter, who separated them?
Shall I not ask who is the craftsman of the universe itself? By what plan such vastness came to be ordered and regulated? Who collected what was scattered, separated what was mingled, apportioned visible form to all that lay in one vast and shapeless mass? What is the source of the mighty light that is shed upon us? Was it fire, or something brighter than fire? Shall I not ask these things?
Am I not to know whence I have descended? Whether I shall see this world but once, or be born many times? Where I shall go when I depart? What abodes are waiting for my spirit when it is released from the slavery of human life? Do you deny me my share of heaven — which is to say, do you bid me live with eyes cast downward?
Too great am I to be slave to my body; too great is that for which I was born. I regard the body as nothing but a shackle fastened around my freedom.
Therefore, I set it in the way of fortune as a hindrance, and do not allow any hurt to pass through it to me. This is the only thing in me that can suffer injury; in such vulnerable quarters does my free mind dwell. Never will this flesh compel me to cowardice; never to pretenses unworthy of a good person; never will I tell a lie merely to honor this paltry body of mine. When I see fit, I will break off my alliance with it; and even now, while we adhere to one another, that alliance will not be of equal standing: the mind will draw every privilege to itself. Disregard for one’s body is certain liberation.
You have plenty of spirit, I know. Even before you began to equip yourself with the teachings that bring health and conquer adversity, you felt that you were doing quite well against fortune — and all the more after you came to grips with it and tested your strength. One can never be sure of one’s strength until numerous difficulties have appeared on every side, or indeed until the moment when they have come quite close.
That is the way for the true mind to prove itself — the mind that yields to no judgment but its own. Fortune tests the spirit’s mettle. A boxer who has never suffered a beating cannot bring bold spirits to the match. It is the one who has seen his own blood, who has heard his teeth crunch under the fist, who has lost his footing and found himself spread-eagled beneath his opponent — the one who, though forced to yield, has never yielded in spirit, who after falling rises fiercer every time — that is the one who goes to the contest with vigorous hope.
Pursuing the analogy: just so has fortune often had the upper hand with you, and yet you have never surrendered. You have jumped up and stood still more boldly on your feet. For courage increases when it meets with a challenge.
All the same, accept from me, if you will, some few words to help you strengthen your defenses. More things frighten us than really affect us, and we are more often afflicted in thought than in fact. I mean this not in a lofty Stoic sense but in a simpler way. It is, of course, our belief that all those things that wring sighs and groans from people are minor matters and not worth deep distress.
But let us skip those great words — although they are true. My advice to you is this: do not be miserable before it is time. Those things you fear as if they were impending may never happen; certainly they have not happened yet. Some things torment us more than they should, some sooner than they should; and some torment us that should not do so at all. Either we add to our pain, or we make it up, or we get ahead of it.
I swell — I exult — I shake off my years and feel again the heat of youth each time I learn from your letters and from your actions how far you have surpassed even yourself. For you broke from the pack some time ago. If a farmer takes delight when a tree bears fruit, if a herdsman is pleased when his animals bear young, if one who sees a protégé reach adulthood feels as if it were his own coming of age, then how do you think a person feels when he has guided someone’s intellectual development and sees that immature mind grown up all at once?
I claim you as my own; you are my handiwork. It was I who laid hands upon you, having seen your potential, and encouraged you, set you in motion, and did not let you slow down but continued to spur you on — and I am doing that even now. But now I cheer you in the race, and you in return cheer for me.
“Why say more?” you ask. “I am willing all the time.”
That is most of it — and not only half, as the saying goes, “Well begun is half done.” This is something that depends upon the mind; so when one is willing to become good, goodness is in large part achieved.
Do you know what I mean by a good person? One who is complete; one who has been perfected; one who would not be made to do wrong by any force or any stricture. I foresee that you will be this good person, if you persevere, if you press on and make all your actions and words cohere and fit with one another, all struck from the same mold. If the actions are inconsistent, the mind has not been set to rights.
An excellent way to become acquainted with the two functions of your mind is to look upon your mind as a garden. You are a gardener, and you are planting seeds — thoughts — in your subconscious mind all day long, based upon your habitual thinking. As you sow in your subconscious mind, so shall you reap in your body and environment.
When your mind thinks correctly, when you understand truth, when the thoughts deposited in your subconscious mind are constructive, harmonious, and peaceful, the hidden power within you responds and brings about harmonious conditions, agreeable surroundings, and the best of things. When you begin to govern your thought processes, you may apply the powers of your inner life to any problem or difficulty. In other words, you consciously cooperate with the finite power and the governing law that orders all things
Conclusion:
And consider how he left this world.
Seneca did not merely write about courage and indifference to fortune — he was commanded to take his own life by Emperor Nero, and he met death with the same composure he preached. Calm, deliberate, unwavering. His final act was not a contradiction of his philosophy, but its fulfillment. (See image above after he cuts his own veins open.)
He died as he had lived — governed by reason, not fear.
That is his legacy: not words alone, but a life — and a death — that proved them true.
Sam Madlala
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