L. Annaeus Seneca on Benefits
make repayment at the wrong time is as bad as to be slow to do so at the
right time. My benefactor has entrusted his bounty to me: I ought not
to have any fears either on his behalf or on my own. He has a sufficient
security; he cannot lose it except he loses me--nay, not even if he
loses me. I have returned thanks to him for it--that is, I have requited
him. He who thinks too much about repaying a benefit must suppose that
his friend thinks too much about receiving repayment. Make no difficulty
about either course. If he wishes to receive his benefit back again,
let us return it cheerfully; if he prefers to leave it in our hands,
why should we dig up his treasure? why should we decline to be its
guardians? he deserves to be allowed to do whichever he pleases. As
for fame and reputation, let us regard them as matters which ought to
accompany, but which ought not to direct our actions.
BOOK VII.
I.
Be of good cheer, my Liberalis:
"Our port is close, and I will not delay,
Nor by digressions wander from the way."
This book collects together all that has been omitted, and in it, having
exhausted my subject, I shall consider not what I am to say, but what
there is which I have not yet said. If there be anything superfluous
in it, I pray you take it in good part, since it is for you that it is
superfluous. Had I wished to set off my work to the best advantage, I
ought to have added to it by degrees, and to have kept for the last that
part which would be eagerly perused even by a sated reader. However,
instead of this, I have collected together all that was essential in the
beginning; I am now collecting together whatever then escaped me; nor,
by Hercules, if you ask me, do I think that, after the rules which
govern our conduct have been stated, it is very much to the purpose to
discuss the other questions which have been raised more for the exercise
of our intellects than for the health of our minds. The cynic Demetrius,
who in my opinion was a great man even if compared with the greatest
philosophers, had an admirable saying about this, that one gained more
by having a few wise precepts ready and in common use than by learning
many without having them at hand. "The best wrestler," he would say, "is
not he who has learned thoroughly all the tricks and twists of the art,
which are seldom met with in actual wrestling, but he who has well and
carefully trained himself in one or two of them, and watches keenly for
an opportunity of practising them. It does not matter how many of them
he knows, if he knows enough to give him the victory; and so in
this subject of ours there are many points of interest, but few of
importance. You need not know what is the system of the ocean tides,
why each seventh year leaves its mark upon the human body, why the more
distant parts of a long portico do not keep their true proportion,
but seem to approach one another until at last the spaces between the
columns disappear, how it can be that twins are conceived separately,
though they are born together, whether both result from one, or each
from a separate act, why those whose birth was the same should have such
different fates in life, and dwell at the greatest possible distance
from one another, although they were born touching one another; it will
not do you much harm to pass over matters which we are not permitted to
know, and which we should not profit by knowing. Truths so obscure may
be neglected with impunity. [Footnote: The old saying, 'Truth lurks deep
in a well (or abyss).'] Nor can we complain that nature deals hardly
with us, for there is nothing which is hard to discover except those
things by which we gain nothing beyond the credit of having discovered
them; whatever things tend to make us better or happier are either
obvious or easily discovered. Your mind can rise superior to the
accidents of life, if it can raise itself above fears and not greedily
covet boundless wealth, but has learned to seek for riches within
itself; if it has cast out the fear of men and gods, and has learned
that it has not much to fear from man, and nothing to fear from God; if
by scorning all those things which make life miserable while they adorn
it, the mind can soar to such a height as to see clearly that death
cannot be the beginning of any trouble, though it is the end of many;
if it can dedicate itself to righteousness and think any path easy which
leads to it; if, being a gregarious creature, and born for the common
good, it regards the world as the universal home, if it keeps its
conscience clear towards God and lives always as though in public,
fearing itself more than other men, then it avoids all storms, it stands
on firm ground in fair daylight, and has brought to perfection its
knowledge of all that is useful and essential. All that remains serves
merely to amuse our leisure; yet, when once anchored in safety, the mind
may consider these matters also, though it can derive no strength, but
only culture from their discussion."
II. The above are the rules which my friend Demetrius bids him who would
make progress in philosophy to clutch with both hands, never to let
go, but to cling to them, and make them a part of himself, and by daily
meditation upon them to bring himself into such a state of mind, that
these wholesome maxims occur to him of their own accord, that wherever
he may be, they may straightway be ready for use when required, and
that the criterion of right and wrong may present itself to him without
delay. Let him know that nothing is evil except what is base, and
nothing good except what is honourable: let him guide his life by this
rule: let him both act and expect others to act in accordance with this
law, and let him regard those whose minds are steeped in indolence, and
who are given up to lust and gluttony, as the most pitiable of mankind,
no matter how splendid their fortunes may be. Let him say to himself,
"Pleasure is uncertain, short, apt to pall upon us, and the more eagerly
we indulge in it, the sooner we bring on a reaction of feeling against
it; we must necessarily afterwards blush for it, or be sorry for it,
there is nothing grand about it, nothing worthy of man's nature, little
lower as it is than that of the gods; pleasure is a low act, brought
about by the agency of our inferior and baser members, and shameful in
its result. True pleasure, worthy of a human being and of a man, is,
not to stuff or swell his body with food and drink, nor to excite lusts
which are least hurtful when they are most quiet, but to be free from
all forms of mental disturbance, both those which arise from men's
ambitious struggles with one another, and those which come from on high
and are more difficult to deal with, which flow from our taking the
traditional view of the gods, and estimating them by the analogy of our
own vices." This equable, secure, uncloying pleasure is enjoyed by the
man now described; a man skilled, so to say, in the laws of gods and men
alike. Such a man enjoys the present without anxiety for the future: for
he who depends upon what is uncertain can rely confidently upon nothing.
Thus he is free from all those great troubles which unhinge the mind,
he neither hopes for, nor covets anything, and engages in no uncertain
adventures, being satisfied with what he has. Do not suppose that he
is satisfied with a little; for everything is his, and that not in the
sense in which all was Alexander's, who, though he reached the shore of
the Red Sea, yet wanted more territory than that through which he
had come. He did not even own those countries which he held or had
conquered, while Onesicritus, whom he had sent on before him to discover
new countries, was wandering about the ocean and engaging in war in
unknown seas. Is it clear that he who pushed his armies beyond the
bounds of the universe, who with reckless greed dashed headlong into a
boundless and unexplored sea, must in reality have been full of wants?
It matters not how many kingdoms he may have seized or given away, or
how great a part of the world may pay him tribute; such a man must be in
need of as much as he desires.
III. This was not the vice of Alexander alone, who followed with a
fortunate audacity in the footsteps of Bacchus and Hercules, but it is
common to all those whose covetousness is whetted rather than appeased
by good fortune. Look at Cyrus and Cambyses and all the royal house of
Persia: can you find one among them who thought his empire large enough,
or was not at the last gasp still aspiring after further conquests? We
need not wonder at this, for whatever is obtained by covetousness is
simply swallowed up and lost, nor does it matter how much is poured
into its insatiable maw. Only the wise man possesses everything
without having to struggle to retain it; he alone does not need to send
ambassadors across the seas, measure out camps upon hostile shores,
place garrisons in commanding forts, or manoeuvre legions and squadrons
of cavalry. Like the immortal gods, who govern their realm without
recourse to arms, and from their serene and lofty heights protect their
own, so the wise man fulfils his duties, however far-reaching they may
be, without disorder, and looks down upon the whole human race, because
he himself is the greatest and most powerful member thereof. You may
laugh at him, but if you in your mind survey the east and the west,
reaching even to the regions separated from us by vast wildernesses, if
you think of all the creatures of the earth, all the riches which the
bounty of nature lavishes, it shows a great spirit to be able to say, as
though you were a god, "All these are mine." Thus it is that he covets
nothing, for there is nothing which is not contained in everything, and
everything is his.
IV. "This," say you, "is the very thing that I wanted! I have caught
you! I shall be glad to see how you will extricate yourself from the
toils into which you have fallen of your own accord. Tell me, if the
wise man possesses everything, how can one give anything to a wise man?
for even what you give him is his already. It is impossible, therefore,
to bestow a benefit upon a wise man, if whatever is given him comes from
his own store; yet you Stoics declare that it is possible to give to
a wise man. I make the same inquiry about friends as well: for you
say that friends own everything in common, and if so, no one can give
anything to his friend, for he gives what his friend owned already in
common with himself."
There is nothing to prevent a thing belonging to a wise man, and yet
being the property of its legal owner. According to law everything in a
state belongs to the king, yet all that property over which the king has
rights of possession is parcelled out among individual owners, and
each separate thing belongs to somebody: and so one can give the king
a house, a slave, or a sum of money without being said to give him what
was his already; for the king has rights over all these things, while
each citizen has the ownership of them. We speak of the country of the
Athenians, or of the Campanians, though the inhabitants divide them
amongst themselves into separate estates; the whole region belongs to
one state or another, but each part of it belongs to its own individual
proprietor; so that we are able to give our lands to the state, although
they are reckoned as belonging to the state, because we and the state
own them in different ways. Can there be any doubt that all the private
savings of a slave belong to his master as well as he himself? yet he
makes his master presents. The slave does not therefore possess nothing,
because if his master chose he might possess nothing; nor does what he
gives of his own free will cease to be a present, because it might have