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It seems to be a law of nature, inflexible and inexorable, that those who will not risk cannot win. You cannot help knowing the truth of these words, since you have had not only slaves, but also enemies. Unless, perhaps, the following syllogism is shrewder still: "'Mouse' is a syllable. On the Shortness of Life by Seneca (Deep Summary + Infographic. Monadnock Valley Press > Seneca. For you yourself, who consult me, also reflected for a long time whether to do so; how much more, then, should I myself reflect, since more deliberation is necessary in settling than in propounding a problem! A fire which has seized upon a substance that sustains it needs water to quench it, or, sometimes, the destruction of the building itself; but the fire which lacks sustaining fuel dies away of its own accord. I can make it perfectly clear to you whenever you wish, that a noble spirit when involved in such subtleties is impaired and weakened.
Who will allow your course to proceed as you arrange it? Nature does not care whether the bread is the coarse kind or the finest wheat; she does not desire the stomach to be entertained, but to be filled. On all sides lie many short and simple paths to freedom; and let us thank God that no man can be kept in life. Seneca all nature is too little paris. The butterflies are free. All the years that have passed before them are added to their own. What, then, is the reason of this? I must insert in this letter one or two more of his sayings: " Do everything as if Epicurus were watching you. " You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire.
Of course; he also is great-souled, who sees riches heaped up round him and, after wondering long and deeply because they have come into his possession, smiles, and hears rather than feels that they are his. And yet this utterance was heard in the very factory of pleasure, when Epicurus said: " Today and one other day have been the happiest of all! " Therefore, my dear Lucilius, withdraw yourself as far as possible from these exceptions and objections of so-called philosophers. "What", you ask, "will you present me with an empty plate? Whenever I have made a discovery, I do not wait for you to cry "Shares! " How many are pale from constant pleasures! Seneca all nature is too little market. And when you have progressed so far that you have also respect for yourself, you may send away your attendant; but until then, set as a guard over yourself the authority of some man, whether your choice be the great Cato or Scipio, or Laelius, – or any man in whose presence even abandoned wretches would check their bad impulses. Finally, everybody agrees that no one pursuit can be successfully followed by a man who is busied with many things. "May not a man, however, despise wealth when it lies in his very pocket? " Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it. Let him bring along his rating and his present property and his future expectations, and let him add them all together: such a man, according to my belief, is poor; according to yours, he may be poor some day.
How late it is to begin really to live just when life must end! "But life is very short and anxious for those who forget the past, neglect the present, and fear the future. They achieve what they want laboriously; they possess what they have achieved anxiously; and meanwhile they take no account of time that will never more return. In answer to the letter which you wrote me while traveling, – a letter as long as the journey itself, – I shall reply later. What is your answer? Even prison fare is more generous; and those who have been set apart for capital punishment are not so meanly fed by the man who is to execute them. Otherwise, the cot-bed and the rags are slight proof of his good intentions, if it has not been made clear that the person concerned endures these trials not from necessity but from preference. Living is the least important activity of the preoccupied man; yet there is nothing which is harder to learn. Seneca for all nature is too little. Socrates made the same remark to one who complained; he said: "Why do you wonder that globe-trotting does not help you, seeing that you always take yourself with you? But what is baser than to fret at the very threshold of peace? The thought for today is one which I discovered in Epicurus; for I am wont to cross over even into the enemy's camp – not as a deserter, but as a scout. You ask, as if you were ignorant whom I am pressing into service; it is Epicurus. This privilege will not be yours unless you withdraw from the world; otherwise, you will have as guests only those whom your slave-secretary sorts out from the throng of callers.
It will not lengthen itself for a king's command or a people's favour. And if this seems surprising to you, I shall add that which will surprise you still more: Some men have left off living before they have begun. You have all the fears of mortals and all the desires of immortals. This also is a saying of Epicurus: "If you live according to nature, you will never be poor; if you live according to opinion, you will never be rich. " At any rate, he makes such a statement in the well known letter written to Polyaenus in the archonship of Charinus. "So what is the reason for this? The false has no limits. He, however, who has arranged his affairs according to nature's demands, is free from the fear, as well as from the sensation, of poverty. The prosperity of all these men looks to public opinion; but the ideal man, whom we have snatched from the control of the people and of Fortune, is happy inwardly. Happiness flutters in the air whilst we rest among the breaths of nature. For greed all nature is too little. … In order that Idomeneus may not be introduced free of charge into my letter, he shall make up the indebtedness from his own account. For solid timbers have repelled a very great fire; conversely, dry and easily inflammable stuff nourishes the slightest spark into a conflagration. I was just putting the seal upon this letter; but it must be broken again, in order that it may go to you with its customary contribution, bearing with it some noble word.
I only ask to be free. The following text consists of excerpts from the letters of Lucius Annaeus Seneca that either make direct reference to Epicurus or clearly convey Epicurean ideas. It is clear that unless I can devise some very tricky premises and by false deductions tack on to them a fallacy which springs from the truth, I shall not be able to distinguish between what is desirable and what is to be avoided! D., Headmaster, William Penn Charter School, Philadelphia, as published by Harvard University Press in 1917, which is available here. And so I should like to lay hold upon someone from the company of older men and say: "I see that you have reached the farthest limit of human life, you are pressing hard upon your hundredth year, or are even beyond it; come now, recall your life and make a reckoning. Assume that fortune carries you far beyond the limits of a private income, decks you with gold, clothes you in purple, and brings you to such a degree of luxury and wealth that you can bury the earth under your marble floors; that you may not only possess, but tread upon, riches.
And you may add a third statement, of the same stamp: " Men are so thoughtless, nay, so mad, that some, through fear of death, force themselves to die. "The deified Augustus, to whom the gods granted more than to anyone else, never ceased to pray for rest and to seek a respite from public affairs. And this is particularly true when one thing is advantageous to you and another to me. Everything conducive to our well-being is prepared and ready to our hands; but what luxury requires can never be got together except with wretchedness and anxiety. Our courage fails us, our cheeks blanch; our tears fall, though they are unavailing. The payment shall not be made from my own property; for I am still conning Epicurus. "It is, however, " you reply, "thanks to himself and his endurance, and not thanks to his fortune. " And no one can live happily who has regard to himself alone and transforms everything into a question of his own utility; you must live for your neighbor, if you would live for yourself. Behold an equal thing, worthy of a God, a brave man matched in conflict with evil Annaeus Seneca. He who was but lately the disputed lord of an unknown corner of the world, is dejected when, after reaching the limits of the globe, he must march back through a world which he has made his own. Tell them what nature has made necessary, and what superfluous; tell them how simple are the laws that she has laid down, how pleasant and unimpeded life is for those who follow these laws, but how bitter and perplexed it is for those who have put their trust in opinion rather than in nature. I should deem your games of logic to be of some avail in relieving men's burdens, if you could first show me what part of these burdens they will relieve. For he tells us that he had to endure excruciating agony from a diseased bladder and from an ulcerated stomach, so acute that it permitted no increase of pain; "and yet, " he says, "that day was none the less happy. "