It is easy to form the mind while it is still tender; but it is
difficult to root out those vices that have grown up with it.
It is a great thing to know when to speak and when to be silent.
The vices of others we have before our eyes; our own, behind our backs.
Use your ears oftener than your tongue.
Nothing is more out of place in him who is inflicting punishment than
anger.
It is not the issue of a thing that ought to be taken into account, but
the purpose.
Every crime is committed before the deed is done.
To cupidity nothing is enough; to nature even a little is enough.
Vice takes possession of us unconsciously; virtue is difficult to find,
and we need a guide and teacher. Vices are learned without a teacher.
Stars shall impinge upon stars and all matter that now delights us with
its beautiful order shall burn in one huge conflagration.
All that is best can neither be given to men nor taken from them.
There are two things, the most precious of all, that attend us
whithersoever we turn our steps: common nature and personal virtue.
These things are so, believe me, because they were so willed by the
creator of the universe, whether it is that God who controls everything,
or incorporeal reason, the artificer of great works, or the divine
spirit that pervades equally the greatest and the smallest things.
If the dead have any feeling, the soul of my brother, now set free from
a long imprisonment, is at length in the full enjoyment of his freedom
and his majority; he beholds with delight the nature of things and looks
down upon human affairs from his high abode; but things divine, the
causes of which he so long sought out in vain, he now beholds at close
range. Why then do I pine away in sorrow for him who is either blessed
or not all? To mourn for one who is in bliss is envy; for one who is
not, folly.
Borne on high, he soars among beatified spirits, and a sanctified
company welcomes him—the Scipios, the Catos, released by the beneficence
of death. There thy father devotes himself to his grandson, resplendent
in the new light even though in that place all are known to each. He
explains to him the motions of the stars around him; not from
conjectures, but, versed in the knowledge of all things, he gladly
inducts him into the arcana of nature.
If you will believe those who have looked more deeply into the truth,
our whole life is a punishment.
For those who sail this sea so stormy, so exposed to every tempest,
there is no harbor except death.
He now enjoys a serene and cloudless heaven. From this humble and low
abode, he has sped swiftly into that region, wherever it may be, where
souls, freed from their chains, are received into the abode of the
blest. He now roams about at will, and beholds with supremest delight
all that is good in the universe.... He has not left us; he has gone
before.
DE PROVIDENTIA SIVE QUARE ALIQUA INCOMMODA BONIS VIRIS ACCIDANTCUM
PROVIDENTIA SIT.
NOTE:—This monograph is addressed to the same Lucilius, procurator
of Sicily, to whom Seneca also dedicates his letters and his
Problems in Physics. The date of composition is not known, but it
probably belongs to the later years of the author’s life. The
opening sentences seem to make it a part of a larger work on ethics,
or rather of a theodicy, which was either never completed or has not
come down to us. This is a serious loss both to us and to Seneca: to
us, because such a work would doubtless have placed before us a
complete theory of human conduct as conceived by a man who was
thoroughly conversant with the motives that dominate men; to Seneca,
because it would in all probability have explained if not justified
some of the inconsistencies that have so sadly marred his career.
Indeed the fundamental proposition of the essay is inconsistent,
since the conclusion does not follow from the premises. For if the
patient endurance of tribulation is the supreme test of a good man,
how is he justified in avoiding that test, as our author proposes,
by taking his own life?