and other shows of the _Circus_, which were looked upon by his
contemporaries as not only interesting spectacles, but as a useful
school for war and endurance--much for the same reason as that on
which the “sports” of the present day are defended. Cicero uses this
argument, and only expresses the general sentiment. Not so Seneca. He
speaks of a chance visit to the Circus (the gigantic Colosseum was
not yet built), for the sake of mental relaxation, expecting to see,
at the period of the day he had chosen, only innocent exercises. He
indignantly narrates the horrid and bloody scenes of suffering, and
demands, with only too much reason, whether it is not evident that such
evil examples receive their righteous retribution in the deterioration
of character of those who encourage them:--
“Ah! what dense mists of darkness do power and prosperity cast
over the human mind. He [the magistrate] believes himself to be
raised above the common lot of mortality, and to be at the pinnacle
of glory, when he has offered so many crowds of wretched human
beings to the assaults of wild beasts; when he forces animals of
the most different species to engage in conflict; when in the
full presence of the Roman populace he causes torrents of blood
to flow, a fitting school for the future scenes of still greater
bloodshed.”[32]
In his treatise _On Clemency_, dedicated to his youthful pupil Nero,
he anticipates the very modern theory--_theory_, for the prevalent
_practice_ is a very different thing--that _prevention_ is better than
_punishment_, and he denounces the cruel and selfish policy of princes
and magistrates, who are, for the most part, concerned only to punish
the criminals produced by unjust and unequal laws:--
“Will not that man,” he asks, “appear to be a very bad father
who punishes his children, even for the slightest causes, with
constant blows? Which preceptor is the worthier to teach--the one
who scarifies his pupils’ backs if their memory happens to fail
them, or if their eyes make a slight blunder in reading, or he
who chooses rather to correct and instruct by admonition and the
influence of shame?... You will find that those crimes are most
often committed which are most often punished.... Many capital
punishments are no less disgraceful to a ruler than are many deaths
to a physician. Men are more easily governed by mild laws. The
human mind is naturally stubborn and inclined to be perverse, and
it more readily follows than is forced. The disposition to cruelty
which takes delight in blood and wounds is the characteristic of
wild beasts; it is to throw away the human character and to pass
into that of a denizen of the woods.”
Speaking of giving assistance to the needy, he says that the genuine
philanthropist will give his money--
“Not in that insulting way in which the great majority of those who
wish to seem merciful disdain and despise those whom they help, and
shrink from contact with them, but as one mortal to a fellow-mortal
he will give as though out of a treasury that should be common to
all.”[33]
Next to the _De Clementiâ_ and the _De Irâ_ (“On Anger”), his treatise
_On the Happy Life_ is most admirable. In the abundance of what is
unusually good and useful it is difficult to choose. His warning (so
unheeded) against implicit confidence in authority and tradition cannot
be too often repeated:--
“There is nothing against which we ought to be more on our guard
than, like a flock of sheep, following the crowd of those who have
preceded us--going, as we do, not where we ought to go, but where
men have walked before. And yet there is nothing which involves
us in greater evils than following and settling our faith upon
authority--considering those dogmas or practices best which have
been received heretofore with the greatest applause, and which have
a multitude of great names. We live not according to reason, but
according to mere fashion and tradition, from whence that enormous
heap of bodies, which fall one over the other. It happens as in a
great slaughter of men, when the crowd presses upon itself. Not
one falls without dragging with him another. The first to fall are
the cause of destruction to the succeeding ranks. It runs through
the whole of human life. No-one’s error is limited to himself
alone, but he is the author and cause of another’s error.... We
shall recover our sound health if only we shall separate ourselves
from the herd, for the crowd of mankind stands opposed to right
reason--the defender of its own evils and miseries.[34] ... Human
history is not so well conducted, that the better way is pleasing
to the mass. The very fact of the approbation of the multitude is
a proof of the badness of the opinion or practice. Let us ask what
is _best_, not what is _most customary_; what may place us firmly
in the possession of an everlasting felicity, not what has received
the approbation of the vulgar--the worst interpreter of the
truth. Now I call “the vulgar” _the common herd of all ranks and
conditions_” (_Tam chlamydatos quam coronatos_).--(_De Vitâ Beatâ_
i. and ii.)
Again:--
“I will do nothing for the sake of opinion; everything for the sake
of conscience.”
He repudiates the doctrines of Egoism for those of Altruism:--
“I will so live, as knowing myself to have come into the world for
others.... I shall recognise the _world_ as my proper country.
Whenever nature or reason shall demand my last breath I shall
depart with the testimony that I have loved a good conscience,
useful pursuits--that I have encroached upon the liberty of no one,
least of all my own.”
Very admirable are his rebukes of unjust and insensate anger in regard
to the non-human species:--
“As it is the characteristic of a madman to be in a rage with
lifeless objects, so also is it to be angry with dumb animals,[35]
inasmuch as there can be no injury unless _intentional_. Hurt
us they can--as a stone or iron--_injure_ us they cannot.
Nevertheless, there are persons who consider themselves insulted
when horses that will readily obey one rider are obstinate in
the case of another; just as if they are more tractable to some
individuals than to others of _set purpose_, not from custom or
_owing to treatment_.”--(_De Irâ_ ii., xxvi.)
Again, of anger, as between human beings:--
“The faults of others we keep constantly before us; our own we hide
behind us.... A large proportion of mankind are angry, not with the
_sins_, but with the _sinners_. In regard to reported offences;
_many speak falsely to deceive, many because they are themselves
deceived_.”
Of the use of self-examination, he quotes the example of his excellent
preceptor, Sextius, who strictly followed the Pythagorean precept to
examine oneself each night before sleep:--
“Of what bad practice have you cured yourself to-day? What vice
have you resisted? In what respect are you the better? Rash anger
will be moderated and finally cease when it finds itself daily
confronted with its judge. What, then, is more useful than this
custom of thoroughly weighing the actions of the entire day?”
He adduces the feebleness and shortness of human life as one of the
most forcible arguments against the indulgence of malevolence:--
“Nothing will be of more avail than reflections on the nature of
mortality. Let each one say to himself, as to another, ‘What good
is it to declare enmity against such and such persons, as though
we were born to live for ever, and to thus waste our very brief
existence? What profit is it to employ time which might be spent
in honourable pleasures in inflicting pain and torture upon any of
our fellow-beings?’ ... Why rush we to battle? Why do we provoke
quarrels? Why, forgetful of our mortal weakness, do we engage in
huge hatreds? Fragile beings as we are, why will we rise up to
crush others?... Why do we tumultuously and seditiously set life
in an uproar? Death stands staring us in the face, and approaches
ever nearer and nearer. That moment which you destine for another’s
destruction perchance may be for your own.... Behold! death comes,
which makes us all equal. Whilst we are in this mortal life, let
us cultivate humanity; let us not be a cause of fear or of danger
to any of our fellow-mortals. Let us contemn losses, injuries,
insults. Let us bear with magnanimity the brief inconveniences of
life.”
Again, in dealing with the weak and defenceless:--
“Let each one say to himself, whenever he is provoked, ‘What right
have I to punish with whips or fetters a slave who has offended me
by voice or manner? Who am I, whose ears it is such a monstrous
crime to offend? Many grant pardon to their enemies; shall I not
pardon simply idle, negligent, or garrulous slaves?’ Tender years
should shield childhood--their sex, women--individual liberty, a
stranger--the common roof, a domestic. Does he offend now for the
first time? Let us think how often he may have pleased us.”--(_De
Irâ_ iii., passim.)
As to the conduct of life:--
“We ought so to live, as though in the sight of all men. We ought
so to employ our thoughts, as though someone were able to inspect
our inmost soul--and there is one able. For what advantages it that
a thing is hidden from men; nothing is hidden from God. (_Ep._ 83.)
... Would you propitiate heaven? Be good. He worships the gods, who
imitates [the higher ideal of] them. How do we act? What principles
do we lay down? That we are to refrain from human bloodshed? Is it
a great matter to refrain from injuring him to whom you are bound
to do good? The whole of human and divine teaching is summed up in
this one principle--we are all members of one mighty body. Nature
has made us of one kin (_cognatos_), since she has produced us
from the same elements and will resolve us into the same elements.
She has implanted in us love one for another, and made us for
living together in society. She has laid down the laws of right
and justice, by which ordinance it is more wretched to injure than
to be injured; and by her ordering, our hands are given us to help
each the other.... Let us ask what things _are_, not what they _are
called_. Let us value each thing on its own merits, without thought
of the world’s opinion. Let us love temperance; let us, before all
things, cherish justice.... Our actions will not be right unless
the will is first right, for from that proceeds the act.”
Again:--
“The will will not be right unless the _habits_ of mind are right,
for from these results the will. The habits of thought, however,
will not be at the best unless they shall have been based upon _the
laws of the whole of life_; unless they shall have tried all things
by the test of truth.”--(_Ep._ xcv.)
Excellent is his advice on the choice of books and of reading:--
“Be careful that the reading of many authors, and of every sort of
books, does not induce a certain vagueness and uncertainty of mind.
We ought to linger over and nourish our minds with, writers of
assured genius and worth, if we wish to extract something which may
usefully remain fixed in the mind. A multitude of books distracts
the mind. Read always, then, books of approved merit. If ever you
have a wish to go for a time to other kinds of books, yet always
return to the former.”[36]--(_Ep._ ii.)
In his 88th Letter Seneca well exposes the folly of a learning which
begins and ends in _mere words_, which has no real bearing on the
conduct of life and the instruction of the _moral_ faculties:--
“In testing the value of books and writers, let us see whether
or no they teach _virtue_.... You inquire minutely about the
wanderings of Ulysses rather than work for the prevention of error
in your own case. We have no leisure to hear exactly how and where
he was tossed about between Italy and Sicily.... The tempests of
the soul are ever tossing us, and evildoing urges us into all the
miseries of Ulysses.... Oh marvellously excellent education! By
it you can measure circles and squares, and all the distances of
the stars. There is nothing that is not within the reach of your
geometry. Since you are so able a mechanician, measure the human
mind. Tell me how great it is, how small it is (_pusillus_). You
know what a straight line is. What does it profit you, if you
know not what is straight (_rectum_) in life.”[37] What then? Are
liberal studies of no avail? For other things much; for virtue
nothing.... They do not lead the mind to virtue--they only clear
the way.
“Humanity forbids us to be arrogant towards our fellows; forbids us
to be grasping; shows itself kind and courteous to all, in word,
deed, and thought; thinks no evil of another, but rather loves its
own highest good, chiefly because it will be of good to another.
Do liberal studies [always] inculcate these maxims? No more than
they do simplicity of character and moderation; no more than they
do frugality and economy of living; no more than they do mercy,
which is as sparing of another’s blood as it is of its own, and
recognises that man is not to use the services of his fellows
unnecessarily or prodigally.
“Wisdom is a great, a vast subject. It needs all the spare time
that can be given to it.... Whatever amount of natural and moral
questions you may have mastered, you will still be wearied with the
vast abundance of questions to be asked and solved. So many, so
great, are these questions, all superfluous things must be removed
from the mind, that it may have free scope for exercise. Shall I
waste my life in mere words (_syllabis_)? Thus does it come about
that the learned are more anxious to talk than to live. Mark what
mischief _excessive_ subtlety of mind produces, and how dangerous
it may be to truth.”--(_Ep._ lxxxviii.)
Elsewhere he indignantly demands:--
“What is more vile or disgraceful than a learning which catches at
popular applause (_clamores_)?”--(_Ep._ lii.)
Anticipating the ultimate triumph of Truth, he well says:--
“No virtue is really lost--that it has to remain hidden for a time
is no loss to itself. A day will come which will publish the truth
at present neglected and oppressed by the malignity (_malignitas_)
of its age. He who thinks the world to be of his own age only, is
born for the few. Many thousands of years, many millions of people,
will supervene. Look forward to that time. Though the envy of
your own day shall have condemned you to obscurity, there will
come those who will judge you without fear or favour. If there is
any reward for virtue from fame, that is imperishable. The talk of
posterity, indeed, will be nothing to us. Yet it will revere us,
even though we are insensible to its praise; and it will frequently
consult us.... What now deceives has not the elements of duration.
Falsehood is thinly disguised; it is transparent, if only you look
close enough.”--(_Ep._ lxix.)
In his _Questions on Nature_, in which he often shows himself to have
been much in advance of his contemporaries, and, indeed, of the whole
mediæval ages, in scientific acumen, he takes occasion to reprobate the
common practice of glorifying the lives and deeds of worthless princes
and others, and exclaims in the modern spirit:--
“How much better to try to extinguish the evils of our own age than
to glorify the bad deeds of others to posterity! How much better
to celebrate the works of Nature [_deorum_] than the piracies of
a Philip or Alexander and of the rest who, become illustrious
by the calamities of nations, have been no less the pests of
mankind than an inundation which devastates a whole country, or a
conflagration in which a large proportion of living creatures is
consumed.”--(_Quæst. Nat._ iii.)
It will be sufficiently apparent, from what we have presented to our
readers, that Seneca, though nominally of the Stoic school, belonged in
reality to no special sect or party. _Nullius addictus jurare in verba
magistri._ Bound to the words of no one master, he sought for truth
everywhere. The authority whom he most frequently quotes with approval
is Epicurus, the arch-enemy of Stoicism. Wiser and more candid than
the great mass of sectaries, he scorns the tactics of partisanship. He
justly recognises the fact that the “luxurious egoists have not derived
their impulse or sanction from Epicurus; but, abandoned to their vices,
they disguise their selfishness in the name of his philosophy.” He
professes his own conviction to be “against the common prejudice of
the popular writers of my own school, that the teaching of Epicurus
was just and holy, and, on a close examination, essentially grave
and sober.... I affirm this, that he is ill-understood, defamed, and
depreciated.” (_De Vitâ Beatâ_, xii, xiii.)
It will also be sufficiently clear that the ethics of Seneca consist
of no mere trials of skill in logomachy; in finely-drawn distinctions
between words and names, as do so large a proportion both of modern
and ancient dialectics. If so daring a heresy may possibly be forgiven
us, we would venture to suggest that the authorities of our schools
and universities might, with no inconsiderable advantage, substitute
judicious excerpts from the _Morals_ of Seneca for the _Ethics_ of
Aristotle; or, as Latin literature is now in question, even for the
_De Officiis_ of Cicero. This, however, is perhaps to indulge Utopian
speculation too greatly. The mediæval spirit of scholasticism is not
yet sufficiently out of favour at the ancient schools of Aquinas and
Scotus.
VI.
PLUTARCH. 40-120 A.D. (?)
The years of the birth and death of the first of biographers and the
most amiable of moralists are unknown. We learn from himself that he
was studying philosophy at Athens under Ammonius, the Peripatetic, at
the time when Nero was making his ridiculous progress through Greece.
This was in 66 A.D., and the date of his birth may therefore
be approximately placed somewhere about the year 40. He was thus a
younger contemporary of Seneca. Chæronea, in Bœotia, claims the honour
of giving him birth.
He lived several years at Rome and in other parts of Italy, where,
according to the fashion of the age and the custom of the philosophic
rhetoricians (of whom, probably, he was one of the very few whose
_prælections_ were of any real value), he gave public lectures,
attended by the most eminent literary as well as social personages
of the time, among whom were Tacitus, the younger Pliny, Quintilian,
and perhaps Juvenal. These lectures may have formed the basis, if not
the entire matter, of the miscellaneous essays which he afterwards
published. When in Italy he neglected altogether the Latin language and
literature, and the reason he gives proves the estimation in which he
was held: “I had so many public commissions, and so many people came
to me to receive instruction in philosophy.... it was, therefore, not
till a late period in life that I began to read the Latin writers.” In
fact, the very general indifference, or at least silence, of the Greek
masters in regard to Latin literature is not a little remarkable.
It is asserted, on doubtful authority (Suidas), that he was preceptor
of Trajan, in the beginning of whose reign he held the high post
of Procurator of Greece; and he also filled the honourable office
of _Archon_, or Chief Magistrate of his native city, as well as of
priest of the Delphic Apollo. He passed the later and larger portion
of his life in quiet retirement at Chæronea. The reason he assigns
for clinging to that dull and decaying provincial town, although
residence there was not a little inconvenient for him, is creditable
to his citizen-feeling, since he believed that by quitting it he,
as a person of influence, might contribute to its ruin. In all the
relations of social life Plutarch appears to have been exemplary,
and he was evidently held in high esteem by his fellow-citizens. As
husband and father he was particularly admirable. The death of a young
daughter, one of a numerous progeny, was the occasion of one of his
most affecting productions--the _Consolation_--addressed to his wife
Timoxena. He himself died at an advanced age, in the reign of Hadrian.
Plutarch’s writings are sufficiently numerous. The _Parallel Lives_,
forty-six in number, in which he brings together a Greek and a Roman
celebrity by way of comparison, is perhaps the book of Greek and Latin
literature which has been the most widely read in all languages. “The
reason of its popularity,” justly observes a writer in Dr. Smith’s
_Dictionary_, “is that Plutarch has rightly conceived the business of a
biographer--his biography is true portraiture. Other biography is often
a dull, tedious enumeration of facts in the order of time, with perhaps
a summing up of character at the end. The reflections of Plutarch are
neither impertinent nor trifling; his sound good sense is always there;
his honest purpose is transparent; his love of humanity warms the
whole. His work is and will remain, in spite of all the fault that can
be found with it by plodding collectors of facts and small critics, the
book of those who can nobly think and dare and do.”
His miscellaneous writings--indiscriminately classed under the title
_Moralia_, or _Morals_, but including historical, antiquarian,
literary, political, and religious disquisitions--are about eighty in
number. As might be expected of so miscellaneous a collection, these
essays are of various merit, and some of them are, doubtless, the
product of other minds than Plutarch’s. Next to the _Essay on Flesh
Eating_[38] may be distinguished as amongst the most important or
interesting, _That the Lower Animals Reason_,[39] _On the Sagacity
of the Lower Animals_--highly meritorious treatises, far beyond the
ethical or intellectual standard of the mass of “educated” people even
of our day--_Rules for the Preservation of Health_, _A Discourse on
the Training of Children_, _Marriage Precepts, or Advice to the Newly
Married_, _On Justice_, _On the Soul_, _Symposiacs_--in which he deals
with a variety of interesting or curious questions--_Isis and Osiris_,
a theological disquisition; _On the Opinions of the Philosophers_,
_On the Face that Appears in the Moon_,[40] _Political Precepts_,
_Platonic Questions_, and last, not least, his _Consolation_, addressed
to Timoxena. Plutarch also wrote his autobiography. If it had come
down to us it would have been one of the most interesting remains
of Antiquity, dealing, as we may well imagine it did deal, with some
of the most important phenomena of the age. Possibly we might have
had the expression of his feeling and attitude in regard to the new
religion (established some 200 years later), which, strangely enough,
is altogether overlooked or ignored as well by himself as by the other
eminent writers of Greece and Italy.[41]
Plutarch was an especial admirer of Plato and his school, but he
attached himself exclusively to no sect or system. He was essentially
eclectic: he chose what his reason and conscience informed him to be
the most good and useful from the various philosophies. As to the
influence of his literary labours in instructing the world, it has been
truly remarked by the author of the article in the _Penny Cyclopædia_
that, “a kind, humane disposition, and a love of everything that is
ennobling and excellent, pervades his writings, and gives the reader
the same kind of pleasure that he has in the company of an esteemed
friend, whose singleness of heart appears in everything that he says
or does.” His personal character is, in fact, exactly reflected in his
publications. That he was somewhat superstitious and of a conservative
bias is sufficiently apparent;[42] but it is also equally clear, in his
case, that the moral perceptions were not obscured by a selfishness
which is too often the product of optimism, or self-complacent
contentment with things as they are. In metaphysics, with all earnest
minds oppressed by the terrible fact of the dominance of evil and
error in the world, he vainly attempted to find a solution of the
enigma in that prevalent Western Asiatic prejudice of a dualism of
contending powers. He found consolation in the persuasion that the two
antagonistic principles are not of _equal_ power, and that the Good
must eventually prevail over the Evil.