L. ANNAEUS SENECA
MINOR DIALOGUES TOGETHER WITH THE DIALOGUE ON CLEMENCY
_TRANSLATED BY_ AUBREY STEWART, M.A. LATE FELLOW OF TRINITY
COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
LONDON — GEORGE BELL AND SONS, YORK STREET COVENT GARDEN 1889
CHISWICK PRESS :—C. WHITTINGHAM AND CO., TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY
LANE
PREFACE.
I can say little by way of preface to Seneca’s “Minor Dialogues”
which I have not already expressed in my preface to “De Beneficiis,”
except that the “Minor Dialogues” seem to me to be composed in a
gloomier key than either the “De Beneficiis” or “De Clementia,” and
probably were written at a time when the author had already begun
to experience the ingratitude of his imperial pupil. Some of the
Dialogues are dated from Corsica, Seneca’s place of exile, which
he seems to have found peculiarly uncomfortable, although he remarks
that there are people who live there from choice. Nevertheless,
mournful as they are in tone, these Dialogues have a certain value,
because they teach us what was meant by Stoic philosophy in the
time of the Twelve Caesars. I have only to add that the value of
my work has been materially enhanced by the kindness of the Rev.
Professor J. E. B. Mayor, who has been good enough to read and
correct almost all the proof sheets of this volume.
AUBREY STEWART. _London,_ 1889.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
Of Providence 1
On the Firmness of the Wise Man 22
Of Anger. I. 48
" II. 76
" III. 115
Of Consolation. To Marcia 162
Of a Happy Life 204
Of Leisure 240
Of Peace of Mind 250
Of the Shortness of Life 288
Of Consolation. To Helvia 320
" To Polybius 353
Of Clemency. I. 380
" II. 415
{1}
THE FIRST BOOK OF THE DIALOGUES OF L. ANNAEUS SENECA, ADDRESSED TO
LUCILIUS.
“WHY, WHEN A PROVIDENCE EXISTS, ANY MISFORTUNES BEFALL GOOD MEN;”
OR, “OF PROVIDENCE”
I. You have asked me, Lucilius, why, if the world be ruled by
providence, so many evils befall good men? The answer to this would
be more conveniently given in the course of this work, after we
have proved that providence governs the universe, and that God is
amongst us: but, since you wish me to deal with one point apart
from the whole, and to answer one replication before the main action
has been decided, I will do what is not difficult, and plead the
cause of the gods. At the present time it is superfluous to point
out that it is not without some guardian that so great a work
maintains its position, that the assemblage and movements of the
stars do not depend upon accidental impulses, or that objects whose
motion is regulated by chance often fall into confusion and soon
stumble, whereas this swift and safe movement goes on, governed by
eternal law, bearing with it so many things both on sea and land,
so many most brilliant lights shining in order in the skies; that
this regularity does not belong to matter moving at random, and
that particles brought together by chance could not {2} arrange
themselves with such art as to make the heaviest weight, that of
the earth, remain unmoved, and behold the flight of the heavens as
they hasten round it, to make the seas pour into the valleys and
so temper the climate of the land, without any sensible increase
from the rivers which flow into them, or to cause huge growths to
proceed from minute seeds. Even those phenomena which appear to be
confused and irregular, I mean showers of rain and clouds, the rush
of lightning from the heavens, fire that pours from the riven peaks
of mountains, quakings of the trembling earth, and everything else
which is produced on earth by the unquiet element in the universe,
do not come to pass without reason, though they do so suddenly: but
they also have their causes, as also have those things which excite
our wonder by the strangeness of their position, such as warm springs
amidst the waves of the sea, and new islands that spring up in the
wide ocean. Moreover, any one who has watched how the shore is laid
bare by the retreat of the sea into itself, and how within a short
time it is again covered, will believe that it is in obedience to
some hidden law of change that the waves are at one time contracted
and driven inwards, at another burst forth and regain their bed
with a strong current, since all the while they wax in regular
proportion, and come up at their appointed day and hour greater or
less, according as the moon, at whose pleasure the ocean flows,
draws them. Let these matters be set aside for discussion at their
own proper season, but I, since you do not doubt the existence of
providence but complain of it, will on that account more readily
reconcile you to gods who are most excellent to excellent men: for
indeed the nature of things does not ever permit good to be injured
by good. Between good men and the gods there is a friendship which
is brought about by virtue— friendship do I say? nay, rather
relationship and likeness, since the good man differs from a god
in time alone, {3} being his pupil and rival and true offspring,
whom his glorious parent trains more severely than other men,
insisting sternly on virtuous conduct, just as strict fathers do.
When therefore you see men who are good and acceptable to the gods
toiling, sweating, painfully struggling upwards, while bad men run
riot and are steeped in pleasures, reflect that modesty pleases us
in our sons, and forwardness in our house-born slave-boys; that the
former are held in check by a somewhat stern rule, whereas the
boldness of the latter is encouraged. Be thou sure that God acts
in like manner: He does not pet the good man: He tries him, hardens
him, and fits him for Himself.
II. Why do many things turn out badly for good men? Why, no evil
can befall a good man: contraries cannot combine. Just as so many
rivers, so many showers of rain from the clouds, such a number of
medicinal springs, do not alter the taste of the sea, indeed, do
not so much as soften it, so the pressure of adversity does not
affect the mind of a brave man; for the mind of a brave man maintains
its balance and throws its own complexion over all that takes place,
because it is more powerful than any external circumstances. I do
not say that he does not feel them, but he conquers them, and on
occasion calmly and tranquilly rises superior to their attacks,
holding all misfortunes to be trials of his own firmness. Yet who
is there who, provided he be a man and have honourable ambition,
does not long for due employment, and is not eager to do his duty
in spite of danger? Is there any hard-working man to whom idleness
is not a punishment? We see athletes, who study only their bodily
strength, engage in contests with the strongest of men, and insist
that those who train them for the arena should put out their whole
strength when practising with them: they endure blows and maltreatment,
and, if they cannot find any single person who is their match, they
engage with several at once: their {4} strength and courage droop
without an antagonist: they can only prove how great and how mighty
it is by proving how much they can endure. You should know that
good men ought to act in like manner, so as not to fear troubles
and difficulties, nor to lament their hard fate, to take in good
part whatever befalls them, and force it to become a blessing to
them. It does not matter what you bear, but how you bear it. Do you
not see how differently fathers and mothers indulge their children?
how the former urge them to begin their tasks betimes, will not
suffer them to be idle even on holidays, and exercise them till
they perspire, and sometimes till they shed tears—while their mothers
want to cuddle them in their laps, and keep them out of the sun,
and never wish them to be vexed, or to cry, or to work. God bears
a fatherly mind towards good men, and loves them in a manly spirit.
“Let them,” says He, “be exercised by labours, sufferings, and
losses, that so they may gather true strength.” Those who are
surfeited with ease break down not only with labour, but with mere
motion and by their own weight. Unbroken prosperity cannot bear a
single blow; but he who has waged an unceasing strife with his
misfortunes has gained a thicker skin by his sufferings, yields to
no disaster, and even though he fall yet fights on his knee. Do you
wonder that God, who so loves the good, who would have them attain
the highest goodness and pre-eminence, should appoint fortune to
be their adversary? I should not be surprised if the gods sometimes
experience a wish to behold great men struggling with some misfortune.
We sometimes are delighted when a youth of steady courage receives
on his spear the wild beast that attacks him; or when he meets the
charge of a lion without flinching; and the more eminent the man
is who acts thus,[1] the more {5} attractive is the sight: yet these
are not matters which can attract the attention of the gods, but
are mere pastime and diversions of human frivolity. Behold a sight
worthy to be viewed by a god interested in his own work, behold a
pair[2] worthy of a god, a brave man matched with evil fortune,
especially if he himself has given the challenge. I say, I do not
know what nobler spectacle Jupiter could find on earth, should he
turn his eyes thither, than that of Cato, after his party had more
than once been defeated, still standing upright amid the ruins of
the commonwealth. Quoth he, “What though all be fallen into one
man’s power, though the land be guarded by his legions, the sea by
his fleets, though Caesar’s soldiers beset the city gate? Cato has
a way out of it: with one hand he will open a wide path to freedom;
his sword, which he has borne unstained by disgrace and innocent
of crime even in a civil war, will still perform good and noble
deeds; it will give to Cato that freedom which it could not give
to his country. Begin, my soul, the work which thou so long hast
contemplated, snatch thyself away from the world of man. Already
Petreius and Juba have met and fallen, each slain by the other’s
hand—a brave and noble compact with fate, yet not one befitting my
greatness: it is as disgraceful for Cato to beg his death of any
one as it would be for him to beg his life.”
It is clear to me that the gods must have looked on with great joy,
while that man, his own most ruthless avenger, took thought for the
safety of others and arranged the escape of those who departed,
while even on his last night he pursued his studies, while he drove
the sword into his sacred breast, while he tore forth his vitals
and laid his hand upon that most holy life which was unworthy to
be defiled by steel. This, I am inclined to think, was the reason
that {6} his wound was not well-aimed and mortal: the gods were not
satisfied with seeing Cato die once: his courage was kept in action
and recalled to the stage, that it might display itself in a more
difficult part: for it needs a greater mind to return a second time
to death. How could they fail to view their pupil with interest
when leaving his life by such a noble and memorable departure? Men
are raised to the level of the gods by a death which is admired
even by those who fear them.
III. However, as my argument proceeds, I shall prove that what
appear to be evils are not so; for the present I say this, that
what you call hard measure, misfortunes, and things against which
we ought to pray, are really to the advantage, firstly, of those
to whom they happen, and secondly, of all mankind, for whom the
gods care more than for individuals; and next, that these evils
befall them with their own good will, and that men deserve to endure
misfortunes, if they are unwilling to receive them. To this I shall
add, that misfortunes proceed thus by destiny, and that they befall
good men by the same law which makes them good. After this, I shall
prevail upon you never to pity any good man; for though he may be
called unhappy, he cannot be so.
Of all these propositions that which I have stated first appears
the most difficult to prove. I mean, that the things which we dread
and shudder at are to the advantage of those to whom they happen.
“Is it,” say you, “to their advantage to be driven into exile, to
be brought to want, to carry out to burial their children and wife,
to be publicly disgraced, to lose their health?” Yes! if you are
surprised at these being to any man’s advantage, you will also be
surprised at any man being benefited by the knife and cautery, or
by hunger and thirst as well. Yet if you consider that some men,
in order to be cured, have their bones scraped, and pieces of them
extracted, that their veins are pulled out {7} and that some have
limbs cut off, which could not remain in their place without ruin
to the whole body, you will allow me to prove to you this also,
that some misfortunes are for the good of those to whom they happen,
just as much, by Hercules, as some things which are praised and
sought after are harmful to those who enjoy them like indigestions
and drunkenness and other matters which kill us through pleasure.
Among many grand sayings of our Demetrius is this, which I have but
just heard, and which still rings and thrills in my ears: “No one,”
said he, “seems to me more unhappy than the man whom no misfortune
has ever befallen.” He never has had an opportunity of testing
himself; though everything has happened to him according to his
wish, nay, even before he has formed a wish, yet the gods have
judged him unfavourably; he has never been deemed worthy to conquer
ill fortune, which avoids the greatest cowards, as though it said,
“Why should I take that man for my antagonist? He will straightway
lay down his arms: I shall not need all my strength against him:
he will be put to flight by a mere menace: he dares not even face
me; let me look around for some other with whom I may fight hand
to hand: I blush to join battle with one who is prepared to be
beaten.” A gladiator deems it a disgrace to be matched with an
inferior, and knows that to win without danger is to win without
glory. Just so Fortune; she seeks out the bravest to match herself
with, passes over some with disdain, and makes for the most unyielding
and upright of men, to exert her strength against them. She tried
Mucius fire, Fabricius by poverty, Rutilius by exile, Regulus by
torture, Socrates by poison, Cato by death: it is ill fortune alone
that discovers these glorious examples. Was Mucius unhappy, because
he grasped the enemy’s fire with his right hand, and of his own
accord paid the penalty of his mistake? because he overcame the
King with his hand when it was burned, though he could {8} not when
it held a sword? Would he have been happier, if he had warmed his
hand in his mistress’s bosom? Was Fabricius unhappy, because when
the state could spare him, he dug his own land? because he waged
war against riches as keenly as against Pyrrhus? because he supped
beside his hearth off the very roots and herbs which he himself,
though an old man, and one who had enjoyed a triumph, had grubbed
up while clearing his field of weeds? What then? would he have been
happier if he had gorged himself with fishes from distant shores,
and birds caught in foreign lands? if he had roused the torpor of
his queasy stomach with shellfish from the upper and the lower sea?
if he had piled a great heap of fruits round game of the first head,
which many huntsmen had been killed in capturing? Was Rutilius
unhappy, because those who condemned him will have to plead their
cause for all ages? because he endured the loss of his country more
composedly than that of his banishment? because he was the only man
who refused anything to Sulla the dictator, and when recalled from
exile all but went further away and banished himself still more.
“Let those,” said he, “whom thy fortunate reign catches at Rome,
see to the Forum drenched with blood,[3] and the heads of Senators
above the Pool of Servilius—the place where the victims of Sulla’s
proscriptions were stripped—the bands of assassins roaming at large
through the city, and many thousands of Roman citizens slaughtered
in one place, after, nay, by means of a promise of quarter. Let
those who are unable to go into exile behold these things.” Well!
is Lucius Sulla happy, because when he comes down into the Forum
room is made for him with sword-strokes, because he allows the heads
of consulars to be shown to him, and counts out the price of blood
through the quaestor and the state exchequer? {9} And this, this
was the man who passed the Lex Cornelia! Let us now come to Regulus:
what injury did fortune do him when she made him an example of good
faith, an example of endurance? They pierce his skin with nails:
wherever he leans his weary body, it rests on a wound; his eyes are
fixed for ever open; the greater his sufferings, the greater is his
glory. Would you know how far he is from regretting that he valued
his honour at such a price? heal his wounds and send him again into
the senate-house; he will give the same advice. So, then, you think
Maecenas a happier man, who when troubled by love, and weeping at
the daily repulses of his ill-natured wife, sought for sleep by
listening to distant strains of music? Though he drug himself with
wine, divert himself with the sound of falling waters, and distract
his troubled thoughts with a thousand pleasures, yet Maecenas will
no more sleep on his down cushions than Regulus on the rack. Yet
it consoles the latter that he suffers for the sake of honour, and
he looks away from his torments to their cause: whilst the other,
jaded with pleasures and sick with over-enjoyment, is more hurt by
the cause of his sufferings than by the sufferings themselves. Vice
has not so utterly taken possession of the human race that, if men
were allowed to choose their destiny, there can be any doubt but
that more would choose to be Reguluses than to be Maecenases: or
if there were any one who dared to say that he would prefer to be
born Maecenas than Regulus that man, whether he says so or not,
would rather have been Terentia (than Cicero).
Do you consider Socrates to have been badly used, because he took
that draught which the state assigned to him as though it were a
charm to make him immortal, and argued about death until death
itself? Was he ill treated, because his blood froze and the current
of his veins gradually stopped as the chill of death crept over
them? How much more is this man to be envied than he who is {10}
served on precious stones, whose drink a creature trained to every
vice, a eunuch or much the same, cools with snow in a golden cup?
Such men as these bring up again all that they drink, in misery and
disgust at the taste of their own bile, while Socrates cheerfully
and willingly drains his poison. As for Cato, enough has been said,
and all men must agree that the highest happiness was reached by
one who was chosen by Nature herself as worthy to contend with all
her terrors: “The enmity,” says she, “of the powerful is grievous,
therefore let him be opposed at once by Pompeius, Caesar, and
Crassus: it is grievous, when a candidate for public offices, to
be defeated by one’s inferiors; therefore let him be defeated by
Vatinius: it is grievous to take part in civil wars, therefore let
him fight in every part of the world for the good cause with equal
obstinacy and ill-luck: it is grievous to lay hands upon one’s self,
therefore let him do so. What shall I gain by this? That all men
may know that these things, which I have deemed Cato worthy to
undergo, are not real evils.”
IV. Prosperity comes to the mob, and to low-minded men as well as
to great ones; but it is the privilege of great men alone to send
under the yoke[4] the disasters and terrors of mortal life: whereas
to be always prosperous, and to pass through life without a twinge
of mental distress, is to remain ignorant of one half of nature.
You are a great man; but how am I to know it, if fortune gives you
no opportunity of showing your virtue? You have entered the arena
of the Olympic games, but no one {11} else has done so: you have
the crown, but not the victory: I do not congratulate you as I would
a brave man, but as one who has obtained a consulship or praetorship.
You have gained dignity. I may say the same of a good man, if
troublesome circumstances have never given him a single opportunity
of displaying the strength of his mind. I think you unhappy because
you never have been unhappy: you have passed through your life
without meeting an antagonist: no one will know your powers, not
even you yourself. For a man cannot know himself without a trial:
no one ever learnt what he could do without putting himself to the
test; for which reason many have of their own free will exposed
themselves to misfortunes which no longer came in their way, and
have sought for an opportunity of making their virtue, which otherwise
would have been lost in darkness, shine before the world. Great
men, I say, often rejoice at crosses of fortune just as brave
soldiers do at wars. I remember to have heard Triumphus, who was a
gladiator[5] in the reign of Tiberius Caesar, complaining about the
scarcity of prizes; “What a glorious time,” said he, “is past.”
Valour is greedy of danger, and thinks only of whither it strives
to go, not of what it will suffer, since even what it will suffer
is part of its glory. Soldiers pride themselves on their wounds,
they joyously display their blood flowing over their breastplate.[6]
Though those who return unwounded from battle may have done as
bravely, yet he who returns wounded is more admired. God, I say,
favours those whom He wishes to enjoy the greatest honours, whenever
He affords them the means of performing some exploit with spirit
and courage, something which is not easily to be accomplished: you
can judge of a pilot in a storm, of a soldier in a battle. How can
I know with {12} how great a spirit you could endure poverty, if
you overflow with riches? How can I tell with how great firmness
you could bear up against disgrace, dishonour, and public hatred,
if you grow old to the sound of applause, if popular favour cannot
be alienated from you, and seems to flow to you by the natural bent
of men’s minds? How can I know how calmly you would endure to be
childless, if you see all your children around you? I have heard
what you said when you were consoling others: then I should have
seen whether you could have consoled yourself, whether you could
have forbidden yourself to grieve. Do not, I beg you, dread those
things which the immortal gods apply to our minds like spurs:
misfortune is virtue’s opportunity. Those men may justly be called
unhappy who are stupified with excess of enjoyment, whom sluggish
contentment keeps as it were becalmed in a quiet sea: whatever
befalls them will come strange to them. Misfortunes press hardest
on those who are unacquainted with them: the yoke feels heavy to
the tender neck. The recruit turns pale at the thought of a wound:
the veteran, who knows that he has often won the victory after
losing blood, looks boldly at his own flowing gore. In like manner
God hardens, reviews, and exercises those whom He tests and loves:
those whom He seems to indulge and spare, He is keeping out of
condition to meet their coming misfortunes: for you are mistaken
if you suppose that any one is exempt from misfortune: he who has
long prospered will have his share some day; those who seem to have
been spared them have only had them put off. Why does God afflict
the best of men with ill-health, or sorrow, or other troubles?
Because in the army the most hazardous services are assigned to the
bravest soldiers: a general sends his choicest troops to attack the
enemy in a midnight ambuscade, to reconnoitre his line of march,
or to drive the hostile garrisons from their strong places. No one
of these {13} men says as he begins his march, “The general has
dealt hardly with me,” but “He has judged well of me.” Let those
who are bidden to suffer what makes the weak and cowardly weep, say
likewise, “God has thought us worthy subjects on whom to try how
much suffering human nature can endure.” Avoid luxury, avoid
effeminate enjoyment, by which men’s minds are softened, and in
which, unless something occurs to remind them of the common lot of
humanity, they lie unconscious, as though plunged in continual
drunkenness. He whom glazed windows have always guarded from the
wind, whose feet are warmed by constantly renewed fomentations,
whose dining-room is heated by hot air beneath the floor and spread
through the walls, cannot meet the gentlest breeze without danger.
While all excesses are hurtful, excess of comfort is the most hurtful
of all; it affects the brain; it leads men’s minds into vain
imaginings; it spreads a thick cloud over the boundaries of truth
and falsehood. Is it not better, with virtue by one’s side, to
endure continual misfortune, than to burst with an endless surfeit
of good things? It is the overloaded stomach that is rent asunder:
death treats starvation more gently. The gods deal with good men
according to the same rule as schoolmasters with their pupils, who
exact most labour from those of whom they have the surest hopes.
Do you imagine that the Lacedaemonians, who test the mettle of their
children by public flogging, do not love them? Their own fathers
call upon them to endure the strokes of the rod bravely, and when
they are torn and half dead, ask them to offer their wounded skin
to receive fresh wounds. Why then should we wonder if God tries
noble spirits severely? There can be no easy proof of virtue. Fortune
lashes and mangles us: well, let us endure it: it is not cruelty,
it is a struggle, in which the oftener we engage the braver we shall
become. The strongest part of the {14} body is that which is exercised
by the most frequent use: we must entrust ourselves to fortune to
be hardened by her against herself: by degrees she will make us a
match for herself. Familiarity with danger leads us to despise it.
Thus the bodies of sailors are hardened by endurance of the sea,
and the hands of farmers by work; the arms of soldiers are powerful
to hurl darts, the legs of runners are active: that part of each
man which he exercises is the strongest: so by endurance the mind
becomes able to despise the power of misfortunes. You may see what
endurance might effect in us if you observe what labour does among
tribes that are naked and rendered stronger by want. Look at all
the nations that dwell beyond the Roman Empire: I mean the Germans
and all the nomad tribes that war against us along the Danube. They
suffer from eternal winter, and a dismal climate, the barren soil
grudges them sustenance, they keep off the rain with leaves or
thatch, they bound across frozen marshes, and hunt wild beasts for
food. Do you think them unhappy? There is no unhappiness in what
use has made part of one’s nature: by degrees men find pleasure in
doing what they were first driven to do by necessity. They have no
homes and no resting-places save those which weariness appoints
them for the day; their food, though coarse, yet must be sought
with their own hands; the harshness of the climate is terrible, and
their bodies are unclothed. This, which you think a hardship, is
the mode of life of all these races: how then can you wonder at
good men being shaken, in order that they may be strengthened? No
tree which the wind does not often blow against is firm and strong;
for it is stiffened by the very act of being shaken, and plants its
roots more securely: those which grow in a sheltered valley are
brittle: and so it is to the advantage of good men, and causes them
to be undismayed, that they should live much {15} amidst alarms,
and learn to bear with patience what is not evil save to him who
endures it ill.
V. Add to this that it is to the advantage of every one that the
best men should, so to speak, be on active service and perform
labours: God has the same purpose as the wise man, that is, to prove
that the things which the herd covets and dreads are neither good
nor bad in themselves. If, however, He only bestows them upon good
men, it will be evident that they are good things, and bad, if He
only inflicts them upon bad men. Blindness would be execrable if
no one lost his eyes except those who deserve to have them pulled
out; therefore let Appius and Metellus be doomed to darkness. Riches
are not a good thing: therefore let Elius the pander possess them,
that men who have consecrated money in the temple, may see the same
in the brothel: for by no means can God discredit objects of desire
so effectually as by bestowing them upon the worst of men, and
removing them from the best. “But,” you say, “it is unjust that a
good man should be enfeebled, or transfixed, or chained, while bad
men swagger at large with a whole skin.” What! is it not unjust
that brave men should bear arms, pass the night in camps, and stand
on guard along the rampart with their wounds still bandaged, while
within the city eunuchs and professional profligates live at their
ease? what? is it not unjust that maidens of the highest birth
should be roused at night to perform Divine service, while fallen
women enjoy the soundest sleep? Labour calls for the best man: the
senate often passes the whole day in debate, while at the same time
every scoundrel either amuses his leisure in the Campus Martius,
or lurks in a tavern, or passes his time in some pleasant society.
The same thing happens in this great commonwealth (of the world):
good men labour, spend and are spent, and that too of their own
free will; they are not dragged along by fortune, but follow {16}
her and take equal steps with her; if they knew how, they would
outstrip her. I remember, also, to have heard this spirited saying
of that stoutest-hearted of men, Demetrius. “Ye immortal Gods,”
said he, “the only complaint which I have to make of you is that
you did not make your will known to me earlier; for then I would
sooner have gone into that state of life to which I now have been
called. Do you wish to take my children? it was for you that I
brought them up. Do you wish to take some part of my body? take it:
it is no great thing that I am offering you, I shall soon have done
with the whole of it. Do you wish for my life? why should I hesitate
to return to you what you gave me? whatever you ask you shall receive
with my good will: nay, I would rather give it than be forced to
hand it over to you: what need had you to take away what you did?
you might have received it from me: yet even as it is you cannot
take anything from me, because you cannot rob a man unless he
resists.”
I am constrained to nothing, I suffer nothing against my will, nor
am I God’s slave, but his willing follower, and so much the more
because I know that everything is ordained and proceeds according
to a law that endures for ever. The fates guide us, and the length
of every man’s days is decided at the first hour of his birth: every
cause depends upon some earlier cause: one long chain of destiny
decides all things, public or private. Wherefore, everything must
be patiently endured, because events do not fall in our way, as we
imagine, but come by a regular law. It has long ago been settled
at what you should rejoice and at what you should weep, and although
the lives of individual men appear to differ from one another in a
great variety of particulars, yet the sum total comes to one and
the same thing: we soon perish, and the gifts which we receive soon
perish. Why, then, should we be angry? why should we lament? we are
prepared for our fate: let nature deal {17} as she will with her
own bodies; let us be cheerful whatever befalls, and stoutly reflect
that it is not anything of our own that perishes. What is the duty
of a good man? to submit himself to fate: it is a great consolation
to be swept away together with the entire universe: whatever law
is laid upon us that thus we must live and thus we must die, is
laid upon the gods also: one unchangeable stream bears along men
and gods alike: the creator and ruler of the universe himself,
though he has given laws to the fates, yet is guided by them: he
always obeys, he only once commanded. “But why was God so unjust
in His distribution of fate, as to assign poverty, wounds, and
untimely deaths to good men?” The workman cannot alter his materials:
this is their nature. Some qualities cannot be separated from some
others: they cling together; are indivisible. Dull minds, tending
to sleep or to a waking state exactly like sleep, are composed of
sluggish elements: it requires stronger stuff to form a man meriting
careful description. His course will not be straightforward; he
must go upwards and downwards, be tossed about, and guide his vessel
through troubled waters: he must make his way in spite of fortune:
he will meet with much that is hard which he must soften, much that
is rough that he must make smooth. Fire tries gold, misfortune tries
brave men. See how high virtue has to climb: you may be sure that
it has no safe path to tread.
“Steep is the path at first: the steeds, though strong, Fresh
from their rest, can hardly crawl along; The middle part lies
through the topmost sky, Whence oft, as I the earth and sea
descry, I shudder, terrors through my bosom thrill. The ending
of the path is sheer down hill, And needs the careful guidance
of the rein, For ever when I sink beneath the main, {18} Old
Tethys trembles in her depths below Lest headlong down upon
her I should go.”[7]
When the spirited youth heard this, he said, “I have no fault to
find with the road: I will mount it, it is worth while to go through
these places, even though one fall.” His father did not cease from
trying to scare his brave spirit with terrors:—
“Then, too, that thou may’st hold thy course aright, And neither
turn aside to left nor right. Straight through the Bull’s fell
horns thy path must go. Through the fierce Lion, and the
Archer’s bow.”
After this Phaethon says:—
“Harness the chariot which you yield to me,
I am encouraged by these things with which you think to scare me:
I long to stand where the Sun himself trembles to stand.” It is the
part of grovellers and cowards to follow the safe track; courage
loves a lofty path.
VI. “Yet, why does God permit evil to happen to good men?” He does
not permit it: he takes away from them all evils, such as crimes
and scandalous wickedness, daring thoughts, grasping schemes, blind
lusts, and avarice coveting its neighbour’s goods. He protects and
saves them. Does any one besides this demand that God should look
after the baggage of good men also? Why, they themselves leave the
care of this to God: they scorn external accessories. Democritus
forswore riches, holding them to be a burden to a virtuous mind:
what wonder then, if God permits that to happen to a good man, which
a good man sometimes chooses should happen to himself? Good men,
you say, lose their children: why should they not, since sometimes
they even put them to death? They are banished: why should they not
be, since sometimes they {19} leave their country of their own free
will, never to return? They are slain: why not, since sometimes
they choose to lay violent hands on themselves? Why do they suffer
certain miseries? it is that they may teach others how to do so.
They are born as patterns. Conceive, therefore, that God says:—“You,
who have chosen righteousness, what complaint can you make of me?
I have encompassed other men with unreal good things, and have
deceived their inane minds as it were by a long and misleading
dream: I have bedecked them with gold, silver, and ivory, but within
them there is no good thing. Those men whom you regard as fortunate,
if you could see, not their outward show, but their hidden life,
are really unhappy, mean, and base, ornamented on the outside like
the walls of their houses: that good fortune of theirs is not sound
and genuine: it is only a veneer, and that a thin one. As long,
therefore, as they can stand upright and display themselves as they
choose, they shine and impose upon one; when something occurs to
shake and unmask them, we see how deep and real a rottenness was
hidden by that factitious magnificence. To you I have given sure
and lasting good things, which become greater and better the more
one turns them over and views them on every side: I have granted
to you to scorn danger, to disdain passion. You do not shine
outwardly, all your good qualities are turned inwards; even so does
the world neglect what lies without it, and rejoices in the
contemplation of itself. I have placed every good thing within your
own breasts: it is your good fortune not to need any good fortune.
‘Yet many things befall you which are sad, dreadful, hard to be
borne.’ Well, as I have not been able to remove these from your
path, I have given your minds strength to combat all: bear them
bravely. In this you can surpass God himself; He is beyond suffering
evil: you are above it. Despise poverty; no man lives as poor as
he was born: {20} despise pain; either it will cease or you will
cease: despise death; it either ends you or takes you elsewhere:
despise fortune; I have given her no weapon that can reach the mind.
Above all, I have taken care that no one should hold you captive
against your will: the way of escape lies open before you: if you
do not choose to fight, you may fly. For this reason, of all those
matters which I have deemed essential for you, I have made nothing
easier for you than to die. I have set man’s life as it were on a
mountain side: it soon slips down.[8] Do but watch, and you will
see how short and how ready a path leads to freedom. I have not
imposed such long delays upon those who quit the world as upon those
who enter it: were it not so, fortune would hold a wide dominion
over you, if a man died as slowly as he is born. Let all time, let
every place teach you, how simple it is to renounce nature, and to
fling back her gifts to her: before the altar itself and during the
solemn rites of sacrifice, while life is being prayed for, learn
how to die. Fat oxen fall dead with a tiny wound; a blow from a
man’s hand fells animals of great strength: the sutures of the neck
are severed by a thin blade, and when the joint which connects the
head and neck is cut, all that great mass falls. The breath of life
is not deep seated, {21} nor only to be let forth by steel—the
vitals need not be searched throughout by plunging a sword among
them to the hilt: death lies near the surface, I have not appointed
any particular spot for these blows—the body may be pierced wherever
you please. That very act which is called dying, by which the breath
of life leaves the body, is too short for you to be able to estimate
its quickness: whether a knot crushes the windpipe, or water stops
your breathing: whether you fall headlong from a height and perish
upon the hard ground below, or a mouthful of fire checks the drawing
of your breath—whatever it is, it acts swiftly. Do you not blush
to spend so long a time in dreading what takes so short a time to
do?”
[1] _honestior_ opposed to the gladiator—the loftier the station
of the combatant. The Gracchus of Juvenal, Sat. ii. and viii.,
illustrates, the passage.
[2] _par_, a technical term in the language of sport (_worthy_ of
such a spectator).
[3] _viderint_—Let them see to it: it is no matter of mine.
[4] That is, to triumph over. “Two spears were set upright ... and
a third was fastened across them at the top; and through this gateway
the vanquished army marched out, as a token that they had been
conquered in war, and owed their lives to the enemy’s mercy. It was
no peculiar insult devised for this occasion, but a common usage,
so far as appears, in similar cases; like the modern ceremony of
piling arms when a garrison or army surrender themselves as prisoners
of war.”— Arnold’s _History of Rome_, ch. xxxi.
[5] He was a “mirmillo,” a kind of gladiator who was armed with a
Gaulish helmet.
[6] _e lorica_.
[7] The lines occur in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, ii. 63. Phoebus is
telling Phaethon how to drive the chariot of the Sun.
[8] Compare Walter Scott: “All. . . . must have felt that but for
the dictates of religion, or the natural recoil of the mind from
the idea of dissolution, there have been times when they would have
been willing to throw away life as a child does a broken toy. I am
sure I know one who has often felt so. O God! what are we?—Lords
of nature?—Why, a tile drops from a house-top, which an elephant
would not feel more than a sheet of pasteboard, and there lies his
lordship. Or something of inconceivably minute origin, the pressure
of a bone, or the inflammation of a particle of the brain takes
place, and the emblem of the Deity destroys himself or some one
else. We hold our health and our reason on terms slighter than any
one would desire, were it in their choice, to hold an Irish
cabin.”—Lockhart’s _Life of Sir Walter Scott_, vol. vii., p. 11.
{22}
THE SECOND BOOK OF THE DIALOGUES OF L. ANNAEUS SENECA, ADDRESSED
TO SERENUS.
“THAT THE WISE MAN CAN NEITHER RECEIVE INJURY NOR INSULT,” OR, AN
ESSAY ON THE FIRMNESS OF THE WISE MAN.
I. I might truly say, Serenus, that there is as wide a difference
between the Stoics and the other sects of philosophers as there is
between men and women, since each class contributes an equal share
to human society, but the one is born to command, the other to obey.
The other philosophers deal with us gently and coaxingly, just as
our accustomed family physicians usually do with our bodies, treating
them not by the best and shortest method, but by that which we allow
them to employ; whereas the Stoics adopt a manly course, and do not
care about its appearing attractive to those who are entering upon
it, but that it should as quickly as possible take us out of the
world, and lead us to that lofty eminence which is so far beyond
the scope of any missile weapon that it is above the reach of Fortune
herself. “But the way by which we are asked to climb is steep and
uneven.” What then? Can heights be reached by a level path? Yet
they are not so sheer and precipitous as some think. It is only the
first part that {23} has rocks and cliffs and no apparent outlet,
just as many hills seen from a long way off appear abruptly steep
and joined together, because the distance deceives our sight, and
then, as we draw nearer, those very hills which our mistaken eyes
had made into one gradually unfold themselves, those parts which
seemed precipitous from afar assume a gently sloping outline. When
just now mention was made of Marcus Cato, you whose mind revolts
at injustice were indignant at Cato’s own age having so little
understood him, at its having allotted a place below Vatinius to
one who towered above both Caesar and Pompeius; it seemed shameful
to you, that when he spoke against some law in the Forum his toga
was torn from him, and that he was hustled through the hands of a
mutinous mob from the Rostra as far as the arch of Fabius, enduring
all the bad language, spitting, and other insults of the frantic
rabble.
II. I then answered, that you had good cause to be anxious on behalf
of the commonwealth, which Publius Clodius on the one side, Vatinius
and all the greatest scoundrels on the other, were putting up for
sale, and, carried away by their blind covetousness, did not
understand that when they sold it they themselves were sold with
it; I bade you have no fears on behalf of Cato himself, because the
wise man can neither receive injury nor insult, and it is more
certain that the immortal gods have given Cato as a pattern of a
wise man to us, than that they gave Ulysses or Hercules to the
earlier ages; for these our Stoics have declared were wise men,
unconquered by labours, despisers of pleasure, and superior to all
terrors. Cato did not slay wild beasts, whose pursuit belongs to
huntsmen and countrymen, nor did he exterminate fabulous creatures
with fire and sword, or live in times when it was possible to believe
that the heavens could be supported on the shoulders of one man.
In an age which had thrown {24} off its belief in antiquated
superstitions, and had carried material knowledge to its highest
point, he had to struggle against that many-headed monster, ambition,
against that boundless lust for power which the whole world divided
among three men could not satisfy. He alone withstood the vices of
a worn-out State, sinking into ruin through its own bulk; he upheld
the falling commonwealth as far as it could be upheld by one man’s
hand, until at last his support was withdrawn, and he shared the
crash which he had so long averted, and perished together with that
from which it was impious to separate him—for Cato did not outlive
freedom, nor did freedom outlive Cato. Think you that the people
could do any wrong to such a man when they tore away his praetorship
or his toga? when they bespattered his sacred head with the rinsings
of their mouths? The wise man is safe, and no injury or insult can
touch him.
III. I think I see your excited and boiling temper. You are preparing
to exclaim: “These are the things which take away all weight from
your maxims; you promise great matters, such as I should not even
wish for, let alone believe to be possible, and then, after all
your brave words, though you say that the wise man is not poor, you
admit that he often is in want of servants, shelter, and food. You
say that the wise man is not mad, yet you admit that he sometimes
loses his reason, talks nonsense, and is driven to the wildest
actions by the stress of his disorder. When you say that the wise
man cannot be a slave, you do not deny that he will be sold, carry
out orders, and perform menial services at the bidding of his master;
so, for all your proud looks, you come down to the level of every
one else, and merely call things by different names. Consequently,
I suspect that something of this kind lurks behind this maxim, which
at first sight appears so beautiful and noble, ‘that the wise man
can neither receive {25} injury nor insult.’ It makes a great deal
of difference whether you declare that the wise man is beyond feeling
resentment, or beyond receiving injury; for if you say that he will
bear it calmly, he has no special privilege in that, for he has
developed a very common quality, and one which is learned by long
endurance of wrong itself, namely, patience. If you declare that
he can never receive an injury, that is, that no one will attempt
to do him one, then I will throw up all my occupations in life and
become a Stoic.”
It has not been my object to decorate the wise man with mere imaginary
verbal honours, but to raise him to a position where no injury will
be permitted to reach him. “What? will there be no one to tease
him, to try to wrong him?” There is nothing on earth so sacred as
not to be liable to sacrilege; yet holy things exist on high none
the less because there are men who strike at a greatness which is
far above themselves, though with no hope of reaching it. The
invulnerable is not that which is never struck, but that which is
never wounded. In this class I will show you the wise man. Can we
doubt that the strength which is never overcome in fight is more
to be relied on than that which is never challenged, seeing that
untested power is untrustworthy, whereas that solidity which hurls
back all attacks is deservedly regarded as the most trustworthy of
all? In like manner you may know that the wise man, if no injury
hurts him, is of a higher type than if none is offered to him, and
I should call him a brave man whom war does not subdue and the
violence of the enemy does not alarm, not him who enjoys luxurious
ease amid a slothful people. I say, then, that such a wise man is
invulnerable against all injury; it matters not, therefore, how
many darts be hurled at him, since he can be pierced by none of
them. Just as the hardness of some stones is impervious to steel,
and adamant can neither be cut, {26} broken, or ground, but blunts
all instruments used upon it; just as some things cannot be destroyed
by fire, but when encircled by flame still retain their hardness
and shape; just as some tall projecting cliffs break the waves of
the sea, and though lashed by them through many centuries, yet show
no traces of their rage; even so the mind of the wise man is firm,
and gathers so much strength, that it is as safe from injury as any
of those things which I have mentioned.
IV. “What then? Will there be no one who will try to do an injury
to the wise man?” Yes, some one will try, but the injury will not
reach him; for he is separated from the contact of his inferiors
by so wide a distance that no evil impulse can retain its power of
harm until it reaches him. Even when powerful men, raised to positions
of high authority, and strong in the obedience of their dependents,
strive to injure him, all their darts fall as far short of his
wisdom as those which are shot upwards by bowstrings or catapults,
which, although they rise so high as to pass out of sight, yet fall
back again without reaching the heavens. Why, do you suppose that
when that stupid king[1] clouded the daylight with the multitude
of his darts, that any arrow of them all went into the sun? or that
when he flung his chains into the deep, that he was able to reach
Neptune? Just as sacred things escape from the hands of men, and
no injury is done to the godhead by those who destroy temples and
melt down images, so whoever attempts to treat the wise man with
impertinence, insolence, or scorn, does so in vain. “It would be
better,” say you, “if no one wished to do so.” You are expressing
a wish that the whole human race were inoffensive, which may hardly
be; moreover, those who would gain by such wrongs not being done
are those who would do them, not he who could not suffer from them
even if they were done; nay, I {27} know not whether wisdom is not
best displayed by calmness in the midst of annoyances, just as the
greatest proof of a general’s strength in arms and men consists in
his quietness and confidence in the midst of an enemy’s country.
V. If you think fit, my Serenus, let us distinguish between injury
and insult. The former is naturally the more grievous, the latter
less important, and grievous only to the thin-skinned, since it
angers men but does not wound them. Yet such is the weakness of
men’s minds, that many think that there is nothing more bitter than
insult; thus you will find slaves who prefer to be flogged to being
slapped, and who think stripes and death more endurable than insulting
words. To such a pitch of absurdity have we come that we suffer not
only from pain, but from the idea of pain, like children, who are
terror-stricken by darkness, misshapen masks, and distorted faces,
and whose tears flow at hearing names unpleasing to their ears, at
the movement of our fingers, and other things which they ignorantly
shrink from with a sort of mistaken spasm. The object which injury
proposes to itself is to do evil to some one. Now wisdom leaves no
room for evil; to it, the only evil is baseness, which cannot enter
into the place already occupied by virtue and honour. If, therefore,
there can be no injury without evil, and no evil without baseness,
and baseness cannot find any place with a man who is already filled
with honour, it follows that no injury can reach the wise man: for
if injury be the endurance of some evil, and the wise man can endure
no evil, it follows that no injury takes effect upon the wise man.
All injury implies a making less of that which it affects, and no
one can sustain an injury without some loss either of his dignity,
or of some part of his body, or of some of the things external to
ourselves; but the wise man can lose nothing. He has invested
everything in himself, has entrusted nothing to fortune, has his
property in safety, {28} and is content with virtue, which does not
need casual accessories, and therefore can neither be increased or
diminished; for virtue, as having attained to the highest position,
has no room for addition to herself, and fortune can take nothing
away save what she gave. Now fortune does not give virtue; therefore
she does not take it away. Virtue is free, inviolable, not to be
moved, not to be shaken, and so hardened against misfortunes that
she cannot be bent, let alone overcome by them. She looks unfalteringly
on while tortures are being prepared for her; she makes no change
of countenance, whether misery or pleasure be offered to her. The
wise man therefore can lose nothing of whose loss he will be sensible,
for he is the property of virtue alone, from whom he never can be
taken away. He enjoys all other things at the good pleasure of
fortune; but who is grieved at the loss of what is not his own? If
injury can hurt none of those things which are the peculiar property
of the wise man, because while his virtue is safe they are safe,
then it is impossible that an injury should be done to a wise man.
Demetrius, who was surnamed Poliorcetes, took Megara, and the
philosopher Stilbo, when asked by him whether he had lost anything,
answered, “No, I carry all my property about me.” Yet his inheritance
had been given up to pillage, his daughters had been outraged by
the enemy, his country had fallen under a foreign dominion, and it
was the king, enthroned on high, surrounded by the spears of his
victorious troops, who put this question to him; yet he struck the
victory out of the king’s hands, and proved that, though the city
was taken, he himself was not only unconquered but unharmed, for
he bore with him those true goods which no one can lay hands upon.
What was being plundered and carried away hither and thither he did
not consider to be his own, but to be merely things which come and
go at the caprice of fortune; therefore he had not loved them as
his own, for {29} the possession of all things which come from
without is slippery and insecure.
VI. Consider now, whether any thief, or false accuser, or headstrong
neighbour, or rich man enjoying the power conferred by a childless
old age, could do any injury to this man, from whom neither war nor
an enemy whose profession was the noble art of battering city walls
could take away anything. Amid the flash of swords on all sides,
and the riot of the plundering soldiery, amid the flames and blood
and ruin of the fallen city, amid the crash of temples falling upon
their gods, one man was at peace. You need not therefore account
that a reckless boast, for which I will give you a surety, if my
words goes for nothing. Indeed, you would hardly believe so much
constancy or such greatness of mind to belong to any man; but here
a man comes forward to prove that you have no reason for doubting
that one who is but of human birth can raise himself above human
necessities, can tranquilly behold pains, losses, diseases, wounds,
and great natural convulsions roaring around him, can bear adversity
with calm and prosperity with moderation, neither yielding to the
former nor trusting to the latter, that he can remain the same amid
all varieties of fortune, and think nothing to be his own save
himself, and himself too only as regards his better part. “Behold,”
says he, “I am here to prove to you that although, under the direction
of that destroyer of so many cities, walls may be shaken by the
stroke of the ram, lofty towers may be suddenly brought low by
galleries and hidden mines, and mounds arise so high as to rival
the highest citadel, yet that no siege engines can be discovered
which can shake a well-established mind. I have just crept from
amid the ruins of my house, and with conflagrations blazing all
around I have escaped from the flames through blood. What fate has
befallen my daughters, whether a worse one than that of their
country, I {30} know not. Alone and elderly, and seeing everything
around me in the hands of the enemy, still I declare that my property
is whole and untouched. I have, I hold whatever of mine I have ever
had. There is no reason for you to suppose me conquered and yourself
my conqueror. It is your fortune which has overcome mine. As for
those fleeting possessions which change their owners, I know not
where they are; what belongs to myself is with me, and ever will
be. I see rich men who have lost their estates; lustful men who
have lost their loves, the courtesans whom they cherished at the
cost of much shame; ambitious men who have lost the senate, the law
courts, the places set apart for the public display of men’s vices;
usurers who have lost their account-books, in which avarice vainly
enjoyed an unreal wealth; but I possess everything whole and
uninjured. Leave me, and go and ask those who are weeping and
lamenting over the loss of their money, who are offering their bare
breasts to drawn swords in its defence, or who are fleeing from the
enemy with weighty pockets.” See then, Serenus, that the perfect
man, full of human and divine virtues, can lose nothing; his goods
are surrounded by strong and impassable walls. You cannot compare
with them the walls of Babylon, which Alexander entered, nor the
fortifications of Carthage and Numantia, won by one and the same
hand,[2] nor the Capitol and citadel of Rome, which are branded
with the marks of the victors’ insults; the ramparts which protect
the wise man are safe from fire and hostile invasion; they afford
no passage; they are lofty, impregnable, divine.
VII. You have no cause for saying, as you are wont to do, that this
wise man of ours[3] is nowhere to be found; we do not invent him
as an unreal glory of the human race, or conceive a mighty shadow
of an untruth, but we have displayed and will display him just as
we sketch him, though {31} he may perhaps be uncommon, and only one
appears at long intervals; for what is great and transcends the
common ordinary type is not often produced; but this very Marcus
Cato himself, the mention of whom started this discussion, was a
man who I fancy even surpassed our model. Moreover, that which hurts
must be stronger than that which is hurt. Now wickedness is not
stronger than virtue; therefore the wise man cannot be hurt. Only
the bad attempt to injure the good. Good men are at peace among
themselves; bad ones are equally mischievous to the good and to one
another. If a man cannot be hurt by one weaker than himself, and a
bad man be weaker than a good one, and the good have no injury to
dread, except from one unlike themselves; then, no injury takes
effect upon the wise man; for by this time I need not remind you
that no one save the wise man is good.
“If,” says our adversary, “Socrates was unjustly condemned, he
received an injury.” At this point it is needful for us to bear in
mind that it is possible for some one to do an injury to me, and
yet for me not to receive it, as if any one were to steal something
from my country-house and leave it in my town-house, that man would
commit a theft, yet I should lose nothing. A man may become
mischievous, and yet do no actual mischief: if a man lies with his
own wife as if she were a stranger, he will commit adultery, but
his wife will not; if a man gives me poison and the poison lose its
strength when mixed with food, that man, by administering the poison,
has made himself a criminal, even though he has done no hurt. A man
is no less a brigand because his sword becomes entangled in his
victim’s clothes and misses its mark. All crimes, as far as concerns
their criminality, are completed before the actual deed is accomplished.
Some crimes are of such a nature and bound by such conditions that
the first part can take place without the second. {32} though the
second cannot take place without the first. I will endeavour to
explain these words: I can move my feet and yet not run; but I
cannot run without moving my feet. I can be in the water without
swimming; but if I swim, I cannot help being in the water. The
matter of which we are treating is of this character: if I have
received an injury, it is necessary that some one must have done
it to me; but if an injury has been done me, it is not necessary
that I should have received one; for many circumstances may intervene
to avert the injury, as, for example, some chance may strike the
hand that is aiming at us, and the dart, after it has been thrown,
may swerve aside. So injuries of all kinds may by certain circumstances
be thrown back and intercepted in mid-course, so that they may be
done and yet not received.
VIII. Moreover, justice can suffer nothing unjust, because contraries
cannot co-exist; but an injury can only be done unjustly, therefore
an injury cannot be done to the wise man. Nor need you wonder at
no one being able to do him an injury; for no one can do him any
good service either. The wise man lacks nothing which he can accept
by way of a present, and the bad man can bestow nothing that is
worthy of the wise man’s acceptance; for he must possess it before
he can bestow it, and he possesses nothing which the wise man would
rejoice to have handed over to him. Consequently, no one can do
either harm or good to the wise man, because divine things neither
want help nor are capable of being hurt; and the wise man is near,
indeed very near to the gods, being like a god in every respect
save that he is mortal. As he presses forward and makes his way
towards the life that is sublime, well-ordered, without fear,
proceeding in a regular and harmonious course, tranquil, beneficent,
made for the good of mankind, useful both to itself and to others,
he will neither long nor weep for anything that is grovelling. He
who, trusting to {33} reason, passes through human affairs with
godlike mind, has no quarter from which he can receive injury. Do
you suppose that I mean merely from no man? He cannot receive an
injury even from fortune, which, whenever she contends with virtue,
always retires beaten. If we accept with an undisturbed and tranquil
mind that greatest terror of all, beyond which the angry laws and
the most cruel masters have nothing to threaten us with, in which
fortune’s dominion is contained—if we know that death is not an
evil, and therefore is not an injury either, we shall much more
easily endure the other things, such as losses, pains, disgraces,
changes of abode, bereavements, and partings, which do not overwhelm
the wise man even if they all befall him at once, much less does
he grieve at them when they assail him separately. And if he bears
the injuries of fortune calmly, how much more will he bear those
of powerful men, whom he knows to be the hands of fortune.
IX. He therefore endures everything in the same spirit with which
he endures the cold of winter and the severities of climate, fevers,
diseases, and other chance accidents, nor does he entertain so high
an opinion of any man as to suppose that he acts of set purpose,
which belongs to the wise man alone. All other men have no plans,
but only plots and deceits and irregular impulses of mind, which
he reckons the same as pure accident; now, what depends upon pure
accident cannot rage around us designedly. He reflects, also, that
the largest sources of injury are to be found in those things by
means of which danger is sought for against us, as, for example,
by a suborned accuser, or a false charge, or by the stirring up
against us of the anger of great men, and the other forms of the
brigandage of civilized life. Another common type of injury is when
a man loses some profit or prize for which he has long been angling;
when an inheritance which he {34} has spent great pains to render
his own is left to some one else, or the favour of some noble house,
through which he makes great gain, is taken from him. The wise man
escapes all this, since he knows not what it is to live for hope
or for fear. Add to this, that no one receives an injury unmoved,
but is disturbed by the feeling of it. Now, the man free from
mistakes has no disturbance; he is master of himself, enjoying a
deep and tranquil repose of mind; for if an injury reaches him it
moves and rouses him. But the wise man is without anger, which is
caused by the appearance of injury, and he could not be free from
anger unless he were also free from injury, which he knows cannot
be done to him; hence it is that he is so upright and cheerful,
hence he is elate with constant joy. So far, however, is he from
shrinking from the encounter either of circumstances or of men,
that he makes use of injury itself to make trial of himself and
test his own virtue. Let us, I beseech you, show favour to this
thesis and listen with impartial ears and minds while the wise man
is being made exempt from injury; for nothing is thereby taken away
from your insolence, your greediest lusts, your blind rashness and
pride; it is without prejudice to your vices that this freedom is
sought for the wise man; we do not strive to prevent your doing an
injury, but to enable him to sink all injuries beneath himself and
protect himself from them by his own greatness of mind. So in the
sacred games many have won the victory by patiently enduring the
blows of their adversaries and so wearying them out. Think that the
wise man belongs to this class, that of men who, by long and faithful
practice, have acquired strength to endure and tire out all the
violence of their enemies.
X. Since we have now discussed the first part of our subject, let
us pass on to the second, in which we will prove by arguments, some
of which are our own, but {35} which for the most part are Stoic
commonplaces, that the wise man cannot be insulted. There is a
lesser form of injury, which we must complain of rather than avenge,
which the laws also have considered not to deserve any special
punishment. This passion is produced by a meanness of mind which
shrinks at any act or deed which treats it with disrespect. “He did
not admit me to his house to-day, although he admitted others; he
either turned haughtily away or openly laughed when I spoke;” or,
“he placed me at dinner, not on the middle couch (the place of
honour), but on the lowest one;” and other matters of the same sort,
which I can call nothing but the whinings of a queasy spirit. These
matters chiefly affect the luxuriously-nurtured and prosperous; for
those who are pressed by worse evils have no time to notice such
things as these. Through excessive idleness, dispositions naturally
weak and womanish and prone to indulge in fancies through want of
real injuries are disturbed at these things, the greater part of
which arise from misunderstanding. He therefore who is affected by
insult shows that he possesses neither sense nor trustfulness; for
he considers it certain that he is scorned, and this vexation affects
him with a certain sense of degradation, as he effaces himself and
takes a lower room; whereas the wise man is scorned by no one, for
he knows his own greatness, gives himself to understand that he
allows no one to have such power over him, and as for all of what
I should not so much call distress as uneasiness of mind, he does
not overcome it, but never so much as feels it. Some other things
strike the wise man, though they may not shake his principles, such
as bodily pain and weakness, the loss of friends and children, and
the ruin of his country in war-time. I do not say that the wise man
does not feel these, for we do not ascribe to him the hardness of
stone or iron; there is no virtue but is conscious of its own
endurance. What then does he? He receives some {36} blows, but when
he has received them he rises superior to them, heals them, and
brings them to an end; these more trivial things he does not even
feel, nor does he make use of his accustomed fortitude in the
endurance of evil against them, but either takes no notice of them
or considers them to deserve to be laughed at.
XI. Besides this, as most insults proceed from those who are haughty
and arrogant and bear their prosperity ill, he has something wherewith
to repel this haughty passion, namely, that noblest of all the
virtues, magnanimity, which passes over everything of that kind as
like unreal apparitions in dreams and visions of the night, which
have nothing in them substantial or true. At the same time he
reflects that all men are too low to venture to look down upon what
is so far above them. The Latin word _contumelia_ is derived from
the word _contempt_, because no one does that injury to another
unless he regards him with contempt; and no one can treat his elders
and betters with contempt, even though he does what contemptuous
persons are wont to do; for children strike their parents’ faces,
infants rumple and tear their mother’s hair, and spit upon her and
expose what should be covered before her, and do not shrink from
using dirty language; yet we do not call any of these things
contemptuous. And why? Because he who does it is not able to show
contempt. For the same reason the scurrilous raillery of our slaves
against their masters amuses us, as their boldness only gains licence
to exercise itself at the expense of the guests if they begin with
the master; and the more contemptible and the more an object of
derision each one of them is, the greater licence he gives his
tongue. Some buy forward slave-boys for this purpose, cultivate
their scurrility and send them to school that they may vent
premeditated libels, which we do not call insults, but smart sayings;
yet what madness, at one time to be amused and at another to be
affronted by the same thing, {37} and to call a phrase an outrage
when spoken by a friend, and an amusing piece of raillery when used
by a slave-boy!
XII. In the same spirit in which we deal with boys, the wise man
deals with all those whose childhood still endures after their youth
is past and their hair is grey. What do men profit by age when their
mind has all the faults of childhood and their defects are intensified
by time? when they differ from children only in the size and
appearance of their bodies, and are just as unsteady and capricious,
eager for pleasure without discrimination, timorous and quiet through
fear rather than through natural disposition? One cannot say that
such men differ from children because the latter are greedy for
knuckle-bones and nuts and coppers, while the former are greedy for
gold and silver and cities; because the latter play amongst themselves
at being magistrates, and imitate the purple-edged robe of state,
the lictors’ axes, and the judgment-seat, while the former play
with the same things in earnest in the Campus Martius and the courts
of justice; because the latter pile up the sand on the seashore
into the likeness of houses, and the former, with an air of being
engaged in important business, employ themselves in piling up stones
and walls and roofs until they have turned what was intended for
the protection of the body into a danger to it? Children and those
more advanced in age both make the same mistake, but the latter
deal with different and more important things; the wise man,
therefore, is quite justified in treating the affronts which he
receives from such men as jokes: and sometimes he corrects them,
as he would children, by pain and punishment, not because he has
received an injury, but because they have done one and in order
that they may do so no more. Thus we break in animals with stripes,
yet we are not angry with them when they refuse to carry their
rider, but curb them in order that pain may overcome {38} their
obstinacy. Now, therefore, you know the answer to the question which
was put to us, “Why, if the wise man receives neither injury nor
insult, he punishes those who do these things?” He does not revenge
himself, but corrects them.
XIII. What, then, is there to prevent your believing this strength
of mind to belong to the wise man, when you can see the same thing
existing in others, though not from the same cause?—for what physician
is angry with a crazy patient? who takes to heart the curses of a
fever-stricken one who is denied cold water? The wise man retains
in his dealings with all men this same habit of mind which the
physician adopts in dealing with his patients, whose parts of shame
he does not scorn to handle should they need treatment, nor yet to
look at their solid and liquid evacuations, nor to endure their
reproaches when frenzied by disease. The wise man knows that all
those who strut about in purple-edged togas,[4] healthy and embrowned,
are brain-sick people, whom he regards as sick and full of follies.
He is not, therefore, angry, should they in their sickness presume
to bear themselves somewhat impertinently towards their physician,
and in the same spirit as that in which he sets no value upon their
titles of honour, he will set but little value upon their acts of
disrespect to himself. He will not rise in his own esteem if a
beggar pays his court to him, and he will not think it an affront
if one of the dregs of the people does not return his greeting. So
also he will not admire himself even if many rich men admire him;
for he knows that they differ in no respect from beggars—nay, are
even more wretched than they; for {39} beggars want but a little,
whereas rich men want a great deal. Again, he will not be moved if
the King of the Medes, or Attalus, King of Asia, passes by him in
silence with a scornful air when he offers his greeting; for he
knows that such a man’s position has nothing to render it more
enviable than that of the man whose duty it is in some great household
to keep the sick and mad servants in order. Shall I be put out if
one of those who do business at the temple of Castor, buying and
selling worthless slaves, does not return my salute, a man whose
shops are crowded with throngs of the worst of bondmen? I trow not;
for what good can there be in a man who owns none but bad men? As
the wise man is indifferent to the courtesy or incivility of such
a man, so is he to that of a king. “You own,” says he, “the Parthians
and Bactrians, but they are men whom you keep in order by fear,
they are people whose possession forbids you to unstring the bow,
they are fierce enemies, on sale, and eagerly looking out for a new
master.” He will not, then, be moved by an insult from any man for
though all men differ one from another, yet the wise man regards
them all as alike on account of their equal folly; for should he
once lower himself to the point of being affected by either injury
or insult, he could never feel safe afterwards, and safety is the
especial advantage of the wise man, and he will not be guilty of
showing respect to the man who has done him an injury by admitting
that he has received one, because it necessarily follows that he
who is disquieted at any one’s scorn would value that person’s
admiration.
XIV. Such madness possesses some men that they imagine it possible
for an affront to be put upon them by a woman. What matters it who
she may be, how many slaves bear her litter, how heavily her ears
are laden, how soft her seat? she is always the same thoughtless
creature, and unless she possesses acquired knowledge and {40} much
learning, she is fierce and passionate in her desires. Some are
annoyed at being jostled by a heater of curling-tongs, and call the
reluctance of a great man’s porter to open the door, the pride of
his nomenclator,[5] or the disdainfulness of his chamberlain,
insults. O! what laughter is to be got out of such things, with
what amusement the mind may be filled when it contrasts the frantic
follies of others with its own peace! “How then? will the wise man
not approach doors which are kept by a surly porter?” Nay, if any
need calls him thither, he will make trial of him, however fierce
he may be, will tame him as one tames a dog by offering it food,
and will not be enraged at having to expend entrance-money, reflecting
that on certain bridges also one has to pay toll; in like fashion
he will pay his fee to whoever farms this revenue of letting in
visitors, for he knows that men are wont to buy whatever is offered
for sale.[6] A man shows a poor spirit if he is pleased with himself
for having answered the porter cavalierly, broken his staff, forced
his way into his master’s presence, and demanded a whipping for
him. He who strives with a man makes himself that man’s rival, and
must be on equal terms with him before he can overcome him. But
what will the wise man do when he receives a cuff? He will do as
Cato did when he was struck in the face; he did not flare up and
revenge the outrage, he did not even pardon it, but ignored it,
showing more magnanimity in not acknowledging it than if he had
forgiven it. We will not dwell long upon this point; for who is
there who knows not that none of those things which are thought to
be good or evil are looked upon by the wise man and by mankind in
general in the same manner? He does not regard what all men think
low or wretched; he does not follow the people’s track, but as the
{41} stars move in a path opposite to that of the earth, so he
proceeds contrary to the prejudices of all.
XV. Cease then to say, “Will not the wise man, then, receive an
injury if he be beaten, if his eye be knocked out? will he not
receive an insult if he be hooted through the Forum by the foul
voices of ruffians? if at a court banquet he be bidden to leave the
table and eat with slaves appointed to degrading duties? if he be
forced to endure anything else that can be thought of that would
gall a high spirit?” However many or however severe these crosses
may be, they will all be of the same kind; and if small ones do not
affect him, neither will greater ones; if a few do not affect him,
neither will more. It is from your own weakness that you form your
idea of his colossal mind, and when you have thought how much you
yourselves could endure to suffer, you place the limit of the wise
man’s endurance a little way beyond that. But his virtue has placed
him in another region of the universe which has nothing in common
with you. Seek out sufferings and all things hard to be borne,
repulsive to be heard or seen; he will not be overwhelmed by their
combination, and will bear all just as he bears each one of them.
He who says that the wise man can bear this and cannot bear that,
and restrains his magnanimity within certain limits, does wrong;
for Fortune overcomes us unless she is entirely overcome. Think not
that this is mere Stoic austerity. Epicurus, whom you adopt as the
patron of your laziness, and who, you imagine, always taught what
was soft and slothful and conducive to pleasure, said, “Fortune
seldom stands in a wise man’s way.” How near he came to a manly
sentiment! Do thou dare to speak more boldly, and clear her out of
the way altogether! This is the house of the wise man—narrow,
unadorned, without bustle and splendour, the threshold guarded by
no porters who marshal the crowd of visitors with a haughtiness
proportionate to their bribes—but For {42} tune cannot cross this
open and unguarded threshold. She knows that there is no room for
her where there is nothing of hers.
XVI. Now if even Epicurus, who made more concessions to the body
than any one, takes a spirited tone with regard to injuries, what
can appear beyond belief or beyond the scope of human nature amongst
us Stoics? He says that injuries may be endured by the wise man,
we say that they do not exist for him. Nor is there any reason why
you should declare this to be repugnant to nature. We do not deny
that it is an unpleasant thing to be beaten or struck, or to lose
one of our limbs, but we say that none of these things are injuries.
We do not take away from them the feeling of pain, but the name of
“injury,” which cannot be received while our virtue is unimpaired.
We shall see which of the two is nearest the truth; each of them
agree in despising injury. You ask what difference there is between
them? All that there is between two very brave gladiators, one of
whom conceals his wound and holds his ground, while the other turns
round to the shouting populace, gives them to understand that his
wound is nothing, and does not permit them to interfere on his
behalf. You need not think that it is any great thing about which
we differ; the whole gist of the matter, that which alone concerns
you, is what both schools of philosophy urge you to do, namely, to
despise injuries and insults, which I may call the shadows and
outlines of injuries, to despise which does not need a wise man,
but merely a sensible one, who can say to himself, “Do these things
befall me deservedly or undeservedly? If deservedly, it is not an
insult, but a judicial sentence; if undeservedly, then he who does
injustice ought to blush, not I. And what is this which is called
an insult? Some one has made a joke about the baldness of my head,
the weakness of my eyes, the thinness of my legs, the shortness of
my stature; what insult is there in {43} telling me that which every
one sees? We laugh when _tête-à-tête_ at the same thing at which
we are indignant when it is said before a crowd, and we do not allow
others the privilege of saying what we ourselves are wont to say
about ourselves; we are amused at decorous jests, but are angry if
they are carried too far.”
XVII. Chrysippus says that a man was enraged because some one called
him a sea-sheep; we have seen Fidus Cornelius, the son-in-law of
Ovidius Naso, weeping in the Senate-house because Corbulo called
him a plucked ostrich; his command of his countenance did not fail
him at other abusive charges, which damaged his character and way
of life; at this ridiculous saying he burst into tears. So deplorable
is the weakness of men’s minds when reason no longer guides them.
What of our taking offence if any one imitates our talk, our walk,
or apes any defect of our person or our pronunciation? as if they
would become more notorious by another’s imitation than by our doing
them ourselves. Some are unwilling to hear about their age and grey
hairs, and all the rest of what men pray to arrive at. The reproach
of poverty agonizes some men, and whoever conceals it makes it a
reproach to himself; and therefore if you of your own accord are
the first to acknowledge it, you cut the ground from under the feet
of those who would sneer and politely insult you; no one is laughed
at who begins by laughing at himself. Tradition tells us that
Vatinius, a man born both to be laughed at and hated, was a witty
and clever jester. He made many jokes about his feet and his short
neck, and thus escaped the sarcasms of Cicero above all, and of his
other enemies, of whom he had more than he had diseases. If he, who
through constant abuse had forgotten how to blush, could do this
by sheer brazenness, why should not he who has made some progress
in the education of a gentleman and the study of philosophy? Besides,
it is a sort of revenge to spoil a man’s {44} enjoyment of the
insult he has offered to us; such men say, “Dear me, I suppose he
did not understand it.” Thus the success of an insult lies in the
sensitiveness and rage of the victim; hereafter the insulter will
sometimes meet his match; some one will be found to revenge you
also.
XVIII. Gaius Caesar, among the other vices with which he overflowed,
was possessed by a strange insolent passion for marking every one
with some note of ridicule, he himself being the most tempting
subject for derision; so ugly was the paleness which proved him
mad, so savage the glare of the eyes which lurked under his old
woman’s brow, so hideous his misshapen head, bald and dotted about
with a few cherished hairs; besides the neck set thick with bristles,
his thin legs, his monstrous feet. It would be endless were I to
mention all the insults which he heaped upon his parents and
ancestors, and people of every class of life. I will mention those
which brought him to ruin. An especial friend of his was Asiaticus
Valerius, a proud-spirited man and one hardly likely to put up with
another’s insults quietly. At a drinking bout, that is, a public
assembly, Gaius, at the top of his voice, reproached this man with
the way his wife behaved in bed. Good gods! that a man should hear
that the emperor knew this, and that he, the emperor, should describe
his adultery and his disappointment to the lady’s husband, I do not
say to a man of consular rank and his own friend. Chaerea, on the
other hand, the military tribune, had a voice not befitting his
prowess, feeble in sound, and somewhat suspicious unless you knew
his achievements. When he asked for the watchword Gaius at one time
gave him “Venus,” and at another “Priapus,” and by various means
reproached the man-at-arms with effeminate vice; while he himself
was dressed in transparent clothes, wearing sandals and jewellery.
Thus he forced him to use his sword, that he might not have to ask
for the watchword oftener; it was Chaerea who {45} first of all the
conspirators raised his hand, who cut through the middle of Caligula’s
neck with one blow. After that, many swords, belonging to men who
had public or private injuries to avenge, were thrust into his body,
but he first showed himself a man who seemed least like one. The
same Gaius construed everything as an insult (since those who are
most eager to offer affronts are least able to endure them). He was
angry with Herennius Macer for having greeted him as Gaius—nor did
the chief centurion of triarii get off scot-free for having saluted
him as Caligula; having been born in the camp and brought up as the
child of the legions, he had been wont to be called by this name,
nor was there any by which he was better known to the troops, but
by this time he held “Caligula” to be a reproach and a dishonour.
Let wounded spirits, then, console themselves with this reflexion,
that, even though our easy temper may have neglected to revenge
itself, nevertheless that there will be some one who will punish
the impertinent, proud, and insulting man, for these are vices which
he never confines to one victim or one single offensive act. Let
us look at the examples of those men whose endurance we admire, as,
for instance, that of Socrates, who took in good part the published
and acted jibes of the comedians upon himself, and laughed no less
than he did when he was drenched with dirty water by his wife
Xanthippe. Antisthenes was reproached with his mother being a
barbarian and a Thracian; he answered that the mother of the gods,
too, came from Mount Ida.
XIX. We ought not to engage in quarrels and wrangling; we ought to
betake ourselves far away and to disregard everything of this kind
which thoughtless people do (indeed thoughtless people alone do
it), and to set equal value upon the honours and the reproaches of
the mob; we ought not to be hurt by the one or to be pleased by the
other. Otherwise we shall neglect many essential points, shall
desert our {46} duty both to the state and in private life through
excessive fear of insults or weariness of them, and sometimes we
shall even miss what would do us good, while tortured by this
womanish pain at hearing something not to our mind. Sometimes, too,
when enraged with powerful men we shall expose this failing by our
reckless freedom of speech; yet it is not freedom to suffer nothing—we
are mistaken—freedom consists in raising one’s mind superior to
injuries and becoming a person whose pleasures come from himself
alone, in separating oneself from external circumstances that one
may not have to lead a disturbed life in fear of the laughter and
tongues of all men; for if any man can offer an insult, who is there
who cannot? The wise man and the would-be wise man will apply
different remedies to this; for it is only those whose philosophical
education is incomplete, and who still guide themselves by public
opinion, who would suppose that they ought to spend their lives in
the midst of insults and injuries; yet all things happen in a more
endurable fashion to men who are prepared for them. The nobler a
man is by birth, by reputation, or by inheritance, the more bravely
he should bear himself, remembering that the tallest men stand in
the front rank in battle. As for insults, offensive language, marks
of disgrace, and such-like disfigurements, he ought to bear them
as he would bear the shouts of the enemy, and darts or stones flung
from a distance, which rattle upon his helmet without causing a
wound; while he should look upon injuries as wounds, some received
on his armour and others on his body, which, he endures without
falling or even leaving his place in the ranks. Even though you be
hard pressed and violently attacked by the enemy, still it is base
to give way; hold the post assigned to you by nature. You ask, what
this post is? it is that of being a man. The wise man has another
help, of the opposite kind to this; you are hard at work, while he
has already won the victory. Do not {47} quarrel with your own good
advantage, and, until you shall have made your way to the truth,
keep alive this hope in your minds, be willing to receive the news
of a better life, and encourage it by your admiration and your
prayers; it is to the interest of the commonwealth of mankind that
there should be some one who is unconquered, some one against whom
fortune has no power.
[1] Xerxes.
[2] Scipio.
[3] The Stoics.
[4] Seneca here speaks of men wearing the toga as officials,
contrasted with the mass of Roman citizens, among whom the wearing
of the toga was already falling into disuse in the time of Augustus.
See Macrob., “Sat.,” vi. 5 extr., and Suetonius, “Life of Octavius,”
40, where the author mentions that Augustus used sarcastically to
apply the verse, Virg., ‘Aen.,’ i. 282, to the Romans of his day.
[5] See note, “De Beneficiis,” vi. 33.
[6] Gertz reads ‘decet emere venalia,’ ‘there is no harm in buying
what is for sale.’
{48}
THE THIRD BOOK OF THE DIALOGUES OF L. ANNAEUS SENECA, ADDRESSED TO
NOVATUS.
OF ANGER.
Book I.
You have demanded of me, Novatus, that I should write how anger may
be soothed, and it appears to me that you are right in feeling
especial fear of this passion, which is above all others hideous
and wild: for the others have some alloy of peace and quiet, but
this consists wholly in action and the impulse of grief, raging
with an utterly inhuman lust for arms, blood and tortures, careless
of itself provided it hurts another, rushing upon the very point
of the sword, and greedy for revenge even when it drags the avenger
to ruin with itself. Some of the wisest of men have in consequence
of this called anger a short madness: for it is equally devoid of
self control, regardless of decorum, forgetful of kinship, obstinately
engrossed in whatever it begins to do, deaf to reason and advice,
excited by trifling causes, awkward at perceiving what is true and
just, and very like a falling rock which breaks itself to pieces
upon the very thing which it crushes. That you may know that they
whom anger possesses are not sane, look at their appearance; for
as there are distinct symptoms which mark madmen, such as a bold
and menacing air, a gloomy {49} brow, a stern face, a hurried walk,
restless hands, changed colour, quick and strongly-drawn breathing;
the signs of angry men, too, are the same: their eyes blaze and
sparkle, their whole face is a deep red with the blood which boils
up from the bottom of their heart, their lips quiver, their teeth
are set, their hair bristles and stands on end, their breath is
laboured and hissing; their joints crack as they twist them about,
they groan, bellow, and burst into scarcely intelligible talk, they
often clap their hands together and stamp on the ground with their
feet, and their whole body is highly-strung and plays those tricks
which mark a distraught mind, so as to furnish an ugly and shocking
picture of self-perversion and excitement. You cannot tell whether
this vice is more execrable or more disgusting. Other vices can be
concealed and cherished in secret; anger shows itself openly and
appears in the countenance, and the greater it is, the more plainly
it boils forth. Do you not see how in all animals certain signs
appear before they proceed to mischief, and how their entire bodies
put off their usual quiet appearance and stir up their ferocity?
Boars foam at the mouth and sharpen their teeth by rubbing them
against trees, bulls toss their horns in the air and scatter the
sand with blows of their feet, lions growl, the necks of enraged
snakes swell, mad dogs have a sullen look—there is no animal so
hateful and venomous by nature that it does not, when seized by
anger, show additional fierceness. I know well that the other
passions, can hardly be concealed, and that lust, fear, and boldness
give signs of their presence and may be discovered beforehand, for
there is no one of the stronger passions that does not affect the
countenance: what then is the difference between them and anger?
Why, that the other passions are visible, but that this is conspicuous.
II. Next, if you choose to view its results and the mischief that
it does, no plague has cost the human race {50} more dear: you will
see slaughterings and poisonings, accusations and counter-accusations,
sacking of cities, ruin of whole peoples, the persons of princes
sold into slavery by auction, torches applied to roofs, and fires
not merely confined within city-walls but making whole tracts of
country glow with hostile flame. See the foundations of the most
celebrated cities hardly now to be discerned; they were ruined by
anger. See deserts extending for many miles without an inhabitant:
they have been desolated by anger. See all the chiefs whom tradition
mentions as instances of ill fate; anger stabbed one of them in his
bed, struck down another, though he was protected by the sacred
rights of hospitality, tore another to pieces in the very home of
the laws and in sight of the crowded forum, bade one shed his own
blood by the parricide hand of his son, another to have his royal
throat cut by the hand of a slave, another to stretch out his limbs
on the cross: and hitherto I am speaking merely of individual cases.
What, if you were to pass from the consideration of those single
men against whom anger has broken out to view whole assemblies cut
down by the sword, the people butchered by the soldiery let loose
upon it, and whole nations condemned to death in one common ruin .
. . .[1] as though by {51} men who either freed themselves from our
charge or despised our authority? Why, wherefore is the people angry
with gladiators, and so unjust as to think itself wronged if they
do not die cheerfully? It thinks itself scorned, and by looks,
gestures, and excitement turns itself from a mere spectator into
an adversary. Everything of this sort is not anger, but the semblance
of anger, like that of boys who want to beat the ground when they
have fallen upon it, and who often do not even know why they are
angry, but are merely angry without any reason or having received
any injury, yet not without some semblance of injury received, or
without some wish to exact a penalty for it. Thus they are deceived
by the likeness of blows, and are appeased by the pretended tears
of those who deprecate their wrath, and thus an unreal grief is
healed by an unreal revenge.
III. “We often are angry,” says our adversary, “not with men who
have hurt us, but with men who are going to hurt us: so you may be
sure that anger is not born of injury.” It is true that we are angry
with those who are going to hurt us, but they do already hurt us
in intention, and one who is going to do an injury is already doing
it. “The weakest of men,” argues he, “are often angry with the most
powerful: so you may be sure that anger is not a desire to punish
their antagonist—for men do not desire to punish him when they
cannot hope to do so.” In the first place, I spoke of a desire to
inflict punishment, not a power to do so: now men desire even what
they cannot obtain. In the next place, no one is so low in station
as not to be able to hope to inflict punishment even upon the
greatest of men: we all are powerful for mischief. {52} Aristotle’s
definition differs little from mine: for he declares anger to be a
desire to repay suffering. It would be a long task to examine the
differences between his definition and mine: it may be urged against
both of them that wild beasts become angry without being excited
by injury, and without any idea of punishing others or requiting
them with pain: for, even though they do these things, these are
not what they aim at doing. We must admit, however, that neither
wild beasts nor any other creature except man is subject to anger:
for, whilst anger is the foe of reason, it nevertheless does not
arise in any place where reason cannot dwell. Wild beasts have
impulses, fury, cruelty, combativeness: they have not anger any
more than they have luxury: yet they indulge in some pleasures with
less self-control than human beings. Do not believe the poet who
says:
“The boar his wrath forgets, the stag forgets the hounds. The
bear forgets how ’midst the herd he leaped with frantic bounds.”[2]
When he speaks of beasts being angry he means that they are excited,
roused up: for indeed they know no more how to be angry than they
know how to pardon. Dumb creatures have not human feelings, but
have certain impulses which resemble them: for if it were not so,
if they could feel love and hate, they would likewise be capable
of friendship and enmity, of disagreement and agreement. Some traces
of these qualities exist even in them, though properly all of them,
whether good or bad, belong to the human breast alone. To no creature
besides man has been given wisdom, foresight, industry, and reflexion.
To animals not only human virtues but even human vices are forbidden:
their whole constitution, mental and bodily, is unlike that of human
beings: in them the royal[3] and {53} leading principle is drawn
from another source, as, for instance, they possess a voice, yet
not a clear one, but indistinct and incapable of forming words: a
tongue, but one which is fettered and not sufficiently nimble for
complex movements: so, too, they possess intellect, the greatest
attribute of all, but in a rough and inexact condition. It is,
consequently, able to grasp those visions and semblances which rouse
it to action, but only in a cloudy and indistinct fashion. It follows
from this that their impulses and outbreaks are violent, and that
they do not feel fear, anxieties, grief, or anger, but some semblances
of these feelings: wherefore they quickly drop them and adopt the
converse of them: they graze after showing the most vehement rage
and terror, and after frantic bellowing and plunging they straightway
sink into quiet sleep.
IV. What anger is has been sufficiently explained. The difference
between it and irascibility is evident: it is the same as that
between a drunken man and a drunkard; between a frightened man and
a coward. It is possible for an angry man not to be irascible; an
irascible man may sometimes not be angry. I shall omit the other
varieties of anger, which the Greeks distinguish by various names,
because we have no distinctive words for them in our language,
although we call men bitter, and harsh, and also peevish, frantic,
clamorous, surly, and fierce: all of which are different forms of
irascibility. Among these you may class sulkiness, a refined form
of irascibility; for there are some sorts of anger which go no
further than noise, while some are as lasting as they are common:
some are fierce in deed, but inclined to be sparing of words: some
expend themselves in bitter words and curses: some do not go beyond
complaining and turning one’s back: some are great, deep-seated,
and brood within a man: there are a thousand other forms of a
multiform evil.
V. We have now finished our enquiry as to what anger {54} is, whether
it exists in any other creature besides man, what the difference
is between it and irascibility, and how many forms it possesses.
Let us now enquire whether anger be in accordance with nature, and
whether it be useful and worth entertaining in some measure.
Whether it be according to nature will become evident if we consider
man’s nature, than which what is more gentle while it is in its
proper condition? Yet what is more cruel than anger? What is more
affectionate to others than man? Yet what is more savage against
them than anger? Mankind is born for mutual assistance, anger for
mutual ruin: the former loves society, the latter estrangement. The
one loves to do good, the other to do harm; the one to help even
strangers, the other to attack even its dearest friends. The one
is ready even to sacrifice itself for the good of others, the other
to plunge into peril provided it drags others with it. Who, then,
can be more ignorant of nature than he who classes this cruel and
hurtful vice as belonging to her best and most polished work? Anger,
as we have said, is eager to punish; and that such a desire should
exist in man’s peaceful breast is least of all according to his
nature; for human life is founded on benefits and harmony, and is
bound together into an alliance for the common help of all, not by
terror, but by love towards one another.
VI. “What, then? Is not correction sometimes necessary?” Of course
it is; but with discretion, not with anger; for it does not injure,
but heals under the guise of injury. We char crooked spearshafts
to straighten them, and force them by driving in wedges, not in
order to break them, but to take the bends out of them; and, in
like manner, by applying pain to the body or mind we correct
dispositions which have been rendered crooked by vice. So the
physician at first, when dealing with slight disorders, tries not
to make much change in his patient’s daily habits, to regulate {55}
his food, drink, and exercise, and to improve his health merely by
altering the order in which he takes them. The next step is to see
whether an alteration in their amount will be of service. If neither
alteration of the order or of the amount is of use, he cuts off
some and reduces others. If even this does not answer, he forbids
food, and disburdens the body by fasting. If milder remedies have
proved useless he opens a vein; if the extremities are injuring the
body and infecting it with disease he lays his hands upon the limbs;
yet none of his treatment is considered harsh if its result is to
give health. Similarly, it is the duty of the chief administrator
of the laws, or the ruler of a state, to correct ill-disposed men,
as long as he is able, with words, and even with gentle ones, that
he may persuade them to do what they ought, inspire them with a
love of honour and justice, and cause them to hate vice and set
store upon virtue. He must then pass on to severer language, still
confining himself to advising and reprimanding; last of all he must
betake himself to punishments, yet still making them slight and
temporary. He ought to assign extreme punishments only to extreme
crimes, that no one may die unless it be even to the criminal’s own
advantage that he should die. He will differ from the physician in
one point alone; for whereas physicians render it easy to die for
those to whom they cannot grant the boon of life, he will drive the
condemned out of life with ignominy and disgrace, not because he
takes pleasure in any man’s being punished, for the wise man is far
from such inhuman ferocity, but that they may be a warning to all
men, and that, since they would not be useful when alive, the state
may at any rate profit by their death. Man’s nature is not, therefore,
desirous of inflicting punishment; neither, therefore, is anger in
accordance with man’s nature, because that is desirous of inflicting
punishment. I will also adduce Plato’s argument—for what harm is
there in using {56} other men’s arguments, so far as they are on
our side? “A good man,” says he, “does not do any hurt: it is only
punishment which hurts. Punishment, therefore, does not accord with
a good man: wherefore anger does not do so either, because punishment
and anger accord one with another. If a good man takes no pleasure
in punishment, he will also take no pleasure in that state of mind
to which punishment gives pleasure: consequently anger is not natural
to man.”
VII. May it not be that, although anger be not natural, it may be
right to adopt it, because it often proves useful? It rouses the
spirit and excites it; and courage does nothing grand in war without
it, unless its flame be supplied from this source; this is the goad
which stirs up bold men and sends them to encounter perils. Some
therefore consider it to be best to control anger, not to banish
it utterly, but to cut off its extravagances, and force it to keep
within useful bounds, so as to retain that part of it without which
action will become languid and all strength and activity of mind
will die away.
In the first place, it is easier to banish dangerous passions than
to rule them; it is easier not to admit them than to keep them in
order when admitted; for when they have established themselves in
possession of the mind they are more powerful than the lawful ruler,
and will in no wise permit themselves to be weakened or abridged.
In the next place, Reason herself, who holds the reins, is only
strong while she remains apart from the passions; if she mixes and
befouls herself with them she becomes no longer able to restrain
those whom she might once have cleared out of her path; for the
mind, when once excited and shaken up, goes whither the passions
drive it. There are certain things whose beginnings lie in our own
power, but which, when developed, drag us along by their own force
and leave us no retreat. Those who have flung themselves over a
precipice {57} have no control over their movements, nor can they
stop or slacken their pace when once started, for their own headlong
and irremediable rashness has left no room for either reflexion or
remorse, and they cannot help going to lengths which they might
have avoided. So, also, the mind, when it has abandoned itself to
anger, love, or any other passion, is unable to check itself: its
own weight and the downward tendency of vices must needs carry the
man off and hurl him into the lowest depth.
VIII. The best plan is to reject straightway the first incentives
to anger, to resist its very beginnings, and to take care not to
be betrayed into it: for if once it begins to carry us away, it is
hard to get back again into a healthy condition, because reason
goes for nothing when once passion has been admitted to the mind,
and has by our own free will been given a certain authority, it
will for the future do as much as it chooses, not only as much as
you will allow it. The enemy, I repeat, must be met and driven back
at the outermost frontier-line: for when he has once entered the
city and passed its gates, he will not allow his prisoners to set
bounds to his victory. The mind does not stand apart and view its
passions from without, so as not to permit them to advance further
than they ought, but it is itself changed into a passion, and is
therefore unable to check what once was useful and wholesome strength,
now that it has become degenerate and misapplied: for passion and
reason, as I said before, have not distinct and separate provinces,
but consist of the changes of the mind itself for better or for
worse. How then can reason recover itself when it is conquered and
held down by vices, when it has given way to anger? or how can it
extricate itself from a confused mixture, the greater part of which
consists of the lower qualities? “But,” argues our adversary, “some
men when in anger control themselves.” Do they so far control
themselves that they do nothing which anger dictates, or some {58}
what? If they do nothing thereof, it becomes evident that anger is
not essential to the conduct of affairs, although your sect advocated
it as possessing greater strength than reason . . . . Finally, I
ask, is anger stronger or weaker than reason? If stronger, how can
reason impose any check upon it, since it is only the less powerful
that obey: if weaker, then reason is competent to effect its ends
without anger, and does not need the help of a less powerful quality.
“But some angry men remain consistent and control themselves.” When
do they do so? It is when their anger is disappearing and leaving
them of its own accord, not when it was red-hot, for then it was
more powerful than they. What then? do not men, even in the height
of their anger, sometimes let their enemies go whole and unhurt,
and refrain from injuring them? “They do: but when do they do so?
It is when one passion overpowers another, and either fear or greed
gets the upper hand for a while. On such occasions, it is not thanks
to reason that anger is stilled, but owing to an untrustworthy and
fleeting truce between the passions.
IX. In the next place, anger has nothing useful in itself, and does
not rouse up the mind to warlike deeds: for a virtue, being
self-sufficient, never needs the assistance of a vice: whenever it
needs an impetuous effort, it does not become angry, but rises to
the occasion, and excites or soothes itself as far as it deems
requisite, just as the machines which hurl darts may be twisted to
a greater or lesser degree of tension at the manager’s pleasure.
“Anger,” says Aristotle, “is necessary, nor can any fight be won
without it, unless it fills the mind, and kindles up the spirit.
It must, however, be made use of, not as a general, but as a soldier,”
Now this is untrue; for if it listens to reason and follows whither
reason leads, it is no longer anger, whose characteristic is
obstinacy: if, again, it is disobedient and will not be quiet when
ordered, but is carried away by its own {59} wilful and headstrong
spirit, it is then as useless an aid to the mind as a soldier who
disregards the sounding of the retreat would be to a general. If,
therefore, anger allows limits to be imposed upon it, it must be
called by some other name, and ceases to be anger, which I understand
to be unbridled and unmanageable: and if it does not allow limits
to be imposed upon it, it is harmful and not to be counted among
aids: wherefore either anger is not anger, or it is useless: for
if any man demands the infliction of punishment, not because he is
eager for the punishment itself, but because it is right to inflict
it, he ought not to be counted as an angry man: that will be the
useful soldier, who knows how to obey orders: the passions cannot
obey any more than they can command.
X. For this cause reason will never call to its aid blind and fierce
impulses, over whom she herself possesses no authority, and which
she never can restrain save by setting against them similar and
equally powerful passions, as for example, fear against anger, anger
against sloth, greed against timidity. May virtue never come to
such a pass, that reason should fly for aid to vices! The mind can
find no safe repose there, it must needs be shaken and tempest-tossed
if it be safe only because of its own defects, if it cannot be brave
without anger, diligent without greed, quiet without fear: such is
the despotism under which a man must live if he becomes the slave
of a passion. Are you not ashamed to put virtues under the patronage
of vices? Then, too, reason ceases to have any power if she can do
nothing without passion, and begins to be equal and like unto
passion; for what difference is there between them if passion without
reason be as rash as reason without passion is helpless? They are
both on the same level, if one cannot exist without the other. Yet
who could endure that passion should be made equal to reason? “Then,”
says our adversary, “passion is useful, provided it be moderate.”
{60} Nay, only if it be useful by nature: but if it be disobedient
to authority and reason, al that we gain by its moderation is that
the less there is of it, the less harm it does: wherefore a moderate
passion is nothing but a moderate evil.
XI. “But,” argues he, “against our enemies anger is necessary.” In
no case is it less necessary; since our attacks ought not to be
disorderly, but regulated and under control. What, indeed, is it
except anger, so ruinous to itself, that overthrows barbarians, who
have so much more bodily strength than we, and are so much better
able to endure fatigue? Gladiators, too, protect themselves by
skill, but expose themselves to wounds when they are angry. Moreover,
of what use is anger, when the same end can be arrived at by reason?
Do you suppose that a hunter is angry with the beasts he kills? Yet
he meets them when they attack him, and follows them when they flee
from him, all of which is managed by reason without anger. When so
many thousands of Cimbri and Teutones poured over the Alps, what
was it that caused them to perish so completely, that no messenger,
only common rumour, carried the news of that great defeat to their
homes, except that with them anger stood in the place of courage?
and anger, although sometimes it overthrows and breaks to pieces
whatever it meets, yet is more often its own destruction. Who can
be braver than the Germans? who charge more boldly? who have more
love of arms, among which they are born and bred, for which alone
they care, to the neglect of everything else? Who can be more
hardened to undergo every hardship, since a large part of them have
no store of clothing for the body, no shelter from the continual
rigour of the climate: yet Spaniards and Gauls, and even the unwarlike
races of Asia and Syria cut them down before the main legion comes
within sight, nothing but their own irascibility exposing them to
death. Give but intelligence to those {61} minds, and discipline
to those bodies of theirs, which now are ignorant of vicious
refinements, luxury, and wealth,—to say nothing more, we should
certainly be obliged to go back to the ancient Roman habits of life.
By what did Fabius restore the shattered forces of the state, except
by knowing how to delay and spin out time, which angry men know not
how to do? The empire, which then was at its last gasp, would have
perished if Fabius had been as daring as anger urged him to be: but
he took thought about the condition of affairs, and after counting
his force, no part of which could be lost without everything being
lost with it, he laid aside thoughts of grief and revenge, turning
his sole attention to what was profitable and to making the most
of his opportunities, and conquered his anger before he conquered
Hannibal. What did Scipio do? Did he not leave behind Hannibal and
the Carthaginian army, and all with whom he had a right to be angry,
and carry over the war into Africa with such deliberation that he
made his enemies think him luxurious and lazy? What did the second
Scipio do? Did he not remain a long, long time before Numantia, and
bear with calmness the reproach to himself and to his country that
Numantia took longer to conquer than Carthage? By blockading and
investing his enemies, he brought them to such straits that they
perished by their own swords. Anger, therefore, is not useful even
in wars or battles: for it is prone to rashness, and while trying
to bring others into danger, does not guard itself against danger.
The most trustworthy virtue is that which long and carefully considers
itself, controls itself, and slowly and deliberately brings itself
to the front.
XII. “What, then,” asks our adversary, “is a good man not to be
angry if he sees his father murdered or his mother outraged?” No,
he will not be angry, but will avenge them, or protect them. Why
do you fear that {62} filial piety will not prove a sufficient spur
to him even without anger? You may as well say—“What then? When a
good man sees his father or his son being cut down, I suppose he
will not weep or faint,” as we see women do whenever any trifling
rumour of danger reaches them. The good man will do his duty without
disturbance or fear, and he will perform the duty of a good man,
so as to do nothing unworthy of a man. My father will be murdered:
then I will defend him: he has been slain, then I will avenge him,
not because I am grieved, but because it is my duty. “Good men are
made angry by injuries done to their friends.” When you say this,
Theophrastus, you seek to throw discredit upon more manly maxims;
you leave the judge and appeal to the mob: because every one is
angry when such things befall his own friends, you suppose that men
will decide that it is their duty to do what they do: for as a rule
every man considers a passion which he recognises to be a righteous
one. But he does the same thing if the hot water is not ready for
his drink, if a glass be broken, or his shoe splashed with mud. It
is not filial piety, but weakness of mind that produces this anger,
as children weep when they lose their parents, just as they do when
they lose their toys. To feel anger on behalf of one’s friends does
not show a loving, but a weak mind: it is admirable and worthy
conduct to stand forth as the defender of one’s parents, children,
friends, and countrymen, at the call of duty itself, acting of one’s
own free will, forming a deliberate judgment, and looking forward
to the future, not in an impulsive, frenzied fashion. No passion
is more eager for revenge than anger, and for that very reason it
is unapt to obtain it: being over hasty and frantic, like almost
all desires, it hinders itself in the attainment of its own object,
and therefore has never been useful either in peace or war: for it
makes peace like war, and when in arms forgets that Mars belongs
{63} to neither side, and falls into the power of the enemy, because
it is not in its own. In the next place, vices ought not to be
received into common use because on some occasions they have effected
somewhat: for so also fevers are good for certain kinds of ill-health,
but nevertheless it is better to be altogether free from them: it
is a hateful mode of cure to owe one’s health to disease. Similarly,
although anger, like poison, or falling headlong, or being shipwrecked,
may have unexpectedly done good, yet it ought not on that account
to be classed as wholesome, for poisons have often proved good for
the health.
XIII. Moreover, qualities which we ought to possess become better
and more desirable the more extensive they are: if justice is a
good thing, no one will say that it would be better if any part
were subtracted from it; if bravery is a good thing, no one would
wish it to be in any way curtailed: consequently the greater anger
is, the better it is, for who ever objected to a good thing being
increased? But it is not expedient that anger should be increased:
therefore it is not expedient that it should exist at all, for that
which grows bad by increase cannot be a good thing. “Anger is
useful,” says our adversary, “because it makes men more ready to
fight.” According to that mode of reasoning, then, drunkenness also
is a good thing, for it makes men insolent and daring, and many use
their weapons better when the worse for liquor: nay, according to
that reasoning, also, you may call frenzy and madness essential to
strength, because madness often makes men stronger. Why, does not
fear often by the rule of contraries make men bolder, and does not
the terror of death rouse up even arrant cowards to join battle?
Yet anger, drunkenness, fear, and the like, are base and temporary
incitements to action, and can furnish no arms to virtue, which has
no need of vices, although they may at times be of some little
assistance to sluggish and cowardly minds. {64} No man becomes
braver through anger, except one who without anger would not have
been brave at all: anger does not therefore come to assist courage,
but to take its place. What are we to say to the argument that, if
anger were a good thing it would attach itself to all the best men?
Yet the most irascible of creatures are infants, old men, and sick
people. Every weakling is naturally prone to complaint.
XIV. It is impossible, says Theophrastus, for a good man not to be
angry with bad men. By this reasoning, the better a man is, the
more irascible he will be: yet will he not rather be more tranquil,
more free from passions, and hating no one: indeed, what reason has
he for hating sinners, since it is error that leads them into such
crimes? now it does not become a sensible man to hate the erring,
since if so he will hate himself: let him think how many things he
does contrary to good morals, how much of what he has done stands
in need of pardon, and he will soon become angry with himself also,
for no righteous judge pronounces a different judgment in his own
case and in that of others. No one, I affirm, will be found who can
acquit himself. Every one when he calls himself innocent looks
rather to external witnesses than to his own conscience. How much
more philanthropic it is to deal with the erring in a gentle and
fatherly spirit, and to call them into the right course instead of
hunting them down? When a man is wandering about our fields because
he has lost his way, it is better to place him on the right path
than to drive him away.
XV. The sinner ought, therefore, to be corrected both by warning
and by force, both by gentle and harsh means, and may be made a
better man both towards himself and others by chastisement, but not
by anger: for who is angry with the patient whose wounds he is
tending? “But they cannot be corrected, and there is nothing in
them that is {65} gentle or that admits of good hope.” Then let
them be removed from mortal society, if they are likely to deprave
every one with whom they come in contact, and let them cease to be
bad men in the only way in which they can: yet let this be done
without hatred: for what reason have I for hating the man to whom
I am doing the greatest good, since I am rescuing him from himself?
Does a man hate his own limbs when he cuts them off? That is not
an act of anger, but a lamentable method of healing. We knock mad
dogs on the head, we slaughter fierce and savage bulls, and we doom
scabby sheep to the knife, lest they should infect our flocks: we
destroy monstrous births, and we also drown our children if they
are born weakly or unnaturally formed; to separate what is useless
from what is sound is an act, not of anger, but of reason. Nothing
becomes one who inflicts punishment less than anger, because the
punishment has all the more power to work reformation if the sentence
be pronounced with deliberate judgment. This is why Socrates said
to the slave, “I would strike you, were I not angry.” He put off
the correction of the slave to a calmer season; at the moment, he
corrected himself. Who can boast that he has his passions, under
control, when Socrates did not dare to trust himself to his anger?
XVI. We do not, therefore, need an angry chastiser to punish the
erring and wicked: for since anger is a crime of the mind, it is
not right that sins should be punished by sin. “What! am I not to
be angry with a robber, or a poisoner?” No: for I am not angry with
myself when I bleed myself. I apply all kinds of punishment as
remedies. You are as yet only in the first stage of error, and do
not go wrong seriously, although you do so often: then I will try
to amend you by a reprimand given first in private and then in
public.[4] You, again, have gone {66} too far to be restored to
virtue by words alone; you must be kept in order by disgrace. For
the next, some stronger measure is required, something that he can
feel must be branded upon him; you, sir, shall be sent into exile
and to a desert place. The next man’s thorough villany needs harsher
remedies: chains and public imprisonment must be applied to him.
You, lastly, have an incurably vicious mind, and add crime to crime:
you have come to such a pass, that you are not influenced by the
arguments which are never wanting to recommend evil, but sin itself
is to you a sufficient reason for sinning: you have so steeped your
whole heart in wickedness, that wickedness cannot be taken from you
without bringing your heart with it. Wretched man! you have long
sought to die; we will do you good service, we will take away that
madness from which you suffer, and to you who have so long lived a
misery to yourself and to others, we will give the only good thing
which remains, that is, death. Why should I be angry with a man
just when I am doing him good: sometimes the truest form of compassion
is to put a man to death. If I were a skilled and learned physician,
and were to enter a hospital, or a rich[5] man’s house, I should
not have prescribed the same treatment for all the patients who
were suffering from various diseases. I see different kinds of vice
in the vast number of different minds, and am called in to heal the
whole body of citizens: let us seek for the remedies proper for
each disease. This man may be cured by his own sense of honour,
that one by travel, that one by pain, that one by want, that one
by the sword. If, therefore, it becomes my duty as a magistrate to
put on black[6] robes, and summon an assembly by the sound of a
{67} trumpet,[7] I shall walk to the seat of judgment not in a rage
or in a hostile spirit, but with the countenance of a judge; I shall
pronounce the formal sentence in a grave and gentle rather than a
furious voice, and shall bid them proceed {68} sternly, yet not
angrily. Even when I command a criminal to be beheaded, when I sew
a parricide up in a sack, when I send a man to be punished by
military law, when I fling a traitor or public enemy down the
Tarpeian Rock, I shall be free from anger, and shall look and feel
just as though I were crushing snakes and other venomous creatures.
“Anger is necessary to enable us to punish.” What? do you think
that the law is angry with men whom it does not know, whom it has
never seen, who it hopes will never exist? We ought, therefore, to
adopt the law’s frame of mind, which does not become angry, but
merely defines offences: for, if it is right for a good man to be
angry at wicked crimes, it will also be right for him to be moved
with envy at the prosperity of wicked men: what, indeed, is more
scandalous than that in some cases the very men, for whose deserts
no fortune could be found bad enough, should flourish and actually
be the spoiled children of success? Yet he will see their affluence
without envy, just as he sees their crimes without anger: a good
judge condemns wrongful acts, but does not hate them. “What then?
when the wise man is dealing with something of this kind, will his
mind not be affected by it and become excited beyond its usual
wont?” I admit that it will: he will experience a slight and trifling
emotion; for, as Zeno says, “Even in the mind of the wise man, a
scar remains after the wound is quite healed.” He will, therefore,
feel certain hints and semblances of passions; but he will be free
from the passions themselves.
XVII. Aristotle says that “certain passions, if one makes a proper
use of them, act as arms”: which would be true if, like weapons of
war, they could be taken up or laid aside at the pleasure of their
wielder. These arms, which Aristotle assigns to virtue, fight of
their own accord, do not wait to be seized by the hand, and possess
a man instead of being possessed by him. We have no need of {69}
external weapons, nature has equipped us sufficiently by giving us
reason. She has bestowed this weapon upon us, which is strong,
imperishable, and obedient to our will, not uncertain or capable
of being turned against its master. Reason suffices by itself not
merely to take thought for the future, but to manage our affairs:[8]
what, then, can be more foolish than for reason to beg anger for
protection, that is, for what is certain to beg of what is uncertain?
what is trustworthy of what is faithless? what is whole of what is
sick? What, indeed? since reason is far more powerful by itself
even in performing those operations in which the help of anger seems
especially needful: for when reason has decided that a particular
thing should be done, she perseveres in doing it; not being able
to find anything better than herself to exchange with. She, therefore,
abides by her purpose when it has once been formed; whereas anger
is often overcome by pity: for it possesses no firm strength, but
merely swells like an empty bladder, and makes a violent beginning,
just like the winds which rise from the earth and are caused by
rivers and marshes, which blow furiously without any continuance:
anger begins with a mighty rush, and then falls away, becoming
fatigued too soon: that which but lately thought of nothing but
cruelty and novel forms of torture, is become quite softened and
gentle when the time comes for punishment to be inflicted. Passion
soon cools, whereas reason is always consistent: yet even in cases
where anger has continued to burn, it often happens that although
there may be many who deserve to die, yet after the death of two
or three it ceases to slay. Its first onset is fierce, just as the
teeth of snakes when first roused from their lair are venomous, but
become harmless after repeated bites have exhausted their poison.
Consequently those who are {70} equally guilty are not equally
punished, and often he who has done less is punished more, because
he fell in the way of anger when it was fresher. It is altogether
irregular; at one time it runs into undue excess, at another it
falls short of its duty: for it indulges its own feelings and gives
sentence according to its caprices, will not listen to evidence,
allows the defence no opportunity of being heard, clings to what
it has wrongly assumed, and will not suffer its opinion to be wrested
from it, even when it is a mistaken one.
XVIII. Reason gives each side time to plead; moreover, she herself
demands adjournment, that she may have sufficient scope for the
discovery of the truth; whereas anger is in a hurry: reason wishes
to give a just decision; anger wishes its decision to be thought
just: reason looks no further than the matter in hand; anger is
excited by empty matters hovering on the outskirts of the case: it
is irritated by anything approaching to a confident demeanour, a
loud voice, an unrestrained speech, dainty apparel, high-flown
pleading, or popularity with the public. It often condemns a man
because it dislikes his patron; it loves and maintains error even
when truth is staring it in the face. It hates to be proved wrong,
and thinks it more honourable to persevere in a mistaken line of
conduct than to retract it. I remember Gnaeus Piso, a man who was
free from many vices, yet of a perverse disposition, and one who
mistook harshness for consistency. In his anger he ordered a soldier
to be led off to execution because he had returned from furlough
without his comrade, as though he must have murdered him if he could
not show him. When the man asked for time for search, he would not
grant it: the condemned man was brought outside the rampart, and
was just offering his neck to the axe, when suddenly there appeared
his comrade who was thought to be slain. Hereupon the centurion in
charge of the execution bade the guardsman sheathe his sword, and
led the condemned {71} man back to Piso, to restore to him the
innocence which Fortune had restored to the soldier. They were led
into his presence by their fellow soldiers amid the great joy of
the whole camp, embracing one another and accompanied by a vast
crowd. Piso mounted the tribunal in a fury and ordered them both
to be executed, both him who had not murdered and him who had not
been slain. What could be more unworthy than this? Because one was
proved to be innocent, two perished. Piso even added a third: for
he actually ordered the centurion, who had brought back the condemned
man, to be put to death. Three men were set up to die in the same
place because one was innocent. O, how clever is anger at inventing
reasons for its frenzy! “You,” it says, “I order to be executed,
because you have been condemned to death: you, because you have
been the cause of your comrade’s condemnation, and you, because
when ordered to put him to death you disobeyed your general.” He
discovered the means of charging them with three crimes, because
he could find no crime in them.
XIX. Irascibility, I say, has this fault—it is loth to be ruled:
it is angry with the truth itself, if it comes to light against its
will: it assails those whom it has marked for its victims with
shouting and riotous noise and gesticulation of the entire body,
together with reproaches and curses. Not thus does reason act: but
if it must be so, she silently and quietly wipes out whole households,
destroys entire families of the enemies of the state, together with
their wives and children, throws down their very dwellings, levels
them with the ground, and roots out the names of those who are the
foes of liberty. This she does without grinding her teeth or shaking
her head, or doing anything unbecoming to a judge, whose countenance
ought to be especially calm and composed at the time when he is
pronouncing an important sentence. “What need is there,” asks
Hieronymus, “for you to bite your own lips when you want to strike
some one?” What {72} would he have said, had he seen a proconsul
leap down from the tribunal, snatch the fasces from the lictor, and
tear his own clothes because those of others were not torn as fast
as he wished. Why need you upset the table, throw down the drinking
cups, knock yourself against the columns, tear your hair, smite
your thigh and your breast? How vehement do you suppose anger to
be, if it thus turns back upon itself, because it cannot find vent
on another as fast as it wishes? Such men, therefore, are held back
by the bystanders and are begged to become reconciled with themselves.
But he who while free from anger assigns to each man the penalty
which he deserves, does none of these things. He often lets a man
go after detecting his crime, if his penitence for what he has done
gives good hope for the future, if he perceives that the man’s
wickedness is not deeply rooted in his mind, but is only, as the
saying is, skin-deep. He will grant impunity in cases where it will
hurt neither the receiver nor the giver. In some cases he will
punish great crimes more leniently than lesser ones, if the former
were the result of momentary impulse, not of cruelty, while the
latter were instinct with secret, underhand, long-practised craftiness.
The same fault, committed by two separate men, will not be visited
by him with the same penalty, if the one was guilty of it through
carelessness, the other with a premeditated intention of doing
mischief. In all dealing with crime he will remember that the one
form of punishment is meant to make bad men better, and the other
to put them out of the way. In either case he will look to the
future, not to the past: for, as Plato says, “no wise man punishes
any one because he has sinned, but that he may sin no more: for
what is past cannot be recalled, but what is to come may be checked.”
Those, too, whom he wishes to make examples of the ill success of
wickedness, he executes publicly, not merely in order that they
themselves may die, but that by dying they {73} may deter others
from doing likewise. You see how free from any mental disturbance
a man ought to be who has to weigh and consider all this, when he
deals with a matter which ought to be handled with the utmost care,
I mean, the power of life and death. The sword of justice is
ill-placed in the hands of an angry man.
XX. Neither ought it to be believed that anger contributes anything
to magnanimity: what it gives is not magnanimity but vain glory.
The increase which disease produces in bodies swollen with morbid
humours is not healthy growth, but bloated corpulence. All those
whose madness raises them above human considerations, believe
themselves to be inspired with high and sublime ideas; but there
is no solid ground beneath, and what is built without foundation
is liable to collapse in ruin. Anger has no ground to stand upon,
and does not rise from a firm and enduring foundation, but is a
windy, empty quality, as far removed from true magnanimity as
fool-hardiness from courage, boastfulness from confidence, gloom
from austerity, cruelty from strictness. There is, I say, a great
difference between a lofty and a proud mind: anger brings about
nothing grand or beautiful. On the other hand, to be constantly
irritated seems to me to be the part of a languid and unhappy mind,
conscious of its own feebleness, like folk with diseased bodies
covered with sores, who cry out at the lightest touch. Anger,
therefore, is a vice which for the most part affects women and
children. “Yet it affects men also.” Because many men, too, have
womanish or childish intellects. “But what are we to say? do not
some words fall from angry men which appear to flow from a great
mind?” Yes, to those who know not what true greatness is: as, for
example, that foul and hateful saying, “Let them hate me, provided
they fear me,” which you may be sure was written in Sulla’s time.
I know not which was the worse of the two things he wished {74}
for, that he might be hated or that he might be feared. It occurs
to his mind that some day people will curse him, plot against him,
crush him: what prayer does he add to this? May all the gods curse
him—for discovering a cure for hate so worthy of it. “Let them
hate.” How? “Provided they obey me?” No! “Provided they approve of
me?” No! How then? “Provided they fear me!” I would not even be
loved upon such terms. Do you imagine that this was a very spirited
saying? You are wrong: this is not greatness, but monstrosity. You
should not believe the words of angry men, whose speech is very
loud and menacing, while their mind within them is as timid as
possible: nor need you suppose that the most eloquent of men, Titus
Livius, was right in describing somebody as being “of a great rather
than a good disposition.” The things cannot be separated: he must
either be good or else he cannot be great, because I take greatness
of mind to mean that it is unshaken, sound throughout, firm and
uniform to its very foundation; such as cannot exist in evil
dispositions. Such dispositions may be terrible, frantic, and
destructive, but cannot possess greatness; because greatness rests
upon goodness, and owes its strength to it. “Yet by speech, action,
and all outward show they will make one think them great.” True,
they will say something which you may think shows a great spirit,
like Gaius Caesar, who when angry with heaven because it interfered
with his ballet-dancers, whom he imitated more carefully than he
attended to them when they acted, and because it frightened his
revels by its thunders, surely ill-directed,[9] challenged Jove to
fight, and that to the death, shouting the Homeric verse:—
“Carry me off, or I will carry thee!”
{75} How great was his madness! He must have believed either that
he could not be hurt even by Jupiter himself, or that he could hurt
even Jupiter itself. I imagine that this saying of his had no small
weight in nerving the minds of the conspirators for their task: for
it seemed to be the height of endurance to bear one who could not
bear Jupiter.
XXI. There is therefore nothing great or noble in anger, even when
it seems to be powerful and to contemn both gods and men alike. Any
one who thinks that anger produces greatness of mind, would think
that luxury produces it: such a man wishes to rest on ivory, to be
clothed with purple, and roofed with gold; to remove lands, embank
seas, hasten the course of rivers, suspend woods in the air. He
would think that avarice shows greatness of mind: for the avaricious
man broods over heaps of gold and silver, treats whole provinces
as merely fields on his estate, and has larger tracts of country
under the charge of single bailiffs than those which consuls once
drew lots to administer. He would think that lust shows greatness
of mind: for the lustful man swims across straits, castrates troops
of boys, and puts himself within reach of the swords of injured
husbands with complete scorn of death. Ambition, too, he would think
shows greatness of mind: for the ambitious man is not content with
office once a year, but, if possible, would fill the calendar of
dignities with his name alone, and cover the whole world with his
titles. It matters nothing to what heights or lengths these passions
may proceed: they are narrow, pitiable, grovelling. Virtue alone
is lofty and sublime, nor is anything great which is not at the
same time tranquil.
[1] Here a leaf or more has been lost, including the fragment cited
in Lactantius, _De ira dei_, 17 “Ira est eupiditas,” &c. The entire
passage is:—“But the Stoics did not perceive that there is a
difference between right and wrong; that there is just and unjust
anger: and as they could find no remedy for it, they wished to
extirpate it. The Peripatetics, on the other hand, declared that
it ought not to be destroyed, but restrained. These I have sufficiently
answered in the sixth book of my ‘Institutiones.’ It is clear that
the philosophers did not comprehend the reason of anger, from the
definitions of it which Seneca has enumerated in the books ‘On
Anger’ which he has written. ‘Anger,’ he says, ‘is the desire of
avenging an injury.’ Others, as Posidonius says, call it ‘a desire
to punish one by whom you think that you have been unjustly injured,’
Some have defined it thus, ‘Anger is an impulse of the mind to
injure him who either has injured you or has sought to injure you.’
Aristotle’s definition differs but little from our own. He says,
‘that anger is a desire to repay suffering,’” etc.
[2] Ovid, “Met.” vii. 545-6.
[3] τὸ ἡγεμονικὸν of the Stoics.
[4] The gospel rule. Matt, xviii. 15.
[5] _Divitis_ (where there might be an army of slaves).
[6] “Lorsque le Préteur devoit prononcer la sentence d’un coupable,
il se depouilloit de la robe pretexte, et se revêtoit alors d’une
simple tunique, ou d’une autre robe, presque usée, et d’un blanc
sale (_sordida_) ou d’un gris très foncé tirant sur le noir (_toga
pulla_), telle qu’en portoient à Rome le peuple et les pauvres
(_pullaque paupertas_). Dans les jours solemnelles et marqués par
un deuil public, les Senateurs quittoient le laticlave, et les
Magistrats la pretexte. La pourpre, la hache, les faisceaux, aucun
de ces signes extérieurs de leur dignité ne les distinguoient alors
des autres citoyens: _sine insignibus Magistratus_. Mais ce n’étoit
pas seulement pendant le temps ou la ville étoit plongée dans le
deuil et dans I’affliction, que les magistrats s’habilloient comme
le peuple (_sordidam vestem induebant_); ils en usoient de même
lorsqu’ils devoient condamner à mort un citoyen. C’est dans ces
tristes circonstances qu’ils quittoient la prétexte et prenoient
la robe de deuil _perversam vestem_. (No doubt “inside out.”—J. E.
B. M.) ”On pourroit supposer avec assez de vraisemblance que par
cette expression, Séneque a voulu faire allusion à ce changement .
. . . . Peut-être les Magistrats qui devoient juger à mort un
citoyen, portoient ils aussi leur robe renversée, ou la jettoient
ils de travers ou confusément sur leurs épaules, pour mieux peindre
par ce desordre le trouble de leur esprit. Si cette conjecture est
vraie, comme je serais assez porté à croire, l’expression _perversa
vestis_ dont Séneque s’est servi ici, indiqueroit plus d’un simple
changement d’habit,” &c, (La Grange’s translation of Seneca, edited
by J, A. Naigeon. Paris, 1778.)
[7] “Ceci fait allusion à une coutume que Caius Gracchus prétend
avoir été pratiquée de tout tems à Rome, ‘Lorsqu’un citoyen,” dit
il, “avoit un procès criminel qui alloit à la mort, s’il refusoit
d’obéir aux sommations qui lui étoient faites; le jour qu’on devoit
le juger, en envoyoit des le matin à la porte de sa maison un
Officier I’appeller au son de la trompette, et jamais avant que
cette cérémonie eût été observée, les Juges ne donneroient leur
voix contre lui: tant ces hommes sages,’ ajoute ce hardi Tribun,
‘avoient de retenue et de precaution dans leurs jugements, quand
il s’agissoit de la vie d’un citoyen.’”
“C’étoit de même au son de la trompette que l’on convoquoit le
peuple, lorsqu’on devoit faire mourir un citoyen, afin qu’il fût
témoin de ce triste spectacle, et que la supplice du coupable pût
lui servir d’exemple. Tacite dit qu’un Astrologue, nommé P. Marcius,
fût exécuté, selon l’ancien usage, hors de la porte Esquiline, en
presence du peuple Romain que les Consuls firent convoquer au son
de la trompette.” (Tac. Ann. II. 32.) L. Grom.
[8] _I.e._ not only for counsel but for action.
[9] _Prorsus parum certis_ (_i.e._, the thunderbolts missed their
aim in not striking him dead).
{76}
THE FOURTH BOOK OF THE DIALOGUES OF L. ANNAEUS SENECA, ADDRESSED
TO NOVATUS.
OF ANGER.