Letters From a Stoic

by Seneca

  Philosophy has the single task of discovering the truth about the divine and human worlds. The religious conscience, the sense of duty, justice and all the rest of the close-knit, interdependent ‘company of virtues’, never leave her side. Philosophy has taught men to worship what is divine, to love what is human, telling us that with the gods belongs authority, and among human beings fellowship. That fellowship lasted for a long time intact, before men’s greed broke society up – and impoverished even those she had brought most riches; for people cease to possess everything as soon as they want everything for themselves.

  The first men on this earth, however, and their immediate descendants, followed nature unspoiled; they took a single person as their leader and their law, freely submitting to the decisions of an individual of superior merit. It is nature’s way to subordinate the worse to the better. With dumb animals, indeed, the ones who dominate the group are either the biggest or the fiercest. The bull who leads the herd is not the weakling, but the one whose bulk and brawn has brought it victory over the other males. In a herd of elephants the tallest is the leader. Among human beings the highest merit means the highest position. So they used to choose their ruler for his character. Hence peoples were supremely fortunate when among them a man could never be more powerful than others unless he was a better man than they were. For there is nothing dangerous in a man’s having as much power as he likes if he takes the view that he has power to do only what it is his duty to do.

  In that age, then, which people commonly refer to as the Golden Age, government, so Posidonius maintains, was in the hands of the wise. They kept the peace, protected the weaker from the stronger, urged and dissuaded, pointed out what was advantageous and what was not. Their ability to look ahead ensured that their peoples never went short of anything, whilst their bravery averted dangers and their devotedness brought well-being and prosperity to their subjects. To govern was to serve, not to rule. No one used to try out the extent of his power over those to whom he owed that power in the first place. And no one had either reason or inclination to perpetrate injustice, since people governing well were equally well obeyed, and a king could issue no greater threat to disobedient subjects than that of his own abdication.

  But with the gradual infiltration of the vices and the resultant transformation of kingships into tyrannies, the need arose for laws, laws which were themselves, to begin with, drafted by the wise. Solon, who established Athens as a democratic state, was one of the seven men of antiquity celebrated for their wisdom. If the same age had produced Lycurgus, an eighth name would have been added to that revered number. The laws of Zaleucus and Charondas are still admired. And it was not in public life or in the chambers of lawyers that these two men learnt the constitutional principles which they were to establish in Sicily (then in its heyday) and throughout the Greek areas of Italy, but in the secret retreat, now hallowed and famous, of Pythagoras.

  Thus far I agree with Posidonius. But that philosophy discovered the techniques employed in everyday life, that I refuse to admit. I will not claim for philosophy a fame that belongs to technology. ‘It was philosophy,’ says Posidonius, ‘that taught men how to raise buildings at a time when they were widely dispersed and their shelter consisted of huts or burrowed-out cliffs or hollowed tree trunks.’ I for my part cannot believe that philosophy was responsible for the invention of these modern feats of engineering that rise up storey after storey, or the cities of today crowding one against the next, any more than of our fish-tanks, those enclosures designed to save men’s gluttony from having to run the risk of storms and to ensure extravagance safe harbours of her own, however wildly the high seas may be raging, in which to fatten separately the different kinds of fish. Are you really going to tell me that philosophy taught the world to use keys and bolts on doors – which was surely nothing but a signal for greed? Was it philosophy that reared the towering buildings we know today, with all the danger they mean to the people living in them? It was not enough, presumably, for man to avail himself of whatever cover came to hand, to have found a shelter of some kind or other in nature without trouble and without the use of skills. Believe me, that age before there ever existed architects or builders was a happy age. The squaring off of timbers, the accurate cutting of beams with a saw that travels along a marked out line, all these things came in with extravagance.

  The first of men with wedges split their wood.*

  Yes, for they were not preparing a roof for a future banqueting-hall; and pines or firs were not continually being drawn through streets trembling at their passage on a long convoy of vehicles to support panelled ceilings heavy with gold. Their huts were held up by a forked pole stood at either end, and with close-packed branches and a sloping pile of leaves a run-off was arranged for even heavy rains. This was the kind of roof under which they lived and yet their lives were free of care. For men in a state of freedom had thatch for their shelter, while slavery dwells beneath marble and gold.

  Another matter on which I disagree with Posidonius is his belief that it was by wise men that tools were originally invented. On that sort of basis there is nothing to stop him saying that it was by philosophers that

  Discovered next were ways of snaring game,

  Of catching birds with lime, of setting dogs

  All round deep woods.*

  It was human ingenuity, not wisdom, which discovered all that. I disagree with him again where he maintains that it was wise men who discovered iron and copper mining (when the earth had been scorched by a forest fire and had melted to produce a flow from surface veins of ore). The person who discovers that sort of thing is the kind of person who makes it his business to be interested in just that sort of thing. Nor, for that matter, do I find it as nice a question as Posidonius does, whether the hammer started to come into general use before the tongs or the other way round. They were both invented by some individual of an alert, perceptive turn of mind, but not one with the qualities of greatness or of inspiration. And the same applies to anything else the quest of which involves a bent back and an earthward gaze.

  The wise man then followed a simple way of life – which is hardly surprising when you consider how even in this modern age he seeks to be as little encumbered as he possibly can. How, I ask you, can you consistently admire both Daedalus and Diogenes? Tell me which of these two you would say was a wise man, the one who hit on the saw, or the one who on seeing a boy drinking water from the hollow of his hand, immediately took the cup out of his knapsack and smashed it, telling himself off for his stupidity in having superfluous luggage about him all that time, and curled himself up in a jar56 and went to sleep. And today just tell me which of the following you consider the wiser man: the one who discovers a means of spraying saffron perfumes to a tremendous height from hidden pipes, who fills or empties channels in one sudden rush of water, who constructs a set of interchangeable ceilings for a dining room in such a way as to produce a constant succession of different patterns, with a change of ceiling at each course? Or the one who proves to others and to himself that nature makes no demand on us that is difficult or hard to meet and that we can live without the marble-worker and the engineer, that we can clothe ourselves without importing silks, that we can have the things we need for our ordinary purposes if we will only be content with what the earth has made available on its surface. If they only cared to listen to this man, the human race would realize that cooks are as unnecessary to them as are soldiers.

  That race of men to whom taking care of the body was a straightforward enough matter were, if not philosophers, something very like it. The things that are essential are acquired with little bother; it is the luxuries that call for toil and effort. Follow nature and you will feel no need of craftsmen. It was nature’s desire that we should not be kept occupied this. She equipped us for everything she required us to contend with. ‘But the naked body can’t stand cold.’ So what? Are the skins of wild beasts and other creatures not capable of giving us more than adequate protect
ion against the cold? Is it not a fact that many peoples make a covering for their bodies out of bark, that feathers are sewn together to serve as clothing, that even today the majority of the Scythians wear the pelts of fox and mice, which are soft to the touch and impervious to wind? Are you going to tell me too that any people you care to mention never used their hands to weave a basketwork of wattles, smear it all over with common mud and then cover the whole roof with long grass-stems and other material growing wild, and went through winter weather, the rains streaming down the slopes of the roof, without any worry? ‘But we need some pretty dense shade to keep off the heat of the sun in summer.’ So what? Have past ages not left us plenty of hiding places that have been carved out by the ravages of time, or whatever other cause one cares to suppose, and have developed into caves? And again, is it not a fact that Syrtian tribes take shelter in pits dug in the ground, as do other people who, because of extreme sun temperatures, find nothing less than the baked earth itself sufficiently substantial as a protective covering against the heat? When nature granted all the other animals a simple passage through life, she was not so unfair to man as to make it impossible for him, for him alone, to live without all these skills. Nature demanded nothing hard from us, and nothing needs painful contriving to enable life to be kept going. We were born into a world in which things were ready to our hands; it is we who have made everything difficult to come by through our own disdain for what is easily come by. Shelter and apparel and the means of warming body and food, all the things which nowadays entail tremendous trouble, were there for the taking, free to all, obtainable at trifling effort. With everything the limit corresponded to the need. It is we, and no one else, who have made those same things costly, spectacular and obtainable only by means of a large number of full-scale techniques.

  Nature suffices for all she asks of us. Luxury has turned her back on nature, daily urging herself on and growing through all the centuries, pressing men’s intelligence into the development of the vices. First she began to hanker after things that were inessential, and then after things that were injurious, and finally she handed the mind over to the body and commanded it to be the out and out slave of the body’s whim and pleasure. All those trades that give rise to noise or hectic activity in the city are in business for the body, which was once in the position of the slave, having everything issued to it, and is now the master, having everything procured for it. This is the starting point for textile and engineering workshops, for the perfumes used by chefs, the sensual movements of our dancing teachers, even sensual and unmanly songs. And why? Because the bounds of nature, which set a limit to man’s wants by relieving them only where there is necessity for such relief, have been lost sight of; to want simply what is enough nowadays suggests to people primitiveness and squalor.

  It is incredible, Lucilius, how easily even great men can be carried away from the truth by the sheer pleasure of holding forth on a subject. Look at Posidonius, in my opinion one of those who have contributed most to philosophy, when he wants to give a description of how, in the first place, some threads are twisted and others drawn out from the soft, loose hank of wool, then how the warp has its threads stretched perpendicularly by means of hanging weights, and how the weft (worked in to soften the hard texture of the warp threads which compress it on either side) is made compact and close by means of the batten; he declares that philosophers invented the art of the weaver too, forgetting that philosophers had disappeared by the time this comparatively advanced type of weaving in which

  The warp is bound to the beam, and then its threads

  Are parted by the reed, the woof worked in

  Between with pointed shuttles and pressed home

  By the broad comb’s fretted teeth*

  had been evolved. He might have thought differently if he had only had the opportunity of seeing the looms of the present day, the end product of which is clothing which is not going to conceal a thing, clothing which is no help to modesty let alone the body! He then goes on to farmers, and gives an equally eloquent description of how the soil is broken up by the plough for the first time and then gone over again in order that the earth, this loosened, may allow the roots more room to develop, and continues with the sowing of the seed and the lifting of the weeds to prevent any stray wild plants springing up and ruining the crop. All this, too, he represents as being the work of philosophers, as if agriculturists were not, now as ever, discovering plenty of new methods of increasing the soil’s productivity.

  Not content with these occupations, he proceeds to demean the philosopher to the bakery; he tells us how by imitating nature he began producing bread. ‘The grain,’ he says, ‘is taken into the mouth and crushed by the coming together of the hard surfaces of the teeth; anything that escapes is carried back to the teeth again by the tongue, and the grain is finally mixed with saliva to enable it to pass down the lubricated throat with greater facility; on reaching the stomach, where it is cooked in an even heat, it is finally absorbed into the system. Taking this process as a model, someone or other placed one rough stone on top of another in imitation of the teeth, one set of which remains immobile and awaits the action of the other; the grains are then crushed by the friction of the one against the other, and are constantly re-subjected to it until they are reduced by this repeated grinding to a fine powder. He then sprinkled the resulting meal with water, and by going on manipulating it he made it plastic, and shaped it into the form of a loaf. This he first baked in a glowing hot earthenware vessel in hot ashes; later came the gradual discovery of ovens and other devices the heat of which is controllable at will.’ Posidonius was not far off maintaining that the shoemaker’s trade as well was invented by philosophers!

  Now all these things were indeed discovered by the exercise of reason, but not by reason in its perfect form. They were invented by ordinary men, not by philosophers – just as, let me add, were the vessels we cross rivers and seas in, with sails designed to catch the drive of the winds and rudders at the stern to alter the vessel’s course in this or that direction (the idea being taken from the fish, who steers with his tail, one slight movement of it to either side being enough to alter the direction of his darting course). ‘All these things,’ says Posidonius, ‘were invented by our philosopher. They were, however, rather too unimportant for him to handle personally, and so he passed them over to the minions among his assistants.’ No, the fact is that this sort of thing was not thought up by anyone other than the people who make them their concern today. We know very well that some have only appeared within living memory, the use, for example, of windows letting in the full daylight through transparent panes, or bathrooms heated from beneath with pipes set in the walls in order to diffuse the heat and this maintain an even temperature at the highest as well as the lowest room levels. Need I mention the marble with which our temples and even houses are resplendent? Or the rounded and polished blocks on which we rest whole colonnades and buildings capable of holding large crowds of people? Or the shorthand symbols by means of which even a rapidly delivered speech is taken down and the hand is able to keep up with the quickness of the tongue? These are inventions of the lowest slaves. Philosophy is far above all this; she does not train men’s hands: she is the instructress of men’s minds.

  You want to know, do you, what philosophy has unearthed, what philosophy has achieved? It is not the gracefulness of dance movements, nor the variety of sounds produced by horn or flute as they take in breath and transform it, in its passage through or out of the instrument, into notes. She does not set about constructing arms or walls or anything of use in war. On the contrary, her voice is for peace, calling all mankind to live in harmony. And she is not, I insist, the manufacturer of equipment for everyday essential purposes. Why must you make her responsible for such insignificant things? In her you see the mistress of the art of life itself. She has, indeed, authority over other arts, inasmuch as all activities that provide life with its apparatus must also be the servants of that of which
life itself is the servant. Philosophy, however, takes as her aim the state of happiness. That is the direction in which she opens routes and guides us. She shows us what are real and what are only apparent evils. She strips men’s minds of empty thinking, bestows a greatness that is solid and administers a check to greatness where it is puffed up and all an empty show; she sees that we are left in no doubt about the difference between what is great and what is bloated. And she imparts a knowledge of the whole of nature, as well as of herself. She explains what the gods are, and what they are like….*

  ‘Anacharsis,’ says Posidonius, ‘discovered the potter’s wheel, the rotary motion of which shapes earthenware.’ Then, mention of the potter’s wheel being found in Homer, he would have us think that it is the passage in Homer, rather than his story, that is spurious. I maintain that Anacharsis was not responsible for this invention, and that even if he was, he discovered it as a philosopher, yes, but not in his capacity as a philosopher, in the same way as philosophers do plenty of things as men without doing them in their capacity as philosophers. Suppose, for example, a philosopher happens to be a very fast runner; in a race he will come first by virtue of his ability as a runner, not by virtue of his being a philosopher. I should like to show Posidonius some glass-blower moulding glass by means of his breath into a whole variety of shapes that could hardly be fashioned by the most careful hand – discoveries that have occurred in the period since the disappearance of the wise man. ‘Democritus,’ he says, ‘is reported to be the discoverer of the arch, the idea of which is to bind a curving line of stones, set at slightly differing angles from each other, with a keystone.’ This I should say was quite untrue. For there must have been both bridges and gateways before Democritus’ time, and the upper parts of these generally have a curve to them. And it seems to have escaped your memory, Posidonius, that this same Democritus discovered a means of softening ivory, and a means of turning a pebble into an ‘emerald’ by boiling it, a method employed even today for colouring certain stones that man has discovered and found amenable to the process. These techniques may indeed have been discovered by a philosopher, but not in his capacity as a philosopher. For there are plenty of things which he does which one sees being done just as well if not with greater skill and dexterity by persons totally lacking in wisdom.