SENECA - College of Stoic Philosophers

EPISTLE LXXIV.
colour," his countenance be agitated, and his limbs
grow cold And ? there are other things which we
do, not under the influence of the will, but unconsciously
and as the result of a sort of natural impulse/'
I admit that this is true ;
but the sage will retain the
firm belief that none of these things is evil, or important
enough to make a healthy mind break down.
Whatever shall remain to be done virtue can do with
courage and readiness. For anyone would admit that
it is a mark of folly to do in a slothful and rebellious
spirit whatever one has to do, or to direct the body
in one direction and the mind in another, and thus
to be torn between utterly conflicting emotions.
For folly is despised precisely because of the things
for which she vaunts and admires herself, and she
does not do gladly even those things in which she
prides herself. But if folly fears some evil, she is
burdened by
it in the very moment of awaiting it,
just as if it had actually come, already suffering in
apprehension whatever she fears she may suffer.
Just as in the body symptoms of latent ill-health
precede the disease there is, for example, a certain
weak
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sluggishness, a lassitude which is not the
result of any work, a trembling, and a shivering that
pervades the limbs, so the feeble spirit
is shaken
by its ills a long time before it is overcome by them.
It anticipates them, and totters before its time.
But what is greater madness than to be tortured
by the future and not to save your strength for the
actual suffering, but to invite and bring on wretched
ness ? If you cannot be rid of it, you ought at least
to postpone it. Will you not understand that no
man should be tormented by the future ? The man
who has been told that he will have to endure
torture fifty years from now is not disturbed thereby,
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