SENECA - College of Stoic Philosophers

EPISTLE LXXVIII.
whether because the life-force, when checked in its
natural course and changed for the worse, loses the
peculiar power through which it thrives and through
which it warns us, or because the diseased humours
of the body, when they cease to have a place into
which they may flow, are thrown back upon themselves,
and deprive of sensation the parts where they
have caused congestion. So gout, both in the feet
and in the hands, and all pain in the vertebrae and
in the nerves, have their intervals of rest at the
times when they have dulled the parts which they
before had tortured ;
the first
twinges/ in all such
cases, are what cause the distress, and their onset is
checked by lapse of time, so that there is an end
of pain when numbness has set in. Pain in the
teeth, eyes, and ears is most acute for the very
reason that it
begins among the narrow spaces of
the body, no less acute, indeed, than in the head
itself. But if it is more violent than usual, it turns
to delirium and stupor. This is, accordingly, a
consolation for excessive pain, that you cannot
help ceasing to feel it if you feel it to excess. The
reason, however, why the inexperienced are impatient
when their bodies suffer that is, they have not
accustomed themselves to be contented in spirit.
They have been closely associated with the body.
Therefore a high-minded and sensible man divorces
soul from body, and dw r ells much with the better or
divine part, and only as far as he must with this
complaining and frail portion.
"But it is a hardship," men say, "to do without
our customary pleasures, to fast, to feel thirst and
hunger." These are indeed serious when one first
abstains from them. Later the desire dies down,
because the appetites themselves which lead to
VOL. II G 187