SENECA - College of Stoic Philosophers

EPISTLE LXXVIII.
a man is, the more he enjoys a drink ;
the hungrier
he is, the more pleasure he takes in food. Whatever
falls to one's lot after a period of abstinence is
welcomed with greater zest. The other kind, however,
the pleasures of the mind, which are higher
and less uncertain, no physician can refuse to the
sick man. Whoever seeks these and knows well
what they are, scorns all the blandishments of the
'
senses. Men
" say, Poor sick fellow But !
why ?
Is it because he does not mix snow with his wine, or
because he does not revive the chill of his drinkmixed
as it is in a good-sized bowl by chipping
ice into it ? Or because he does not have Lucrine a
oysters opened fresh at his table ? Or because
there is no din of cooks about his dining-hall, as they
bring in their very cooking apparatus along with
their viands ? For luxury has already devised this
fashion of having the kitchen accompany the
dinner, so that the food may not grow luke-warm,
or fail to be hot enough for a palate which has
already become hardened. '
" Poor sick fellow ! -he
will eat as much as he can digest. There will be
no boar lying before his 5 eyes, banished from the
table as if it were a common meat ;
and on his
sideboard there will be heaped together no breastmeat
of birds, because it sickens him to see birds
served whole. But what evil has been done to you ?
You will dine like a sick man, nay, sometimes like a
sound man. c
All these things, however, can be easily endured
gruel, warm water, and anything else that seems
insupportable to a fastidious man, to one who is
wallowing in luxury, sick in soul rather than in body
if only we cease to shudder at death. And we
shall cease, if once we have gained a knowledge of
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