SENECA - College of Stoic Philosophers

EPISTLE LXXXV.
holds the ship in irons, or strips her masts ?
'
No,
it does not harm him as a pilot, but only as a voyager ;
otherwise, he is no pilot. It is indeed so far from
hindering the pilot's art that it even exhibits the
art for ; anyone, in the words of the proverb, is a
pilot on a calm sea. These mishaps obstruct the
voyage but not the steersman qua steersman. A
pilot has a double role : one he shares with all his
fellow-passengers, for he also is a passenger the
;
other is peculiar to him, for he is the pilot. The
storm harms him as a passenger, but not as a pilot.
Again, the pilot's art is another's good
it concerns
his passengers just as a physician's art concerns his
patients. But the wise man's is
good a common
good it belongs both to those in whose company
he lives, and to himself also. Hence our pilot may
perhaps be harmed, since his services, which have
been promised to others, are hindered by the storm ;
but the wise man is not harmed by poverty, or by
pain, or by any other of life's storms. For all his
functions are not checked, but only those which
pertain to others he himself is
; always in action,
and is greatest in performance at the very time
when fortune has blocked his way. For then he is
actually engaged in the business of wisdom and
;
this wisdom I have declared already to be both the
good of others, and also his own. Besides, he is not
prevented from helping others, even at the time
when constraining circumstances press him down.
Because of his poverty he is
prevented from showing
how the State should be handled ;
but he teaches,
none the less, how poverty should be handled. His
work goes on throughout his whole life.
Thus no fortune, no external circumstance, can
shut off the -wise man from action. For the very
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