SENECA - College of Stoic Philosophers

EPISTLE XC.
control ;
for he whom life serves is also served by
the things which equip
life. But wisdom's course
is toward the state of happiness ;
thither she guides
us, thither she opens the way
for us. She shows us
what things are evil and what things are seemingly
evil ;
she strips our minds of vain illusion. She
bestows upon us a greatness which is substantial,
but she represses the greatness which is inflated,
and showy but filled with emptiness and she does
;
not permit us to be ignorant of the difference between
what is
great and what is but swollen ;
nay, she
delivers to us the knowledge of the whole of nature
and of her own nature. She discloses to us what
the gods are and of what sort they are ;
what are
the nether gods, the household deities, and the
protecting spirits
what are the souls which have
;
been endowed with lasting life and have been
admitted to the second class of divinities," where is
their abode and what their activities, powers, and
will.
Such are wisdom's rites of initiation, by means of
which is unlocked, not a village shrine, but the vast
temple of all the gods the universe itself, whose
true apparitions and true aspects she offers to the
gaze of our minds. For the vision of our eyes
is too
dull for sights so great.
Then she goes back to the
beginnings of things, to the eternal Reason & which
was imparted to the whole, and to the force which
inheres in all the seeds of things, giving them the
power to fashion each thing according to its kind.
Then wisdom begins to inquire about the soul,
whence it comes, where it dwells, how long
it
abides, into how many divisions it falls. Finally, she
has turned her attention from the corporeal to the
incorporeal, and has closely examined truth and the
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