SENECA - College of Stoic Philosophers

EPISTLE XCII.
he has lived longer and has been distracted by no
pain, than one who has always been compelled to
grapple with evil fortune "
? Answer me now, is
he any better or more honourable ? If he is not,
then he is not happier either. In order to live
more happily, he must live more rightly if
;
he
cannot do that, then he cannot live more happily
either. Virtue cannot be strained tighter/ and
therefore neither can the happy life, which depends
on virtue. For virtue is so great a good that it is
not affected by such insignificant assaults upon it as
shortness of life, pain, and the various bodily vexations.
For pleasure does not deserve that virtue should
even glance at it. Now what is the chief thing in
virtue ? It is the quality of not needing a single day
beyond the present, and of not reckoning up the days
that are ours; in the slightest possible moment of time
virtue completes an eternity of good. These goods
seem to us incredible and transcending man's nature ;
for we measure its
grandeur by the standard of our
own weakness, and we call our vices by the name
of virtue. Furthermore, does it not seem just as
incredible that any man in the midst of extreme
suffering should say,
"I am happy"? And yet
this utterance was heard in the very factory of
pleasure, when Epicurus said b " To-day and one
:
other day have been the "
happiest of all !
although
in the one case he was tortured by strangury, and
in the other by the incurable pain of an ulcerated
stomach. Why, then, should those goods which
virtue bestows be incredible in the sight of us, who
cultivate virtue, when they are found even in those
who acknowledge pleasure as their mistress ? These
also, ignoble and base-minded as they are, declare
that even in the midst of excessive pain and mis-
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