Seneca - College of Stoic Philosophers

132 SENECAproceed to the solution of riddles, to nice distinctions,to the elucidation of obscurities ;for the present let uskeep to the essential.^To understand Seneca's reiterated inp^istencein these letters on the vital necessity of a mentaldiscipline which should brace the mind againstall that might befall, and prepare a man toface death at any moment at the hands of atyrant, we must remember that they were writtenat a time when these trials were becomingincreasingly possible for every man of mark.Philosophy, he is always saying,is concernedwith action, not with words ;and the test ofproficiency is the concordance of practice withtheory. It teaches us to distinguish realitiesfrom appearances. Death, for instance, maycome through a tyrant or a fever, pain throughdisease or an executioner ;such differences cannotchange their nature, they are still but deathand pain. Yet we fear them far more in theone case than in the other, for it is the pompand circumstance of things and not the thingsthemselves that form the subjects of our fear.^'Remember,' he tells him, ' that there is nothingadmirable in man except his soul, to which whengreat all other things are small.' ^ Wisdom consistsin constancy of will — a constancy unalter-1Ep. 109. In tliis long controversy between the rhetoriciansand philosophers, between 'the artists of the pure form of speechand the investigators of the inmost nature of things,' Seneca, indirect opposition to his father's view, was the protagonist of thephilosophers. See Friedlander, iii. 3.*'Ef&cientia non effectum spectat timor.'^'Cogita in te, praeter animum,magno nihil magnum est ' {Ep. 8).niliil esse mirabile : cui