Seneca - College of Stoic Philosophers

,poweri66SENECAmay— have power over our bodies indeed everyman has that if he chooses — to exert it withoutregard to consequences they '— can have none over'ourselves. Vindica te tibi claim to be lord ofyourself, make good yourclaim to be free foryour own sake, subject not 3^our will to another's,wrote Seneca in the first of his letters to Lucilius,and the remaining series are largely a commentaryon that text,fPhilosophy, as Seneca understood it, is the)study/man;of the works of God and of the nature ofof natural science and of the moral law.^He would have understood and assented to thesaying of the modern sage who declared thatthe two great subjects of his admiration andreverence were the starry heaven outside himand the moral law within. Man's nature he heldto be twofold— an inherited instinctive or physicalnature which he shares with the animals, and arational nature which is divine. The last is theproper or distinguishing character of man, andonly so far as it gains the mastery can he trulybe said as man to live. The end of philosophyis to secure this predominance, and so far as itsucceeds in so doing man is placed beyond theof Fortune and his felicity is assured.His good and evil reside in the choice which it—isalways in his power to make. External thingshis own body included— are in themselves neithergood nor evil, but they are the material out of'which man makes the one or the other. Theyreach not unto the soul,' as Marcus Aureiius'says, but stand without still and quiet, and