Seneca - College of Stoic Philosophers

THE PHILOSOPHY OF SENECA 167it is from the opinion only which is within thatall the tumult and all the trouble doth proceed.'It isexcellent, wrote Seneca, to combine the freedomfrom concern of a God with the physicalfrailty of man.^ All nature is one. We are allmembers of a single great body.^ In the physicalworld this is clear to the view, for the actualmaterial of which it iscomposed is used successivelyfor all things— for minerals, for plants, and foranimals. But it is also true of the spiritual worldto which man alone of living things has beengranted admission. Hence it follows that we arecalled by our spiritual nature to recognise ouruniversal kinship and to love one another, hencecome our notions of equity and justice, and abelief which consciously or unconsciously we musthold that it is better for a man to be wrongedthan to wrong.Thus Seneca was a dualist. For him, as hasbeen said, there is the world of matter of whichour bodies__are_a part, and there is the world ofspirit "wEich isjdLvine. Bodies are the instrumentsof our free action when we possess ourselves, butwhen we obey their behests we lose our freedomand become the slaves of those who can threatenus with or save — us from the perils to which thebody is exposed poverty, sickness, or externalviolence. Of these we dread the last most becauseof its tumultuous onset, whereas the others creepsilently upon us accompanied by nothing formid-^Ep- 53- 'Ecce res magna, habere imbecillitatem hominis,securitatem Dei.''^Ep. 95 Omne hoc quod vides, quo divina et humana:conclusa sunt, unum est : membra sumus corporis magni.'