Seneca - College of Stoic Philosophers

THE PHILOSOPHY OF SENECA 173all our actions, and we shall never regret themwhatever their results. Actions, like things, arein themselves neither good— nor bad it is themanner and the circumstances that qualify them.The veiy same action is base or honourable,according to the mental disposition of the actor.A man attends assiduously the sick bed of hisfriend, and we approve. But if he does this witha view to an inheritance, we regard him as avulture awaiting his prey. The action is thesame in both cases, but in the first we recognisewhat we significantly call the man's humanity,that is, goodness, truth, and beauty, those fruitsof the universal human spirit, of which man couldnot have formed the idea were they not the verymaterial of his reasonable soul ;and our consciousnessof the self-regarding source of the same actionin the other case fills us with a certain disgust.As with things so with actions, we must weighthem without regard to their reputation, and considernot what they are called but what they are.Notwithstanding his rhetoric and antitheses,it is this recall to reality which is the dominantnote in Seneca's writings. An excellent critic,who was by no means an undiscriminating admirerof his subject, has written: 'The less aman cares for the practical, the real, the lesshe will value Seneca. The more a man envelopshimself in words and ideas without exact meaning,the less will he comprehenda writer whodoes not merely deal in words, but has ideaswith something to correspond1G. Long.to them.'^ Seneca