86Thousand400: Seneca Philosophy Cont.

Life's finest days, for us poor human beings, Fly first. Why finest? Because what is to come is uncertain. Why finest? Because while we are able to learn; when the mind is quick to learn and still susceptible to training we can turn it to better ends. Because this is a good time for hard work, for studies as a means of keeping our brains alert and busy and for strenuous activities as a means of exercising our bodies; the time remaining to us afterwards is marked by relative apathy and indolence, and is all the closer to the end. Let us act on this then, wholeheartedly. Let us cut all distractions and work away at this alone for fear that otherwise we may be left behind and only eventually realize one day the swiftness of the passage of this fleeting phenomenon, time, which we are powerless to hold back. Every day as it comes should be welcomed and reduced forthwith into our own possession as if it were the finest day imaginable. What flies past has to be seized at.

We should hunt out the helpful pieces of teaching, and the spirited and noble-minded sayings which are capable of immediate practical application - not far-fetched or archaic expressions or extravagant metaphors and figures of speech - and learn them so well that words become works. No-one to my mind lets humanity down quite so much as those who study philosophy as if it were a sort of commercial skill and then proceed to live in a quite different manner from the way they tell other people to live. The words were said by Plato, said by Zeno, said by Chrysippus and Posidonius and a whole host more of Stoics like them. Let me indicate here how man can prove that their words are their own: let them put their preaching into practice.

See then, that the spirit is well looked after. Our thoughts and our words proceed from it. We derive our demeanour and expression and the very way we walk from it. If the spirit is sound and healthy our style will be firm and forceful.

All vices are at odds with nature, all abandon the proper order of things. The whole object of luxurious living is the delight it takes in irregegular ways and not merely departing from the correct course but going to the farthest point away from it, and in eventually even taking a stand diametrically opposed to it. Don't you think it's living unnaturally to drink without having eaten, taking liquor into an empty system and going out to dinner in a drunken state?

People who regard notoreity as a reward for misbehaviour have no inclination for common forms of misbehaviour. And notoreity is the aim of all these people who live, so to speak, back to front. We therefore, should keep to the path which nature has mapped out for us and never diverge from it. For those who follow nature everything is easy and straightforward, whereas those who fight against her life is just like rowing against the stream.

Nothing is burdensome if taken lightly, and nothing need arouse one's irritation so long as one doesn't make it bigger than it is by getting irritated. My baker may be out of bread, but the farm manager will have some, or the steward or the tenant. 'Bad bread, yes!' you'll say. Wait then: it'll soon turn to good bread. Hunger will make you find even that bread soft and wheaty. One shouldn't, accordingly, eat until hunger demands. I shall wait, then, and not eat until I either start getting good bread again or cease to be fussy about bad bread. It is essential to make oneself used to putting up with a little.

How much better to pursue a straight course and eventually reach that destination where the things that are pleasant and the things that are honourable finally become, for you, the same. And we can achieve this if we realize that there are two classes of things attracting or repelling us. We are attracted by wealth, pleasures, good looks, political advancement and various other welcoming and enticing prospects: we are repelled by exertion, death, pain, disgrace and limited means. It follows that we need to train ourselves not to crave the former and not to be afraid of the latter. Let us fight the battle the other way round - retreat from the things that actually attract us and rouse ourselves to meet the things that actually attack us. You know the difference, Lucilius, between the postures that people adopt in climbing up and descending a mountain; those coming down a slope lean back, those moving steeply upwards lean forward, for to tilt one's weight ahead of one when descending, and backwards when ascending, is to be in league with what one has to contend with. The path that leads to pleasures is the downward one: the upward climb is the one that takes us to rugged and difficult ground. Here let us throw our bodies forward, in the other direction rein them back.

Cling tooth and nail to the following rule: not to give in to adversity, never to trust prosperity, and always take full note of fortune's habit of behaving just as she pleases, treating her as if she were actually going to do everything it is in her power to do. Whatever you have been expecting for some time comes less of a shock.