Stoicism P5: Seneca là ai? - Không phải thánh, chắc chắn, nhưng cũng phải đến mức thánh nhân!

Avoid those things that please the many, the gifts that fortune brings. Be suspicious; be timid; resist every good that comes by chance. It is by the allurements of hope that the fish is caught, the game snared. Do you think these are the blessings of fortune? They are traps. Any one of you who wants to live in safety must make every effort to shun those baited favors amidst which we, poor creatures, are deceived. We think we have hold of them, when in fact they have hold of us.

Within it (studying philosophy), let us be completely different, but let the face we show to the world be like other people’s. Our clothes should not be fine, but neither should they be filthy; we should not own vessels of silver engraved with gold, but neither should we think that the mere fact that one lacks gold and silver is any indication of a frugal nature. The life we endeavour to live should be better than the general practice, not contrary to it. Otherwise we frighten off the very ppl we want to correct: by making them afraid that they will have to imitate everything about us, we make them unwilling to imitate us in any way at all. 

A person entering our house should marvel at the inhabitant, not at the dinnerware. One who uses earthenware as if it were silver is indeed a great person; equally great, though, is the one who uses silver as if it were earthenware.

We shall be able to reach that point if we understand that there are two kinds of things that can either entice or repel us. The enticing ones are wealth, pleasures, beauty, ambition, and everything else that is seductive and pleasing. We are repelled by hard physical work, death, pain, public disapproval, and an austere diet. Hence we should train ourselves neither to fear the latter things nor to desire the former. We should contend against our inclinations, resisting the attractive things and advancing against those that assail us.

Don’t you notice how much people’s posture differs when they are climbing a hill from when they are descending? While going down they lean their bodies back, but when climbing they lean forward. It is a deliberate error, when descending, to let your weight go forward, and similarly, to let it go backward when ascending. We descend into pleasures, Lucilius, but to face difficulties and hardships we have to climb. In the latter case, we should push our bodies forward, but in the former case we should hold them back.

Perhaps you will ask me why I mention so many fine sayings from Epicurus rather than from our own school. But is there any reason why you should consider them to belong to Epicurus rather than to the public?

Letter 44: On noble birth

Greeting!

You are running yourself down again. You tell me you had but a scant allowance first from birth and then from fortune, when all the while you could be separating yourself from the common crowd and rising to the summit of human prosperity.
If there is any good in philosophy, it is this: it has no regard for genealogies. If we trace our lineage back to the beginning, all humankind is of divine origins. You are a Roman of equestrian status; your own hard work has advanced you to this rank. But for heaven’s sake, there are many who fi nd themselves excluded from the priority seating; some cannot gain entry to the Senate House; even the regiment is particular about the men it recruits for toil and danger. Meanwhile, excellence of mind is available to all: in this regard we are all nobly born.
Philosophy neither rejects anyone nor chooses anyone; it shines for all. Socrates was no patrician; Cleanthes hauled water, and hired himself out to water people’s gardens; Plato did not come to philosophy a nobleman but was ennobled by it. Why should you not hope perhaps to become their equal? All of them are your ancestors if you prove yourself worthy if them. And you will do so if you persuade yourself, right now, that no one is superior to you merely by reason of noble birth.
Everyone has the same number of ancestors. There is no one whose origins lie anywhere but in oblivion. Plato says that every king is of servile origin and every slave of kingly origin. The changes and chances of time have mingled all things topsy-turvy. Who has good breeding? The one whom nature has given a good disposition toward virtue. We must look to that alone. Otherwise, if you cast your mind back to ancient times, every person has an origin in that moment before which there was nothing. From the beginning of the world until now, our history is a constant succession of dignity and squalor.
An atrium full of smoke-stained images does not make one a nobleman. No one lived his life just for us to brag about him: what happened before our time does not belong to us. It is the mind that confers nobility, for the mind has license, regardless of estate, to rise above the vagaries of chance. Imagine that you are not a Roman of equestrian status but a freedman. You can still attain a condition in which you alone are free, even if those around you do not share your servile origins.
“How?” you ask. If you make your own distinctions of what is good and bad, without reference to popular notions. You should not consider where things come from but where they are headed. If something has the capacity to make your life happy, then that thing is a good in its own right, for it cannot be turned into a bad thing.
What, then, is the mistake people make, seeing that everyone wants a happy life? They take the instruments used by happiness to be happiness itself, and so abandon the very thing they are seeking. For the chief point in a happy life is to be solidly secure and unshakably confi dent of that state; and yet they gather up the causes of anxiety and haul, no, drag those burdens behind them on life’s treacherous journey. For that reason they recede further and further from what they seek to attain, and the greater their eff orts, the greater the hindrance they create for themselves. It is like hurrying in a maze: their very haste impedes them.
Farewell.