In reading the letters we are struck by the continual reference to the insecurity of riches, the folly of fearing death, torture, or infamy, and are tempted to regard these as mere commonplaces of the schools. They had, however, a melancholy fitness at the time they were uttered, which we, fortunately, cannot realise. A French gentleman, quoted by Boissier, [21] declared that he found the moral letters tedious until the reign of terror came; that then, being in daily peril of his life, he understood their searching power. At the same time this power is not consistent; the vacillation of the author's mind communicates itself to the person addressed, and the clear grasp of a definite principle which lent such strength to Zeno and the early Stoics is indefinitely diluted in the far more eloquent and persuasive reflections of his Roman representative.
Connected with the name of Seneca is a question of surpassing interest, which it would be unjust to our readers to pass entirely by. We allude to the belief universal in the Church from the time of Jerome until the sixteenth century, and in spite of strong disproof, not yet by any means altogether given up, that Seneca was personally acquainted with St. Paul, [22] and borrowed some of his noblest thoughts from the Apostle's teaching. The first testimony to this belief is given by Jerome, [23] who assigns, as his sole and convincing reason for naming Seneca among the worthies of the Church that his correspondence with Paul was extant. This correspondence, which will be found in Haase's edition of the philosopher, is now admitted on all hands to be a forgery. But we might naturally ask; Does it not point to an actual correspondence which is lost, the traditional remembrance of which gave rise to its later fictitious reproduction? To this the answer must be: Jerome knew of no such early tradition. All he knew was that the letters existed, and on their existence, which he did not critically investigate, he founded his claim to admit Seneca within the Church's pale.
The problem is by no means so simple as it appears. It involves two separate questions: first, a historical one which has only an antiquarian interest, Did the philosopher know the Apostle? secondly, a more important one for the history of religious thought, Do Seneca's writings contain matter which could have come from no source but the teaching of the first Christians.
As regards the first question, the arguments on both sides are as follows:—On the one hand, Gallio, who saw Paul at Corinth, was Seneca's brother, and Burrus, the captain of the praetorian cohort, before whom he was brought at Rome, was Seneca's most intimate friend. What so likely as that these men should have introduced their prisoner to one whose chief object was to find out truth? Again, there is a well authenticated tradition that Acte, once the concubine of Nero, [24] and the only person who was found to bury him, was a convert to the Christian faith; and if converted, who so likely to have been her converter as the great Apostle? Moreover, in the Epistle to the Philippians, St. Paul salutes "them that are of Caesar's household," and it is thought that Seneca may here be specially intended. On the other side it is argued that the phrase, "Caesar's household," can only refer to slaves and freedmen: to apply it to a great magistrate at a time when as yet noblemen had not become body- servants or grooms of the chamber to the monarch, would have been nothing short of an insult; that Seneca, if he had heard of Paul or of Paul's Master, would naturally have mentioned the fact, communicative as he always is; that fear of persecution certainly need not have restrained him, especially since he rather liked shocking people's ideas than otherwise; that everywhere he shows contempt and nothing but contempt for the Jews, among whom as yet the Christians were reckoned; in short, that he appears to know nothing whatever of Christians or their doctrines.
As to this latter point there is room for difference of opinion. It is by no means clear that Christianity was unknown to the court in Nero's reign. We find in Suetonius [25] a notice to the effect that Claudius banished the Jews from Rome for a sedition headed by Chrestus. How Suetonius knew well enough that Christus, not Chrestus, was the name of the Founder of the new religion; it is therefore reasonable to suppose that in this passage he is quoting from a police-magistrate's report dating from the time of Claudius. Again, it is certain that under Nero the Christians were known as an unpopular sect, on whom he might safely wreak his mock vengeance for the burning of the city; and it is equally certain that his abominable cruelty excited a warm sympathy among the people for the persecuted. [26] The Jews were well known; hundreds practised their ceremonies in secret; even as early as Horace [27] we know that Sabbaths were kept, and the Mosaic doctrines taught to noble men and women. The penalties inflicted on these innocent victims must have been at least talked of in Rome, and it is more than probable that Seneca must have been familiar with the name of the despised sect. [28] So far, therefore, we must leave the question open, only stating that while the balance of probability is decidedly against Seneca's having had any personal knowledge of the Apostle, it is in favour of his having at least heard of the religion he represented.
With regard to the second question, whether Seneca's teaching owes anything to Christianity, we must first observe, that philosophy to him was altogether a question of practice. Like all the other thinkers of the time he cared nothing for consistency of opinion, everything for impressiveness of application. He was Stoic, Platonist, Epicurean, as often as it suited him to employ their principles to enforce a moral lesson. Thus in his Naturales Quaestiones, [29] where he has no moral object in view, he speaks of the Deity as Mens Universi, or Natura ipsa, quite in accordance with Stoic pantheism. But in the letters to Lucilius, which are wholly moral, he uses the language of religion: "The great soul is that which yields itself up to God;" [30] "All that pleases Him is good;" [31] "He is a friend never far off;" [32] "He is our Father;" [33] "It is from Him that great and good resolutions come;" [34] "He is worshipped and loved;" [35] "Prayer is a witness to His care for us." [36] There is no doubt in these passages a strong resemblance to the teaching of the New Testament. There are other points of contact hardly less striking. The Stoic doctrine of the soul affirms the cessation of existence after death. So Zeno taught; but Chrysippus allowed the souls of the good an existence until the end of the world, and Cleanthes extended this privilege to all souls alike. Seneca sometimes speaks as a Stoic, [37] and denies immortality: sometimes he admits it as an ennobling belief; [38] sometimes he declares it to be his own conviction, [39] and uses the beautiful expression, so common in Christian literature, that the day of death is the birth-day of eternity. [40] The coincidence, if it is nothing more than a coincidence, is marvellous. But before assuming any closer connection we must take these passages with their respective contexts, and with the principles which, whether consistently maintained or not, undoubtedly underlie his whole teaching. We must remember that if Seneca had known the Gospel, the day he first heard of it must have been an epoch in his life. [41] And yet we meet with no allusion which could be construed into an admission of such a debt. And besides, the expressions in question do not all belong to one period of the philosopher's life; they occur in his earliest as well as in his latest compositions, though doubtless far more frequently in the latter. Hence we may explain them partly by the natural progress in enlightenment and gentleness during the century from Cicero to Seneca, and partly also by the moral development of the philosopher himself. [42] Resemblances of terms, however striking, must not count for more than they are worth. It is more important to ask whether the spirit of Seneca's teaching is at all like that of the Gospel. Are his ideas Christian? We meet with strong recommendations to charity, kindness, benevolence. To a splenetic acquaintance, out of humour with the world, he cries out, ecquando amabis? "When will you learn to love?" [43] But with him charity is not an end; it is but a means to fortify the sage, to render him absolutely self-sufficient. Egoism is at the bottom of this high precept; [44] and this at once removes it from the Christian category. And the same is true of his account of the wise man's relations to God. They are based on pride, not humility; they make him an equal, not a servant, of the Deity: Sapiem cum dis ex pari trivit; [45] and again, Deo socius non supplex. [46] Nothing could be further from the New Testament than this. If therefore Seneca borrowed anything from Christianity, it was the morality, not the doctrines, that he borrowed. But this is no sooner stated than it is seen to be altogether inconceivable. To suppose that he took from it precepts of life and neglected the higher truths it announced, is to regard him as foolish or blind. With his intense yearning to penetrate to the mysteries of our being, it is impossible that the only solution of them offered as certain to the world should have been neglected by him as not worth a thought. [47]
We therefore conclude that Seneca received no assistance from the preachers of the new religion, that his philosophy was the natural development of the thoughts of his predecessors in a mind at once capacious and smitten with the love of virtue. He cannot be regarded as an isolated phenomenon; he was made by the ages, as he in his turn helped to make the ages that followed; and if we possessed the writings of those intermediate thinkers who busily wrought among the citizens of Rome, striving by persuasion, precept, and example, to wean them from their sensuality and violence, we should probably see in Seneca's thoughts a less astounding individuality than we do.
It has often been said that he prepared the way for Christianity. But even this is hard to defend. In his enunciation of the brotherhood of man, [48] of the unholiness of war, [49] of the sanctity of human life, [50] of the rights of slaves, [51] and their claims to our affection, [52] in his reprobation of gladiatorial shows, he holds the place of a moral pioneer, the more honourable, since none of those before him, except Cicero, had had largeness of heart enough to recognise these truths. By his fierce attacks on paganism, [53] for which (not being a born Roman) he has no sympathy and no mercy, he did good service to the pure creed that was to follow. By his contempt of science, [54] in which he asserts we can never be more than children, he paved the way for a recognition of the supremacy of the moral end; but at the same time his own mind is sceptical quite as much as it is religious. He resembles Cicero far more than Virgil. The current after Augustus ran towards belief and even credulity. Seneca arrests rather than forwards it. His philosophy was the proudest that ever boasted of its claims, "Promittit ut parem Deo faciat." [55] His popularity was excessive, especially with the young and wealthy members of the new nobility of freedmen. The old Romans avoided him, and his great successors in philosophy, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, never even mention his name.
As a man of letters Seneca wielded an incalculable influence. What Lucan did for poetry, he did for prose, or rather, he did far more; while Lucan never superseded Virgil as a model except for expression, Seneca not only superseded Cicero, but set the style in which every succeeding author either wrote, tried to write, or tried not to write. To this there is one exception—the younger Pliny. But Florus, Tacitus, Pliny the elder, and Curtius, are deeply imbued with his manner and style. Quintilian, though anxiously eschewing all imitation of him, continually falls into it; there was a charm about those short, incisive sentences which none who had read them could resist; as Tacitus well says, there was in him ingenium amoenum et temporis eius auribus accommodatum. It is in vain that Quintilian goes out of his way to bewail his broken periods, his wasted force, his sweet vices. The words of Seneca are like those described in Ecclesiastes, "they are as goads or as nails driven in." There is no possibility of missing their point, no fear of the attention not being arrested. If he repeats over and over again, that is after all a fault that can be pardoned, especially when each repetition is more brilliant than its predecessor. And considering the end he proposed to himself, viz., to teach those who as yet were "novices in wisdom," we can hardly regard such a mode of procedure as beside the mark. Where it fails is in what touches Seneca himself, not in what touches the reader. It is a style which does injustice to its author's heart. Its glitter strikes us as false because too brilliant to be true; a man in earnest would not stop to trick his thoughts in the finery of rhetoric; here as ever, the showy stands for the bad. We do not intend to defend the character of the man; if style be the true reflex of the soul, as in all great writers without doubt it is, we allow that Seneca's style shows a mind wanting in gravity, that is, in the highest Roman excellence. His is the bright enthusiasm of display, not the steady one of duty; but though it be lower it need not be less real. There are warriors who meet their death with a song and a gay smile; there are others who meet it with stern and sober resolve. But courage calls both her children. Christian Europe has been kinder and juster to Seneca than was pagan Rome. Rome while she copied, abused him. Neither as Spaniard nor as Roman can he claim the name of sage. The higher philosophy is denied to both these nations. But in brilliancy of touch, in delicious abandon of sparkling chat, all the more delightful because it does us good in genial human feeling, none the less warm, because it is masked by quaint apophthegms and startling paradoxes, Seneca stands facile princeps among the writers of the Empire. His works are a mine of quotation, of anecdote, of caustic observations on life. In no other writer shall we see so speaking a picture of the struggle between duty and pleasure, between virtue and ambition; from no other writer shall we gain so clear an insight into the hopes, fears, doubts, and deep, abiding dissatisfaction which preyed upon the better spirits of the age.