To the same effect is the testimony of Nepos: “So far am I from thinking that philosophy is the teacher of life and the completer of happiness, that I consider that none have greater need of teachers of living than many who are engaged in the discussion of this subject. For I see that a great part of those who give most elaborate precepts in their school respecting modesty and self-restraint, live at the same time in the unrestrained desires of all lusts.”
Both Seneca and Plutarch are firmly convinced that man is the arbiter of his own happiness; but the former found great difficulty in making a practical application of the doctrine to his own case. Notwithstanding the sorry spectacle presented to the world by many professed philosophers, neither lost faith in philosophy. It was the court of last resort. For the man to whom philosophy will not bring happiness there is no happiness in this world. To the importance and benign influence of this culture of mind, Seneca reverts again and again. He contends that “He who frequents the school of a philosopher ought every day to carry away with him something that will be to his profit: he ought to return home a wiser man. And he will so return, for such is the power of philosophy that it not only benefits those who devote themselves to it, but even those who talk about it.” “You must change yourself, not your abode. You may cross the sea, or as our Virgil says, ‘Lands and cities may vanish from sight, yet wherever you go your vices will follow you.’ When a certain person made the same complaint to Socrates that you make, he answered, ‘Why are you surprised that your travels do you no good, when you take yourself with you everywhere?’ If we could look into the mind of a good man, what a beautiful vision, what purity, we should behold beaming forth from its placid depths! Here justice, there fortitude; here self-control, there prudence. Besides these, sobriety, continence, frankness and kindliness, and (who would believe it?) humaneness, that rare trait in man, shed their luster over him.”
Though Seneca’s life was full of contradictions and inconsistencies when measured by the standard of his own writings, it would be unjust to charge him with hypocrisy. He was, within certain limits, a man of moods; a man in whose mind conflicting desires were continually striving for the mastery. It seems to have been a hard matter for him to attain settled convictions on a number of important questions. Even the immortality of the soul, a subject upon which he has much to say, and which to Plutarch is an incontestable dogma, is to Seneca hardly more than a hope. His mind matured early and there is almost no evidence of development or change of views or of style in his writings. He was such a man as nature made him, and he was on the whole pretty well satisfied with the product. Though he now and then seems to be conscious of a certain lack of constancy, and on the point of confessing his sins, he generally ends by excusing them or by trying to show that they are venial. Yet the fact that he at times acknowledges a kind of moral weakness is perhaps the chief reason why Seneca has been so often claimed as a Christian, while no such claim has ever been made for Plutarch who sees no defects either in himself or his doctrine.
The chief problem of philosophy has at all times been, how to make the judgment supreme in all matters that present themselves before the mind and how to make the will carry out the decisions of the critical faculty. When the poet says, “Video meliora proboque, Deteriora sequor,” he is thinking of this irrepressible conflict. Paul himself was not a stranger to it, for he exclaims in a moment of self-abasement when writing to Seneca’s fellow citizens, “The good which I would, I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I practice.” He, too, finds within himself a “law,” a fact of human experience, that the flesh wars against the spirit; that the appetencies are hard to reconcile with the judgment. Seneca’s own writings furnish abundant evidence that many who professed to be philosophers used their intellects solely, or chiefly, in devising means for gratifying their desires. To men of his way of thinking the Epicureans were a constant object of attack; yet the Epicureans were generally consistent from their point of view and in accordance with the postulates of their system. The all-important question with every man who is in the habit of giving an account to himself of his life is how to get the most out of it,—how to formulate a system of complete living. If the individual is the goal, considered solely from the standpoint of his earthly life, it is evident that he will act differently in the same circumstances from him whose aim is the good of society considered as an undying entity, or the happiness of the individual regarded as an immortal soul. The disagreements of philosophers have always hinged on these fundamental problems and it is strange that so little note has been made of them. It is too often taken for granted that the mere use of the reasoning faculties, that is, philosophy per se, and without reference to the highest good, is able to make men as nearly perfect as they can become in this life, both as individuals and as members of the community. It was the conviction that philosophy had run its course; that it was “played out,”—to use a phrase more expressive than elegant—that made so many of the best men, in the first Christian centuries, turn from it and seek refuge in Christianity. They had become weary of the ceaseless and acrimonious discussions of the different philosophical schools. Disgusted with contradictions and inconsistencies, they turned to the Gospel as offering a solution of problems at which so many acute thinkers had labored for centuries in vain.
It has often been remarked that the Roman world had grown old. Every experiment had been tried, every theory had been suggested that might lead to complete living; all had ended in failure and disappointment for those who had the good of their fellow men at heart. He who would perform a successful experiment in physics or chemistry must see to it that all the necessary conditions have been provided. If this is not done, no amount of care in manipulation will bring about the desired result. The mere presence of the proper ingredients, however pure, will not insure success. So in society, the existence and vitality of social forces will avail the reformer in no wise unless he knows how to put a motive force into men’s minds and hearts that will induce them to aid him in bringing about the changes he proposes. Some good men have been made so by a noble system of philosophy, to the practical exemplification of which they have devoted their lives. Both Greece and Rome furnished not a few such. On the other hand there have been many bad men who were made so by following the tenets of a vicious philosophy.
There are two reasons why Seneca has, for more than eighteen hundred years, engaged the attention of thinking men. No doubt the most important is his extraordinary ability. The world will not willingly forget the words of a great man, nor suffer his life to pass into oblivion. It clings to thoughts and deeds that are worthy to survive. Seneca not only had something to say that men wanted to hear, but he knew how to say it in such a way that they were glad to listen. Great as has been the evil in the world at all times it has never lacked many men who felt that they were made for something better than the daily concerns that occupied their time and labor. In their better moments they found pleasure in listening to the voices that spoke to them of something more abiding than the fleeting affairs of this transitory life.
Seneca, too, was intensely human. He frequently furnishes evidence of extraordinary mental strength while now and then he sinks down in sheer exhaustion. His mind ranges freely along the whole scale of mental experiences; and though he dwell, longest on the higher parts, he does not always do so. The record of such an experience has an attraction for many men. They see in it a counterpart of their own struggles, and are rarely without hope that its triumphs may be an earnest of their own.
The scholar in politics is a character of whom we hear a good deal, but as a matter of fact, scholarship, in the true sense of the word, and successful politics, as the world understands success, are a combination that has rarely been made. Again, an ecclesiastical statesman, strictly speaking, is an equally rare phenomenon and has been since the days of the supremacy of the Romish church. The greater the success of the ecclesiastic in statecraft, the farther he departed from the prescriptions of the church, or at least of the Gospel. How often has the experience of Wolsey been anticipated or repeated; and many men, both laics and priests, have felt the truth of Shakespeare’s thoughts, if they have not expressed them in his words:
“Had I but served my God with half the zeal
I served my king, he would not in mine age