🏛️ Sundays with Seneca
Sundays with Seneca explores Lucius Annaeus Seneca's writings and Stoic philosophy. Each week, I share a selected reading from one of Seneca's letters in search of ancient lessons on the art of living (along with a journaling prompt at the end). The series is exclusively available to members.
Seneca — On Various Aspects of Virtue
In this week’s Sundays with Seneca series, we’re exploring selected passages from a letter known today as On Various Aspects of Virtue.
I have just seen my former schoolmate Claranus for the first time in many years. You need not wait for me to add that he is an old man; but I assure you that I found him hale in spirit and sturdy, although he is wrestling with a frail and feeble body. For Nature acted unfairly when she gave him a poor domicile for so rare a soul, or perhaps it was because she wished to prove to us that an absolutely strong and happy mind can lie hidden under any exterior. Be that as it may, Claranus overcomes all these hindrances and, by despising his own body, has arrived at a stage where he can despise other things also.
The poet who sang: “Worth shows more pleasing in a form that’s fair,” is, in my opinion, mistaken. For virtue needs nothing to set it off; it is its own great glory, and it hallows the body in which it dwells. At any rate, I have begun to regard Claranus in a different light; he seems to me handsome, and as well-setup in body as in mind. …
“Whatever it (virtue) has touched, it brings into likeness with itself and dyes with its own color. It adorns our actions, friendships, and sometimes entire households, which it has entered and set in order. Whatever it has handled, it immediately makes lovable, notable, and admirable.”
Therefore, the power and the greatness of virtue cannot rise to greater heights because the increase is denied to that which is superlatively great. You will find nothing straighter than the straight, nothing truer than the truth, and nothing more temperate than that which is temperate.
Every virtue is limitless; for limits depend upon definite measurements. Constancy cannot advance further, any more than fidelity, truthfulness, or loyalty. What can be added to that which is perfect? Nothing otherwise that was not perfect to which something has been added. Nor can anything be added to virtue, either, for if anything can be added thereto, it must have contained a defect. Honor also permits no addition; for it is honorable because of the very qualities which I have mentioned. What then? Do you think that propriety, justice, and lawfulness do not also belong to the same type and that they are kept within fixed limits? The ability to increase is proof that a thing is still imperfect.
The good, in every instance, is subject to these same laws. The advantage of the state and that of the individual are yoked together; indeed, it is as impossible to separate them as to separate the commendable from the desirable. Therefore, virtues are mutually equal, and so are the works of virtue and all men who are fortunate enough to possess these virtues. …
