On the Happy Life (Part II)

Young Woman Knitting by Vincent van Gogh (Public domain)

🏛️ 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.

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On the Happy Life (Part II)

In a letter known today as On the Happy Life (if you missed Part I, listen here), Seneca wrote,

‘What, then,’ comes the retort, ‘if good health, rest, and freedom from pain are not likely to hinder virtue, shall you not seek all these?’ Of course, I shall seek them, but not because they are goods—I shall seek them because they are according to nature and because they will be acquired through the exercise of good judgment on my part. What, then, will be good in them? This alone—that it is a good thing to choose them. For when I don suitable attire, or walk as I should, or dine as I ought to dine, it is not my dinner, or my walk, or my dress that are goods, but the deliberate choice which I show in regard to them, as I observe, in each thing I do, a mean that conforms with reason.

Let me also add that the choice of neat clothing is a fitting object of a man’s efforts; for man is by nature a neat and well-groomed animal. Hence, the choice of neat attire, and not neat attire in itself, is a good; since the good is not in the thing selected but in the quality of the selection. Our actions are honorable, but not the actual things which we do.

And you may assume that what I have said about dress applies also to the body. For nature has surrounded our soul with the body as with a sort of garment; the body is its cloak. But who has ever reckoned the value of clothes by the wardrobe which contained them? The scabbard does not make the sword good or bad. Therefore, with regard to the body, I shall return the same answer to you—that, if I have the choice, I shall choose health and strength, but that the good involved will be my judgment regarding these things, and not the things themselves.