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    Of a Happy Life
    Of a Happy Life
    Of a Happy Life
    Ebook61 pages1 hour

    Of a Happy Life

    By Seneca

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    About this ebook

    De Vita Beata (Of a Happy Life) is a wonderful philosophical treatise on the definition of Happiness.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherFV Éditions
    Release dateOct 13, 2015
    ISBN9791029900815
    Of a Happy Life
    Author

    Seneca

    The writer and politician Seneca the Younger (c. 4 BCE–65 CE) was one of the most influential figures in the philosophical school of thought known as Stoicism. He was notoriously condemned to death by enforced suicide by the Emperor Nero.

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      Book preview

      Of a Happy Life - Seneca

      page

      copyright

      Copyright © 2015 / FV Éditions

      Cover Picture : http://www.snap2objects.com

      Translator : Aubrey Stewart

      ISBN 9791029900815

      All Rights Reserved

      SÊNECA

      (Lucius Annaeus Seneca, c. 4 BC – AD 65)

      « The highest good is a mind which despises the accidents of fortune, and takes pleasure in virtue »

      OF A HAPPY LIFE

      — DE VITA BEATA —

      Translated by Aubrey Stewart¹

      PREFACE

      I can say little by way of preface to Seneca’s Minor Dialogs which I have not already expressed in my preface to De Benficiis, except that the Minor Dialogs seem to me to be composed in a gloomier key than either De Beneficiis or De Clementia and probably were written at a time when the author had already begun to experience the ingratitude of his imperial pupil. Some of the dialogs are dated from Corsica, Seneca’s place of exile, which he seems to have found peculiarly uncomfortable, although he remarks that there are people who live there from choice. Nevertheless, mournful as they are in tone, these Dialogs have a certain value, because they teach us what was meant by Stoic philosophy in the time of the Twelve Caesars.

      I have only to add that the value of my work has been materially enhanced by the kindness of the Rev. Professor J.E.B. Mayor, who has been good enough to read and correct almost all the proof sheets of this volume.

      Aubrey Stewart

      London, 1889

      I

      All men, brother Gallio, wish to live happily, but are dull at perceiving exactly what it is that makes life happy: and so far is it from being easy to attain the happiness that the more eagerly a man struggles to reach it the further he departs from it, if he takes the wrong road; for, since this leads in the opposite direction, his very swiftness carries him all the further away. We must therefore first define clearly what it is at which we aim: next we must consider by what path we may most speedily reach it, for on our journey itself, provided it be made in the right direction, we shall learn how much progress we have made each day, and how much nearer we are to the goal towards which our natural desires urge us. But as long as we wander at random, not following any guide except the shouts and discordant clamours of those who invite us to proceed in different directions, our short life will be wasted in useless roamings, even if we labour both day and night to get a good understanding. Let us not therefore decide whither we must tend, and by what path, without the advice of some experienced person who has explored the region which we are about to enter, because this journey is not subject to the same conditions as others; for in them some distinctly understood track and inquiries made of the natives make it impossible for us to go wrong, but here the most beaten and frequented tracks are those which lead us most astray. Nothing, therefore, is more important than that we should not, like sheep, follow the flock that has gone before us, and thus proceed not whither we ought, but whither the rest are going. Now nothing gets us into greater troubles than our subservience to common rumour, and our habit of thinking that those things are best which are most generally received as such, of taking many counterfeits for truly good things, and of living not by reason but by imitation of others. This is the cause of those great heaps into which men rush till they are piled one upon another. In a great crush of people, when the crowd presses upon itself, no one can fall without drawing some one else down upon him, and those who go before cause the destruction of those who follow them. You may observe the

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