Letters From a Stoic - Seneca: Summary of all 124 Letters
The less a disease has infected the soul, the less one perceives so. If we were ill, we would not worry about business or other duties we regularly perform. However, our soul is sick, and philosophy is a remedy.
But, by my faith, it is the sign of a great artist to have confined a full likeness to the limits of a miniature.
The journey we travel and are able to paint onto a canvas can be infinitely difficult, but there is a beauty in being forced to confine it to a small space.
Physicians in Seneca’s day used to call asthma ‘practicing how to die’. For one day the breath will falter. Death will test you so often.
For that reason the wise man can never be thrust out, because that would mean removal from a place which he was unwilling to leave; and the wise man does nothing unwillingly. He escapes necessity, because he wills to do what necessity is about to force upon him.
It makes a great difference to hide and be idle and to live. To hide actualizes passivity, and you do not get to improve and become your best self. There is a difference between conferring in the self and seclusion. Seneca argues the place where one lives can contribute little towards tranquility. A friend retained in the spirit cannot be absent. The same can extent with ideas.
Words demand attention, but noises merely fill the content of the ears. The quiet we may require when studying can simply be a lack of words, it may not necessarily be a lack of sound at all.
The gloom of certain travels can reawaken us with a new light. This transformation from rough times can come out of practically nothing, but unaccompanied by fear. What difference is there when the rock or mountain comes crashing down? In both instances, we will be crushed.
So this aspect of fear and failure really does not matter, in the sense that our own knockout by mistakes will be all the same. The greatest knockout, death. However, nothing can harm our everlasting soul.
Seneca describes in thorough detail Plato’s 6 classes of existing things. Detailed below are descriptions of the 6: