Do Not Spend Twice
Can prudence make a man happy? The chain runs from self-restraint to steadiness to freedom from disturbance. The Peripatetics want unperturbed to mean rarely perturbed. Seneca will not halve the definition and keep the prize. If sorrow and fear may sometimes own the wise man, happiness is already conditional. Fear of death is a belief that death is bad. Excess grief is a belief that the lost thing was a genuine good. The wise man is not unfeeling. He has fewer false attachments for feeling to colonize. He tames pain, poverty, disgrace, exile the way a trainer tames beasts that still live in the house.
Key Insight
Moderation that leaves the error intact is not training. It is a truce with a belief you have not cross-examined. Name the evaluation under the weather: what good do I think I am losing, what evil do I think is arriving. The feeling often shrinks when the sentence is forced into the open.
“I am ashamed to enter the arena and undertake battle on behalf of gods and men armed only with an awl.”Explore full theme analysis
