Continuing his argument that an individual’s needs are small and easily satisfied by Nature, Seneca says there’s no reason to grieve the loss of your home for you can live in a cave as well as a house. Animal skins can keep you warm as well as designer clothes. Losing the comforts of home is not the same thing as losing the necessities of life.
…If, however, [a man] sighs for a purple robe…interwoven with threads of gold and with many coloured [sic] artistic embroideries, then his poverty is his own fault…1
Anytime a desire is allowed to grow beyond necessity, Seneca says we’re no longer dealing with desire but disease. The most-impoverished environments supply all one’s needs; Not even an empire will prove sufficient to satisfy all one’s desires. He grounds this statement on a conception of the human person that is similar to one long-popular among Christians. It is often expressed, “You do not have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.”2
If the body really is “nothing more than a temporary garment”, then Seneca’s argument seems valid. No setting would be so impoverished as to make it worthy of being described as “poverty.” In this case, poverty really must emerge from the person himself.
It is the mind which makes men rich: this it is that accompanies them into exile…the mind has no more connexion [sic] with money than the immortal gods have with those things which are so highly valued by untutored intellects…this trumpery body, the prison and fetter of the spirit, may be tossed to this place or to that; upon it tortures, robberies, and diseases may work their will: but the spirit itself is holy and eternal, and upon it no one can lay hands.3
This may seem no different that Paul claiming to have learned, “in whatever state I am, to be content in it.”4 I’m not convinced, however, that they are the same. If one can endure injustice without ceasing to recognize it as injustice (e.g., the experience of the Christ and many of His followers); why couldn’t one also endure poverty without ceasing to recognize it as poverty?
Over twenty years ago, a missionary friend related a story to me about her time serving in southeast Asia with women psychologically and physically scarred from their time in sex work. Her basic message was: “You’re in a system that is abusing you and we want to help get you out of it.”
In contrast, local Buddhist monks would give the very same women a very different message: “You need to recognize that there’s really no you that is suffering in the first place. Therefore, there is nothing to amend except within your own mind/soul.” I do not share this story out of any desire to disparage Buddhism, but to illustrate how profoundly assumptions about what a human is affect our conceptions of, and prescriptions for, suffering.
Returning to the text at hand, Seneca buttresses his claim with the trite observation that the poor often appear happier than the rich. Much depends, of course, upon how one defines “poor” and “rich,” but there is something to Seneca’s argument; those of us caught up in the hamster wheel of consumerist society would do well to ponder it:
Whenever I look back to the great examples of antiquity, I feel ashamed to seek consolation for my poverty, now that luxury has advanced so far in the present age, that the allowance of an exile is larger than the inheritance of the princes of old.5
Seneca cites various examples to illustrate his point (Homer, Menenius Agrippa, Scipio, et. al) before concluding:
Can an exile be angry at any privation, when Scipio could not afford a portion for his daughters, Regulus could not afford a hired labourer [sic], Menenius could not afford a funeral?6
Or, we might well add, when the Son of Man had no place to lay His head7?
At this point, Seneca addresses another objection one might make. Sure, any of these misfortunes — by themselves — can be endured; but what about when all of it hits you at once? Surely it’s different when you lose your job, and your home, and your family in one fell swoop!
I suspect this argument would find a lot of sympathy today. It’s interesting, then, that Seneca insists the amount of suffering is irrelevant.
If you have enough strength to resist any one part of your ill-fortune, you will have enough to resist it all.8
That’s awfully big talk….but is it real? I don’t know. Life has taught me that I’ve got a breaking point. The best I seem able to manage is developing myself so that more and more suffering is required to reach that breaking point. In the end, though, it’s always there.
I think this is where the rubber meets the road for in understanding the Gospel’s importance. I can’t rely on my own strength because history has demonstrated it isn’t that impressive. So…I’ve chosen to place my faith in One Who has taken the worst the world had to offer and yet didn’t break.
I don’t know how Seneca ultimately coped with the reality of his own weakness. Perhaps he simply refused to let himself dwell on it. That may afford some momentary comfort, but a weakness ignored is not one eliminated.
As Seneca continues to wax eloquent on the machismo of the soul, I do not deny his vision is inspiring…and one worthy of aspiration.
No one is despised by others unless he be previously despised by himself: a grovelling and abject mind may fall an easy prey to such contempt: but he who stands up against the most cruel misfortunes, and overcomes those evils by which others would have been crushed — such a man, I say, turns his misfortunes into badges of honour [sic], because we are so constituted as to admire nothing so much as a man who bears adversity bravely.9
At this point, Seneca seems to feel he’s sufficiently outlined why exile isn’t an evil. Thus, he tells his mother:
Since…you have no reason for endless weeping on my account, it follows that your tears must flow on your own : there are two causes for this, either your having lost my protection, or your not being able to bear the mere fact of separation.10
He dismisses the first option quickly, praising Helvia for her devotion and selflessness. Thus, he attributes her despondency to her great love for him. She had recently returned (to Rome?) to live near Seneca, and had departed on a brief journey just three days before his exile. Thus, she was deprived of the emotional armor that might have been built-up by long separation, and she was denied the last two days she might have spent with him as well.
But the harder these things are to bear, the more virtue you must summon to your aid, and the more bravely you must struggle as it were with an enemy whom you know well, and whom you have already often conquered.11
Seneca, Lucius Annaeus. 1912. L. Annaeus Seneca Minor Dialogues : Together with the Dialogue on Clemency. London : G. Bell and Sons, 337.
You have likely seen this quotation attributed to C.S. Lewis. However, the C.S. Lewis Foundation insists he never uttered it. According to them, the expression actually originated with George McDonald.
Seneca, Lucius Annaeus. L. Annaeus Seneca Minor Dialogues, 338.
Philippians 4:11 (WEB)
Seneca, Lucius Annaeus. L. Annaeus Seneca Minor Dialogues, 339.
Seneca, Lucius Annaeus. L. Annaeus Seneca Minor Dialogues, 340.
Matthew 8:20 (WEB)
Seneca, Lucius Annaeus. L. Annaeus Seneca Minor Dialogues, 340.
Seneca, Lucius Annaeus. L. Annaeus Seneca Minor Dialogues, 341.
Seneca, Lucius Annaeus. L. Annaeus Seneca Minor Dialogues, 342.
Seneca, Lucius Annaeus. L. Annaeus Seneca Minor Dialogues, 343.