Morals: Of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency (ca. 65)

Summary

Seneca (4 B.C. to 65 A.D.) was a Stoic philosopher, an influential political figure in Ancient Rome, and the author of Morals: Of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency.  Key Founders like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington drew on Seneca to understand the pursuit of happiness.  In this passage, from the 1742 English translation that Washington read, Seneca opens his Morals with his reflections on the components of “a Happy life.”  As Seneca explains, “It is every Man’s wish, and Design; and yet not one of a thousand . . . knows wherein that Happiness consists.”  Seneca urges us to “govern oursel[ves] by Reason” and to “be free from Perturbations”—“rest[ing] satisfied with what we have” and finding “[t]ranquility.”

Selected by

Paul Rahe

Professor of History and Charles O. Lee and Louise K. Lee Chair in the Western Heritage at Hillsdale College

Jeffrey Rosen

President and CEO, National Constitution Center

Colleen A. Sheehan

Professor of Politics at the Arizona State University School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership

Document Excerpt

There is not anything in this World, perhaps, that is more talked of, and less understood, than the Business of a Happy Life. It is every Man’s Wish, and Design; and yet not one of a thousand that knows wherein that Happiness consists. We live, however in a blind and eager Pursuit of it; and the more haste we make in a wrong way, the further we are from our Journey’s End. . . .

The true Felicity of Life, is to be free from Perturbations; to understand our Duties toward God and Man; to enjoy the Present, without any anxious Dependence upon the Future. Not to amuse ourselves with either Hopes or Fears, but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is abundantly sufficient; for he that is so, wants nothing. The great Blessings of Mankind are within us, and within our Reach; but we shut our eyes, and like People in the dark, we fall foul upon the very thing we search for, without finding it. Tranquility is a certainty Equality of Mind, which no Condition of Fortune can either exalt, or depress. Nothing can make it less, for it is the State of human Perfection.