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Moral Letters Vol III

Seneca

§ Section 5

On the corporeality of virtue

106:5

Book Subtitle: Seneca's timeless letters of advice and wisdom.

Book Description: The final volume of Seneca's moral letters. Common Stoic themes emerge again and again: the unreliability of fortune, the ability to form Stoic resolve, and the importance of virtue.

5.

Ergo, man’s good must be corporeal, since man himself is corporeal.

I am sadly astray if the elements which support man and preserve or restore his health, are not bodily; therefore, his good is a body.

You will have no doubt, I am sure, that emotions are bodily things (if I may be allowed to wedge in another subject not under immediate discussion), like wrath, love, sternness; unless you doubt whether they change our features, knot our foreheads, relax the countenance, spread blushes, or drive away the blood?

What, then?

Do you think that such evident marks of the body are stamped upon us by anything else than body?