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Moral Letters Vol III

Seneca

§ Section 7

On the vitality of the soul and its attributes

113:7

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.

7. “What is Justice?” people say.

Justice is a soul that maintains itself in a certain attitude. “Then if the soul is a living being, so is Justice.” By no means.

For Justice is really a state, a kind of power, of the soul; and this same soul is transformed into various likenesses and does not become a different kind of living thing as often as it acts differently.

Nor is the result of soul-action a living thing.