56.
Nature does not ally us with any vice; she produced us in health and freedom.
She put before our eyes no object which might stir in us the itch of greed.
She placed gold and silver beneath our feet, and bade those feet stamp down and crush everything that causes us to be stamped down and crushed.
Nature elevated our gaze towards the sky and willed that we should look upward to behold her glorious and wonderful works.
She gave us the rising and the setting sun, the whirling course of the on-rushing world which discloses the things of earth by day and the heavenly bodies by night, the movements of the stars, which are slow if you compare them with the universe, but most rapid if you reflect on the size of the orbits which they describe with unslackened speed; she showed us the successive eclipses of sun and moon, and other phenomena, wonderful because they occur regularly or because, through sudden causes they leap into view—such as nightly trails of fire, or flashes in the open heavens unaccompanied by stroke or sound of thunder, or columns and beams and the various phenomena of flames.
Book: Moral Letters Vol III
Subtitle: Seneca's timeless letters of advice and wisdom.
Author: Seneca
Chapter: On the value of advice
Location: Chapter 94, Section 56
Content:
56.
Nature does not ally us with any vice; she produced us in health and freedom.
She put before our eyes no object which might stir in us the itch of greed.
She placed gold and silver beneath our feet, and bade those feet stamp down and crush everything that causes us to be stamped down and crushed.
Nature elevated our gaze towards the sky and willed that we should look upward to behold her glorious and wonderful works.
She gave us the rising and the setting sun, the whirling course of the on-rushing world which discloses the things of earth by day and the heavenly bodies by night, the movements of the stars, which are slow if you compare them with the universe, but most rapid if you reflect on the size of the orbits which they describe with unslackened speed; she showed us the successive eclipses of sun and moon, and other phenomena, wonderful because they occur regularly or because, through sudden causes they leap into view—such as nightly trails of fire, or flashes in the open heavens unaccompanied by stroke or sound of thunder, or columns and beams and the various phenomena of flames.