On the usefulness of basic principles
95:8
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.
8.
Now all these arts are concerned with the tools of life, but not with life as a whole.
Hence there is much to clog these arts from without and to complicate them—such as hope, greed, fear.
But that art which professes to teach the art of life cannot be forbidden by any circumstance from exercising its functions; for it shakes off complications and pierces through obstacles.
Would you like to know how unlike its status is to the other arts?
In the case of the latter, it is more pardonable to err voluntarily rather than by accident; but in the case of wisdom the worst fault is to commit sin wilfully.
Book: Moral Letters Vol III
Subtitle: Seneca's timeless letters of advice and wisdom.
Author: Seneca
Chapter: On the usefulness of basic principles
Location: Chapter 95, Section 8
Content:
8.
Now all these arts are concerned with the tools of life, but not with life as a whole.
Hence there is much to clog these arts from without and to complicate them—such as hope, greed, fear.
But that art which professes to teach the art of life cannot be forbidden by any circumstance from exercising its functions; for it shakes off complications and pierces through obstacles.
Would you like to know how unlike its status is to the other arts?
In the case of the latter, it is more pardonable to err voluntarily rather than by accident; but in the case of wisdom the worst fault is to commit sin wilfully.