Giving advice. Seneca, Epistles 3.29.1-3
Seneca
discusses the problem of advice. What is the best way to give it?
Lucilius likes to be generous, but Seneca prefers to ration more
carefully.
De
Marcellino nostro quaeris et vis scire quid agat. Raro ad nos venit,
non ulla alia ex causa quam quod audire verum timet, a quo periculo
iam abest; nulli enim nisi audituro dicendum est. Ideo de Diogene nec
minus de aliis Cynicis qui libertate promiscua usi sunt et obvios
monuerunt, dubitari solet, an hoc facere debuerint. Quid enim, si
quis surdos obiurget aut natura morbove mutos? Quare inquis
verbis parcam? gratuita sunt. Non possum scire an ei profuturus sim
quem admoneo: illud scio, alicui me profuturum, si multos admonuero.
Spargenda manus est: non potest fieri ut non aliquando succedat multa
temptanti. Hoc, mi Lucili, non existimo magno viro faciendum:
diluitur eius auctoritas nec habet apud eos satis ponderis quos
posset minus obsolefacta corrigere. Sagittarius non aliquando
ferire debet, sed aliquando deerrare; non est ars quae ad effectum
casu venit. Sapientia ars est: certum petat, eligat
profecturos, ab iis quos desperavit recedat, non tamen cito relinquat
et in ipsa desperatione extrema remedia temptet.
You
ask me about our friend Marcellinus, wanting to know how he's doing.
He comes to visit only rarely, for no other reason than that he fears
to hear the truth from me. From this danger he is already quite far
removed, if only he knew, for there is no point in speaking to
someone who won't listen. For this reason there is consistent doubt
about the methods of Diogenes (†) and other Cynic philosophers,
too, who spoke with unguarded frankness and taught others to do the
same: was this really the right approach to take? Is preaching to the
unwilling really any different from haranguing the deaf, or those
otherwise removed from intelligent conversation by nature or disease?
“Why should I be stingy with my advice?” you say. “It's free. I
cannot know, at any given moment, whether it will prove useful to the
person I admonish, but if I spread it around, I'm sure to help
someone. Gotta sow the seeds of counsel with a free hand: if we sow
enough, some of it must eventually sprout and give us a successful
crop.” I don't think this approach worthy of a great man, Lucilius:
it dilutes his authority, so that those who would benefit from his
advice cannot, since experience teaches them to ignore what they
might attend if it weren't so constant and common. A decent archer
should surprise us by missing his target, rather than by hitting it,
as a real art does not achieve its ends purely by accident. Wisdom is
an art. It should aim for what is certain, choosing carefully those
who will benefit from its counsels, and withdrawing from those in
whom it finds no hope it can recognize. But it should not move away
too quickly, as its strongest remedies can work even in hopeless
situations.
---
(†)
Diogenes the Cynic hailed from Sinope, in Paphlagonia, where his father
Hicesias minted coins. Legend has it that the son was banished for
debasing the coinage. Traveling the ancient world, he took up with
Socrates' student Antisthenes in Athens, following him so faithfully
into a life of philosophical poverty that folk called him a dog
(κύων) and his life or
philosophy doggish (κυνικός, Cynic).
He was captured by pirates
and sold in a
Cretan slave-market
to one Xeniades, from Corinth, where he spent the latter part of his
life, tutoring his master's
children and teaching Cynic philosophy to all by his sometimes
outrageous example. The
Cynic approach to life is one of radical, even indecent, honesty, as
well as poverty: in the tradition of Diogenes, many of these
philosophers presented as aggressive, uncouth beggars.