Philosophy is personal: do your own. Seneca, Epistles 4.33.6-8
Live
your own life. Make your own proverbs. Do your own philosophy.
Res
geritur et per lineamenta sua ingenii opus nectitur ex quo nihil
subduci sine ruina potest. Nec recuso quominus singula membra,
dummodo in ipso homine, consideres: non est formonsa cuius crus
laudatur aut brachium, sed illa cuius universa facies admirationem
partibus singulis abstulit.
Si
tamen exegeris, non tam mendice tecum agam, sed plena manu fiet;
ingens eorum turba est passim iacentium; sumenda erunt, non
colligenda. Non enim excidunt sed fluunt; perpetua et inter se
contexta sunt. Nec dubito quin multum conferant rudibus adhuc et
extrinsecus auscultantibus; facilius enim singula insidunt
circumscripta et carminis modo inclusa. Ideo pueris et sententias
ediscendas damus et has quas Graeci chrias vocant, quia complecti
illas puerilis animus potest, qui plus adhuc non capit. Certi
profectus viro captare flosculos turpe est et fulcire se notissimis
ac paucissimis vocibus et memoria stare: sibi iam innitatur. Dicat
ista, non teneat; turpe est enim seni aut prospicienti senectutem ex
commentario sapere. Hoc Zenon dixit: tu quid? Hoc
Cleanthes: tu quid? Quousque sub alio moveris? impera et dic quod
memoriae tradatur; aliquid et de tuo profer.
The
work of philosophy is carried out by the design and execution of your
own personal genius, from which nothing can be alienated without
ruining the whole enterprise. I do not forbid you to pursue
philosophy piecemeal, provided always that you take the pieces as
parts of the same person. A lady is not beautiful because her leg or
arm be praised, but because her entire appearance draws admiration
from the union of all her parts.
But
as you have made a request, I shall not turn you away empty, but with
a full hand. There is a vast throng of philosophical sayings floating
all about us here. They must be taken up and put to good use; don't
waste time begging for them. They reach us not in rare drops but in a
constant flow, each bound close to all those round it. Nor do I have
any doubt but that they confer great benefit to those still rough and
ignorant, who hear them from outside the stream of philosophy. They
hold our attention more easily as polished sentences, joined together
like a song. For this reason we give children sentences to learn, and
the little rhetorical exercises the Greeks call chriae (†).
The childish mind can grasp
these things, though it be as
yet incapable
of more. It's shameful
for a man to keep clutching such
flowers of proven success, though, propping himself on them and
committing a few of the most famous to memory. He should rather rely
upon himself. Let him quote
proverbs offhand,
not grasp after them desperately.
It's really scandalous when an old man, or someone looking out on the
prospect of his own old age, knows his own life only by reference to
some commentary. “Zeno said this! Cleanthes said that!”
What about you? How long are you going to be pushed around by other
people? Take command and speak the words your own memory has handed
down. Give us something from your own store of wisdom, your own
experience.
---
(†)
These 'useful' exercises (χρεῖαι)
were generally polished rhetorical anecdotes or fables, finished off
in the manner of Aesop, with a pregnant moral maxim. Students learned
them as part of their introduction to public speaking, which requires
narrating a sensible series of events that your audience follows, &
then delivering some actionable opinion.