Learn virtue, not happiness. Seneca, Epistles 4.36.2-3
Seneca
urges Lucilius not to care whether the populace, or the fast set of
up-and-comers in imperial society, approves his character. Studying
philosophy is about developing virtue, which is not something we can
do by appealing to the emotions of strangers.
At
bene aliquis illam fert. Sic, quomodo vinum. Itaque non est quod
tibi isti persuadeant eum esse felicem qui a multis obsidetur: sic ad
illum quemadmodum ad lacum concurritur, quem exhauriunt et turbant.
Nugatorium et inertem vocant. Scis quosdam perverse loqui et
significare contraria. Felicem vocabant: quid ergo? erat?
Ne illud quidem curo, quod quibusdam nimis horridi animi videtur et
tetrici. Ariston aiebat malle se adulescentem tristem quam hilarem et
amabilem turbae; vinum enim bonum fieri quod recens
durum et asperum visum est; non pati aetatem quod in dolio placuit.
Sine eum tristem appellent et inimicum processibus suis: bene se
dabit in vetustate ipsa tristitia, perseveret modo colere virtutem,
perbibere liberalia studia, non illa quibus perfundi satis est, sed
haec quibus tingendus est animus.
“But
someone is certainly enjoying happiness.” Yes, the same way folk
enjoy wine. It is not the place of such people to persuade you that
being besieged by a crowd makes us happy. Parties descend on happy
people like tourists rushing upon a lake, whose waters they suck and
muck. “People call me a useless party-pooper if I refuse to go
along.” You already know that certain folk are perverse, and
indicate the opposite of whatever it is they say. They once called
you happy, remember? Were you? I
wouldn't care at all about such people seeing something savage and
fierce in the cast of my mind. Ariston (†)
used to say that he preferred a sad young man to one merry
and close with the mob. That a good wine was one that seemed harsh
and bitter when first bottled. That our life will not suffer whatever
it is that has pleased us in our cups. Let the mobs call this
philosopher sad, an enemy to
his own enjoyment. They will give themselves a miserable old age,
while he just goes on cultivating his virtue, drinking as deep as he
can from the well of liberal studies: not the kind of studies it is
enough merely to have tasted, but those that profoundly imbue the
texture of your mind.
---
(†)
Ariston of Chios was a
pupil of Stoic
Zeno. His approach to the
teaching of the master was too skeptical for others (including
Chrysippus, who inherited Zeno's role in the Stoa).