This is the last of Seneca’s surviving letters to Lucilius, and it ends on the biggest question of all: what is the real good, and where do we find it? Pleasure-seekers say we feel it through the senses. Seneca says it belongs to reason: “a free mind, an upright mind, subjecting other things to itself and itself to nothing.” Animals beat us at strength, speed, and beauty, but they can’t beat us at this. The collection closes with a short test worth carrying for life: “You will come into your own when you understand that those the world calls fortunate are really the most unfortunate of all.”
From Seneca to Lucilius
Many an old precept I could give you,
if you didn’t shrink from them and feel ashamed
to learn such humble duties.
But you don’t shrink, and no subtleties of study scare you off. Your cultivated mind isn’t in the habit of investigating important subjects in a careless way. I approve of your approach: you make everything count toward some degree of progress, and you’re only annoyed when nothing can be accomplished by even the greatest subtlety. I’ll take pains to show that this isn’t the case now, either. Our question is whether the good is grasped by the senses or by the understanding; and its corollary is that the good doesn’t exist in animals or in small children.
Senses or Reason?
Those who rank pleasure as the highest ideal hold that the good is a matter of the senses; but we Stoics maintain that it’s a matter of the understanding, and we assign it to the mind. If the senses judged what is good, we’d never reject any pleasure, because there’s no pleasure that doesn’t attract, no pleasure that doesn’t please. In the same way, we’d never accept any pain voluntarily, because there’s no pain that doesn’t clash with the senses.
Besides, people who are too fond of pleasure, and people who fear pain above everything, wouldn’t deserve criticism. But we do condemn those who are slaves to their appetites and lusts, and we scorn those who, out of fear of pain, won’t dare any brave deed. Yet what wrong would they be doing if they only looked to the senses as judges of good and evil? For it’s to the senses that you and your school have entrusted the test of what to seek and what to avoid!
Surely reason is the governing element in a matter like this. Just as reason has made the decision about the happy life, and about virtue and honor too, so she has made the decision about good and evil. With the other school, the lowest part is allowed to pass sentence on the higher, so that the senses, dense and dull as they are, and even more sluggish in humans than in other animals, judge the good. Just imagine someone wanting to distinguish tiny objects by touch rather than by sight! There’s no faculty sharper and more precise than the eye; we’d need something like it to tell good from evil. So you see how ignorant of the truth a person is, and how completely he has overturned lofty and divine ideals, if he thinks the sense of touch can judge the nature of the highest good and the highest evil!
Don’t Put the Treetop Where the Root Belongs
He says: “Just as every science and every art must have an element that is tangible and can be grasped by the senses, its source of origin and growth, so the happy life takes its foundation and beginnings from tangible things that fall within the scope of the senses. Surely you admit that the happy life begins from things the senses can grasp.”
But we call “happy” whatever is in accord with nature. And what is in accord with nature is obvious and seen at once, just as easily as what is complete. What is in accord with nature, what is given to us as a gift right at birth, is, I maintain, not a good, but the beginning of a good. You, however, assign the highest good, pleasure, to mere babies, so that the child at birth starts at the point the fully developed person arrives at. You’re putting the treetop where the root should be.
If anyone said that the baby still hidden in its mother’s womb, its sex not yet known, delicate, unformed, and shapeless, was already in a state of goodness, he’d clearly be confused. And yet how little difference there is between one who has just received the gift of life and one who is still a hidden burden in the mother’s body! As far as understanding good and evil goes, they’re equally developed; a baby is no more capable of grasping the good than a tree or an animal is.
The Good Comes With Reason
But why doesn’t the good exist in a tree or an animal? Because there’s no reason there, either. For the same cause, the good doesn’t exist in a baby, because the baby has no reason yet either; the child will reach the good only when he reaches reason. There are creatures without reason, creatures not yet gifted with reason, and creatures who have reason, but only incompletely. In none of these does the good exist, because it is reason that brings the good along with it.
What, then, is the difference between the groups I’ve mentioned? In what has no reason, the good will never exist. In what doesn’t yet have reason, the good can’t exist yet. And in what has reason, but only incompletely, the good is capable of existing, but doesn’t yet. This is what I mean, Lucilius: the good can’t be found in just any person, or at just any age; it’s as far removed from infancy as last is from first, or as the complete is from what has only just come into being. So it can’t exist in a delicate body whose little frame has only just begun to knit together. Of course not, any more than in the seed.
The Ripening of the Wheat
Granting this, we understand that there is a certain kind of good in a tree or a plant; but it isn’t present in its first growth, when the plant has just begun to spring up out of the ground. There’s a certain good of wheat: but it doesn’t exist yet in the swelling stalk, or when the soft ear is pushing out of its husk, but only when summer days and its appointed maturity have ripened the wheat. Just as nature in general doesn’t produce her good until she is brought to completion, so a human being’s good doesn’t exist until both reason and the person are brought to completion.
What the Good Is
And what is this good? I’ll tell you. It is a free mind, an upright mind, subjecting other things to itself and itself to nothing. Infancy is so far from admitting this good that boyhood has no hope of it, and even young adulthood cherishes the hope without good reason. Even our old age is very fortunate if it has reached this good after long and focused study. If this is the good, then the good is a matter of the understanding.
“But,” comes the reply, “you admitted that there’s a certain good of trees and grass; then surely there can be a certain good of a child too.” But the true good isn’t found in trees or animals; the good in them is called “good” only by courtesy. “Then what is it?” you ask. Simply what is in accord with the nature of each. The real good can’t find a place in animals, not by any means; its nature is more blessed and of a higher class. And where there’s no place for reason, the good doesn’t exist.
Four Natures
There are four natures we should mention here: the tree, the animal, the human being, and God. The last two, having reason, share the same nature, differing only in that one is immortal and the other mortal. For one of these, God, nature perfects the good; for the other, the human being, effort and study do. All other things are complete only within their particular nature, and not truly perfect, since they lack reason.
Indeed, to sum up, only that is perfect which is perfect according to nature as a whole, and nature as a whole has reason. Other things can be perfect according to their kind. What can’t contain the happy life can’t contain what produces the happy life; and the happy life is produced by goods alone. In animals there’s no trace of the happy life, nor of the means by which it is produced; in animals the good doesn’t exist.
Past, Present, and Future
An animal grasps the world around it through its senses alone. It remembers the past only when it meets something that reminds its senses; a horse, for example, remembers the right road only when it’s placed at the starting point. In its stall, though, it has no memory of the road, however often it has walked it. The third state, the future, is entirely beyond animals.
How, then, can we regard as perfect the nature of creatures that have no experience of time in its fullness? For time is threefold: past, present, and future. Animals perceive only the time that matters most to them within the limits of their coming and going: the present. They rarely recall the past, and only when confronted with present reminders. So the good of a perfect nature can’t exist in an imperfect nature; if that kind of nature could have the good, so could mere plants. I don’t deny that animals have strong and swift impulses toward actions that seem natural, but such impulses are confused and disordered. The good, however, is never confused or disordered.
“What!” you say. “Do animals move in a disturbed and disordered way?” I’d say they moved in a disturbed and disordered way if their nature allowed for order; as it is, they move according to their nature. For something is called “disturbed” only if it could at another time be “undisturbed”; likewise, something is called troubled only if it could be at peace. No one is vicious except someone who has the capacity for virtue; in animals, their movement is simply what results from their nature.
But not to tire you: a certain sort of good will be found in an animal, and a certain sort of virtue, and a certain sort of perfection, but not the good, or virtue, or perfection in the absolute sense. For this is the privilege of reasoning beings alone, who are permitted to know the cause, the degree, and the means. So the good can exist only in what has reason.
Why This Matters for You
Are you asking now where our argument is heading, and what good it will do your mind? I’ll tell you: it exercises and sharpens the mind, and by keeping it honorably occupied, ensures it will accomplish some kind of good. And even what merely holds people back when they’re rushing toward wickedness is useful. But I’ll say this too: I can do you no greater good than by showing you the good that is truly yours, by lifting you out of the class of animals and placing you on a level with God.
Animals Win at Everything Else
Why, tell me, do you build up and train your physical strength? Nature has given more strength to cattle and wild beasts. Why cultivate your looks? After all your efforts, animals surpass you in beauty. Why style your hair with such endless attention? Whether you let it hang loose in the Parthian style, tie it up the German way, or let it flow wild like the Scythians, you’ll see a thicker mane tossing on any horse you like, and a more beautiful one bristling on the neck of any lion. And even after training for speed, you’ll be no match for the hare.
Won’t you give up all these things, where you have to admit defeat, striving as you are for what isn’t yours, and come back to the good that is truly yours?
The Good That Is Yours
And what is this good? It is a clear and flawless mind, which rivals God’s, raised far above mortal concerns, and counting nothing of its own to be outside itself. You are a reasoning animal. What good, then, lies within you? Perfect reason. Are you willing to develop it to its farthest limits, to its fullest possible growth?
Only count yourself happy when all your joys are born of reason, and when, having looked at everything people grab for, or pray for, or guard, you find nothing you would desire; mind you, I don’t say prefer. Here’s a short rule to measure yourself by, and by which you may feel you have reached perfection: “You will come into your own when you understand that those the world calls fortunate are really the most unfortunate of all.”
Farewell.
Breaking It Down: A Modern Take on Letter 124
The final letter in the collection is one of the more technical ones, a debate with the Epicureans about whether we know the good through feeling or through reasoning. But its conclusion is a fitting end to the whole journey. Everything Seneca has written to Lucilius, about time, friendship, fear, grief, money, death, and character, points here: the one good no one can take from us is a free, clear, upright mind. Animals outrun us, outmuscle us, and outshine us. Our gift is reason, and with it the ability to choose what kind of person to become.
1. Feelings can’t be the final judge
“If the senses judged what is good, we’d never reject any pleasure.” If “it feels good” were the standard, we’d have no way to say no to anything pleasant, or to choose anything hard but worthwhile.
2. Reason governs
“Surely reason is the governing element in a matter like this.” Feelings are real and important, but they need a wise guide.
3. Beginnings aren’t endings
Our natural instincts at birth are “not a good, but the beginning of a good.” We start with seeds; goodness is what grows from them.
4. Don’t confuse root and treetop
“You’re putting the treetop where the root should be.” Pleasure may be where we begin, but it isn’t where we’re meant to end up.
5. Goodness ripens
Like wheat ripening in summer, “a human being’s good doesn’t exist until both reason and the person are brought to completion.” Growth takes time. There’s no shortcut to maturity.
6. The definition of the good
“It is a free mind, an upright mind, subjecting other things to itself and itself to nothing.” If you remember one line from these letters, this is a good one to keep.
7. It’s never too late
“Even our old age is very fortunate if it has reached this good after long and focused study.” Seneca wrote these letters in his own final years. Wisdom is a lifelong project, and it’s worth pursuing at any age.
8. Effort makes us whole
For God, nature perfects the good; for people, “effort and study do.” We aren’t born finished. We become ourselves through practice.
9. We live in all three times
“For time is threefold: past, present, and future.” Unlike animals, we can learn from the past and plan for the future. That’s a gift, and a responsibility.
10. The capacity for virtue
“No one is vicious except someone who has the capacity for virtue.” Our ability to do wrong is the flip side of our ability to do right. Both come with being human.
11. Study sharpens the mind
Even technical philosophy “exercises and sharpens the mind.” Hard thinking is its own kind of training.
12. Stop competing where you can’t win
Horses have better hair, lions better manes, hares more speed. Seneca’s question: why pour your energy into contests you’ll always lose, when the good that is truly yours is waiting?
13. Joy born of reason
“Only count yourself happy when all your joys are born of reason.” Joys rooted in good values and clear thinking don’t disappear when circumstances change.
14. The final test
“You will come into your own when you understand that those the world calls fortunate are really the most unfortunate of all.” When fame, wealth, and status stop dazzling you, you’ve arrived. It’s the perfect last line for Seneca’s whole correspondence.
Key Takeaways from Letter 124
- Don’t let feelings decide alone. Pleasure isn’t the measure of good.
- Let reason lead. It’s our greatest gift.
- Instincts are a beginning. Goodness grows from them.
- Be patient with growth. Wisdom ripens like wheat.
- Remember the definition. A free, upright mind.
- It’s never too late. Old age can still reach the good.
- Practice. Effort and study make us whole.
- Use all three times. Learn from the past; plan for the future.
- Stop losing contests that don’t matter. Focus on what’s truly yours.
- Root your joy in reason. It lasts.
- Take the final test. See through the world’s idea of fortune.
“It is a free mind, an upright mind, subjecting other things to itself and itself to nothing.”
— Seneca, Letter 124
And with that, Seneca’s letters to Lucilius come to an end. Thank you for reading along. Whether you’ve read one letter or all 124, I hope something here has made your days a little steadier and kinder.
Keep Seneca With You
If this letter spoke to you
Marcus Aurelius’s private notebook, in Gregory Hays’s readable translation.
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. It costs you nothing and helps keep these translations free.
That’s the final letter. Start again from the beginning: Letter 1 — On Saving Time
[…] Next up: Letter 124 — On the True Good as Attained by Reason […]