THE NATURAL QUESTIONS OF L. ANNAEUS SENECA BOOK I The full consummation of human felicity is attained when, all vice trampled under foot, the soul seeks the heights and reaches the inner recesses of nature. What joy then to roam through the very stars, to look down with derision on the gilded saloons of the rich and the whole earth with its store of gold ! Gold, did I say ? Yes, all the gold the earth ever produced and sent into currency, and all that she keeps hidden in secret to glut the avarice of posterity. Only when one has surveyed the whole 6 universe can one truly despise grand colonnades, ceilings glittering with ivory, trim groves and cooling streams transported into wealthy mansions. From above, one can now look down upon this narrow world, covered for the most part by sea, and, even where it rises above the sea, an ugly waste either parched or frozen. The philosopher says to himself : Is this the plot that so many tribes portion out by fire and sword? How ludicrous are their frontiers ! The Dacian must not pass the lower Danube ; 7 the Strymon must shut off the Thracians ; the Euphrates must be the barrier of the Parthians ; the Danube must form the boundary between Sar- matian and Roman ; the Rhine must set a limit to Germany ; the Pyrenees must raise their chain 6 PHYSICAL SCIENCE BK. i between Gallic and Spanish provinces ; between Egypt and Ethiopia a desert of barren sands must stretch ! Why, if ants are ever endowed with human intelligence, will not they in like manner portion out a threshing-floor into many provinces ? s But when you rise to what is truly great, then, as often as you see armies marching forth with floating banners, and the cavalry now scouting in front, now massed on the flanks, as if some great design were toward, you will pleasantly remark : The black swarm is hurrying through the plains. That host is a throng of ants, its evolutions are in a back garden. In what do we excel the ants, save in the measure of the puny little body ? That is a mere point in which you sail, and war, and dis pose your kingdoms. Your kingdoms are lilliputian even when they stretch from Ocean to Ocean. 9 Only on high are the domains spacious ; to their possession the mind is admitted, provided always that it bring with it no taint of the body, but wipe off all stain and pass forth like an armed man, lightly equipped, nimble, modest in his wants. When the soul reaches those regions, it receives nourishment and growth ; as if freed from the shackles of earth, it returns to the true source of its 10 being. A proof of its divine origin is furnished by the pleasure it derives from what is divine ; here it feels itself at home, not in a strange land. Without alarm it views the setting of the stars and their rising, and the mazy orbits of the heavenly bodies that yet move all in unison. It notes when each star first shows its light on earth, when it attains its meridian height, observes its orbit and the limits of its descent. An interested spectator, it
Posted on: Sun, 14 Jul 2013 23:59:37 +0000
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