Seneca’s Search

Gary Pollard

The following passage was written by Lucius Annaeus Seneca (c. 4 BC — AD 65) in Book I of Naturales quaestiones. There’s a decent chance that he was born the same year as Jesus of Nazareth. These seven books are certainly an interesting read, but I found his Preface to Book I especially fascinating. Reading this brings to mind, “God wanted people to look for him, and perhaps in searching all around for him, they would find him. But he is not far from any of us” (Acts 17.27). And, “There are things about God that people cannot see — his eternal power and all that makes him God. But since the beginning of the world, those things have been easy for people to understand. They are made clear in what God has made. So people have no excuse for the evil they do” (Rom 1.20). Seneca (and many of his predecessors, contemporaries, and spiritual descendants) looked for meaning and goodness in that aspect of reality that cannot be seen. Christ did come “at just the right time”! We’re reading an excerpt from a pagan historian and naturalist today because it gives valuable insight into aspects of the culture, worldviews, and concepts of the transcendent (as well as a refined understanding of words and concepts used in the first century) held by many when Christ and his followers operated on earth. 

Lucilius, my much esteemed friend — While a great gulf separates philosophy from the other learned arts, there is to my mind an equally wide gulf in philosophy itself between the portion which relates to human conduct and that which deals with the nature and the power of heaven. The latter is more exalted and more speculative, it allows itself wide liberty. It is not satisfied with mere observation, it surmises that there is a greater and fairer realm placed by nature beyond human sight. Between these two divisions of philosophy, in short, there is as wide a gulf as between their subjects, God and man. 

The one teaches us what should be done on earth; the other, what is done in heaven. The one dispels our errors and flashes a light by which to thread the mazes of life; the other far transcends this gloom in which we grope, rescues us from the darkness, and leads us to the very source of light itself. For myself, I am grateful to nature, not so much when I see her on the side that is open to the world, as when I am permitted to enter her shrine. Then one may seek to know of what stuff the universe is made, who is its Author or Guardian, what is the nature of God. Is He wholly absorbed in Himself, or does He sometimes regard us? does He do something daily, or has He done once for all? is He a portion of the world, or the whole world? may He issue new decrees even to-day and thus modify the laws of fate, or is it an infringement of His majesty and an acknowledgment of error to alter what has once been made? for surely the same must always please Him who can be pleased only with what is best. Nor yet withal is His freedom or power diminished, for He is a law unto Himself. 

Life would have been a useless gift, were I not admitted to the study of such themes. What cause for joy would it be to be set merely in the number of those who live? In order to digest food and drink? To repair a diseased, enfeebled body, that would perish unless it were continually refilled, and thus lead the life of a sick man’s attendant? To fear death, to which our very birth destines us? Away with the priceless boon! Life is not worth the heat and the sweat. How despicable a creature is man, unless he rise above the earth! What great thing can we do as long as we have to wrestle with our passions? Even if we prevail, we but conquer monsters. What cause have we to esteem ourselves because we are not quite so bad as the very worst? I can see no great reason for self-satisfaction because one’s strength is rather above the average of those in the same hospital. You are still very far from good health and vigour. Or, again, you have escaped vices of soul, the hypocrite’s brow, the flatterer’s speech fashioned to serve another’s will, the dissembler’s heart, the miser’s spirit, which robs all, but yet mortifies itself. You are a prey neither to luxury, which loses basely and repairs its losses still more basely; nor to ambition, which leads to place of worth only by unworthy means. But yet you have accomplished nothing. You have escaped many perils, but not yet that of self. 

The virtue we aim at raises to a splendid eminence; not so much because escape from vice is in itself a blessed thing, but rather because the soul is emancipated, prepared for the knowledge of heavenly things, and rendered worthy of entering into communion with God. 

Clarke, J. (1910). Physical science in the time of Nero, being a translation of the Quaestiones Naturales of Seneca. Macmillan & Co., London. pp 54-55