The New Gospel

Friendship produces between us a partnership in all our interests.  There is no such thing as good or bad fortune for the individual; we live in common.  And no one can live happily who has regard for himself alone and transforms everything into a question of his own utility; you must live for your neighbor, if you would live for yourself.

The time will come when diligent research over very long periods will bring to light things which now lie hidden ... this knowledge will be unfolded only through long successive ages ... There will come a time when our descendants will be amazed that we did not know things that are so plain to them.

Aristotle stands forth as the defender of anger, and forbids us to cut it out; it is, he claims, a spur to virtue, and if the mind be robbed of it, it becomes defenseless and grows sluggish and indifferent to high endeavor.

All else ... he will gladly do with a lofty spirit; he will bring relief to another’s tears, but will not add his own; to the shipwrecked man he will give a hand, to the exile shelter, to the needy alms; he will grant to a mother’s tears the life of her son, the captive’s chains he will order be broken, he will release the gladiator from his training ... The wise man, therefore, will not pity, but will succor, will benefit, and since he is born to be of help to all and to serve the common good, he will give to each his share thereof ... Whenever he can, he will parry Fortune’s stroke.  

We shall engage in affairs to the very end of life, we shall never cease to work for the common good, to help each and all, to give aid even to our enemies when our hand is feeble with age.  

If benefits consisted, not in the very desire to benefit, but in things, the greater would be the benefits.  But this is not true; for sometimes we feel under greater obligations to one who has given small gifts out of great heart, who “by his spirit matched the wealth of kings” ... And so what counts is, not what is done or what is given, but the spirit of the action ... the intention of the giver or doer.

And so all moralists are united upon the principle that it is necessary to give certain benefits openly, others without witnesses ... on the other hand, those that do not give promotion or prestige, yet come to the rescue of bodily infirmity, of poverty, of disgrace — these should be given quietly, so that they will be known only to those who receive the benefit.  Sometimes, too, the very man who is helped must even be deceived in order that he may have assistance, and yet not know from whom he has received it.

I shall give to him if he is in need, yet not to the extent of bringing need upon myself ... It is possible that, while a man may be a worthy person for me to receive a benefit from, it will injure him to give it; this I shall not accept ...

It will be impossible for one to imagine anything more seemly for a ruler than the quality of mercy, no matter in what manner or with what justice he has been set over other men ... This quality is the more beautiful and wonderful, the greater the power under which it is displayed.

Reflect that there are no ills to be suffered after death, and the reports that make the Lower World terrible to us are mere tales, that no darkness is in store for the dead, no prisons, no blazing streams of fire … Death is a release from all suffering, a boundary beyond which our ills cannot pass—it restores to us that peaceful state in which we lay before we were born.

For added to all the rest, this is still cruelty’s greatest curse—that one must persist in it, and no return to better things is open; for crime must be safeguarded by crime.  But what creature is more unhappy than the man who now cannot help being wicked? … who resorts to the sword because he fears the sword, who trusts neither the loyalty of friends … who has laid bare his conscience burdened with crimes and torturings …

There is no reason why you should suppose that there are only seven wandering stars, and that all the others are fixed; there are a few whose movements we apprehend, but, further removed from our sight, are countless divinities [heavenly bodies] that go their rounds, and very many of those that our eyes can reach proceed at such an imperceptible pace and veil their movements.

I know that everything proceeds according to law that is fixed for all time … Cause is linked with cause, and all public and private issues are directed by a long sequence of events.  Therefore everything should be endured with fortitude, since things do not, as we suppose, simply happen … Why, therefore, do we chafe?  Why complain?  For this were we born …

What else is Nature but God and the divine reason that pervades the whole universe and all its parts? … he is the first of all causes on which the others depend.

Nothing is so damaging to good character as the habit of lounging at the games; for then it is that vice steals subtly upon one through the avenue of pleasure.  What do you think I mean?  I mean that I come home more greedy, more ambitious, more voluptuous, and even more cruel and inhuman … The outcome of every fight is death, and the means are fire and sword … You may retort: “But he was a highway robber; he killed a man!”  And what of it?  Granted that, as a murderer, he deserved this punishment, what crime have you committed, poor fellow, that you should sit and see this show? In the morning they cried “Kill him! Lash him! Burn him! … Whip him to meet his wounds! … Come now, do you not understand even this truth, that a bad example reacts on the agent? … What then do you think the effect will be on character, when the world at large assaults it!  You must either imitate or loath the world.

So long as we draw breath, so long as we live among men, let us cherish humanity.  Let us not cause fear to any man, nor danger; let us scorn losses, wrongs, abuse, and taunts, and let us endure with heroic mind our short-lived ills.  While we are looking back, as they say, and turning around, straightway death will be upon us.  (Seneca 4BC-65AD, On Anger (3:43:5), p. 355)

Take us singly, and what are we?  The prey of creatures, their victims, whose blood is most delectable and most easily secured ... no might of claws or teeth makes him [man] a terror to others, naked and weak as he is, his safety lies in fellowship.  God [nature] has given him two things, reason and fellowship, which, from being a creature at the mercy of others, make him the most powerful of all; and so he who, if he were isolated, could be a match for none is master of the world.

No man of sense will hate the erring; otherwise he will hate himself.  Let him reflect how many times he offends against morality, how many of his acts stand in need of pardon; then he will be angry with himself also.  For no just judge will pronounce one sort of judgment in his own case and a different one in the case of others. 

Some sins we have committed, some we have contemplated, some we have desired, some we have encouraged; in the case of some we are innocent only because we did not succeed.  Bearing this in mind, let us be more just to transgressors.

We are all inconsiderate and unthinking, we are all untrustworthy, discontented and ambitious ... And so each man will find in his own breast the fault which he censures in another ... And so let us be more kindly toward one another.  

Cease, therefore, forbidding to philosophers the possession of money; no one has condemned wisdom to poverty.  The philosopher shall own ample wealth, but it will have been wrested from no man, nor will it be stained with another’s blood — wealth acquired without harm to any man, without base dealing, and the outlay of it will be not less honorable than was its acquisition; it will make no man groan except the spiteful.  Pile up that wealth as high as you like. 

Whatever happens, assume that it was bound to happen, and do not be willing to rail at Nature.  That which you cannot reform, it is best to endure.”

We all spring from the same source, have the same origin; no man is more noble than another except in so far as the nature of one man is more upright and more capable of good actions ... Heaven is the one parent of us all, whether from his earliest origin each on arrives at his present degree by an illustrious or obscure line of ancestors ... Whether your line before you holds freedman or slaves or persons of foreign extraction, boldly lift up your head, and leap over the obscure names in your pedigree; great nobility awaits you at its source.

Kindly remember that he whom you call your slave sprang from the same stock, is smiled upon by the same skies, and on equal terms with yourself breathes, lives, and dies.  It is just as possible for you to see in him a free-born man as for him to see in you a slave ... Treat your inferiors [slaves] as you would be treated by your betters ... Show me a man who is not a slave; one is a slave to lust, another to greed, another to ambition, and all men are slaves to fear.