Here’s another decontextualize gem from Seneca popular online
” For love of bustle is not industry,—it is only the restlessness of a hunted mind.”
This sounds like a Dale Carnegie line or some sententious dollop in dialogue written now for a movie set in the 1930s. To be fair, the translation is copyrighted to 1917 by Richard M. Gummere (the Loeb translation).
Here’s the Latin:
Nam illa tumultu gaudens non est industria, sed exagitatae mentis concursatio
In the translation above, there’s no sense of what the demonstrative Illa is doing, and there is definitely something off about the “hunted” for exagitatae, which I think is something closer to “thoroughly bothered/distracted/agitated.” To my taste it is something closer to:
“Taking pleasure in that chaos is not diligence, but the anxiety/movement of a thoroughly troubled mind”
This is decidedly less quotable than the passage above. And it is so because it needs the larger context, which actually, as usual, tells a more complicated, and I think richer, story.
Seneca, Moral Epistle 3.4-6
“There are certain kinds of people who tell things which ought to be entrusted only to friends to anyone they meet and they unload on just any ears whatever has bothered them. Another group of people in turn hesitates at trusting their most dear friends and, if they could, would suppress every secret inside because they do not trust themselves.
But we should do neither thing. It is a mistake both to trust everyone and no one. The first mistake, however, I think is more honest while the second is safer. So, you should criticize both types in this way, those who are always boisterous and those who are always reserved.
For taking pleasure in such disturbance is not diligence, but the anxiety of a troubled mind. And it is not peace to believe that every movement is annoying, but lethargy and apathy. For this, commend to mind this line I have read in Pomponius: “Some people retreat so far into the shadows that they think they are in darkness when in the light.”
People need to mix these habits and one who is resting should move and one who is moving should rest! Take this up with the nature of things: she will explain that she made both the daytime and night. Goodbye!”
Quidam quae tantum amicis committenda sunt, obviis narrant et in quaslibet aures, quicquid illos urserit, exonerant. Quidam rursus etiam carissimorum conscientiam reformidant, et si possent, ne sibi quidem credituri interius premunt omne secretum. Neutrum faciendum est. Utrumque enim vitium est, et omnibus credere et nulli. Sed alterum honestius dixerim vitium, alterum tutius: sic utrosque reprehendas, et eos qui semper inquieti sunt, et eos qui semper quiescunt. Nam illa tumultu gaudens non est industria, sed exagitatae mentis concursatio. Et haec non est quies, quae motum omnem molestiam iudicat, sed dissolutio et languor. Itaque hoc, quod apud Pomponium legi, animo mandabitur: “quidam adeo in latebras refugerunt, ut putent in turbido esse, quicquid in luce est.” Inter se ista miscenda sunt, et quiescenti agendum et agenti quiescendum est. Cum rerum natura delibera; illa dicet tibi et diem fecisse se et noctem. Vale.
I totally understand why people select parts of ancient works to excerpt. I mean, that’s kind of what we do on this blog every day. But the line quoted out of context above completely subverts Seneca’s meaning in service of a modern flat and unsophisticated understanding of Stoicism. It is ok to be busy and troubled, just not all the time! It is no better to be completely withdrawn! For each quality Seneca discusses above in its extreme form, there is an extreme opposite which is no better.
This is another Cylon-Helen fake.
