Seneca, Moral Epistles 45.10-13
“Why do you detain me with that thing you call the liar’s paradox about which so many books have been written? Look, my whole life is a lie. Argue against that for, return to the truth, if you are precise enough. This judges things to be necessary when the greater portion is superfluous. And the part that is not superfluous possesses nothing of consequence in it, it has no potential to make someone fortunate and happy.
Something is not essentially good just because it is necessary. If that were the case, we would debase what good is, calling bread and oatmeal and other things needed for life ‘good’. The good must be necessary but what is necessary is not always good since rather basic things are needed to live. No one is so unaware of the true value of the good as to reduce it to daily needs.
What? Should you not rededicate your energy to showing all people what a tremendous waste of time superfluous things are and that many have moved through life merely collecting tools for living? Think about individuals, examine people altogether, there is no life not looking ahead to tomorrow.
How much of a problem is this, you ask? It is endless–for these people don’t live, they are always about to live. They put everything off. Even if we were constantly vigilant, life would outpace us. But now life sees us delaying and it passes us as if it were someone else’s and although it ends on our last day, it is dying on every day before it.”
Quid me detines in eo, quem tu ipse pseudomenon appellas, de quo tantum librorum conpositum est? Ecce tota mihi vita mentitur; hanc coargue, hanc ad verum, si acutus es, redige. Necessaria iudicat, quorum magna pars supervacua est. Etiam quae non est supervacua, nihil in se momenti habet in hoc, ut possit fortunatum beatumque praestare. Non enim statim bonum est, si quid necessarium est; aut proicimus bonum, si hoc nomen pani et polentae damus et ceteris, sine quibus vita non ducitur. Quod bonum est, utique necessarium est; quod necessarium est, non utique bonum est, quoniam quidem necessaria sunt quaedam eadem vilissima. Nemo usque eo dignitatem boni ignorat, ut illud ad haec in diem utilia demittat.
Quid ergo? Non eo potius curam transferes, ut ostendas omnibus magno temporis inpendio quaeri supervacua et multos transisse vitam, dum vitae instrumenta conquirunt? Recognosce singulos, considera universos; nullius non vita spectat in crastinum. Quid in hoc sit mali, quaeris? Infinitum. Non enim vivunt, sed victuri sunt. Omnia dififerunt. Etiamsi adtenderemus, tamen nos vita praecurreret; nunc vero cunctantes quasi aliena transcurrit et ultimo die finitur, omni perit.
