I. Serenus Describes the Problem

Serenus speaks. A young friend of Seneca's comes to him with a condition he cannot name: he is not sick, but he is not well. The whole chapter is in Serenus's voice.

When I examine myself, some of my faults are right on the surface. I can put my hand on them. Others are harder to see, lurking somewhere deeper. Some are not always there but come back at intervals, and these are the worst of all, like enemies who attack when you least expect them, who let you neither prepare for war nor rest safely in peace.

The condition I find myself in most of all, and why shouldn't I tell you the truth as I would tell a physician, is this: I am not fully free from the things I hate and fear, but I am not fully enslaved to them either. My situation is not the worst possible. It is simply a complaining, irritable one. I am neither sick nor well.

It is no use telling me that good character is tender at the start and grows stronger with time. I know that. What I am afraid of is that the longer I live with this in-between state, the more deeply it takes root.

Let me show you what I mean in pieces, and you can find the name for it.

I love simplicity. I have no desire for expensive furniture or elaborate food or crowds of servants. A plain meal, a plain room, a plain life: this satisfies me, and I believe in it.

Then I walk past the houses of wealthy people, and something shifts. I see the rooms with floors of rare stone, the gold everywhere, the armies of well-dressed slaves. I find myself briefly dazzled. I do not change my principles. I simply find I cannot walk back to my own modest room with quite the same easy confidence I had before.

At other times I feel the call of public life. I want to be useful, to work in the world, to serve. I follow the advice of our school's founders, all of whom said to take part in public affairs, though, I notice, none of them ever actually did. I plunge in, fully ready. Then one small thing goes wrong, one difficulty arises, one piece of work demands more time than it seems worth, and I retreat back to the quiet life with relief.

There I tell myself: nobody who will not give me fair compensation for my time will steal a single day. My mind will keep to itself, improve itself, take no part in other men's affairs. Peace, undisturbed by either the public or the private.

Then I read something brave, or hear of some noble act, and I want to rush back out into the world again.

I go back and forth like this. Not violently. Not in great crisis. In small oscillations that never resolve.

I am not in a storm, Seneca. I am seasick. In sight of land. Take this trouble from me, whatever it is.