XI. The Soldier's Good Character

Seneca uses military imagery to describe the steadiness of a mind of good character.

The happiness that lasts cannot be built on anything unsteady. Pleasure is unsteady by nature. You cannot give good character a solid base if you tell it to stand on something that shifts.

What is more unsteady than luck? Than the body? Than the things that affect the body?

A man who needs pleasure to feel good cannot obey the deeper logic of the world. He cannot receive what comes to him with a steady spirit. He cannot bear difficulty without collapse or joy without excess. He is always at the mercy of what is happening to him.

Good character, by contrast, is like a good soldier. It submits to wounds. It counts its scars. It is pierced by darts as it falls and still loves the general for whom it falls. It follows God willingly rather than being dragged. The man who grumbles and resists is dragged to the same destination anyway. What madness to be dragged when you could walk freely.

Bear whatever the system of the world requires you to bear. This is the oath we were born into: to endure the ills of mortal life and to make peace with what cannot be avoided. We were born into a kind of monarchy. Our freedom is to obey the ruler of it well.