4/5: Living According To Nature

     As noted in my 12/30/17 post, in his fourth letter to Lucilius, Seneca quotes Epicurus' maxim that "Poverty is great wealth when it adjusts to nature's law". In Letter 5, Seneca goes on to flesh out his view of the Stoic concept of nature for Lucilius in good-humored (or perhaps sarcastic) fashion:
          "Our aim is to live in accordance with nature, is it not? This is contrary to nature: tormenting one's body, swearing off simple matters of grooming, affecting a squalid appearance, partaking of foods that are not merely inexpensive but rancid and coarse. A hankering after delicacies is a sign of self-indulgence; by the same token, avoidance of those comforts that are quite ordinary and easy to obtain is an indication of insanity. Philosophy demands self-restraint, not self-abnegation -- and even self-restraint can comb its hair. The limit I suggest is this: our habits should mingle the ideal with the ordinary in due proportion, our way of life should be one that everyone can admire without finding it unrecognizable."
     Here Seneca seems to be making an argument in favor of moderation ("... our habits should mingle the ideal with the ordinary in due proportion ...") which is the founding principle of this blog. The passage also brings to mind Aristotle's doctrine of the mean, discussed in my post of  10/19/17. As readers may recall, in Book II of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle defined virtues as the mean between excess and deficiency. Regarding temperance, for example, he said it was destroyed by excess (licentiousness) and deficiency (insensibility) but preserved by the mean.
     In closing, it is worth noting that Seneca authored a separate treatise called "Natural Questions" -- also included in the University of Chicago's recent series of translations of his complete works into English -- which I hope to read some day.
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     Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (Penguin Classics, London, 2004; original translation by Thomson, revised by Tredennick, introduction by Barnes), Book II, page 34, pages 40-49; see also Appendix 1.
     Seneca, Letters on Ethics to Lucilius, Translated with an Introduction and Commentary by Margaret Graver and A.A. Long (University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 2015), Letter 5, 4-5, page 32.