Key ideas of this chapter 

1. Cheerfulness and peace of mind are good things. They result from the highest good, which is virtue. 
2. Virtue stands by itself. When you mix virtue with something else, you dilute it. 
3. Don’t resist reality. Don’t grumble and complain and feel sorry for yourself about it. 

Why you cannot mix pleasure and virtue 

Our challenger says: 

What is there to stop combining virtue and pleasure? Then it becomes the highest good, so honor and pleasure become the same. 

Nothing can be a part of honor except what is honorable. Because of that, the highest good would lose its purity if it was seen as a part of something that is not better. Even the joy that comes from virtue, although a good thing, is not a part of the absolute good. It is like cheerfulness or peace of mind, which are indeed good things, but they simply follow the highest good. They do not contribute to its perfection, even though they come out of the noblest causes. 

What happens when you mix pleasure with virtue? 

So, if you form a one-sided partnership between virtue and honor, you obstruct whatever strength one has by the weakness of the other. You put liberty under bondage because liberty can only remain unconquered if it knows nothing more valuable than itself. You begin to need the help of chance, which is the worst form of slavery. Your life becomes anxious, full of suspicion, timid, fearful of accidents, waiting in misery for critical moments of time. 

If you ask virtue to stand on what is unsteady, you do not offer it a solid, immovable base. What can be more unsteady than depending on mere chance, the variability of the body and things that act on the body? How can you then obey god and receive everything that happens in a cheerful spirit? If you are agitated by the petty pin-pricks of pleasure and pains, how can you stop complaining of fate and put a good interpretation upon everything that happens to you? If you are inclined to pleasures, you cannot very well protect your country, avenge wrongs, and defend your friends. 

Virtue stands by itself 

Let the highest good, then, rise to that height from where no force can remove it; no pain can touch it; nor hope, fear, or anything else that can damage the authority of the “highest good.” Only virtue can make its way there. A hill will be climbed with its help. It will bravely stand its ground and endure whatever happens—not only in a resigned way but even willingly. It knows that all hard times come according to natural laws and, like a good soldier, it will bear wounds, count scars, and even when stabbed and dying will it adore the cause for which it falls. It will follow the old maxim: “Follow God.” 

Go along with whatever happens, without complaining 

If you grumble and complain and feel sorry for yourself, you will be forced to obey orders. And, much against your will, you will be dragged away anyway. What madness is to be dragged rather than to follow? It is foolishness and ignorance of what we are to feel sorry because we have not got something; or something hurt us; or be surprised or indignant at the misfortunes of good people and bad ones—diseases, illnesses, and other accidents of human life. Let’s nobly bear whatever the universe finds us necessary to bear; we are all bound by this oath: 

To bear the ills of mortal life, and to submit with a good grace to what we cannot avoid. 

We have been born into a monarchy. 

Our liberty is to obey God. 

Think about this 

It is foolishness and ignorance of what we are to feel sorry because we have not got something; or something hurt us; or be surprised or indignant at the misfortunes of good people and bad ones—diseases, illnesses, and other accidents of human life. Let’s nobly bear whatever the universe finds us necessary to bear. 

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In the FIFTEENTH chapter of his discourse On The Happy Life, Seneca tells us that, to be happy, we should stop pursuing pleasure, and instead pursue virtue. This is an excerpt from Stoic Happiness, a plain English version of Seneca’s On the Happy Life, published by The Stoic Gym. 

https://amzn.to/2I0mbVW 

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