Senussi

“ The Senusi is represented to me as all that an Arab saint should be—exact in the observances of religion, gay, and a capital shot; he rides a horse of the purest breed and of great value, dresses magnificently, paints his eyes with kohl and his beard with henna. He is very hospitable, and if the Gibely may be believed, has a granary which the large daily drafts he makes on it never empty; receiving nothing from any one, he has always money ”

“ I must judge as a statesman,’ said Seneca, somewhat offended.
‘Then, if you are only a statesman, do not pretend to act as a philosopher. I speak to you frankly, as one Stoic to another.’
Seneca said nothing. It was evident that he felt deeply hurt by the bluntness of Cornutus, who paused for a moment, regarding him with a look of pity. Then he continued.
‘If it pains you to hear the truth I will be silent; but if you wish me to speak without reserve, you are committing two fatal errors. You dream of controlling passion by indulging it. ”

“ Saw even Cerberus with milder face.
O Theseus, faithful friend, seek out a place, 1335
Far off from here, where I may hide myself.
Since thou a lenient judge of others' sins
Hast ever been, grant mercy now to me.
Restore me to the infernal shades, I beg,
And load me with the chains thou once didst wear. 1340
That place will hide me—but it knows me too!
Theseus: My land awaits thy coming; there will [2] Mars
Wash clean thy hands, and give thee back thy arms.
That land, O Hercules, now calls to thee,
Which even gods from sin is wont to free. ”

“ To be at once a Stoic and a minister of Nero was an absurd endeavour. Declamations in favour of poverty rang hollow on the lips of a man whose enormous usury poured in from every part of the Empire. The praises of virtue sounded insincere from one who was living in the closest intercourse with men and women steeped in unblushing wickedness. And Seneca was far from easy in his own mind. He was surrounded by flatterers, but he knew that he was not ranked with patriots like Pætus Thrasea, and genuine philosophers like Cornutus and Musonius Rufus. ”

“ Ten months later Seneca wrote his tractate on Clemency. Nero should ask himself "Am I the elected of the gods to be their vice-gerent on earth? The arbiter of life and death to the nations?" and so forth. He is gently reminded of the great light that fronts the throne; that his anger would be as disastrous as war; that "Kings gain from kindness a greater security, while their cruelty swells the number of their enemies." Seneca wanders a good deal, but his drift is clear—and the wretchedness of his position. ”

“ He will neither heed you nor hear you; his conversation is other-where. And what then would Senhouse do confronted with Sanchia? Would he look beyond her, towards some horizon where she could never stand? Or would he not see in her blue eyes the goal of all his searching—the content of his own? What would he say but “You!” and take her? What she but sigh her content to be taken? Appeasement is holiness, says Senhouse. And what of their holy life thereafter, breast to breast, fronting the dawn? Glyde's heart, purged of his dishonesty, beat at the thought. ”

“ Great ones of time, a Caesar or so, a Catherine, a Buonaparte, come handily to mind, who, wreaking countless woes, wrought evenly their own. And since greatness is a relative term, and time an abstraction of the mind, in their company, says Mr. Senhouse, was Sanchia Percival, and in her blue-clouded eyes was to be discerned seated, like a captain, foreknowledge of her own fate, and will to choose it. ”

“ Sennoske, although he was young and inexperienced in the passions which stir the heart and guide the actions of men, was yet a keen observer, and he could now easily fathom the depths of the sword-smith’s strange nature. He saw that the man’s ruling passion was ambition,—ambition so inordinate that it could never be satisfied, and which, burning so fiercely without hope of realization, had retired into itself and assumed the semblance of a morose and misanthropic disposition. ”

“ Are criminal. O mind too credulous! 965
Nessus, false and skilled in bestial guile!
Striving my hated rival to remove,
I have destroyed myself. O beaming sun,
And thou, O life, that by thy coaxing arts
Dost strive to hold the wretched in the light,
Begone! for every day is vile to me
That shineth not upon my Hercules. 970
Oh, let me bear, myself, thy sufferings
And give my life for thee. Or shall I wait
And keep myself for death at thy right hand?
Hast still some strength in thee, and can thy hands
Still bend the bow and speed the fatal shaft? ”

“ Religion indeed! If thou hast never been in our house, thou shalt enter now! The dreadful troop of Furies—harsh Erinnys will be there, and Megæra, shaking in her hand torches, doubled on my account. My breast does not sufficiently burn with the great rage within me, it would please me to be filled with greater monstrosities!
GU. What new idea does thy infuriated mind present to thy thoughts?
ATR. Nothing, which takes the shape of ordinary hatred, I will leave no crime out of my calculations, and not one appears sufficient for me.
GU. There's the sword, thou knowest, the fashionable weapon! ”

“ Strange mystery of life—that I who had not known should see, and that this man whose fidelity had not deserted his broken King in his utter downfall should have sought with passion for one sight of the beloved face across the waters of death and sought in vain. I thought of those Buddhist words of Seneca—“The soul may be and is in the mass of men drugged and silenced by the seductions of sense and the deceptions of the world. ”

“ And when, then, the gray-haired sage kneels before the sensual boy, you see the prophet of the new civilization kneel before the monarch of the old! You see Paul make a subject's formal reverence to Nero! [11]
Let me do justice to the court which is to try him. In that judgment-hall there are not only the pomp of Rome, and its crime; we have also the best of its wisdom. By the dissolute boy, Nero, there stands the prime minister Seneca, the chief of the philosophers of his time; "Seneca the saint," cry the Christians of the next century. ”

“ O wife of thundering Jove? Why dost thou not,
In imitation of thy brother, snatch
from his own hand the fiery thunderbolt,
And slay me here thyself? For thou hast lost
Great praise and mighty triumph by my act:
I have forestalled thee, Juno, in the death
Of this thy rival.
Hyllus: Wouldst to ruin doom
Thy house already tottering? This crime,
Whate'er it is, is all from error sprung. 885
He is not guilty who unwilling sins.
Deianira: Whoe'er ignores his fate and spares himself,
Deservedly has erred, deserves to die.
Hyllus: He must be guilty who desires to die. ”

“ Yet he will see their affluence without envy, just as he sees their crimes without anger: a good judge condemns wrongful acts, but does not hate them. "What then? when the wise man is dealing with something of this kind, will his mind not be affected by it and become excited beyond its usual wont?" I admit that it will: he will experience a slight and trifling emotion; for, as Zeno says, "Even in the mind of the wise man, a scar remains after the wound is quite healed." He will, therefore, feel certain hints and semblances of passions; but he will be free from the passions themselves. ”

“ Nay, put away the sword from thy right hand,
And give me heart again. Reveal to me
The cause that forces thee to flee from life.
Phaedra: Alas, great Theseus, by thy kingly power,
And by thy children's souls, by thy return, 870
And by my ashes, suffer me to die.
Theseus: What cause compels thy death?
Phaedra: ⁠The fruit of death
Would perish if I let its cause be known.
Theseus: None else shall hear it save myself alone.
Phaedra: A chaste wife fears her husband most of all.
Theseus: Speak out; I'll hide thy secret in my heart. ”

“ Look upon Sensa as a human being, who, after running his course through several incarnations, and after having passed through a considerable amount of spiritual training, is born again in this world with his spiritual powers of perception greatly developed, and prepared to become a neophyte at a very early stage in his career. As soon as he enters into the physical body, he is placed under the charge of the five Senses and the six Emotions above enumerated, who have it as their place of residence. ”

“ The goddess requires twelve priests in all, including Sensa, to help her cause. Unless the six emotions and the five sensations above enumerated are banded together she cannot exercise her sway completely. They support and strengthen each other as every man's experience clearly demonstrates. Isolated, they are weak and can easily be subdued, but when associated together their combined power is strong enough to keep the soul under control. The fall of Sensa now becomes complete, but not before he receives a well merited rebuke from the gardener and a word of warning from the Lady of the Lotus. ”

“ The mind ought in all cases to be called away from the contemplation of external things to that of itself: let it confide in itself, rejoice in itself, admire its own works; avoid as far as may be those of others, and devote itself to itself; let it not feel losses, and put a good construction even upon misfortunes. Zeno, the chief of our school, when he heard the news of a shipwreck, in which all his property had been lost, remarked, "Fortune bids me follow philosophy in lighter marching order." A tyrant threatened Theodorus with death, and even with want of burial. ”

“ Few things are more touching than the passionate joy with which, in the reign of Nero, Seneca clung to it as the one refuge for the oppressed, the last bulwark of the tottering mind. “To death alone it is due that life is not a punishment, that, erect beneath the frowns of fortune, I can preserve my mind unshaken and master of itself. ”

“ Thyestes [in soliloquy] : Why hesitate, my soul, or why so long
Deliberate upon a point so clear?
To such uncertain things dost thou intrust
Thyself as throne and brother? And fearest thou 425
Those ills already conquered and found mild?
Dost flee those cares which thou hast well bestowed?
Oh, now my former wretchedness is joy.
Turn back, while still thou mayst, and save thyself
Tantalus: What cause, O father, forces thee to leave
Thy native land at last regained? Why now, 430
When richest gifts are falling in thy lap,
Dost turn away? Thy brother's wrath is o'er ”

“ No new-born passion could wholly supersede the result of traditional and inherited tendencies, and of an education which had caused the tenets of a soldier’s creed to be instilled with the first glimmer of consciousness. Sennoske was still as ready as ever to dare anything and sacrifice everything in the cause of his father’s vendetta. ”

“ He prided himself on being not only a philosopher, but also a man of the world, and the consequence was, that in both capacities he failed. It was as true in Paganism as it is in Christianity, that a man must make his choice between duty and interest--between the service of Mammon and the service of God. No man ever gained anything but contempt and ruin by incessantly halting between two opinions.
And by not taking that lofty line of duty which a Zeno or an Antisthenes would have taken, Seneca became more or less involved in some of the most dreadful events of Nero's reign. ”

“ There can hardly be a doubt that the great historian intends by this remark to point at Seneca, to whom he tries to be fair, but whom he could never quite forgive for his share in the disgraces of Nero's reign. That avarice was one of Seneca's temptations is too probable; that expediency was a guiding principle of his conduct is but too evident; and for a man with such a character to rebut an innuendo is never an easy task. Nay more, it was after this foul event, at the close of Nero's first year, that Seneca addressed him in the extravagant and glowing language of his treatise on Clemency. ”

“ We will own him to be Seneca the wise, Seneca almost the good. To this sage had been given the education of the monster who was to rule the world. This sage had introduced him into power, had restrained his madness when he could, and with his colleague had conducted the general administration of the Empire with the greatest honor, while the boy was wearing out his life in debauchery in the palace. Seneca dared say more to Nero, to venture more with him, than did any other man. For the young tiger was afraid of his old master long after he had tasted blood. ”

“ To men ignorant of Greek, like the first generation of the Renaissance, the fourteenth-century men, much in ancient philosophy was obscure. But one system, that of the Stoics, they studied deeply, and understood, for they had the works of Seneca. For men craving for self-help and the complete training of the faculties, eager to escape from the fixed types of medieval manhood, minted by authority, and taught to distrust conscience, when it was their own, and to trust it only in others, Seneca was an oracle. ”

“ Perhaps a senorita, more venturesome, with her black hair hanging in two long plaits behind each shoulder, has run to her iron-barred window to smile at me, and then penitently fallen before her patron saint imploring forgiveness, or hurried to confess her sin to the wily padre. ”

“ With the thought of slipping away in the darkness in mind, Kingdom let the fire die down and from loopholes constantly watched the clearing to make certain the Seneca did not approach the buildings and so be able to prevent his leaving.
Slowly the gathering darkness deepened. It closed around the little log house and stump-dotted open space in the forest’s fastnesses. It closed around Lone-Elk, the Seneca, unrelenting and vigilant. But it closed around another, too, who watched the cabin on the bluff with patience and with perseverance quite equal to the Indian’s. ”