Seneca · c. 4 BCE – 65 CE
On Benefits 4.6 ¶3 — Seneca
Translation by Aubrey Stewart (1887)
Seneca, On Benefits 4.6 ¶3
The true God is he who has placed, not a few oxen, but all the herds on their pastures throughout the world; who furnishes food to the flocks wherever they wander; who has ordained the alternation of summer and winter pasturage, and has taught us not merely to play upon a reed, and to reduce to some order a rustic and artless song, but who has invented so many arts and varieties of voice, so many notes to make music, some with our own breath, some with instruments. You cannot call our inventions our own any more than you call our growth our own, or the various bodily functions which correspond to each stage of our lives; at one time comes the loss of childhood’s teeth, at another, when our age is advancing and growing into robuster manhood, puberty and the last wisdom-tooth marks the end of our youth. We have implanted in us the seeds of all ages, of all arts, and God our master brings forth our intellects from obscurity.
Cite this passage
Seneca, On Benefits 4.6 ¶3, tr. Aubrey Stewart (1887)
https://whatwouldstoicsdo.com/passage/on-benefits/4.6.3
Seneca, Dialogues, tr. Aubrey Stewart (1887–1889). Text: Standard Ebooks (CC0). Sources and licences
In plain English
AI-written notesEven the skills and inventions people think of as their own, such as music and craft, and the stages of bodily growth, are ultimately gifts of the natural order, with the seeds of every age and art already planted in us. Pride in our achievements should be tempered by that.
Older wording
- “pasturage”
- — grazing land for animals
- “wisdom-tooth”
- — the last molar, which appears in early adulthood
Themes and situations
- Nature and the cosmos
- Gratitude
- Pride and humility
- Learning and progress
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