On Providence
6 chapters in Stewart
On Providence answers a question Lucilius had put to Seneca: why, if a providence rules the world, do so many evils befall good men? The dialogue is short, six chapters, and its answer is single: what the crowd calls evil is the training by which the good man is proved, as a father trains a son and a trainer an athlete. Cato, Mucius, Regulus and Socrates are the examples; the last chapter gives the answer in God’s own voice.
The English text here is Aubrey Stewart’s, in his Minor Dialogues of 1889, where the work is printed as the first book of the dialogues, addressed to Lucilius. Stewart numbers the chapters from I to VI, and Baillard’s French edition counts the same six, chapter for chapter, so a passage carries the same number in both; an extract is cited as On Providence, IV, with the line of the file. The extracts below come from Stewart’s text; the passages of this work in the app are counted, not listed.
Structure
| Book | Chapters | Concordance |
|---|---|---|
| I | 6 | chapter for chapter with Baillard, 1861 |
In the edition of Aubrey Stewart, 1889
You have asked me, Lucilius, why, if the world be ruled by providence, so many evils befall good men?
Unbroken prosperity cannot bear a single blow; but he who has waged an unceasing strife with his misfortunes has gained a thicker skin by his sufferings, yields to no disaster, and even though he fall yet fights on his knee.
A gladiator deems it a disgrace to be matched with an inferior, and knows that to win without danger is to win without glory.
Fortune lashes and mangles us: well, let us endure it: it is not cruelty, it is a struggle, in which the oftener we engage the braver we shall become.
It is the part of grovellers and cowards to follow the safe track; courage loves a lofty path.
You do not shine outwardly, all your good qualities are turned inwards; even so does the world neglect what lies without it, and rejoices in the contemplation of itself.
In Stoic+: 11 passages of this work, each with its reference.
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Seneca and Epictetus are in Stoic+: 11 passages of this work in the app, each with its reference.