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Virtue in Adversity: Insights from Seneca

This document discusses the virtues of adversity compared to prosperity. It argues that while prosperity's virtue is temperance, adversity's virtue is fortitude, which is the more heroic virtue. While prosperity is blessed in the Old Testament, adversity carries a greater blessing and clearer revelation of God's favor, as seen through the afflictions of Job described more than Solomon's felicities. Adversity also allows virtue to be more fragrant when incensed or crushed, as prosperity best discovers vice but adversity best discovers virtue.

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66 views2 pages

Virtue in Adversity: Insights from Seneca

This document discusses the virtues of adversity compared to prosperity. It argues that while prosperity's virtue is temperance, adversity's virtue is fortitude, which is the more heroic virtue. While prosperity is blessed in the Old Testament, adversity carries a greater blessing and clearer revelation of God's favor, as seen through the afflictions of Job described more than Solomon's felicities. Adversity also allows virtue to be more fragrant when incensed or crushed, as prosperity best discovers vice but adversity best discovers virtue.

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akhils.igj
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OF ADVERSITY

It was an high speech of Seneca (after the manner of the Stoics),


that the good things, which belong to prosperity, are to be wished;
but the good things, that belong to adversity, are to be admired.
Bona rerum secundarum optabilia; adversarum mirabilia. Certainly
if miracles be the command over nature, they appear most in adver-
sity. It is yet a higher speech of his, than the other (much too high
for a heathen), It is true greatness, to have in one the frailty of a
man, and the security of a God. Vere magnum habere fragilitatem
hominis, securitatem Dei. This would have done better in poesy,
where transcendences are more allowed. And the poets indeed have
been busy with it; for it is in effect the thing, which figured in that
strange fiction of the ancient poets, which seemeth not to be without
mystery; nay, and to have some approach to the state of a Christian;
that Hercules, when he went to unbind Prometheus (by whom hu-
man nature is represented), sailed the length of the great ocean, in
an earthen pot or pitcher; lively describing Christian resolution, that
saileth in the frail bark of the flesh, through the waves of the world.
But to speak in a mean. The virtue of prosperity, is temperance; the
virtue of adversity, is fortitude; which in morals is the more heroical
virtue. Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament; adversity is
the blessing of the New; which carrieth the greater benediction, and
the clearer revelation of God’s favor. Yet even in the Old Testament,
if you listen to David’s harp, you shall hear as many hearse-like airs
as carols; and the pencil of the Holy Ghost hath labored more in
describing the afflictions of Job, than the felicities of Solomon. Pros-

13
14 Bacon’s Essays

perity is not without many fears and distastes; and adversity is not
without comforts and hopes. We see in needle-works and embroi-
deries, it is more pleasing to have a lively work, upon a sad and
solemn ground, than to have a dark and melancholy work, upon a
lightsome ground: judge therefore of the pleasure of the heart, by
the pleasure of the eye. Certainly virtue is like precious odors, most
fragrant when they are incensed, or crushed: for prosperity doth best
discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue.

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