Key Arguments

• He instructs that our minds 'should assume that whatever happens was bound to happen and refrain from railing at nature,' presenting acceptance of necessity as rational piety.
• He says, 'One can do nothing better than endure what cannot be cured and attend uncomplainingly the God at whose instance all things come about,' defining the optimal response to inevitability as patient endurance and religious obedience.
• He introduces a military metaphor to condemn complaint: 'It is a poor soldier that follows his commander grumbling,' implying that grumbling against fate or God is ignoble.
• He continues the metaphor with an exhortation: 'So let us receive our orders readily and cheerfully, and not desert the ranks along the march – the march of this glorious fabric of creation in which everything we shall suffer is a strand,' depicting all sufferings as woven into a grand cosmic campaign.

Source Quotes

This is the law they should be following and obeying. They should assume that whatever happens was bound to happen and refrain from railing at nature. One can do nothing better than endure what cannot be cured and attend uncomplainingly the God at whose instance all things come about.

They should assume that whatever happens was bound to happen and refrain from railing at nature. One can do nothing better than endure what cannot be cured and attend uncomplainingly the God at whose instance all things come about. It is a poor soldier that follows his commander grumbling.

One can do nothing better than endure what cannot be cured and attend uncomplainingly the God at whose instance all things come about. It is a poor soldier that follows his commander grumbling. So let us receive our orders readily and cheerfully, and not desert the ranks along the march – the march of this glorious fabric of creation in which everything we shall suffer is a strand.

It is a poor soldier that follows his commander grumbling. So let us receive our orders readily and cheerfully, and not desert the ranks along the march – the march of this glorious fabric of creation in which everything we shall suffer is a strand. And let us address Jupiter, whose guiding hand directs this mighty work, in the way our own Cleanthes did, in some most expressive lines which I may perhaps be pardoned for translating in view of the example set here by that master of expressiveness, Cicero.

Key Concepts

• They should assume that whatever happens was bound to happen and refrain from railing at nature.
• One can do nothing better than endure what cannot be cured and attend uncomplainingly the God at whose instance all things come about.
• It is a poor soldier that follows his commander grumbling.
• So let us receive our orders readily and cheerfully, and not desert the ranks along the march – the march of this glorious fabric of creation in which everything we shall suffer is a strand.

Context

Later in Letter CVII, having described nature’s law of opposites, Seneca urges a stance of fated acceptance and loyal service to the divine order, using the image of a soldier who follows orders without complaint.