Note 95 — Chapter VI · THE STUDY OF NATURE. FUNDAMENTAL POSITIONS.

Seneca’s treatise, De Providentia, is occupied with expanding this thought. In it, the arguments by which the outward misfortunes of good men are harmonised with the divine government of the world are: (1) The wise man cannot really meet with misfortune: he cannot receive at the hands of fortune what he does not, on moral grounds, assign to himself (c. 2, 6). (2) Misfortune, therefore, is an unlooked-for exercise of his powers, a divine instrument of training; a hero in conflict with fortune is a spectaculum Deo dignum (c. 1, 2–4. Conf. Ep. 85, 39). (3) The misfortunes of the righteous show that external conditions are neither a good nor an evil (c. 5). (4) Everything is a natural consequence of natural causes (c. 5). Similar explanations in Epictet. Diss. iii. 17; i. 6, 37; i. 24, 1; Stob. Ed. i. 132; M. Aurel. iv. 49: vii. 68 and 64; x. 33. ↑