LXXXIV: On Gathering and Digesting Ideas
We ought to copy these bees, and sift whatever we have gathered from a varied course of reading, for such things are better preserved if they are kept separate ; then, by applying the supervising care with which our nature has endowed us,—in other words, our natural gifts,—we should so blend those several flavours into one delicious compound that, even though it betrays its origin, yet it nevertheless is clearly a different thing from that whence it came. This is what we see nature doing in our own bodies without any labour on our part ; the food we have eaten, as long as it retains its original quality and floats in our stomachs as an undiluted mass, is a burden ; but it passes into tissue and blood only when it has been changed from its original form. So it is with the food which nourishes our higher nature,—we should see to it that whatever we have absorbed should not be allowed to remain unchanged, or it will be no part of us. We must digest it ; otherwise it will merely enter the memory and not the reasoning power.
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Our mind should hide away all the materials by which it has been aided, and bring to light only what it has made of them. Even if there shall appear in you a likeness to him who, by reason of your admiration, has left a deep impress upon you, I would have you resemble him as a child resembles his father, and not as a picture resembles its original; for a picture is a lifeless thing.
I think that sometimes it is impossible for it to be seen who is being imitated, if the copy is a true one ; for a true copy stamps its own form upon all the features which it has drawn from what we may call the original, in such a way that they are combined into a unity. Do you not see how many voices there are in a chorus ? Yet out of the many only one voice results. In that chorus one voice takes the tenor, another the bass, another the baritone. There are women, too, as well as men, and the flute is mingled with them. In that chorus the voices of the individual singers are hidden ; what we hear is the voices of all together.
My mind should be equipped with many arts, many precepts, and patterns of conduct taken from many epochs of history ; but all should blend harmoniously into one.
References:
- Seneca: V. Epistulae Morales II. Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press. Internet Archive. Accessed February 17, 2020. https://archive.org/details/adluciliumepistu02sene/mode/2up