For a short period of his life,
indeed, Seneca was at the summit of power; yet, courtier as he was, he
incurred the hatred, the suspicion, and the punishment of all the three
Emperors during whose reigns his manhood was passed. "Of all
unsuccessful men," says Mr. Froude, "in every shape, whether divine or
human, or devilish, there is none equal to Bunyan's Mr.
Facing-both-ways--the fellow with one eye on heaven and one on
earth--who sincerely preaches one thing and sincerely does another, and
from the intensity of his unreality is unable either to see or feel the
contradiction. He is substantially trying to cheat both God and the
devil, and is in reality only cheating himself and his neighbours. This
of all characters upon the earth appears to us to be the one of which
there is no hope at all, a character becoming in these days alarmingly
abundant; and the aboundance of which makes us find even in a Reineke an
inexpressible relief." And, in point of fact, the inconsistency of
Seneca's life was a _conscious_ inconsistency. "To the student," he
says, "who professes his wish to rise to a loftier grade of virtue, I
would answer that this is my _wish_ also, but I dare not hope it. _I am
preoccupied with vices. All I require of myself is, not to be equal to
the best_, but only _to be better than the bad_." No doubt Seneca meant
this to be understood merely for modest depreciation; but it was far
truer than he would have liked seriously to confess. He must have often
and deeply felt that he was not living in accordance with the light
which was in him.

It would indeed be cheap and easy, to attribute the general inferiority
and the many shortcomings of Seneca's life and character to the fact
that he was a Pagan, and to suppose that if he had known Christianity he
would necessarily have attained to a loftier ideal. But such a style of
reasoning and inference, commonly as it is adopted for rhetorical
purposes, might surely be refused by any intelligent child. A more
intellectual assent to the lessons of Christianity would have probably
been but of little avail to inspire in Seneca a nobler life. The fact
is, that neither the gift of genius nor the knowledge of Christianity
are adequate to the ennoblement of the human heart, nor does the grace
of God flow through the channels of surpassing intellect or of orthodox
belief. Men there have been in all ages, Pagan no less than Christian,
who with scanty mental enlightenment and spiri