On Discursiveness in Reading
De inconstantia lectionis
Resumen
Seneca advises against scattered reading and constant travel, advocating instead for deep engagement with a few master thinkers. He recommends selecting one thought each day to digest thoroughly.
Translated by Richard M. Gummere, 1917
Judging by what you write me, and by what I hear, I am forming a good opinion regarding your future. You do not run hither and thither and distract yourself by changing your abode; for such restlessness is the sign of a disordered spirit.
The primary indication, to my thinking, of a well-ordered mind is a man's ability to remain in one place and linger in his own company. Be careful, however, lest this reading of many authors and books of every sort may tend to make you discursive and unsteady.
You must linger among a limited number of master thinkers, and digest their works, if you would derive ideas which shall win firm hold in your mind. Everywhere means nowhere.
When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having many acquaintances, but no friends. And the same thing must hold true of men who seek intimate acquaintance with no single author, but visit them all in a hasty and hurried manner.
Food does no good and is not assimilated into the body if it leaves the stomach as soon as it is eaten; nothing hinders a cure so much as frequent change of medicine; no wound will heal when one salve is tried after another.
Each day acquire something that will fortify you against poverty, against death, indeed against other misfortunes as well; and after you have run over many thoughts, select one to be thoroughly digested that day.
This is my own custom; from the many things which I have read, I claim some one part for myself. The thought for to-day is one which I discovered in Epicurus: 'It is a great thing to understand how to enjoy one's own being.'
This is indeed a great thing. Farewell.