It is in the sympathetic handling of such cases, not in broad philosophic theory, that the peculiar strength of Seneca lies. His counsels were adapted to the particular difficulties presented to him. But many of them have a universal validity. He encourages the wish to retire into meditative quietude, but only as a means to moral cure.(1716) Retreat should not be an ostentatious defiance of the opinion of the world.(1717) Nor is it to be a mere cloak for timid or lazy shrinking from the burdens of life. You should withdraw from the strife and temptations of the mundane city, only to devote yourself to the business of the spiritual city, to cultivate self-knowledge and self-government, to inspire the soul with the contemplation of the Eternal and the Divine. Solitude may be a danger, unless a man lives in the presence of “One who seeth in secret,”(1718) from whom no evil thought is hidden, to whom no prayer for evil things must be addressed.(1719) And, lest the thought of God’s presence may not come home with sufficient urgency, Seneca recommends his disciples to call up the image of some good man or ancient sage, and live as if under his eye.(1720) The first step in moral progress is self-knowledge and confession of one’s faults.(1721) Ignorance of our spiritual disease, the doom of the indurated conscience, is the great danger, and may be the mark of a hopeless moral state. Hence the necessity for constant daily self-examination. In the quiet of each night we should review our conduct and feeling during the day, marking carefully where we have fallen short of the higher law, and strengthening ourselves with any signs of self-conquest. Seneca tells us that this was his own constant practice.(1722) For progress is only slow and difficult. It requires watchful and unremitting effort to reach that assured and settled purpose which issues spontaneously in purity of thought and deed, and which raises man to the level of the Divine freedom. There must be no pauses of self-complacency until the work is done. There is no mediocrity in morals. There must be no halting and unsteadiness of purpose, no looking back to the deceitful things of the world. Inconstancy of the wavering will only shortens the span of this short life. How many there are who, even when treading the last stage to death, are only beginning to live, in the true sense, and who miss the beatitude of the man who, having mastered the great secret, can have no addition to his happiness from lengthened years. In the long tract of time any life is but a moment, and of that the least part by most men is really lived.(1723) And this unsettled aim is liable to constant temptation from without. We are continually within sight and earshot of the isles of the Sirens, and only the resolution of a Ulysses will carry us past in safety.(1724) In fact no isle of the Sirens can have been more dangerous than the life of a great household in the Neronian