An Ancient Reminder On Contentment

Wayne, below are a few quotes from the 1897 translation of Boethius’ The Consolation of Philosophy (old school English!) by H.R. James, which I read a few years ago. Following the quotes are some notes on the work itself, including a comment on it by C.S. Lewis from his book The Discarded Image (which is where I first learned about Boethius). The language is decidedly dated, but it shows how poor, wise Boethius was acquainted with Ecclesiastes.

What though Plenty pour her gifts
With a lavish hand,
Numberless as are the stars,
Countless as the sand,
Will the race of man, content,
Cease to murmur and lament?

Nay, though God, all-bounteous, give
Gold at man’s desire—
Honours, rank, and fame—content
Not a whit is nigher;
But an all-devouring greed
Yawns with ever-widening need.

Then what bounds can e’er restrain
This wild lust of having,
When with each new bounty fed
Grows the frantic craving?
He is never rich whose fear
Sees grim Want forever near.
(Book II, Song II)

One law only standeth fast:
Things created may not last.
(Book II, Song III)

So true is it that nothing is wretched, but thinking makes it so, and conversely every lot is happy if borne with equanimity.
(Book II, IV)

And though thou knowest not the causes on which this great system depends, yet forasmuch as a good ruler governs the world, doubt not for thy part that all is rightly done.
(Book IV, V)

Our hopes and prayers also are not fixed on God in vain, and when they are rightly directed cannot fail of effect. Therefore, withstand vice, practise virtue, lift up your souls to right hopes, offer humble prayers to Heaven. Great is the necessity of righteousness laid upon you if ye will not hide it from yourselves, seeing that all your actions are done before the eyes of a Judge who seeth all things.
(Book V, VI)

Notes
The Consolation of Philosophy was written by Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius near the end of his life, which occurred in A.D. 524. He was a Roman who had fallen from great social and political heights to a life of arrest, exile, and execution. In this book, he pens a reasoned approach to the questions of the vagaries, and seeming injustices, of Fortune. The text is in the form of a dialogue between Boethius and a female personification of Philosophy; and it regularly alternates between sections of prose and poetry.

De Consolatione Philosophiae, according to C.S. Lewis, “was for centuries one of the most influential books ever written in Latin. It was translated into Old High German, Italian, Spanish, and Greek; into French by Jean de Meung; into English by Alfred, Chaucer, Elizabeth I, and others. Until about two hundred years ago it would, I think, have been hard to find an educated man in any European country who did not love it.” (from The Discarded Image)

The influence of this book can be seen in many later authors including Dante, Milton, and Chaucer. For example, Boethius’ “So true is it that nothing is wretched but thinking makes it so, and conversely every lot is happy if borne with equanimity.” is echoed by Shakespeare’s Hamlet who claims, “There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.”

I pray that we truly remember how to do all through Christ who strengthens. It might help to write on our minds that “every lot is happy if borne with equanimity, [and] all your actions are done before the eyes of a Judge who seeth all things.”

God bless,
Wayne