pen and the spindle? What man, intent on his religious or
philosophical meditations, can possibly endure the whining of
children, the lullabies of the nurse seeking to quiet them, or the
noisy confusion of family life? Who can endure the continual
untidiness of children? The rich, you may reply, can do this,
because they have palaces or houses containing many rooms, and
because their wealth takes no thought of expense and protects them
from daily worries. But to this the answer is that the condition of
philosophers is by no means that of the wealthy, nor can those
whose minds are occupied with riches and worldly cares find time
for religious or philosophical study. For this reason the renowned
philosophers of old utterly despised the world, fleeing from its
perils rather than reluctantly giving them up, and denied
themselves all its delights in order that they might repose in the
embraces of philosophy alone. One of them, and the greatest of all,
Seneca, in his advice to Lucilius, says: "Philosophy is not a thing
to be studied only in hours of leisure; we must give up everything
else to devote ourselves to it, for no amount of time is really
sufficient thereto" (Epist. 73).

It matters little, she pointed out, whether one abandons the study
of philosophy completely or merely interrupts it, for it can never
remain at the point where it was thus interrupted. All other
occupations must be resisted; it is vain to seek to adjust life to
include them, and they must simply be eliminated. This view is
maintained, for example, in the love of God by those among us who
are truly called monastics, and in the love of wisdom by all those
who have stood out among men as sincere philosophers. For in every
race, gentiles or Jews or Christians, there have always been a few
who excelled their fellows in faith or in the purity of their