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The Stoic Seneca is the master of the ‘consolation’, a letter written for the express purpose of comforting someone who has been bereaved. Seneca wrote at least three consolations, to Marcia, to Polybius, and to Helvia. In the Consolation to Helvia, he comforts his own mother Helvia on ‘losing’ him to exile—an unusual case, and literary innovation, of the lamented consoling the lamenter.

The emperor Marcus Aurelius (d. 180 CE) had at least fourteen children with his wife Faustina, but only four daughters and one unfortunate son, Commodus, outlived their parents. In the Meditations, Marcus likens his children to leaves, and paraphrases Homer in the Iliad: 

Men come and go as leaves year by year upon the trees. Those of autumn the wind sheds upon the ground, but when the spring returns the forest buds forth with fresh vines.

Marcus was a Stoic, and would have known, at least in principle, how to cope with grief, loss, and bereavement. But if Seneca could have consoled Marcus on the loss of his children, and could only have told him three things, what might those three things have been?

First, Marcus, remember that life is given to us with death as a precondition. Some people die sooner than others, but life, on a cosmic scale, is so short that, really, it makes no difference. Even children are known to die—indeed, they often do—and these, Marcus, simply happened to be your own. A human life, however long or short, or great or small, is of little historical and no cosmic consequence. Since a life can never be long or great enough, the most that it can be is sufficient, and we would do better to concentrate on what that might mean.

Second, it may be that death is in fact preferable to life (the secret of Silenus). Life is full of suffering, and grieving only adds to it, whereas death is the permanent release from every possible pain. Indeed, many people who have died—think only of our friend Cicero—would have died happier if they had died sooner. If we do not pity the unborn, why should we pity the dead, who at least had the benefit, if benefit it is, of having existed? The unborn cry out as soon as they are delivered into the world, but to the dead we never have to block our ears. If weep we must, it is not over death, but the whole of life, that we should weep.

Third, we should treat the people we love not as permanent possessions but as temporary loans from fortune. When, in the evening, you kiss your wife and children goodnight, reflect on the possibility that they, and you, might never wake up. In the morning when you kiss them goodbye, reflect on the possibility that they, or you, might never come home. That way you’ll be better prepared for their eventual loss, and, what’s more, savour and sublime whatever time that you have with them—and, in that way, lead them to love you more. 

If you do lose a loved one, do not grieve, or no more than is appropriate, or no more than they would have wanted you to, but be grateful for the moments that you shared, and consider how much poorer your life would have been if they had never come into it.

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  • The labyrinth is a Jungian archetype that features in prehistoric rock drawings.
  • Mediaeval labyrinths were not simply ornamental but represented the spiritual path to God.
  • Today, labyrinths are increasingly found in therapeutic settings as an aid to meditation and mindfulness.

In Greek myth, Poseidon punished Minos by making his wife Pasiphaë lust for a white bull. Sometime later, Pasiphaë gave birth to the Minotaur, a monster with the head of a bull and the body of a man. As the Minotaur grew, he became increasingly fierce and even began eating people. Fearing that his people would rise against him, Minos sought to contain his stepson in a series of ever-stronger cages; but after he broke out of the strongest cage, he asked Daedalus to build a maze of tunnels beneath his palace. The Labyrinth, as it came to be called, was so intricate that even Daedalus, having built it, struggled to escape from it.

In time, the Minotaur was killed by Theseus, who retraced his steps out of the Labyrinth with the help of a ball of crimson thread given to him by Minos’ daughter Ariadne.

History of the labyrinth

In the early twentieth century, the archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans, working on Crete, uncovered the existence of a complex civilization whose people he called the Minoans after the mythical King Minos. Minoan Crete flourished from 3000 to 1500 BCE and revolved around a series of palace complexes, the largest of which was at Knossos in the north of the island. The palace at Knossos covered an area of around six acres (or three football pitches); it contained some 1,300 rooms connected by various corridors and stairways, leading Evans to speculate that the mythical labyrinth was none other than the palace itself.

Although the labyrinth was a branching, multicursal maze, it has long been represented, for example, on fifth-century BCE Cretan coins, as a single-path, unicursal maze in which it is, of course, impossible to get lost. As a result, “labyrinth,” although essentially synonymous with “maze,” has come to connote unicursality, whereas “maze” has come to connote multicursality. In his Natural History, Pliny the Elder (d. 79 CE) describes four ancient labyrinths—in Egypt, Crete, Lemnos, and Italy—all of which seem to have been enclosed multicursal complexes, confirming that this is the ancient, original meaning of “labyrinth.” In the Histories, Herodotus (d. 425 BCE) claims that the Egyptian labyrinth surpassed even the pyramids in scale and ambition:

I myself have seen the [the Egyptian labyrinth], and no words can tell its wonders: the sum of all that the Greeks have built and wrought would be a matter of less labour and cost than was this single labyrinth.

The psychology of labyrinths

Far from a mere folly, the labyrinth is, like the serpent, the flood, and the trinity, something of a Jungian archetype, found in prehistoric rock drawings at, for example, Pontevedra in Galicia (Spain), Val Camonica in Lombardy (Italy), and Rocky Valley in Cornwall (England).

In mediaeval Europe, cathedrals sometimes contained a labyrinth traced in the nave from contrasting paving stones. Those that have survived, such as the striking one in Chartres Cathedral, can still be walked today. Cathedral labyrinths were not simply ludic or ornamental but represented the spiritual path to God and provided a substitute for going on pilgrimage. Cathedral labyrinths were, therefore, unicursal, as were the first hedge mazes, which evolved from Renaissance knot gardens.

As I argue in The Meaning of Myth, mazes and labyrinths are spiritual tools, not mere amusements or diversions. Multicursal mazes such as the Cretan or Egyptian Labyrinth may have been built not only to guard against gold diggers but also to deter or trap evil spirits, including the Minotaur.

Unicursal labyrinths, on the other hand, may have been traced to guide rituals or dances. The circular unicursal labyrinth symbolizes the cosmos, completeness, and unity, and, by extension, the spiritual path or journey of life. More than a simple garden, it is a removed, secluded, and liminal space that serves to calm and concentrate the mind—which is why labyrinths, often simply mown into a summer field, are increasingly found in therapeutic settings such as hospitals, hospices, and nursing homes.

Labyrinths, especially single-path, unicursal ones, serve not only as a thing of beauty but also and above all as an aid to meditation and mindfulness.

To walk the labyrinth is to re-enter the womb and travel inward, and to come back out is a kind of rebirth. Ariadne’s crimson thread is thus an umbilical cord that ties Theseus to the world while he undertakes the hero’s journey into the underworld and slays the monster.

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Intuition has never been more devalued than in our rational-scientific age.

At a wine bar in Corsica, I ordered a glass of Vermentino and shared some low-key wine talk with the sommelier who brought it to me. After a time, I ordered another glass, and we spoke again. I like testing my intuitions, so I said, at point blank, “You write poetry, don’t you?” The chap, taken aback by my sorcery, confirmed that he did indeed write poetry, and even that some of his poems had been published.

An intuition is a disposition to believe elaborated without hard evidence or conscious deliberation. I say “disposition to believe” rather than “belief” because an intuition is usually held with less certainty or firmness than a belief; and “believe” rather than “know” because an intuition is not justified in the normal sense, and not necessarily true or accurate.

It is not just that intuition is arrived at without hard evidence or conscious deliberation, but that these can impede it. “I am not absentminded” wrote the polymath GK Chesterton, “it is presence of mind that makes me unaware of everything else.”

Intuition versus instinct

Intuition is often confused with instinct. Instinct is not a sense about something, but a more or less strong tendency towards a particular behaviour that is innate and common to the species. “Anna stepped back, intuiting that the dog would follow its instinct and attack.”

Although instincts are ordinarily associated with animals, human beings also have quite a few, even if they are, or can be, strongly modified by culture, temperament, and experience. Examples of human instincts include any number of phobias (fear of heights, fear of spiders…), territoriality, tribal loyalty, and the urge to procreate and rear their young. These instincts are often distorted or sublimed: for example, tribal loyalty may find an outlet in sport, and the urge to procreate may take the more rarefied form of romantic love.

Aristotle says in the Rhetoric that human beings have an instinct for truth, and in the Poetics that we have an instinct for rhythm and harmony.

The psychology of intuition

If intuition is not instinct, how does it operate?

An intuition involves a coming together of facts, concepts, experiences, thoughts, and feelings that are loosely linked but too disparate and peripheral for deliberate or rational processing. As this reflection is sub- or semi-conscious and the workings are hidden, an intuition appears to arise ex nihilo, out of nothing and nowhere, and cannot, or at least not readily, be justified.

What makes an intuition so hard to support and argue for is that it is founded less on arguments and evidence than on the interconnection of things. It hangs, delicately, intricately, and invisibly, like a spider’s web.

The surfacing of an intuition, which can also occur in dream or meditation, is often mingled with a concordant feeling such as joy or fear, or simple pride and pleasure at the supreme cognitive and human achievement that an intuition represents.

How to invite intuition

If this is how intuition works, then we can invite intuition by expanding the range of our experiences, and by tearing down the barriers, such as biases, fears, and inhibitions, that are preventing them from coalescing.

We should also give ourself more time and space for free association. My own intuitive faculty is sharpest when walking, showering, travelling, or otherwise daydreaming, and when I am well rested.

Clearly, the more we know, the more we can intuit, and there is no such thing as wasted knowledge.

Finally, it would help if we could simply acknowledge the place and power of intuition. We have micro-intuitions all the time, about what to eat, what to wear, what road to take, whom to talk to, what to say, how to respond, and so on. I call them micro-intuitions because they rely on a great number of subtle variables, and escape, or largely escape, conscious processing. But what about the macro-intuitions?

Never in the history of humanity has the intuitive or mystic faculty been more neglected or devalued than in our rational-scientific age.

Neel Burton is author of the newly published How to Think Like Plato and Speak Like Cicero.

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19th century cartoon of Cicero denouncing Catiline

When and how to use them, and how to defend against them.

In rhetoric, an ad hominem (“to the man”) is an attack, not on the argument itself, but on the person making it. It is, in simpler words, an attempt to shoot the messenger.

When Winston Churchill called Mahatma Gandhi “a seditious Middle Temple lawyer now posing as a fakir,” he was attempting to undermine Gandhi’s character, or ethos.

Ad hominem, which is essentially an attack on a speaker’s ethos, is older than the books. It was not beneath Churchill, or even the Roman orator Cicero, who used it often, and went so far as to call Piso, Julius Caesar’s father-in-law, a “most foul and inhuman monster” (inhumanissimum ac foedissimum monstrum).

The first and most famous line of the most famous speech in all of Latin literature, Cicero’s First Catilinarian, is no more than an extended ad hominem:

When, O Catiline, do you mean to cease abusing our patience? How long is that madness of yours still to mock us? When is there to be an end to that unbridled audacity of yours, swaggering about as it does now?

When and how to use ad hominem

In academic circles, the ad hominem is regarded as a logical fallacy and frowned upon. It is uncivil, it stifles debate, and it is a tacit admission that you are losing the argument. It is forbidden in formal debates, and there has been a petition to ban it from the U.K.’s House of Commons.

But in rhetoric, anything goes, and an ad hominem can be legitimate if it serves to undermine the ethos, or pro hominem claims, of your opponents.

Even so, when attacking an opponent, it is better to put one’s words into the mouth of some third person, or to use paralipsis (mentioning something by saying that you will not mention it), as Cicero did in his speech Pro Caelio:

Clodia, I am not thinking now of the wrongs you have done me. I am putting to one side the memory of my humiliation. I pass over your cruel treatment of my family when I was away. Consider that nothing I have said has been said against you.

While debating Ron DeSantis, former Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum succeeded in doing both at the same time, to great effect:

I’m not calling Mr. DeSantis a racist; I’m simply saying the racists believe he is a racist.

Such is the power of rhetoric that, had it not been for this single sentence, I may never have heard of Andrew Gillum. Often, when all is said and done, all that remains of a life is one or two sententiae, if even that.

How to defend against ad hominem

If you find yourself on the receiving end of an ad hominem, you can respond in one of four ways:

  1. Ignore it.
  2. Call it out as an ad hominem, e.g. “Instead of attacking me, could you please return to the argument, which you seem afraid of losing.”
  3. Own it.
  4. Bite back with an ad hominem of your own.

Which strategy to use depends on the context and the available material (so always do your research). But in the absence of a killer riposte, it is best and easiest to ignore the insult while looking slightly dismayed.

Finally, if returning an ad hominem, consider accompanying or accenting it with some gesture—the rhetorical device known as mycterismus. If the audience laughs, which it probably will, your opponent will not recover from it.

Neel Burton is author of the newly published How to Think Like Plato and Speak Like Cicero.

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Why speakers shouldn’t always pander to their audience.

In the Rhetoric (4th century BCE), Aristotle identified the three modes of persuasion, or persuasive appeals, that are in: the character of the speaker (ethos), the emotions of the audience (pathos), and the argument itself (logos).

Ethos, pathos, and logos are referred to as artistic means of persuasion, and contrasted to non-artistic means, that is, to hard evidence, such as laws, witnesses, and contracts.

Ethos and decorum

In a speaker, ethos is also a matter of agreeability and meeting the expectations of the audience in terms of appearance, diction, and comportment. The Romans referred to this aspect of ethos as decorum.

Anything that grates with the audience, or sets you apart from it, is a violation of decorum. What this might be varies from audience to audience. For example, an audience of academics would expect some jargon, which, however, would jar with a general audience. Boastfulness and vulgarity can be a violation of decorum, as can be, unfortunately, complexity and subtlety.

In the Rhetoric, Aristotle remarks that it is their simplicity that makes the uneducated more effective than the educated before a general audience:

It is this simplicity that makes the uneducated more effective than the educated when addressing popular audiences—makes them, as the poets tell us, “charm the crowd’s ears more finely.” Educated men lay down broad general principles; uneducated men argue from common knowledge and draw obvious conclusions.

When to break decorum

The rhetorician Quintilian (d. c. 100 CE), author of the Institutes of Oratory, points out that what might de decorous in the eyes of an audience might be repugnant under the aspect of eternity, that is, in the eyes of God.

In example, Quintilian cites the trial of Socrates: how would this paragon of virtue be remembered today if, instead of standing up to them and rebuking them, he had sought to meet the expectations of the jurors by shedding tears, resorting to prayers and supplications, and bringing forth his young children?

Today in America, many politicians are grappling with just this problem in addressing their base. It is much easier to be decorous before an audience that is itself decorous.

How to break decorum

So how to go about telling an audience something that it doesn’t want to hear?

One strategy is to appear to have reached your conclusion reluctantly, driven only by the overwhelming force of the argument. You might even use a technique known as the dubitatio, which involves expressing doubt or uncertainty about what to say.

Another approach is to make your conclusion seem like a concession in the face of an even greater evil, such as inflation or recession.

And the third thing is to make your stance seem in line with the orthodoxy, as when Elon Musk (himself a South African) defended the skilled immigrant visa as “American”.

These techniques work for politicians and public figures, and they will also work for you.

Neel Burton is author of How to Think Like Plato and Speak Like Cicero