On the Happy Life, Section 1 — In Plain English

Seneca — The Senator

Picture a huge crowd where people are pressed together tightly. When someone falls, they can't help but pull others down with them. The people in front cause the people behind them to get hurt. The same thing happens in life. No one makes mistakes alone. When you go wrong, you end up causing others to go wrong too, and you become someone who leads them astray. It's dangerous to follow the people ahead of us. Since everyone would rather believe someone else than think for themselves, we never make careful decisions about our lives. Instead, some old mistake always trips us up and destroys us. We die because we copy what other people do.

Seneca — The Senator Original

In a great crush of people, when the crowd presses upon itself, no one can fall without drawing some one else down upon him, and those who go before cause the destruction of those who follow them. You may observe the same thing in human life: no one can merely go wrong by himself, but he must become both the cause and adviser of another's wrongdoing. It is harmful to follow the march of those who go before us, and since every one had rather believe another than form his own opinion, we never pass a deliberate judgment upon life, but some traditional error always entangles us and brings us to ruin, and we perish because we follow other men's examples: