On Peace of Mind, Section 15 — In Plain English

Seneca — The Senator

But getting rid of personal reasons for sadness doesn't solve everything. Sometimes we find ourselves hating the entire human race. Think about how rare honest people are. How few truly innocent people you meet. How often people break their promises unless it benefits them. Remember all the crimes that go unpunished. All the disgusting things people do for money or sex. Think about how ambitious people will do anything for status — even shameful things. When you dwell on all this, your mind feels like it's been thrown into darkness. Shadows seem to rise up around you. It's as if all virtue has been destroyed, and we can no longer hope to find it or benefit from it.

Seneca — The Senator Original

Yet we gain nothing by getting rid of all personal causes of sadness, for sometimes we are possessed by hatred of the human race. When you reflect how rare simplicity is, how unknown innocence, how seldom faith is kept, unless it be to our advantage, when you remember such numbers of successful crimes, so many equally hateful losses and gains of lust, and ambition so impatient even of its own natural limits that it is willing to purchase distinction by baseness, the mind seems as it were cast into darkness, and shadows rise before it as though the virtues were all overthrown and we were no longer allowed to hope to possess them or benefited by their possession.