Letters 121.14

“You maintain, do you,” says the objector, “that every living thing is at the start adapted to its constitution, but that man’s constitution is a reasoning one, and hence man is adapted to himself not merely as a living, but as a reasoning, being? For man is dear to himself in respect of that wherein he is a man. How, then, can a child, being not yet gifted with reason, adapt himself to a reasoning constitution?”

Seneca, Letters to Lucilius 121.14, translated by Richard Mott Gummere