TO ENGAGE IN negative visualization is to contemplate the bad things that can happen to us. Seneca recommends an extension of this technique: Besides contemplating bad things happening, we should sometimes live as if they had happened. In particular, instead of merely thinking about what it would be like to lose our wealth, we should periodically “practice poverty”: We should, that is, content ourselves with “the scantiest and cheapest fare” and with “coarse and rough dress.”1
