Transcript for:
Notes on Seneca's Letters and Stoicism

letters from A stoic by Seneca Seneca and philosophy stoicism for centuries the most influential philosophy in the Greco-Roman world had a long history before Seneca founded by Zeno born a Phoenician descent in Cyprus Circa 336-5 BC who are taught or lectured in a well-known stower a Colonnade or porch hence the name in Athens it had been developed and Modified by a succession of thinkers whose opinions on various logical ethical or cosmological questions showed some Fair divergences as a moral Creed however it was based throughout on the following framework of belief the stoic saw the world as a single great community in which all men are brothers ruled by a supreme Providence which could be spoken of almost according to choice or context under a variety of names or descriptions including the Divine reason creative reason nature the spirit or purpose of the universe Destiny a personal God even by way of concession to traditional religion the Gods it is man's duty to live in Conformity with the Divine will and this means firstly bringing his life into line with nature's laws and secondly resigning himself completely and uncomplainingly to whatever fate may send him only by living thus not setting too high a value on things which can at any moment be taken away from him can he discover that true unshakable peace and contentment to which ambition luxury and above all avarice are among the greatest obstacles living in accordance with nature means not only questioning convention and training ourselves to do without all except the Necessities plain food water Basic clothing and shelter but developing the inborn gift of Reason which marks us off as different from the animal world we're meant to set free or perfect this rational element this particle of the universal reason the Divine spark in our human makeup so that it may campaign against and Conquer pain grief Superstition and the fear of death it will show us that there's nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so discipline the pleasures and the passions and generally subordinate the body and emotions to the mind and soul in this way we shall arrive at the true end of man happiness through having attained the one and only good thing in life the ideal or goal called arrete in Greek and in Latin wordus for which the English word Virtue is so unsatisfactory a translation this the summon bonum or Supreme ideal is usually summarized in ancient philosophy as a combination of four qualities wisdom or moral Insight courage self-control and Justice or upright dealing it enables a man to be self-sufficient immune to suffering superior to the wounds and upsets of Life often personalizes Fortuna the goddess of Fortune even a slave thus armed can be called free are indeed titled a king since even a king cannot touch him another example of these paradoxes for which the stoics were celebrated is one directed at the vanity of worldly positions the shortest route to wealth is the contempt of wealth this ethic together with its backing and a system of physics and logic had first been given shape in the minds of thinkers who although Greek speaking were for the most part not of European descent coming from places in Asia Minor or the Levant like Tarsus Cyprus and Babylon this does not seem to have reduced the appear it made to educated Romans when around the middle of the second century BC it first came to their notice the duties it inculcated Courage and endurance self-control and self-reliance upright conduct and just dealing simple and unluxurious habits rationality obedience to the state were self-evident to many Romans corresponding quite closely to the traditional idea of huertos the development of the used natural by the Roman jurists and posidonius identification of the stoic World Community or Cosmopolis with the Roman Empire made its acceptance even easier at a later date the stoic view of the ruler this term including Governors magistrates and administrative officials as a man whose actions could be criticized and even as a minister or servant was to be disliked by Emperors some of whom replied by expelling the philosophers but stoics were usually far from hostile to monarchy as such however openly they declared that rank counted for nothing against the duty of all men whatever their station to play their part in life well despite its wide Acceptance in educated circles early historicism had a forbidding aspect which went far to explain its failure to influence the masses there was something unreal or fictional about the sapiens the wise man or philosopher this ideal figure seemed from the way the stoic lecturers talked to have somehow become perfect in some sudden transformation long ago gradual self-improvement was hardly discussed the targeted set seemed too high for ordinary men it stifled and repressed ordinary human emotions in striving after apathya immunity to feeling Cato the great stoic Saint is reported to have expressed regret at having kissed his wife at a moment of danger it held its in certain circumstances a man's self-respect might invite as an act of supreme nobility his suicide in pursuing the ideal of otakia self-sufficiency it seemed to make the perfect man a person detached and aloof from his fellows superior to the world he lived in altogether the impression to conveyed for all its idealism and sincerity could be called dogmatic and unrealistic seneca's contribution to ancient philosophy lay in the humanization of this Creed continuing a process begun long before in roads and Rome by panitius and posidonius although Seneca wrote for a relatively narrow circle of educated persons usually addressing his compositions to a particular friend or relative as if he were that person's special spiritual advisor his letters and essays show a stoicism more closely reconciled with the facts and Frailty of human nature the ideal of apathya is much modified self-sufficient though he is the sapiens can now have friends and can grieve within limits at the loss of one it has become his duty to be kind and forgiving towards others indeed to live for the other person in his way of living he should avoid being ostentatiously different from those he tries to win from moral ignorance he has to battle like the rest against his failings in a long and painful progress towards perfection in which all can do with help from above all the inspiration of others example Seneca himself we observe occasionally makes a modest statements concerning his own progress but is capable of humility as in one description of himself as a long way from being a tolerable let alone a perfect human being in statements of man's kinship with a beneficient even loving God and of a belief in conscience as the divinely inspired Inner Light of the spirit his attitudes are religious beyond anything in Roman State religion in his day little more than the withered survival of formal worship paid to a host of ancient gods and goddesses Christian writers have not been slow to recognize the remarkably close parallels between isolated sentences in seneca's writings and verses of the Bible on the other hand the word God or the gods was used by the philosophers more as a time-honored and convenient expression than a standing for any indispensable or even surely identifiable component of the stoic system and the tendency of stoicism was always to exalt man's importance in the universe rather than to abase him before a higher authority the hope of immortality was occasionally held out but Seneca does not play on it to him as to most stoics virtue was to be looked on as his own reward and vice as its own punishment the religious hunger of the masses of his day was to be met not by philosophy but by the Cults of Isis and mithras and Christianity for the ancient dwell then apart from Reviving philosophy in Latin literature he spiritualized and humanized stoicism what of Seneca and modern philosophy the latter at least in the universities of the English-speaking world has for some time been said on a course which he would certainly have condemned he would not have understood the attention it pays to ordinary language and some of his letters for example letter 48 make it clear that it would have come in for a shell of his impatience with philosophers not excluding stoics who in his eyes degraded Philosophy by wasting their time on verbal puzzles or logical hair splitting but more than this he would have denounced the opinion to which most philosophers tacitly or otherwise have come around in their last half century that it is no part of the business of philosophy to turn people into better persons as tantamount to desertion or less Majesty his tremendous faith in philosophy as a mistress was grounded on a belief that her end was the Practical one of curing Souls of bringing peace and order to the feverish minds of men pursuing the wrong AIMS in life what we say should be of use not just entertaining even speculation on the natural meaning of the universe was of secondary importance something which the philosopher might or might not as he chose take up in Leisure moments a philosopher's word should as a Quaker might put it speak to our condition fielding's observation that few people in the position of being overloaded with prosperity or adversity could be too wise or too foolish not to gain from Reading Seneca might have gratified him not merely as an indication that his writings were proving of use to later generations but also as showing that a philosopher could still be regarded as someone to be turned to for advice or consolation to Seneca as letter 90 and other letters plainly show the philosopher and the wise man were the same person whether or not his letters may still be turned to for their pointers to the contented life they cannot be read without noticing how far in advance of their time are many of his ideas on the shows in the arena for example or the treatment of slaves his implicit belief in the equality and Brotherhood of Man despite all barriers of race or class or rank was one resurrected from the days of the early historics which led directly to great improvements of the legal position of slaves besides explaining the then remarkable attitude towards slaves expressed in letter 47 the belief was also The Germ of the notion of natural law the law which was thought to transcend National boundaries and form a basis for the validity of international law these elements of stoicism made their not so small or indirect contribution to the French and American Revolutions Seneca and literature his letters and other writings Seneca quintillion tells us turned his hand to practically everything which can be made the subject of study speeches poems letters dialogues all surviving much of this is lost including all his speeches political and forensic a biography of his father and essays or treatises on marriage Superstition and a variety of other subjects mainly scientific The Works remaining to us apart from brief poems or epigrams whose attribution to Seneca is sometimes dumped for are of two mankinds there are first the philosophical letters and essays including treatises with such titles as the happy life the shortness of Life Providence anger clemency problems in Natural Science and literary consolationes to persons in bereavement and secondly there are other tragedies probably never staged and intended only for reading or recitation among a relatively small circle the 124 letters to lasilius comprise something entirely new in literature for in these which were his most conspicuous and immediate literary success Seneca if anyone is the founder of the essay as Francis Bacon put it to Prince Henry in the dedication of his own essays the word is late but the thing is ancient for seneca's Epistles to lasilius if one marked them well are but essays that is dispersed meditations though conveyed in the form of Epistles the epistle I Morales are essays in Disguise it has been said that they were real letters edited for publication it seems most likely that they were intended from the first for publication possibly preceded by an interval of private circulation no replies have come down to us the atmosphere varies from that of lively not to say colloquial conversation to that of the serious treaties it is occasionally raised to higher levels but generally remains informal the teaching is generously eclectic the first 30 letters each contain some quotation from or reference to writings of the main rival philosophical School the epicureans the introduction of imaginary queries or objections often scathing in tone from the correspondent or another interjector and the frequent and Urgent exhortation of The Listener to self-improvement suggests the atmosphere of the diatribe while confidence is about the rider's own character and the not uncommon choice of consolation or friendship as a theme serve to keep up the air of the letter personal happenings or surroundings are regularly made the occasion of or the preliminary to Serious Reflections in the abstract there are also biting condemnations of ways of life around the writer particularly among the bored and pleasure-seeking Roman aristocracy rumors found true for culture in an assimilable form in balanced discussions of time on a philosophical or ethical problems or in the development of thoughts on for example poetry or physical phenomena or Style his style with Seneca is of considerable importance notwithstanding his own condemnation of people who give less attention to what they had to say than how they will say it here's a signal example of a writer to whom form mattered as much as content in writers like him in what is commonly been called the Silver age of Latin literature constant striving after terseness and originality of expression gave rise to an arresting and not easily digested Style there were reasons for the development of this pointed Style with the passing of the Republic and succession of a series of suspicious Emperors there had been a diminution both in the range of subject matter which was safe and in the Practical value of a training and rhetoric for a career in public life the leisured Roman now increasingly over littered turned his training to literary rather than political ends and the means to the prime new end of stylistic Brilliance were those of rhetoric all this was encouraged by the fashion of giving public readings of one's work in which success almost came to be measured by the ability of each and every sentence to win Applause carried over two from the schools of rhetoric was unliking for sometimes daringly poetic words especially from Virgil and artificial forms of expression more typical of verse than prose going with the overriding aim of pithinus or epigrammatic brevity contrasting so greatly with the style of Cicero a century before was an Indulgence in colloquialisms seneca's use of popular terms of phrase and everyday Expressions a practice rare in Roman authors not writing for the comic stage or on technical subjects and deliberate cultivation of the easy conversational manner are somehow reconciled with elements of style even in the letters which to us seem highly wrought and Polished the exploitation of such figures as antithesis alliteration homeotelluta and all manner of other players upon worlds Paradox and oxymoron opposition and asinderton the use of cases and prepositions in uncommon connotations all contribute to the twin aims of brevity and Sparkle the result May read more naturally in Latin than it ever could in English but is nonetheless apt to leave the reader dazzled and fatigued all the wealth and Ingenuity of epigram and illustration does not prevent us from feeling that the sentence is often simply repeat the same thought clothed in constantly different guises over and over again as fronto complained in the century following and this reluctance as it appears to say what one has to say and then have done with it instead of continuing the Restless manufacture of yet build a more hard-hitting or more finished sentences or Proverbs sometimes arouses the impatience of more modern readers there is macaulay's celebrated statement in a letter to a friend I cannot bear Seneca his works are made up of mottos there is hardly a sentence which might not be quoted but to read him straightforward is like dining on nothing but anchovies source quintillion considered that Seneca whom by and large he respected and admired weakened the force of his teaching by his manner of writing and others have wondered whether his style is not Unworthy of his subject it is interesting to hear quintillion speaking of his struggle to win his students away from such models as Seneca who he said practically alone among authors was to be found on the shelves of every young man at that time as an academician who stood for Orthodoxy and a returned to the old or ciceronian manner he could not bring himself to give the Seal of his approval to an author whose writing showed in his opinion a degree of corruption all the more dangerous through the very attractiveness of the faults in which it abounds and who had actually voiced the heresy there are no fixed rules of style his influence and appeal while Scholars and school Masters in the century following continued to condemn Seneca early Christians were taking to this kindred spirit among Pagan writers so many of whose ideas and attitudes they felt able to adopt or share anthologies were made of him and he was frequently quoted by such writers as Jerome lactantias and Augustine tertullian called him sepe nosta often one of us the extant set of letters purporting to be correspondence between Seneca and Saint Paul probably composed by a Christian but apparently believed genuine until quite modern times LED Jerome to include him in his so-called catalog of sense and no doubt helps to explain his reputation in the Middle Ages much as the supposed Prophecy of the birth of the Messiah in Virgil's fourth eclog helped to make the latter's name in Christendom only Cicero perhaps among classical authors was better known in medieval times and until Aristotle was rediscovered by Western Europe seneca's main scientific work the naturalis christianes was the Undisputed Authority on the subject with which it dealt Dante Chaucer and petrarch were great admirers and quotas of his writings printing spread his influence the first printed version of the epistuli being published in or about 1475 at Rome Paris and Strasbourg Erasmus was the first person to produce a critical Edition in 1515 and Calvin's first work was an addition 1532 of the day clementia an essay originally written to encourage clemency and Nero and incidentally inspiring much of the quality of Mercy speech in The Merchant of Venice montane was the first and the most conspicuously indebted borrower from Seneca among the great modern literary figures pasquez admiration for montaigne prompted him to say as for his essays which I call masterpieces there is no book in my possession which I have so greatly cherished I always find something in it to please me it is a French Seneca appreciations of Seneca as a moralist may be quoted from many sources John of Salisbury is supposed to have said if quintillion would excuse my saying so there are very few if any writers on conduct among non-christians whose words and ideas can be more readily applied to all kinds of practical things Emerson urged make your own Bible select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your reading have been to you like the blast of Triumph out of Shakespeare Seneca Moses John and Paul he has placed an even more exalted Company by bodola in his essay de lessons in which he seems at one point to be ascribing modern civilized manners to La venue De Jesus Plato and letters to Peter Giles we find Erasmus writing in the words of frood in fraternal Good Humor advising him to Irregular at his work to keep a journal to remember that life was short to study Plato and Seneca love his wife and disregard the world's opinion Queen Elizabeth the first did much at Mars seneca's wholesome advisings Cesar godson Sir John Harrington who saw much of her translating thereof although great literary figures have usually been fondest of the letters it was his place which with all their faults had the greatest effect on European literature if you seek seneca's Memorial look round on the tragic stage of England France and Italy the late Elizabethan age and early 17th century with a high water mark of seneca's influence as a writer well-known and imitated among lyric poets and essayists as well as dramatists his popularity lasted for some time in France where his admirers included Descartes Coney LaFontaine Pusa Russo didero Balzac and Sant berv but disappeared almost all together in England the enthusiasm of for example de Quincy a nobler master of thinking paganism has not to show nor when the of criticism has done its worst a more brilliant master of composition is exceptional and Seneca at the present time may be called a forgotten author letter number two judging from what you tell me and from what I hear I feel that you show great promise you do not tear from place to place and unsettle yourself with one move after another restlessness of that sort is symptomatic of a sick mind nothing to my way of thinking is a better proof of a well-ordered mind than a man's ability to stop just where he is and pass some time in his own company be careful however that there is no element of discussiveness and desultredness about this reading you referred to this reading of many different authors and books of every description you should be extending your stay among writers whose genius is unquestionable deriving constant nourishment from them if you wish to gain anything from your reading that will find a lasting place in your mind to be everywhere is to be nowhere people who spend their whole life traveling abroad end up having plenty of places where they can find Hospitality but no real friendships the same must needs be the case with people who never set about acquiring an intimate acquaintance with any one great writer but skip from one to another paying flying visits to the mall food that is vomited up as soon as it is eaten is not assimilated into the body and does not do one any good nothing hinders a cure so much as frequent changes of treatment a wound will not heal over if it is being made the subject of experiments with different ointments a plant which is frequently moved never grows strong nothing is so useful that it can be of any service in the mere passing a multitude of books only gets in one's way so if you are unable to read all the books in your possession you have enough when you have all the books you are able to read and if you say but I feel like opening different books at different times my answer will be this tasting one dish after another is the sign of a fussy stomach where the foods are dissimilar and diverse in range they lead to contamination of the system not nutrition so always read well tried authors and if at any moment you find yourself wanting a change from a particular author go back to ones you have read before each day to acquire something which will help you to face poverty or death and other ills as well after running over a lot of different thoughts pick out one to be digested thoroughly that day this is what I do myself out of the many bits I've been reading I lay hold of one my thought for today is something which I found an epicurus yes I actually make a practice of going over to the enemies Camp by way of reconnaissance not as a deserter a cheerful poverty he says is an honorable state but if it is cheerful it is not poverty at all it is not the man who has too little who is poor but the one who hankers after more what difference does it make how much there is laid away in a man's safe or in his barns how many head of stock he grazes or how much Capital he puts out at interest if he is always after what is another's that only counts what he has yet to get never what he has already you ask what is the proper limit to a person's wealth first having what is essential and second having what is enough letter number three you have sent me a letter by the hand of a friend of yours as you call him and in the next sentence you warned me to avoid discussing your Affairs freely with him since you are not even in the habit of doing so yourself in other words you have described him as being a friend and then denied this in one and the same letter now if you were using that word in a kind of popular sense and not according to its strict meaning and calling him a friend in much the same way as we refer to candidates as gentlemen or hail someone with the greeting my dear fellow if when we meet him his name sips our memory we can let this pass but if you are looking on anyone as a friend when you do not trust him as you trust yourself you are making a grave mistake and have failed to grasp sufficiently at the full force of true friendship certainly you should discuss everything with a friend but before you do so discuss in your mind the man himself after friendship is formed you must trust but before that you must judge those people who contrary to a theophrastrous advice judge a man after they have met him their friend instead of the other way around certainly put the cart before the horse think for a long time whether or not you should admit a given person to your friendship but when you have decided to do so welcome him heart and soul and speak as unreservedly with him as you would with yourself you should I need hardly say live in such a way that there is nothing which you could not as easily tell your enemy as keep to yourself but seeing that certain matters do arise on which convention decrease silence the things you should share with your friend are all your worries and deliberations regard him as loyal and you will make him loyal some men's fear of being deceived has taught people to deceive them by their suspiciousness they give them the right to do the wrong thing by them why should I keep back anything when I'm with a friend why shouldn't I imagine I'm alone when I'm in his company there are certain people who tell any person they meet things that should only be confided to friends unburdening themselves of whatever is on their minds into any ear they please others again are shy of confiding in their closest friends and would not even let themselves if they could help it into the secrets they keep hidden deep down inside themselves we should do neither trusting everyone is as much a fault as trusting no one though I should call the first the worthier and the second the safer Behavior similarly people who never relax and people who are invariably in a relaxed State marriage or disapproval the former as much as the latter for a delight in bustling about is not industry it is only the Restless energy of a haunted mind and the state of mind that looks on all activity as thousand is not true Repose but a spineless inertia now this prompts me to memorize something which I came across in pomponias some men have shrunk so far into dark Corners that objects in bright daylight seem quite blurred to them a balanced combination of the two attitudes is what we want the active man should be able to take things easily well the man who is inclined towards Repose should be capable of action ask nature she will tell you that she made both day and night letter number five I view with pleasure and approval the way you keep on at your studies and sacrifice everything to your single-minded efforts to make yourself every day a better man I do not merely urge you to persevere in this I actually implore you to let me give you though this one piece of advice refrain from following the example of those whose craving is for attention not their own Improvement by doing certain things which are calculated to give rise to comment on your appearance or way of living generally avoid shabby attire long hair an unkempt beard an unspoken dislike of silverware sleeping on the ground and all other misguided means of self-advertisement the very name of philosophy however modest the manner in which it is pursued is unpopular enough as it is imagine what the reaction would be if we started dissociating ourselves from the conventions of society inwardly everything should be different but our outward face should conform with the crowd our clothes should not be gaudy yet there should not be Dowdy either we should not keep silver plate with inlays of solid gold but at the same time we should not imagine that doing without gold and silver is proof that we are leading the simple life that I am be aware of life not diametrically opposed to but better than that of the mob otherwise we shall repel and alienate the very people whose reform we desire we shall make them moreover reluctant to imitate Us in anything for fear that they may have to imitate Us in everything the first thing philosophy promises us is the feeling of Fellowship of belonging to Mankind and being members of a community being different will mean the abandoning of that Manifesto we must watch that the means by which we hope to gain admiration do not earn ridicule and hostility our motto as everyone knows is to live in Conformity with nature it is quite contrary to Nature to torture one's body to reject simple standards of cleanliness and make a point of being dirty to adopt a diet that is not just plain but hideous and revolting in the same way as craving for dainties is a token of extravagant living avoidance of familiar and inexpensive dishes but tokens insanity philosophy calls for simple living not for doing Penance and the simple way of life need not be a crude one the standard which I accept is this one's life should be a compromise between the ideal and the popular morality people should admire our way of life but they should at the same time find it understandable does that mean we are to act just like other people is there to be no distinction between us and Them well most certainly there is any close Observer should be aware that we are different from the mob anyone entering our home should admire us rather than our Furnishings it is a great man that can treat his earthenware as if it was silver and a man who treats his silver as if it were earthenware is no less great finding wealth an intolerable burden is the mark of an unstable mind but let me share with you as usual the day's small find which today is something that I noticed in the stoic writer hecato limiting one's desires actually helped to cure one of fear cease to hope he said and you will cease to fear but how you will ask can things as diverse as these be linked well the fact is lucidious that they are bound up with one another unconnected as they may seem widely different than they are the two of them March in unison like a prisoner and the escort he is handcuffed to fear keeps Pace with hope nor does their so moving together surprise me both belong to a mind in suspense to a mind in a state of anxiety through looking into the future both are mainly due to projecting our thoughts far ahead of us instead of adapting ourselves to the present thus it is that foresight the greatest blessing Humanity has been given is transformed into a curse wild animals run from the dangers they actually see and once they have escaped them worry no more we however are tormented alike by what is past and what is to come a number of our blessings do us harm for memory brings back the agony of fear while foresight brings it on prematurely no one confines his unhappiness to the present letter number six I see in my shelter cilius not just an improvement but a transformation although I would not Venture as yet to assure you or even to hope that there is nothing left in me needing to be changed naturally there are a lot of things about me requiring to be built up or fine down or eliminated even this the fact that it perceives the failings it was unaware of in itself before is evidence of a change for the better in one's character in the case of some sick people it is a matter of congratulation when they come to realize for themselves that they are sick I should very much like then to share this also sudden metamorphosis of mine with you doing so would make me start to feel a shore of faith in the friendship that exists between us that true friendship which not hope nor fear nor concern for personal Advantage ever Sanders that friendship in which and for which people are ready to die I can give you plenty of examples of people who have not been lacking a friend but friendship something that can never happen when Mutual inclination draws two personalities together in a fellowship of desire for all that is Honorable why can't it happen because they know that everything and especially their setbacks is shared between them you can't imagine how much of an alteration I see each day bringing about in me send me to you will be saying the things you found so effectual indeed I desire to transfer every one of them to you part of my joy in learning is that it puts me in the position to teach nothing however outstanding and however hopeful will ever give me any pleasure if the knowledge is to be for my benefit alone if wisdom were offered me on the one condition that I should keep it shut away and not divulge it to anyone I should reject it there's no enjoying the possession of anything valuable unless one has someone to share it with I shall send you accordingly the actual books themselves and to save you a lot of trouble hunting all over the place for passages likely to be of you see you I shall Mark the passages so that you can turn straight away to the words I approve and admire personal Converse though and daily intimacy with someone will be of more benefit to you than any discourse you should really be here and on the spot firstly because people believe their eyes rather more than their ears and secondly because the road is a long one if one proceeds by way of precepts but short and effectual if by way a personal example client fees would never have been the image of Zeno if he had merely heard him lecture he lived with him studied his private life watched him to see if he lived in accordance with his own principle Plato Aristotle and a host of other philosophers all destined to take different paths derived more from Socrates character than from his words it was not an epicurus school but living under the same roof as epicurus the term metrodorus her Marcus and pollyonus into Great Men and yet I do not summon you to my side solely for the sake of your own progress but for my own as well for we shall be of the utmost benefit to each other meanwhile since I owe you the daily allowance I'll tell you what took my fancy in the writings of hecato today what progress have I made I am beginning to be my own friend that is progress indeed such a person will never be alone and you may be sure he is a friend of all letter number seven you ask me to say what you should consider is particularly important to avoid my answer is this a mass crowd something to which you cannot entrust yourself yet without risk I at any rate am ready to confess my own Frailty in this respect I never come back home with quite the same moral character I went out with something or other becomes unsettled where I had achieved internal peace someone or other of the things I had put to flight reappears on the scene we who are recovering from a prolonged spiritual sickness are in the same condition as invalids who have been affected to such an extent by prolonged indisposition that they cannot once be taken out of doors without ill effects associating with people in large numbers is actually harmful there is not one of them that will not make some Vice or other attractive to us or leave us carrying the imprint of it or be dorbed all unawares with it and inevitably enough the larger the size of the crowd we mingle with the greater the danger but nothing is as ruinous to the character as sitting away one's time at a show for it is then through the medium of entertainment that vices creep into one with more than usual ease but what do you take me to mean that I go home more selfish more self-seeking and more self-indulgent yes and what is more a person crueler a less Humane through having been in contact with human beings I happened to go to one of these shows at the time of the lunch hour interlude expecting there to be some light and witty entertainment then some respite for the purpose of affording people's eyes are rest from human blood far from it all the earlier contests were charity in comparison the nonsense is dispensed with now what we have now is murder pure and simple the combatants have nothing to protect them their whole bodies are exposed to the blows every thrust they launch gets home a great many Spectators prefer this to the ordinary matches and even to the special popular demand ones and quite naturally there are no helmets and no Shields repelling the weapons what is the point of armor or of skill all that sort of thing just makes the death slower and coming in the morning men are thrown to the Lions and the bears but it is the spectators they are thrown to in the lunch hour The Spectators insist that each on killing his man shall be thrown against another to be killed in his turn and the eventual Victor is reserved by them for some other form of Butchery the only exit for the contestants is death fire and steel keep the slaughter going and all this happens while the arena is virtually empty but he was a highway robber he killed a man and what of it granted that as a murderer he deserved this punishment would have viewed our new wretched fellow to deserve to watch it kill him flog him burn him why does he run at the other man's weapon in such a cowardly way why isn't he less half-hearted about killing why isn't he a bit more enthusiastic about dying whip him forward to get his wounds make them each offer the other a bear breasts and trade blue for blow on them and when there is an interval in the show oh let's have some throats cut in the meantime so that there's something happening come now I say surely you people realize if you realize nothing else that bad examples have a way of recalling on those who set them give thanks to the immortal Gods at the men to whom you are giving a lesson in cruelty are not in a position to profit from it when a mind is impressionable and as none too firm a hold on what is right it must be rescued from the crowd it is so easy for it to go over to the majority a Socrates a Cato or a lilius might have been shaken in his principles by a multitude of people different from himself such as the merger of the inability of any of us even as we perfect our personalities adjustment to withstand the onset of vices when they come with such a mighty following a single example of extravagant or greed does a lot of harm an intimate who leads a Pampered life gradually makes one soft and flabby a wealthy neighbor provides Cravings in one a companion with a malicious nature tends to rub off some of his rust even on someone of an innocent and open-hearted nature what then do you imagine the effect on a person's character is when the assault comes from the World At Large you must inevitably either hate or imitate the world but the right thing is to shine both courses you should neither become like the bad because there are many nor be an enemy of the many because they are unlike you retire into yourself as much as you can associate with people who are likely to improve you welcome Those whom you are capable of improving the process is a mutual on men learn as they teach and there is no reason why any pride in advertising your talents abroad should lure you forward into the public eye inducing you to give readings of your works or deliver lectures I shall be glad to see you doing that if what you had to offer them was suitable for the crowd I've been talking about but the fact is not one of them is really capable of understanding you you might perhaps come across one here and there but even they would need to be trained and developed by you to a point where they could grasp your teaching but whose benefit then did I learn it all if it was for your own benefit that you learned it you have no call to fear that your trouble may have been wasted just to make sure that I have not been learning solely for my own benefit today let me share with you three fine quotations I have come across it's concerned with something like the same idea one of them is by way of payment of the usual debt so far as this letter is concerned and the other two you ought to regard as an advance on account to me says Democritus a single man is a crowd and a crowd is a single man equally good is the answer given by the person whoever it was his identity is uncertain who when asked what was the object of all the trouble he took over a piece of craftsmanship when it would never reach more than a very few people replied a few is enough for me so is one and so is none the third is a nice expression used by epicurus in a letter to one of his colleagues I am writing this he says not for the eyes of the many but for yours alone for each of us is audience enough for the other lay these up in your heart my dear lucillius that you may score on the pleasure that comes from the majority's approval the many speak highly of you but have you really any grounds for satisfaction with yourself if you are the kind of person the many understand your merits should not be outward facing letter number eight are you of all people you write really telling me to avoid the crowd to retire from the world and find contentment in a good conscience where are those stoic rules of yours the call on a man to die and harness who come now do I really give you the impression that I advocate a life of inactivity I've only buried Myself Away behind closed doors in order to be able to be of use to more people with me no day is ever wild away at ease I claim a good part of my nights for study I have no time for sleep I just succumb to it keeping my eyes at their work when they are heavy lidded and exhausted from lack of rest I have withdrawn from Affairs as well as from society and from my own Affairs in particular I'm acting on behalf of later generations I am writing down a few things that may be of use to them I am committing to writing some helpful recommendations which might be compared to the formula of successful medications the effectiveness of which I have experienced in the case of my own Souls which may not have been completely cured but have at least ceased to spread I am pointing out to others the right path which I have recognized only late in life when I am worn out with my wanderings avoid I cry whatever is approved of by the mob and things that other gift of chance whenever circumstance brings some welcome thing your way stop in suspicion and alarm wild animals and fish alike are taken in by this or that inviting Prospect do you look on them as presents given you by Fortune they are snares anyone among you who wishes to lead a secure life will do his very best to steer worldwide of these beated bounties which comprise yet another instance of the errors where miserable creatures fall into we think these things are ours when in fact it is we who are caught that track leads to precipices life on that giddy level ends in a fall once moreover Prosperity begins to carry us off course we are no more capable even of bringing the ship to a standstill than of going down with the constellation that she has been held on her course or of going down once and for all Fortune does not just capsize the boat she hurled it headlong on the rocks and dashes it to pieces cling therefore to this sound and wholesome plan of Life indulge the body just so far as suffices for good health it needs to be treated somewhat strictly to prevent it from being disobedient to the spirit your food should appease your hunger your drink quench your thirst your clothing keep out the cold your house be a protection against inclement weather it makes no difference whether it is built of turf or a variegated marble imported from another country what you have to understand is that thatch makes a person just as good a roof as gold does spurn everything that is added on by way of decoration and display unnecessary labor reflect that nothing merits aberration except the spirit the impressiveness of which prevents it from being impressed by anything if these are the things I'm saying to myself if these are the things I'm saying to Future Generations don't you think I'm doing more good than when I go into court to enter into a recognizance on someone's behalf or stamp my seal on a will or lend my assistance by word or action in the Senate to some candidate for office those who appear inactive are believe me engaged in far more important activity they're dealing with matters Divine and human at the same moment but the time has come to make an end and in accordance with the practice I've started to make some disbursement on this letters behalf for this I shall not draw on my own resources I'm still turning over the pages of epicurus and the following saying one I read today comes from him to win true Freedom you must be a slave to philosophy a person who surrenders and subjects himself to her doesn't have his application deferred from day to day he's emancipated on the spot the very service of philosophy being freedom quite possibly you'll be demanding to know why I'm quoting so many fine sayings from epicurus rather than ones belonging to our own School but why should you think of them as belonging to epicurus and not as common property think how many poets say things that philosophers have said or ought to have said not to mention the tragedians or our native Roman drama which has a serious element in it as well and stands halfway between comedy and tragedy think of the quantity of brilliant lines to be found lying about in farses alone think of the number of Publicis verses that really ought to be spoken by actors wearing the tragic buskins instead of barefooted pantomime actors I'll quote one verse of his which belongs to philosophy and the same facet of philosophy that I was occupied with just now a verse in which he proclaims that gifts which chance brings our way are not to be regarded as positions if you pray a thing May and it does come your way it is a long way from being your own I recall you're expressing the same idea a good deal more happily and succinctly what Fortune has made yours is not your own and I can't pass over that even happier expression of yours the Boon that could be given can be withdrawn this being from your own stock I am not debiting it to your account letter number nine you desire to know whether epicurus is right in one of his letters in criticizing those who maintain that the wise man is content with himself and therefore needs no friend this is what epicurus objects to in stillbo and those who believe that the Supreme ideal in life is a mind devoid of feeling or as we say impatience we are bound to involve ourselves in ambiguity if we try to express in a single word the meaning of the Greek term apathia by transferring it straight into our word in patientia for it may be understood in the opposite sense to the one we wish with people taking it to signify the man who is unable to endure anything that goes badly for him instead of what we mean by it the man who refuses to allow anything that goes badly for him to affect him consider then whether it might not be preferable to call it a mind that is invulnerable or above all suffering the difference here between the Epicurean and our own school is this our wise man feels his troubles but overcomes them while their wise man does not even feel them we share with them the belief that the wise man is content with himself nevertheless self-sufficient though he is he still desires a friend a neighbor a companion notice how self-contented he is on occasion such a man is content with a mere partial self if he loses a hand as a result of war or disease or has one of his eyes or even both put out in an accident he will be satisfied with what remains of himself and be no less pleased with his body now that it is maimed and incomplete than he was when it was whole but while he does not Hank her after what he has lost he does prefer not to lose them and this is what we mean when we say the wise man is self-content he is so in the sense that he is able to do without friends not that he desires to do without them when I speak of his being able to do this what I am saying in fact amounts to this he Bears the loss of a friend with equanimity not that he will then be without a friend for it is his to decide how soon he makes good the loss just as Phineas can carve another statue straight away if he loses one so our wise man with his skill in the art of making friends will fill the place of someone he has lost I suppose you will want to know how he will be able to make a friend so quickly well I shall tell you provided we agree that I may make this the moment to pay my debt and square my account so far as this letter is concerned I shall show you says hekato a love filter compounded without drug or herb or witch's spell it is this if you wish to be loved love great pleasure is to be found not only in keeping up an old and established friendship but also in beginning and building up a new one there is the same difference between having gained a friend and actually gaining a friend as there is between a farmer harvesting and a farmer sowing the philosopher of Talus used to say that it was more of a pleasure to make a friend than to have one in the same way as an artist derives more pleasure from painting than from having completed a picture when his whole attention is absorbed in concentration on the work he's engaged on a tremendous sense of satisfaction is created in him by his very absorption there is never quite the same gratification after he Has Lifted his hand from the finished work from then on what he is enjoying is the Arts end product whereas it was the art itself that he enjoyed while he was actually painting so with our children though growing up brings wider fruits but their infancy was sweeter to come back to the question the wise man self-sufficient as he is still desires to have a friend if only for the purpose of practicing friendship and ensuring that those talents are not idle not as epicurus but it is in the same letter for the purpose of having someone to come and sit beside his bed when he is ill or come to his rescue when he is hard up or thrown into chains but so that on the contrary he may have someone by whose sick bed he himself must sit or whom he may himself release when that person is held prisoner by hostile hands anyone thinking of his own interests and seeking out friendship with this in view is making a great mistake things will end as they began he has secured a friend who is going to come to his Aid if captivity threatens at the first Clank of a chain that friend will disappear these are what are commonly called fair weather friendships a person adopted as a friend for the sake of his usefulness will be cultivated only for so long as he is useful this explains the crowd of friends that clusters around successful men and a lonely atmosphere about the ruined their friends running away when it comes to the testing point it explains the countless scandalous instances of people deserting or betraying others out of fear for themselves the ending inevitably matches the beginning a person who starts being friends with you because it pays him will similarly cease to be friends because it pays him to do so if there is anything in a particular friendship that attracts a man other than the Friendship itself the attraction of some reward or other will counterbalance out of friendship what is my object in making a friend to have someone to be able to die for someone I may follow into Exile someone for whose life I may put myself up as security and pay the price as well the thing you describe is not friendship but a business deal looking to the likely consequences with Advantage as its goal there can be no doubt that the desired lovers have for each other is not so very different from Friendship you might say it was friendship gone mad well then does anyone ever fall in love with a View to a profit or advancement or celebrity actual love in itself heedless of all other considerations inflames people's hearts with a passion for the beautiful object not without the hope to that the affection will be mutual how then can the Nobles stimulus of friendship be associated with any ignoble desire you may say we are not at present concerned with the question whether friendship is something to be cultivated for its own sake but this on the contrary is exactly what needs proving most for a friendship is something to be sought out for its own sake the self-contented man is entitled to pursue it and how does he approach it in the same way as he would any object of great Beauty not drawn by gain not out of alarm at the vicissities of Fortune to procure friendship only for better and not for worse is to Robert of all its dignity the wise man is content with himself a lot of people lucilius put quite the wrong interpretation on this statement they removed the wise man from all contact with the world outside shutting him up inside his own skin we must be quite clear about the meaning of this sentence and just how much it claims to say it applies to him so far as happiness in life is concerned for this all he needs is a rational and elevated spirit that treats Fortune with disdain for the actual business of living he needs a great number of things I should like to draw your attention to a similar distinction made by a crucipus the wise man he said lacked nothing but needed a great number of things whereas the Fool on the other hand needs nothing for he does not know how to use anything but lacks everything the wise man needs hands and eyes and a great number of things that are required for the purposes of day-to-day life but he lacks nothing for lacking something implies that it is a necessity and nothing to the wise man is a necessity self-contented as he is then he does need friends and wants as many of them as possible but not to enable him to lead a happy life this he will have even without friends the suprema deal does not call for any external AIDS it is homegrown wholly self-developed once it starts looking outside itself for any part of itself it is on the way to being dominated by Fortune but what sort of life people may say will the wise man have if he is going to be left without any friends when he is thrown into prison or stranded among foreigners or detained in the course of a voyage in distant parts or Cast Away on some Desert Shore that will be like that of job while nature takes a rest of brief duration when the universe is dissolved the gods are all merged in one finding Repose in himself absorbed in his own thoughts such is more or less the way of the wise man he retires to his inner self is his own company so long in fact as he remains in a position to order his Affairs according to his own judgment he remains self-content even when he marries even when he brings up his children he is self-content and yet he would refuse to live if he had to live without any human company at all natural promptings not thoughts of any advantage to himself impel him towards friendship we are born with a sense of the pleasantness of friendship just as of other things in the same way as there exists in man a distaste for Solitude and a cravings for society Natural Instinct drawing one human being to another so too with this there is something inherent in it that stimulates us into seeking friendships the wise man nevertheless unequal though he is in his Devotion to his friends though regarding them as being no less important and frequently more important than his own self will still consider what is valuable in life to be something wholly confined to his inner self he will repeat the words of stillbo the stillbow whom epicurus letter attacks when his home town was captured and he emerged from the general configuration his children lost his wife lost alone and nonetheless a happy man and was questioned by Demetrius asked why this man known from the destruction he dealt out to towns as Demetrius the city sucker whether he had lost anything he replied I have all my valuables with me there was an active and courageous man Victorious over the very victory of the enemy I have lost he said nothing he made Demetrius wonder whether he had won a victory after all all my possessions he said are with me meaning by this the qualities of a just are good and an enlightened character and indeed the very fact of not regarding as valuable anything that is capable of being taken away we are impressed at the way some creatures pass right through fire without physical harm how much more impressive is the way this man came through the burning and the Bloodshed and the ruins uninjured and unscathed does it make you see how much easier it can be to conquer a whole people than to conquer a single man those words of syllables are equally those of the stoic he too carries his valuables intact through cities burnt to ashes for he is contented with himself this is the line he draws as the boundary for his happiness in case you imagine that we stoics are the only people who produce Noble sayings let me tell you something see that you put this down to my credit even though I have already settled my account with you for today epicurus himself who has nothing good to say for still though has uttered a statement quite like this one of syllables who does not think that what he has is more than ample is an unhappy man even if he is the master of the whole world or if you prefer to see it expressed like this the point being that we should be ruled not by the actual words used but by the sense of them a man is unhappy though he reigned the world over if he does not consider himself supremely happy to show you indeed that these are Sentiments of a Universal Character prompted evidently by Nature herself you will find the following verse in a comic poet not happy he who thinks himself not so what difference did it make after all what your position in life is if you dislike it yourself what about so-and-so you may ask who became rich in such a Despicable manner or such and such a person who gives orders to a great many people but is at the mercy of a great many more supposing they say they are happy will their own opinions to this effect make them happy it does not make any difference what a man says what matters is how he feels ah not how he feels on one particular day but how he feels at all times but you have no need to fear that so valuable a thing may fall into unworthy hands only the wise man is content with what is his all foolishness suffers the burden of dissatisfaction with itself letter number 11. I've had a conversation with your talented friend from the very beginning of his talk with me it was apparent what considerable Gifts of character and intelligence he possesses he gave me a foretaste of his capabilities to which he will certainly live up for the things he said courtesy was quite off his guard were entirely unrehearsed as he was recovering his self-possession he could scarcely get over his embarrassment all was a good sign in a young man so deep had the blush been that suffused his face this I rather suspect will remain with him even when he has built up his character and stripped it of all weakness even when he has become a wise man for no amount of wisdom enables one to do away with physical or mental weaknesses that arise from natural causes anything inborn or ingrained in one can by dinner practice be a laid but not overcome when they face a crowd of people some men even ones with the stoutest of Hearts break into the sort of sweat when usually sees on persons in an overheated and exhausted state some men experience are trembling at the knees when they're about to speak some are chattering of the teeth the stuttering tongue or stammering lips these are things which neither training nor experience ever eliminates nature just Wheels her power and uses the particular weakness to make even the strongest conscious of her one of these things I well know is a blush which has a habit of suddenly threatening the faces of men of even the most dignified demeanor it is of course more noticeable in the young with their hotter blood and sensitive complexions nevertheless seasoned men and aging men alike are affected by it some men are more to be feared on the occasions when they flush than at any other time as if in so doing they let loose all their inhibitions was at his wildest when the blood had rushed to his Visage no features were more susceptible than pompous he never failed to blush in company and particularly at public meetings I remember fabiana's blushing when he appeared to give evidence before the Senate and this bashfulness looked wonderfully well on him when this happens it is not due to some mental infirmity but the unfamiliarity of some situation or other which may not necessarily strike any alarm or to inexperienced people but does produce a reaction in them if they are thus liable through having a natural physical predisposition to it certain people have good ordinary blood and others just have an animated Lively sort of blood that comes to the face quickly no amount of wisdom as I said before ever banishes these things otherwise if she eradicated every weakness wisdom would have dominion over the world of nature once physical makeup and the attributes that were once lot at Birth remain settled no matter how much or how long the personality May strive after perfect adjustment one cannot ban these things any more than one can call them up the token is used to portray embarrassment by professional actors those actors who portray emotions simulate unhappiness and reproduce for us fear and apprehension are a hanging of the head a dropping of the voice a casting down of the eyes and keeping them fixed on the ground a blush is something they can never manage to reproduce it is something that will neither be summoned up nor be told to stay away against these things philosophy holds out no remedy and avails one nothing they are quite independent they come unbidden they go Unwritten my letter calls for a conclusion oh here's one for you one that will serve you in good stead too which I'd like you to take to heart we need to set our affections on some good man and keep him constantly before our eyes so that we may live as if he were watching us and do everything as if he saw what we were doing this my dear lucillius is epicurus advice and in giving it he has given us a guardian and a moral tutor and not without reason either misdeeds are greatly diminished of a witness is always standing near intending doers the personality should be provided with someone it can Revere someone whose influence can make even its private inner life more pure happy the man who improves other people not merely when he is in their presence but even when he is in their thoughts and happy too is the person who can so Revere another as to adjust and shape his own personality in the light of Recollections even of that other a person able to Revere another thus will soon deserve to be revered himself so choose yourself a Cato or if Cato seems too severe for you allelius a man whose character is not quite so strict choose someone whose way of life as well as words and whose very face as mirroring the character that lies behind it have won your approval be always pointing him out to yourself either as your guardian or as your model there is a need in my view for someone as a standard against which our characters can measure themselves without a ruler to do it against you won't make the Crooked straight letter number 12. wherever I turn I see fresh evidence of my old age I visited my place just out of Rome recently and was grumbling about the expense of maintaining the building which was in a dilapidated state my manager told me the trouble wasn't due to any neglect on his part he was doing his utmost but the house was old that house had taken shape under my own hands what's to become of me of stones of my own age are crumbling like that losing my temper I seized at the first excuse that presented itself for venting my irritation on him it's quite clear I said that these plane trees are being neglected there's no foliage on them look at those knotty dried up branches and those wretched flicking trunks that wouldn't happen if someone dug around them and watered them he swore by my guardian angel he was doing his utmost in everything his care was unremitting but the poor things were just old between you and me now I had planted them myself and seen the first Leaf appearing on them myself then turning towards the front door I said who's that who's that decrepit old person the doors the proper place for him all right he looks as if he's on the way out where'd you get him from what was the attraction in taking over someone else's dead for burial whereupon the man said don't you recognize me I'm felicio you used to bring me toy figures I'm the son of the manager philosophers your pet playmate the man's absolutely crazy I said become a little child again has he actually called himself my playmate well the way he's losing his teeth at this very moment is perfectly possible so I owe it to this place of mine near town that my old age was made clear to me at every turn well we should cherish old age and enjoy it it's full of pleasure if you know how to use it fruit tastes most delicious just when its season is ending the charms of Youth are at their greatest at the time of its passing it is the final glass which pleases the inveterate Drinker the one that sets the crowning touch on his intoxication and sends him off into Oblivion every pleasure defers till its last its greatest Delights the time of life which offers the greatest Delight is the age that sees the downward movement not the Steep decline already begun and in my opinion even the age that stands on the brink has pleasures of his own or else the very fact of not experiencing the want of any Pleasures takes their place how nice it is to have outworn one's desires and left them behind well it's not very pleasant though you may say to have death right before one's eyes to this I would say firstly that death ought to be right there before the eyes of a young man just as much as an old one the order in which we each receive our summons is not determined by our precedence in the register and secondly that no one is so very old that it would be quite unnatural for him to hope for one more day every day therefore should be regulated as if it were the one that brings up the rear the one that rounds out and completes Our Lives pacuvius the man who acquired a right to Syria by prescription was in the habit of conducting a memorial ceremony for himself with wine and funeral feasting of the kind we're familiar with and then being carried on a beer from the dinner table to his bed what a chanting to music when on of the words he has lived he has lived in Greek amid the Applause of the young Libertines present never a day passed by but he celebrated his own funeral what he did from discreditable motives we should do from honorable ones saying in all joyfulness and cheerfulness as we retire to our beds I have lived I have completed now the course that fortune long ago allotted me if God adds the morrow we should accept it joyfully the man who looks for the morrow without worrying over it knows a peaceful Independence and a happiness beyond all others Whoever has said I have lived receives a windfall every day he gets up in the morning but I must close this letter now what he'll be saying is he coming to me just as it is without any parting contribution but don't worry he's bringing you something why did I call it something though it's a great deal for what could be more Splendid than the following saying which I'm entrusting to this letter of mine for delivery to you to live under constraint is a misfortune but there is no constraint to live under constraint of course not when on every side there are plenty of short and easy roads to Freedom there for the taking let us thank God that no one can be held a prisoner in life the very constraints can be trampled underfoot oh it was epicurus who said that you protest what business have you got with someone else's property whatever is true is my property and I shall persist in inflicting epicures on you in order to bring it home to the people who take an oath of allegiance to someone and never afterwards consider what is being said but only who said it that the things of greatest Merit are common property letter number 15. our ancestors had a custom observed right down as far as my own lifetime of adding to the opening words of a letter I trust this finds you as it leaves me in good health we have good reason to say I trust this finds you in pursuit of wisdom for this is precisely what is meant by good health without wisdom the mind is sick and the body itself however physically powerful can only have the kind of strength that is found in persons in A demented or Delirious state so this is the sort of healthiness you must make your principal concern you must attend to the other sort as well but see that it takes second place it won't cost you any great trouble if good health is all you want for it is silly my dear lucillius and in no way for an educated man to behave to spend one's time exercising the biceps broadening the neck and shoulders and developing the lungs even when the extra feeding has produced gratifying results and you've put on a lot of muscle you'll never match the strength or weight of a prize ox the greater load moreover on the body is crushing to the spirit and renders it less active so keep the body within bounds as much as you can and make room for the spirit devotees of physical culture have to put up with a lot of nuisances there are the exercises in the first place the toil involved in which drains the vitality and renders an unfit for concentration with a more demanding sort of studies next there is the heavy feeding which dulls mental acuteness then there is the taking on as coaches of the worst brand of slave persons who divide their time between putting on lotion putting down liquor whose idea of a well-spent day consists of getting up a good sweat and then replacing the fluid lost with plenty of drink all the better to be absorbed on a dry stomach drinking and perspiring is the life of a despiptic there are short and simple exercises which will Tire the body without undue delay and save what needs a specially close accounting for time there is running swinging weights about and jumping either high jumping or long jumping or the kind indulged in by the priests of Mars if one may so describe it or to be rather more disrespectful by the laundress pick out any of these for ease and straightforwardness but whatever you do return from body to mind very soon exercise a day and night only a moderate amount of work is needed for it to thrive and develop it is a form of exercise to which cold and heat and even old age are no obstacle cultivate an asset which the passing of time itself improves I'm not telling you to be always bent over a book or writing tablets the mind has to be given some time off but in such a way that it may be refreshed not relaxed till it goes to pieces traveling in one's courage shakes the body up and doesn't interfere with intellectual Pursuits you can read dictate speak or listen nor does walking for that matter preclude any of these activities nor need you look down on voice training though I will not have you practicing any of this ascending and then descending Again by degrees through set scales if you start that you'll be going on to take lessons in walking one slit into your house the sort of person that hunger teaches unheard of occupations and you'll have someone regulating the way you walk and watching the way you use your jaws as you eat and in fact going just as far as your patience and credulity lead his audacity on are you to conclude from what I've just said that your voice should start its exercises with a media shouting at full force well the natural thing is to lead up to it through easy stages so naturally in fact that even persons involved in a quarrel begin in conversational tones only later do they go on to render the air no one makes an impassioned appeal for the help and support of all true men of Rome at the very outset our purpose in all this is not to give the voice exercise but to make it give us exercise I have relieved you then of no little bother to these favors I shall be added the following small contribution a striking Maxim that comes from Greece here it is the life of folly is empty of gratitude full of anxiety it is focused wholly on the future who said that you ask the same man as before and what sort of Life do you think is meant by the life of folly bar bars and asios no he means our own life precipitated by blind desire into activities that are likely to bring us harm and will certainly never bring a satisfaction if they could ever satisfy us they would have done so by now never thinking how pleasant it is to ask for nothing has Splendid it is to be complete and be independent of Fortune so continually remind yourself of cilius of the many things you have achieved when you look at all the people out in front of you think of all the ones behind you if you want to feel appreciative where the Gods in your life are concerned just think how many people you've outdone why be concerned about others come to that when you vote on your own self set yourself a limit which you couldn't even exceed if you wanted to and Say Goodbye at last to those deceptive prizes more precious as those who hope for them than those who have won them if they're anything substantial in them they would sooner or later bring a sense of fullness as it is they simply aggravate the first of those who swallow them away with Pomp and show as for the uncertain lot that the future has in store for me why should I demand from fortune that you should give me this and that rather than demand from myself that I should not ask for them why should I ask for them after all I want to pile them up in total forgetfulness of the Frailty of human existence what is the purpose of my labor is going to be see this day is my last or maybe it isn't but it's not so far away from it letter number 16. it is clear to you I know lucillius that no one can lead a happy life or even one that is bearable without the pursuit of wisdom and that the Perfection of wisdom is what makes the happy life although even the beginnings of wisdom make life bearable yet this conviction clear as it is needs to be strengthened and given deeper Roots through daily reflection making Noble resolutions is not as important as keeping the resolutions you have made already you have to persevere and fortify your pertinacity until the will to good becomes a disposition to good so you needn't go in for all this long-winded protestation or say any more on the subject I'm well aware that you've made a great deal of progress I realize the feelings that prompt you to put these things in your letter and there is no potential speciousness about them but to give you my honest opinion at this stage although I have great hopes of you I do not yet feel quite confident about you and I should like you to adopt the same attitude you've no grant for forming a ready Hasty belief in yourself carry out a searching analysis and close scrutiny of yourself in all sorts of different lights consider above or else whether you've advanced in philosophy or just in actual years philosophy is not an occupation of a popular nature nor is it pursued for the sake of self-advertisement its concern is not with words but with facts it is not carried on with the object of passing the day in an entertaining sort of way and taking the boredom out of leisure it molds and builds the personality orders one's life regulates one's conduct shows one what one should do and what one should leave undone sits at the helm and keeps one on the correct course as one is tossed about in pair of seas without it no one can lead a life free of fear or worry every hour of the day countless situations arise that call for advice and for that advice we have to look to philosophy someone may say what help can philosophy be to me if there is such a thing as fate what help can philosophy be if there is a deity controlling all what help can it be if all is governed by chance for it is impossible either to change what is already determined or to make preparations to meet what is undetermined either in the first case my planning is forestalled by a God who decrees how I am to act or in the second case it is fortune that allows me no freedom to plan whichever of these Alternatives lucillius is true even if all of them are true we still need to practice philosophy whether we are caught in the grasp of an inexorable law of fate whether it is God who is Lord of the universe has ordered all things or whether the Affairs of mankind are tossed and buffeted haphazardly by chance it is philosophy that has the duty of protecting us she will encourage us to submit to God with cheerfulness and to Fortune with defiance she will show you how to follow God and bear what chance may send you but I mustn't pass on here to a discussion of the problem what is within our control if there is a governing Providence whether we are carried along in mesh in a train of fated happenings or whether we are at the mercy of the sudden and the unforeseeable for the present I go back to the point where I was before to advise and urge you not to allow your spiritual enthusiasm to cool off or Fall Away keep a hold on it and put it on a firm footing so that what is a present and enthusiasm may become a settled spiritual disposition if I know you you'll have been looking around from the very start of this letter to see what it's going to bring you by way of a little present search the letter and you'll find it you needn't think my kindness or that remarkable I'm only being generous still with someone else's property why though do I call it someone else's whatever is well said by anyone belongs to me here is another saying of epicurus if you shape your life according to Nature you will never be poor if according to people's opinions you will never be rich Nature's once are small while those opinion are Limitless imagine that you've piled up all that a veritable host of rich men ever possessed that fortune has carried you far beyond the bounds of wealth so far as any private individual is concerned building you a roof of gold and clothing you in Royal Purple conducting you to such a height of opulence and luxury that you hide the Earth with marble flaws putting you in a position not merely to own but to walk all over Treasures throw in sculptures paintings all that has been produced at tremendous pains by all the Arts to satisfy extravagance all these things will only induce in you a craving for even bigger things natural desires are limited those which spring from false opinions have nowhere to stop for falsity has no point of termination when a person is following a track there is an eventual end to it somewhere but with wandering at large there is no limit so give up pointless empty journals and whenever you want to know whether desire arrives in You by something you are pursuing is natural or quite unseeing ask yourself whether it is capable of coming to rest at any point if after going a long way there is always something remaining farther away be sure it is not something natural letter number 18. it is the month of December and yet the whole city is in a sweat festivity State expense is given unrestricted license everywhere there Echoes the noise of preparations on a massive scale it all suggests that the saturnalia holidays are different from the ordinary working day when the difference is really non-existent so much so in fact that the man who said that December used to be a month but is now a year was in my opinion not far wide of the mark if I had you with me I should enjoy Consulting you and finding out what course you think we should follow should we make no alteration in our daily habits or should we take off our togas time was when a change of formal wear would come about only during periods of grave political upheaval whereas with us it happens for holidays and pleasure's sake and have dinner parties with a note of gaiety about them to avoid giving the impression that we disagree with the ways of those around us if I know you as well as I think I do and you had to give a decision in the matter you would say that we should be neither altogether alike nor altogether unlike the festive-hatted crowd but perhaps this is the very season when we should be keeping the soul under strict control making it unique and abstaining from pleasure just when the crowd are all on Pleasure bent if the soul succeeds in avoiding either heading or being carried away in the direction of The Temptations that lead people into extravagant living no sure of proof of its strength of purpose can be vouch-safed remaining dry and sober takes a good deal more strength of will when everyone about one is puking drunk it takes a more developed sense of Fitness on the other hand not to make oneself a person apart to be neither indistinguishable from those about one nor conspicuous by one's difference to do the same things but not in quite the same manner for a holiday can be celebrated without extravagant festivity still my determination to put your moral strength and purpose to the test is such that I propose to give even you the following Direction found in great men's teaching set aside now and then a number of days during which you will be content with the plainest of food and very little of it and with rough coarse clothing and we'll ask yourself is this what one used to dread it is in times of security that the spirit should be preparing itself to deal with difficult times while Fortune is bestowing favors on it then is the time for it to be strengthened against her rebuffs in the midst of Peace the soldier carries out Maneuvers throws up Earthworks against a non-existent enemy and tires himself out with unnecessary toil in order to be equal to it when it is necessary if you want a man to keep his head when the crisis comes you must give him some training before it comes this was the aim of the man who once every month pretended they were poor bringing themselves face to face with want to prevent their ever being terrified by a situation which they had frequently rehearsed you must not at this point imagine that I mean meals like diamonds or the poor man's room or anything else to which the extravagance of wealth resorts to amuse away as tedium that palette must be a real one and the same applies to your smoke and your bread must be hard and grimy endure all this for three or four days at a time sometimes more so that it is a genuine trial and not an amusement at the end of it believe me lucillius you will Revel in being sated for a penny and we've come to see that security from care is not dependent on Fortune for even when she is angry she will always let us have what is enough for our needs there is no reason mind you why you should suppose yourself to be performing a considerable feat in doing this you will only be doing something done by thousands upon thousands of slaves and Paupers but take credit on one account that you will be doing it out of your own free choice and finding it no more difficult to endure on a permanent basis than to try out once in a while we should be practicing with a dummy Target getting to be at home with poverty so that fortune cannot catch us unprepared we shall be easier in Our Minds when Rich if we have come to realize how far from burdensome it is to be poor the great hedonist teacher epicurus used to observe certain periods during which he would be niggedly in satisfying his hunger with the object of seeing to what extent if at all one thereby fell short of attaining full and complete pleasure and whether it was worth going to so much trouble to make the deficit good at least so he says in the letter he wrote to pollyinus in the ear karinus was in office he boasted it indeed that he is managing to feed himself for less than a Hape knee whereas matrotorous not yet having made such good progress needs a whole happening do you think such Fair can do no more than fill a person up he can fill in with pleasure as well not the kind of insubstantial fleeting pleasure that needs constant renewal but a pleasure which is sure and Lasting barley porridge or a crust of barley bread and water do not make a very cheerful diet but nothing gives one Keener pleasure than the ability to derive pleasure even from that and the feeling of having arrived at something which one cannot be deprived of by any unjust Stroke Of Fortune prison Russians are more generous The Man In The Condemned cell is not so scantily fed as that by the Executioner to reduce oneself then of One's Own free choice to a diet that no man has any real call to be apprehensive about even if he is sentenced to death that is an act of real spiritual greatness to do this is truly to forestall the blows of Fortune so my dear lucillius start following these men's practice and appoint certain days on which to give up everything make yourself at home with next to nothing start cultivating a relationship with poverty dear guests be bold enough to pay no heed to riches and so make yourself like him worthy of a god for no one is worthy of a god unless he has paid no heed to riches I am not mind you against your possessing them but I want to ensure that you possess them without Tremors and this you will only achieve in One Way by convincing yourself that you can live a happy life even without them and by all those regarding them as being on the point of Vanishing but it's time I started folding up this letter not till you've settled your account you say well I'll refer you to epicurus for payment anger carried to excess begets Madness how true this is you're bound to know having had both slaves and enemies it is a passion though which flares up against all types of people it is born of love as well as hate and is as liable to arise in the course of sport or jesting as an Affairs of a serious kind the factor that counts is not the importance of the cause from which it Springs but the kind of personality it lands in in the same way as with fire what matters is not the fierceness of the flame but where it catches solid objects may resist the fiercest flame while conversely dry and inflammable matter will nurse a mere spark into conflagration it is true my dear lucillius the outcome of violent anger is a mental raving and therefore anger is to be avoided not for the sake of moderation but for the sake of sanity letter number 26. it's only a short time since I was telling you I was in the sight of old age now I'm afraid I may have left old age behind me altogether some other term would be more in keeping now with my ears or at least my present physical state since old age connotes a period of decline not debility put me in the list of the decrepit the ones on the very Brink I congratulate myself mind you on the fact that my age is not so far as I'm aware brought any deterioration in my spirit conscious as I am of the deterioration in my Constitution only my vices and their accessories have decayed the spirit is full of life and delighted to be having only limited dealings with the body it has thrown off a great part of his burden it's full of vigor and carry on an argument with me on the subject of old age maintaining that these are its finest years let's accept what it says and that it'll make the most of its blessings it tells me to start thinking and examine how far I owe the Serenity and sobriety to philosophy and how far I owe it simply to my years and to investigate with some care what things I really am refusing to do and what I'm simply incapable of doing and it's prepared to accept whatever I'm really pleased to find myself incapable of doing as equivalent to refusing to do them and what course can there be for complaint after all in anything that was always bound to come to an end fading gradually away what is troubling about that well nothing you may say could be more troubling than the idea of our wasting and perishing away melting out of existence one may aptly call it since we aren't struck down all of a sudden but worn away every day that passes diminishing in some degree our powers moving to one's end through Nature's Own gentle process of dissolution is there a better way of living life than that not because there is anything wrong with a sudden violent departure but because this gradual withdrawal is an easy route anyway here's what I do I imagine to myself that the testing time is Drawing Near That the day that it's going to see judgment pronounced on the whole of my past life has actually arrived and I take a look at myself and address myself in these terms all that I've done or said up to now counts for nothing my showing to date besides being heavily varnished over is a paltry value and reliability as a guarantee of my spirit I'm going to leave it to death to settle what progress I made without anxiety Then I'm making ready for the day when the tricks and disguises will be put away and I shall come to a verdict on myself determining whether the courageous attitudes I adopt are really felt or just so many words and whether or not the defiant challenges I've held at Fortune have been mere pretense and pantomime away with the world's opinion of you it's always unsettled and divided away with the Pursuits that have occupied the whole of your life death is going to deliver the verdict in your case yes all your debates and learned conferences your scholarly talk and collection of maxims from the teachings of philosophers are in no way indicative of genuine spiritual strength bold words come even from the timidist it's only when you're breathing your last that the way you've spent your time will become apparent I accept the terms and feel no dread of the coming judgment that's what I say to myself but assume that I've said it to you as well you're younger than I am but what difference does that make no count is taken of years just where death is expect to you is something we cannot know so for your part expect him everywhere I was just intending to stop my hand considering its closing sentence but the accounts have still to be made out and this letter issued with its traveling expenses you may assume that I won't be announcing this Source I intend borrowing from you know whose funds I'm drawing on give me a fraction more time and payments will be made out of my own pocket in the meantime epicurus will oblige me with the following saying rehearse death or the idea may come across was rather more satisfactory if put in this form it is a very good thing to familiarize oneself with death well you may possibly think it's unnecessary to learn something which will only have to put into practice once that is the very reason why we ought to be practicing it we must need continually study a thing if we are not in a position to test whether we know it rehearse death to say this is to tell a person to rehearse his freedom a person who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a Slave he is above or generate beyond the reach of all political Powers what are prisons Waters bars to him he has an Open Door there is but one chain holding us in Fetters and that is our love of life there is no need to cast this love out altogether but it does need to be listened someone so that in the event of circumstances ever demanding this nothing May stand in the way of our being prepared to do it once what we must do at some time or other letter number 27. so you're giving me advice are you you say have you already given yourself advice then have you already put yourself straight is that how you come to have time for reforming other people no I'm not so Shameless as I said about treating people when I'm sick myself I'm talking to you as if I were lying in the same Hospital Ward about the illness we're both suffering from and passing on some remedies so listen to me as if I were speaking to myself I'm allowing you access to my innermost self calling you in to advise me as I have things out with myself I Proclaim to my own self count your years and you'll be ashamed to be wanting and working for exactly the same things as you wanted when you were a boy this one thing made sure against your dying day that your faults die before you do have done with those unsettled Pleasures which cost one dear they do want harm after their past and gone not merely when they're in Prospect even when they're over pleasures of a depraved nature are apt to carry feelings of dissatisfaction in the same way as a criminal's anxiety doesn't end with the commission of the crime even it is undetected at the time such Pleasures are insubstantial and unreliable even if they don't do one any harm they're fleeting in character look around for some enduring good instead and nothing answers the description except what the spirit discovers for itself within itself a good character is the only guarantee of everlasting Carefree happiness even if some obstacle to this comes on the scene its appearance is only to be compared to that of clothes which drift in front of the sun without ever defeating its light how soon will you be fortunate enough to attain this happiness well you haven't been dragging your steps up to now but your pace could be increased there's a lot of work remaining to be done and if you want to be successful you must devote all your waking hours and all your efforts to the task personally this is not something that admits of Delegation it is a different branch of learning which has room for deviling there was a rich man called calvicius Sabinas in my own lifetime who had a freedman's brain as along with a Friedman's Fortune I have never seen greater vulgarity in a successful man his memory was so bad that at one moment or another the names of Ulysses or Achilles or Priam characters he knew as well as we knew our early teachers would slip his memory no doddering Butler ever went through the introductions of a massive callers committing quite such solar systems not announcing people's names so much as feisty names on them as Sabinas did with the Greek and Trojan Heroes but this didn't stop him wanting to appear a well-read man and to this end he thought up the following shortcut he spent an enormous amount of money on slaves one of them to know Homer by Heart Another to know his yard while he assigned one a piece to each of the nine lyric poets that the cost was enormous is hardly surprising not having found what he wanted in the market he had them made to order after this collection of slaves had been procured for him he began to give his dinner guests nightmares he would have these fellows at his elbow so that he could continually be turning to them for quotations from these poets which he might repeat to the company and then it happened frequently he would break down halfway through a word certelius quadratus who regarded stupid millionaires as fair game to be sponged off and consequently also fair game for flattery as well as and this goes with the other two things fair game for facetiousness at their expense suggested to him that he should keep a team of Scholars to pick up the bits on Sabrina's letting it be known that the slaves have set him back a hundred thousand sister cities apiece he said yes for less than that you could have brought the same number of bookcases sabinus was nonetheless quite convinced that what anyone in his household knew he knew personally it was satillius again who started urging Sabinas a pale and skinny individual whose Health was poor to take up wrestling when Sabine is retorted how can I possibly do that it's as much as I can do to stay alive sotelius answered now please don't say that look how many slaves you've got in perfect physical condition the sound mind could neither be bought nor borrowed and if it were for sale I doubt whether it would find a buyer and yet unsound ones are being purchased every day but let me pay you what I owe you and say goodbye poverty brought into a chord with the law of nature is wealth epicurus is constantly saying this in one way or another but something that can never be learned too thoroughly can never be said too often with some people you only need to point to a remedy others need to have it rammed into them letter number 28. do you think you are the only person to have had this experience are you really surprised as if it was something unprecedented that so long a tour and such diversity of scene have not enabled you to throw off this Melancholy and this feeding of depression a change of character not a change of air is what you need though you cross the boundless ocean though to use the words of our poet Virgil lands and towns are left to stern whatever your destination you will be followed by your failings well here is what Socrates said to someone who is making the same complaint how can you wander your travels do you no good when you carry yourself around with you you are settled with the very thing that drove you away how can novelty of surroundings abroad and becoming acquainted with foreign scenes or cities be of any help all that dashing about turns out to be quite futile and if you want to know why all this running away cannot help you the answer is simply this you are running away in your own company you have to lay aside the load on your spirit until you do that nowhere will satisfy you imagine your present State as being like that of the prophetess whom our Virgil represents and arose an excited state largely taken over by a spirit not her own the Sybil Raves about as one possessed in hope she may dislodge the Mighty God within her bosom you rush hither and wither with the idea of dislodging a firmly seated weight when the very dashing about just adds to the trouble it causes you like the cargo in a ship which does not weigh her down on duly so long as it does not shift but if it rolls more to one side than the other it is liable to carry the side on which it settles down into the water whatever you do is bad for you the very movement in itself being harmful to you since you are in fact shaking up a sick man once you have rid yourself of the Affliction there though every change of scene will become a pleasure you may be banished to the ends of the Earth and yet in whatever outlandish corner of the world you may find yourself stationed you will find that place whatever it may be like a hospitable home where you arrive does not matter so much as what sort of person you are when you arrive there we ought not therefore to give over our hearts for good to any one part of the world we should live with the conviction I wasn't born for one particular Corner The Whole World's my home country if the truth of that were clear to you you would not be surprised that the diversity of new surroundings for which out of weariness of the old you are constantly heading fails to do you any good whichever you first came to would have satisfied you if you had believed you were at home in all as it is instead of traveling you're rambling and drifting exchanging one place for another with the thing you are looking for the good life is available everywhere could there be a scene of Greater turmoil than the city he had even there if need be you are free to lead a life of peace given a free choice of posting though I should feel a long way from the vicinity let alone the sight of the city for in the same way as there are unpleasant climates which are trying even to the most robust constitutions there are others which are none too wholesome for the mind even though it'd be a sound one when it is still in an imperfect State and building up its strength I do not agree with those who recommend a stormy life and plunge straight into the breakers waging a spirited struggle against worldly obstacles every day of their lives the wise man will put up with these things not go out of his way to meet them he will prefer a state of peace to a state of War it does not profit a man much to have managed to discard his own failings if he must ever be at loggerheads with other peoples Socrates they will tell you had the 30 tyrants standing over him and yet they could not break his spirit what difference does it make how many Masters a man has slavery is only one and yet the person who refuses to let the thought of it affect him is a free man no matter how great the swarm of Masters around him it is time I left off not before I have paid the usual Duty though a consciousness of wrongdoing is the first step to Salvation this remark of epicurus is to me a very good one for a person who is not aware that he is doing anything wrong has no desire to put it right you have to catch yourself doing it before you can reform some people boast about their failings can you imagine someone who counts as faults as merits ever giving thought to their cure so to the best of your ability demonstrate your own guilt conduct inquiries of your own into all the evidence against yourself play the part first of prosecutor then of Judge and finally of pleader in mitigation be harsh with yourself at times letter number 33. you feel that my present letters should be like my earlier ones and have odd sayings of leading stoics appended to them but they never visited themselves with philosophical gems the whole system was too virile for that when things stand out and attract attention in a work you can be sure there is an uneven quality about it one tree by itself never calls for admiration when the whole Forest Rises to the same height poetry is Repeat with such things so is history so please don't think them peculiar to epicurus they are General and ours more than anyone's although they receive more notice in him because they occur at widely scattered intervals because they are unlooked for and because it is rather a surprise to find spirited sayings in a person who so most people consider was an advocate of soft living in my own view epicurus was actually in spite of his long sleeves a man of spirit as well courage energy and a war-like spirit are as commonly given to Persians as to people with a style of dress more suited to action so there's no call for you to press for stock excerpts seeing that the sort of thing which in the case of other thinkers is accepted is in our case continuous writing that's why we don't go in for that business of window dressing we don't mislead the customer so that when he enters the shop he finds nothing in stock apart from the things on display in the window we allow him to pick up samples from whatever he likes and suppose we did want to separate out individual aphorisms from the mass whom should we attribute them to Xeno cleanses crucifus pinatius posidonius we stoics are no Monarch subjects each asserts his own freedom among epicureans whatever hamarchus or Matilda says is credited to one man alone everything ever said by any member of that fraternity was uttered under the authority and auspices of one person I say again then that for us try as we may it is impossible to pick out individual items from so Vasa stock in which each thing is as good as the next the poor man tis that counts his flock wherever you look your eye will light on things that might stand out if everything around them were not of equal standard so give up this hope of being able to get an idea of the genius of the greatest figures by so cursory and approach you have to examine and consider it as a whole there is a sequence about the creative process and a work of Genius as a synthesis of its individual features from which nothing can be subtracted without disaster I have no objection to your inspecting the components individually provided you do so without detaching them from the personality they actually belong to a woman is not beautiful when her ankle or arm wins compliments but when her total appearance diverts admiration from the individual parts of her body still if you press me I won't treat you so meanly open-handed generosity it shall be there is a mass of such things an enormous mass of them lying all over the place needing only to be picked up as distinct from gathered up they come not in dribs and drabs but in a closely interconnected and continuous stream I have no doubt to they may be very helpful to the uninitiated and those who are still novices for individual aphorisms in a small Compass rounded off in units rather like lines of verse become fixed more readily in the mind it is for this reason that we give children Proverbs and what the Greeks call kriya to learn by heart a child's mind being able to take these in at a stage when anything more would be Beyond its capacity but in the case of a grown man who has made incontestable progress it is distressful to go hunting after gems of wisdom and prop himself up with a minute number of best known sayings and be dependent on his memory as well it is time he was standing on his own feet he should be delivering himself as such sayings not memorizing them it is disgraceful that a man who is old or inside of old age should have a wisdom deriving solely from his notebook Xeno said this what have you said clianthis said that what have you said how much longer are you going to serve under others orders assume Authority yourself utter something that may be handed down to posterity produce something from your own resources this is why I look on people like this as a spiritless lot the people who are forever acting as interpreters never as creators always lurking in someone else's shadow they never venture to do for themselves the things they have spent such a long time learning they exercise their memories on things that are not their own it is one thing however to remember another to know to remember is to safeguard something entrusted to your memory whereas to know by contrast is actually to make each item your own and not be dependent on some original and be constantly looking to see what the master said Zeno said this cleansea said that let's have some difference between you and the books how much longer are you going to be a pupil from now on do some teaching as well why after all shall I listen to what I can read for myself the living voice it may be answered counts for a great deal not when it is just acting in a kind of Secretarial capacity making yourself an instrument for what others have to say a further Point too is that these people who never attain Independence follow the views of their predecessors first in matters in which everyone else without exception has abandoned the older Authority concerned and secondly in matters in which investigations are still not complete but no new findings will ever be made if we rest content with the findings of the past besides a man who follows someone else not only does not find anything he is not even looking but surely you are going to walk in your predecessor's footsteps yes indeed I shall use the old road but if I find a shorter and easier one I shall open it up the men who pioneered the old roots are leaders not our masses truth lies open to everyone there has yet to be a monopoly of Truth and there is plenty of it left for future Generations too letter number 38. you are quite right in urging that we should exchange letters often up the utmost benefit comes from talk because it steals little by little into the mine lectures prepared beforehand and delivered before a listening audience are more resounding but less intimate philosophy is good advice and no one gives advice at the top of his voice such harangues if I make all them that may need to be resorted to now and then where a person in a set of indecision is needing a bush but when the object is not to make him want to learn but to get him learning one must have recourse to these lower tones which enter the mind more easily and stick in it what is required is not a lot of words but effectual ones words need to be sewn like seed no matter how tiny a seed may be when it lands in the right sort of ground it unfolds its strength and from being minute expands and grows to a massive size reason does the same to the outward eye its Dimensions may be insignificant but with activity it starts developing although the words spoken are few if the mind has taken them in as it should they gather strength and shoot upwards yes precepts have the same features as seeds thereof compact dimensions and they produce impressive results given as I say the right sort of mind to grasp that and assimilate them the mind will then respond by being in turn creative and will produce a yield exceeding what was put into it letter number 40. thank you for writing so often by doing so you give me a glimpse of yourself and the only way you can I never get a letter from you without instantly feeling we're together if pictures of absent friends are a source of pleasure to us refreshing the memory and relieving the sense of void with a Solace however insubstantial and unreal how much more so are letters which carry marks and signs of the absent friend that are real for the handwriting of a friend affords us what is so delightful about seeing him again the sense of recognition you say in your letter that you went and heard the philosopher Sarah Pio when his ship put in where you are his words you say tend to be tumbled out at a tremendous Pace pounded and driven along rather than poured out for they come in a volume no one voice could cope with I do not approve of this in a philosopher whose delivery like his life should be well ordered nothing can be well regulated if it is done in a Breakneck hurry that is why in Homer the impetuous type of eloquence which he compares to snow that keeps on coming down without a break is given to the orator while from the old man there comes a gentle eloquence that flowed sweeter than honey you should take the view then that this copious and impetuous energy and a speaker is better suited to a hawker than to someone who deals with the subject of serious importance and is also a teacher yet I'm just as much against his words coming in a trickle as in a stream he should not keep people's ears on the stretch any more than he should swamp them for The Other Extreme of thinness and poverty means less attentiveness on the part of the listener as he becomes tired of this slowness with all its interruptions nonetheless what is waited for does sink in more readily than what goes flying past one speaks in any event of instruction as being handed on to those being taught and something that escapes them is hardly being handed on language moreover which devotes his attention to truth or to be plain and unadorned this popular style has nothing to do with truth its object is to sway a mass audience to carry away unpracticed ears by the force of his onslaught it never submits itself to detailed discussion it's just wafted away besides how can a thing possibly govern others when it cannot be governed itself and apart from all this surely language which is directed to the healing of men's Minds needs to penetrate into one medicines do no good unless they stop some length of time in one there is moreover a great deal of futility and emptiness about this style of speaking which has more noise about it than Effectiveness there are my Terrors to be quieted incitements to be quelled Illusions to be dispelled extravagance to be checked greed to be reprimanded and which of these things can be done in a hurry what doctor can heal patients merely in passing one might add too that there is not even any pleasure to be found in such a noisy promiscuous torrent of words just as with a lot of things that one would never believe possible one finds it quite enough to have seen them once proved possible so with these performers with words to have heard them once is more than enough what is there in them after all that anyone could want to learn or imitate what view is one likely to take of the state of a person's mind when his speech is wild and incoherent and knows no restraint this rapidity of utterance recalls a person running down a slope and unable to stop where he meant to being carried on instead a lot farther than he intended at the mercy of his body's momentum it is out of control and Unbecoming to philosophy which should be placing our words not throwing them around and moving forward step by step but surely she can move on to a higher plane now and then as well certainly but it must be without prejudice to her Dignity of character and this vehement excessive energy strips her of that power she should have great power but it should be controlled she should be our never failing stream not a Spate even in an advocate I should be loath to allow such uncontrollable speed and delivery all in an unruly Rush How could a judge who is not uncommonly too inexperienced and unqualified be expected to keep up with it even on the occursion when an advocate is carried away by an ungovernable passion or a desire to display his powers he should not increase his pace and pile on the words beyond the capacity of the year he will be doing the right thing therefore if you do not go to listen to people who are more concerned about the quantity than the quality of what they say and choose yourself if you have to to speak in the manner of Publius vinicius when arcelius was asked how vernisius spoke he described it as being at a slow pace minus various in fact remarked how you can call the man eloquent I simply don't know he can't string three words together is there any reason why of the two you should not choose vernicious Style you can expect to be interrupted by persons with as little taste as the one who when vinicius was jerking the words out one by one as if we were dictating rather than speaking exclaimed I call on the speaker to speak the pace of quintessitarius a celebrated speaker of his day is something I should have a sensible man keep will clear of with him there was never a hesitation or a pause only one start and only one stop but I also think that certain styles are suitable in greater or lesser degree to different nationalities in a Greek one will tolerate this lack of discipline while we have acquired the habit of punctuating what we say in writing as well as speech our own Cicero too from whom Roman oratory really sprang was a steady goer Roman discourse is more given to self-examination appraising herself and inviting appraisal fabianus who added outstanding oratory to those more important distinctions of his his way of life and his learning would discuss a subject with dispatch rather than with haste you might describe his oratory as being not rapid but fluent this I'm ready to see in a philosopher but I do not insist on it his delivery is not to be halting but I should rather have the words issued forth than flowing forth and a further reason I have forewarning you against that disease is the fact that you can only acquire it successfully if you cease to feel any sense of Shame you really need to give the skin of your face a good rub and then not listen to yourself for that unguarded pace will give rise to a lot of expressions of which you would otherwise be critical you cannot I repeat successfully acquire it and preserve your modesty at the same time one needs moreover constant daily practice for it it requires a switch of attention too from subject matter to words and even if it does transpire that the words come readily to the tongue and are capable of reading of it without any effort on your part they will still need to be regulated a way of speaking which is restrained not bold suits a wise man in the same way as an unassuming sort of walk does the upshot then of what I have to say is this I am telling you to be a slow speaking person letter number 41 you are doing the finest possible thing and acting in your best interests if as you say in your letter you are persevering in your efforts to acquire a sound understanding this is something it is foolish to pray for when you can win it from your own self there's no need to raise our hands to Heaven there's no need to implore the temple Warden to allow us close to the ear of some Graven image as though this increased the chances of our being heard God is near you is with you is inside you yes lucilius there resides within us a Divine Spirit which guards us and watches Us in the evil and the good we do as we treat him so will he treat us no man indeed is good without God is anyone capable of rising above Fortune unless he has help from God here it is that prompts us to Noble and exalted endeavors in each and every good man a God what God we are uncertain dwells if you have ever come on a dense wood of ancient trees that have risen to an exceptional height shutting out all sides of the sky with one thick screen of branches upon another the loftiness of the forest the seclusion of the spot your sense of wonderment at finding so deep and unbroken a Gloom out of doors will persuade you of the presence of a deity any cave in which the rocks have been eroded deep into the mountain resting on it it's hollowing out into a cavern of impressive extent not produced by the labors of men but the result of processes of nature will strike into your soul some kind of inkling of the Divine we venerate the sources of important streams places where a mighty River bursts suddenly from hiding are provided with altars Hot Springs are objects of worship the darkness on fathomable depths of pools have made their Waters sacred and if you come across a man who was never alarmed by dangers never affected by Cravings happy in adversity calm in the midst of storm viewing Mankind from a higher level and the gods from their own is it not likely that a feeling will find its way into you of veneration for him is it not likely that you will say to yourself here is a thing which is too great too Sublime for anyone to regard it as being in the same sort of category as that puny body it inhabits into that body there's ascended a divine power a soul that is elevated and well regulated that passes through any experience as if it counted for comparatively little that smiles at all the things we fear or pray for is impelled by a force that comes from heaven a thing of that Soul's height cannot stand without the prop of a deity hence the greater part of it is situated where it descends from in the same way as the sun's Rays touch the Earth but I really are situated at the point from which they emanate a sole possessed of greatness and Holiness which has been sent down into this world in order that we may gain a nearer knowledge of the Divine Associates with us certainly but never loses contact with its source on that Source it depends that is the direction in which his eyes turn and the direction it strives to climb in the manner in which it takes part in our Affairs is that of a superior being what then is this soul something which has a luster that is due to no quality other than its own could anything be more stupid than to praise a person for something that is not his or more crazier than admiring things which in a single moment can be transferred to another it is not a golden bit it makes one horse Superior to others sending a lion into the arena with his Mane gilded tired by the handling he has been given in the process of being forced to submit to this embellishment is a very different thing from sending in a wild one with his Spirit Unbroken bold and attack as nature meant him to be in all his unkempt Beauty a beast whose Glory it is that none can look on him without fear he sounds higher in people's eyes than the other docile Gold Leaf coated creature no one should feel pride in anything that is not his own we praise a Vine if it loads its branches with fruit and bends its very props to the ground with the weight it carries would anyone prefer the famous Vine that had gold grapes and leaves hanging on it fruitfulness is the Vine's peculiar virtue so too in a man praise is due only to what is his very own suppose he has a beautiful home and a handsome collection of servants a lot of land on the cultivation a lot of money outed interest not one of these things can be said to be in him they are just things around him praising him what can neither be given nor snatched away what is peculiarly a man's you ask what that is it is his spirit and the Perfection of his reason in that spirit for man is a rational animal man's ideal state is realized when he has fulfilled the purpose for which he was born and what is it that reason demands of him something very easy that he live in accordance with his own nature yet this is turned into something difficult by the madness that is universal among men we push one another into vices and how can people be called back to spiritual well-being when no one is trying to hold them back and the crowd is hurting them all letter number 46 the book you promised me has come I was intending to read it at my convenience and I opened it on arrival without meaning to do any more than just get an idea of its contents the next thing I knew the book itself had Charmed me into a deeper reading of it there and then how Lucid its style is you may gather from the fact that I found the word Light reading although at first glance my will conveyed the impression that the writer was someone like Livy or epicurus it's bulk being rather unlike you or me it was so enjoyable though that I found myself held and drawn on until I ended up having read it right through to the end without a break all the time the sunshine was inviting me out hunger prompting me to eat the weather threatening to break but I gulped it all down in one sitting it was a joy not just a pleasure to read it there was so much talent and spirit about it I'd have said forcefulness too if it had been written on a quieter plane now and then and periodically raised onto a Higher One as it was there was no such forcefulness but instead there was a sustained evenness of style the writing was pure and virile and yet not lacking in that occasional entertaining touch that bit of Light Relief at the appropriate moment the quality of nobility of Sublimity you have I want you to keep it and carry on just the way you're doing your subject also contributed to the result which is the reason why you should always select a fertile one one that will Engage The Mind's attention and stimulate it but I'll write and say more about the book when I've gone over it again at the moment my judgment isn't really a sufficiently settled one it's as if I'd heard it all rather than read it you must let me go into it thoroughly too you needn't be apprehensive you'll hear nothing but the truth how fortunate you are in possessing nothing capable of inducing anyone to tell you a lie over a distance as great as the one that separates us except that even in these circumstances when all reason for it is removed we still find habit or reason for telling lies letter number 47. I'm glad to hear from these people who've been visiting you that you live on friendly terms with your slaves it is just what one expects of an enlightened cultivated person like herself they're slaves people say no they're human beings they're slaves but they share the same roof as ourselves they're slaves know their friends humble friends they're slaves strictly speaking there are fellow slaves if you once reflect that fortune has as much power over us as over them this is why I laugh at those people who think it degrading for a man to eat with his slave why do they think it degrading only because the most arrogant of conventions has decreed the Master of the House be surrounded at his dinner by a crowd of slaves who have to stand around while he eats more than he can hold loading and already his extended belly in his monstrous greed and that it proves incapable any longer at performing the function of a belly at which points he expends more effort in vomiting everything up than he did in forcing it down and all this time the poor slaves are forbidden to move their lips to speak let alone to eat the slightest murmur is checked with a stick not even accidental sounds like a cough or a sneeze or a hiccup or let off a beating all night long they go on standing about dumb and hungry paying grievously for any interruption the result is that slaves who cannot talk before his face talk about him behind his back the slaves are former days however whose mouths were not sealed up like this who were able to make conversations not only in the presence of their Master but actually with him were ready to Bear their next to the Executioner for him to divert unto themselves any danger that threatened him they talked at dinner but under torture they kept their mouths shut it is just this high-handed treatment which is responsible for the frequently heard saying you've as many enemies as you've slaves they are not our enemies when we acquire them we make them so for the moment I pass over other instances of our harsh and inhuman Behavior the way we abuse them as if they were beasts of Burden instead of human beings the way for example from the time we take our places on the dinner counties one of them mops up the spittle and in other stations at the foot of the couch collects up the leavings of the drunken diners another calves the costly game birds slicing off Choice pieces from the breast and rump with The unerring Strokes of a trained hand unhappy man to exist for the one and only purpose of carving a fat bird in the proper Style although the person who learns the technique from sheer necessity is not quite so much to be pitted as the person who gives demonstrations of it for pleasure's sake another the one who serves the wine is got up like a girl and engaged in a struggle with his years he cannot get away from his Boyhood but has dragged back to it all the time although he already has the figure of a soldier he is kept free of hair by having it rubbed away or pulled out by the roots his sleepless night is divided between his master's drunkenness and sexual pleasures boy at the table man in the bedroom another who has the privilege of rating each guest's character has to go on standing where he is poor fellow and watch to see whose powers are flattery and absence of restraint in appetite or speech are to secure them an invitation for the following day add to these the Caterers with their highly developed knowledge of their masters palette The Men Who know the flavors that will sharpen his appetite know what will appeal to his eyes what Novelties can tempt his stomach when it is becoming queasy what dishes he will push aside with the eventual coming of sheer satiety what he will have a craving for on that particular day these are the people with whom a master cannot tolerate the thought of taking his dinner assuming that to sit down at the same table with one of his slaves would seriously impair his dignity the very I did yeah he says yet have a look at the number of Masters he has from the ranks of these various slaves take callistus one-time master I saw him once actually standing waiting at calista's door and refused admission While others were going inside the very master who had attached a price ticket to the man and put him up for sale along with other rejects from his household staff there's a slave who has paid his master back one who was pushed into the first lot too the batch on which the auctioneer is merely trying out his voice now it was the slave's turn to strike his master off the list to decide that he's not the sort of person he wants in his house callistus's Master sold him yes and look how much it cost him how about reflecting that the person you call your slave traces his origin back to the same stock as yourself has the same good sky above him breathes as you do lives as you do dies as you do it is as easy for you to see in him a Freeborn Man as for him to see a slave in you remember the varus disaster many a man of the most distinguished ancestry who was doing his military service as the first step on the road to a seat in the Senate was brought Low by Fortune condemned by her to look after a studying for example or a flock of sheep now think contemptuously of these people's lot in life in whose very praise for all your contempt you could suddenly find yourself I don't want to involve myself in an endless topic of debate by discussing the treatment of slaves towards whom we Romans are exceptionally arrogant harsh and insulting but the essence of the advice I'd like to give is this treat your inferiors in the way in which you would like to be treated by your own superiors and whenever it strikes you how much power you have over your slave that it also strikes you that your own master has just as much power over you I haven't got a master you say you're young yet there's always the chance that you'll have one have you forgotten the age at which hakuber became a slave or crisis or the mother of Darius or Plato or diogenes be kind and courteous in your dealings with a Slave bring him into your discussions and conversations and your company generally and if at this point all those people who have been spoiled by luxury raise an outcry protesting as they will there couldn't be anything more degrading anything more disgraceful let me just say that these are the very persons I will catch on occasion kissing the hand of someone else's slave don't you notice too how our ancestors took away all odium from the master's position and all that seemed insulting or degrading in the lot of the slave by calling the master father of the household and speaking of the slaves as members of the household something which survived to this day in the mime they instituted to a holiday on which master and slave were to eat together not as the only day this could happen of course but as one on which it was always to happen and in the household they allowed the slaves to hold official positions and to exercise some jurisdiction in it in fact they regarded the household as a miniature of republic do you mean to say comes the retort that I'm to have each and every one of my slaves sitting at the table with me not at all any more than you're to invite to it everybody who isn't a slave you're quite mistaken though if you imagine that I'd bar from the table certain slaves on the ground of the relatively menial or dirty nature of their work that muelloteer for example or that cow hand I propose to Value them according to their character not their jobs each man has a character of his own choosing it is chance or fate that decides his choice of job have some of them dine with you because they deserve it others in order to make them so deserving for if there's anything typical of the slave about them as a result of the low company they're used to living in it will be rubbed off through association with men of better breeding you needn't my dear lucillius look for friends only in the city of the Senate if you keep your eyes open you'll find them in your own home good material often lies idle for want of someone to make use of it just give it a trial a man who examines the saddle and bridle and not the animal himself when he is out to buy a horse is a fool similarly only an absolute fool values a man according to his clothes or according to his social position which after all is only something that we wear like clothing he's a slave but he may have the spirit of a free man he's a Slave but is that really to against him show me a man who isn't a Slave one is a slave to sex another to money another to ambition all are slaves to Hope or fear I could show you a man who has been a Consul who is a slave to his little old woman a millionaire who is the slave of a little girl in domestic service I could show you some highly aristocratic young men who are utter slaves to stage artistes and there's no set of slavery more disgraceful and one which is self-imposed so you needn't allow yourself to be deterred by the snobbish people I've been talking about from showing Good Humor towards your slaves instead of adopting an attitude of arrogant superiority towards them have them respect you rather than fear you here just because I said they should respect to master rather than fear Him someone will tell us that I'm now inviting slaves to Proclaim their freedom and bringing about their employers overthrow our slaves to pay their respects like dependent followers or early morning callers that's what he means I suppose for anyone saying this forgets that what is enough for a God in the shape of worship cannot be too little for a master to be really respected is to be loved and love and fear will not mix that's why I think you're absolutely right in not wishing to be feared by your slaves and in confining your lashings to verbal ones as instruments of Correction beatings are for animals only besides what annoys us does not necessarily do us any harm but we Masters are apt to be robbed of our senses by mere passing fancies to the point where our anger is called out by anything which fails to answer to our will we assume the mental attitudes of tyrants for they too Forget Their Own Strength and the helplessness of others and grow white hot with Fury as if they had received an injury when all the time they are quite immune from any such danger through the sheer exaltedness of their position nor indeed are they unaware of this but it does not stop them seizing an opportunity of finding fault with an inferior and maltreating him for it they receive an injury by way of excuse to do one themselves but I won't keep you any longer you don't need exhortation it is a mark of a good way of life that among other things it satisfies and abides bad behavior constantly changing not for the better simply into different forms has none of this stability letter number 48 I shall reply later to the letter you sent me while you were on your journey it was as long as the journey itself I must first check myself aside and deliberate what advice I should give for you yourself before Consulting me as you are doing gave long thought to the question whether you should consult me at all so I ought to be giving this question of advice far longer thought on the principle that it takes you more time to solve a problem than to set it particularly when one course is to your interest and another to mine or does this make me sound like an Epicurean again no if a thing is in your interest it is also in my own interest otherwise if any matter that affects you is no concern of mine I'm not a friend friendship creates a community of interests between us and everything we have neither successes nor setbacks as individuals our lives have a common end no one can lead a happy life if he thinks only of himself and turns everything to his own purposes you should live for the other person if you wish to live for yourself the assiduous unscrupulous cultivation of this bond which leads to our associating with our fellow man and believes in the existence of a common law For All Mankind contributes more than anything else to the maintenance of that more intimate Bond I was mentioning friendship a person who shares much with a fellow human being will share everything with a friend what I should like those subtle thinkers you know the ones I mean my Peerless lucillius to teach me is this what my duties are to a friend and to a man rather than a number of Senses in which the expression friend is used and how many different meanings the word man has before my very eyes wisdom and Folly are taking their separate stands which shall I join whose side am I to follow for one person man is equivalent to friend for another man and friend are far from being identified and in making a friend one man will be seeking an asset while another will be making himself an asset to the other and in the midst of all this what you people do for me is pull words about and cut up syllables one is led to believe that unless one has constructed syllogisms of the craftiest kind and reduced fallacies to a compact form in which a false conclusion is derived from a true premise one will not be in a position to distinguish what one should aim at and what one should avoid it makes one ashamed that men of our Advanced years should turn a thing as serious as this into a game Mouse is a syllable and a mouse nibbles cheese therefore a syllable nibbles cheese suppose for the moment I can't detect the fallacy in that what danger am I placed in by such lack of insight what serious consequences are there in it for me what I have to fear no doubt is the possibility of one of these days of catching my syllable in a mousetrap or even having my cheese eaten up by a book if I'm not careful unless perhaps the following train of logic is a more acute one Mouse is a syllable and a syllable does not nibble cheese therefore a mouse does not nibble cheese what childish fatuities these are is this what we philosophers acquire wrinkles in our brows for is this what we let our beards grow long for is this what we teach with faces grave and pale shall I tell you what philosophy holds out to humanity Council one person is facing death another is vexed by poverty while another is tormented by wealth whether his own or someone else's one man is appalled by his misfortunes while another longer to get away from his own Prosperity one man is suffering at the hands of men another at the hands of the Gods what's the point of concocting whimses for me of the sort I've just been mentioning this isn't the place for Fun you're called in to help the unhappy your pledge to bring sucker to the Shipwrecked to those in captivity to the sick the needy and men who are just placing their heads beneath the execution as uplifted Acts what are you off to what are you about the person you're engaging in wordplay with is in fear go to his Aid all mankind are stretching out their hands to you on every side lives that have been ruined lives that are on their way to ruin are appealing for some help it is to you that they look for Hope and assistance they are begging you to extricate them from this awful Vortex to show them in their doubt and disarray The Shining torch of Truth tell them what Nature has made necessary and what she has made superfluous tell them how simple are the laws she has laid down and how straightforward and enjoyable life is for those who follow them and how confused and disagreeable it is for others who put more trust in popular ideas than they do in nature all right if you can point out to me where those puzzles are likely to bring such people relief which of them removes Cravings or brings them under control If Only They were simply unhelpful they're actually harmful I'll give you the clearest proof whenever you like of that tendency to weaken and in feeble even eminent talents once applied to such quibbles and when it comes to saying how they equip people proposing to do battle with fortune and what weapons they offer them one hangs one's head with shame is this the way to our Supreme ideal do we get there by means of all that if x y or if not y z one finds in philosophy and by means of quibbles that will be shameful and discreditable even one person's occupying themselves with law reports when you're leading the person you're questioning into a trap aren't you just making it look as if he has lost his case on a purely technical point of bleeding the protoss court however restores litigants losing in this way to thy rightful position and philosophy does the same for the people thus questioned why do philosophers like you abandon the Magnificent promises you have made after assuring me in solemn terms that he will see to it that my eyes shall no more be overwhelmed by the glitter of gold than by the glitter of a sword that I shall spurn with magnificent strength of purpose for things all other men pray for and the things all other men are afraid of why do you have to descend to the school room ABC what do you say is this the way to the heavens for that is what philosophy has promised me that she will make me Gods equal that's the invitation and that's what I've come for be as good as your word keep clear then my dear lucillius as far as you can of the sort of quibbles and qualifications I've been mentioning in philosophers straightforwardness and simplicity are in keeping with goodness even if you had a large part of your life remaining before you you would have to organize it very economically to have enough for all the things that are necessary as things are isn't it the height of folly to learn inessential things when time so desperately short letter number 53. I wonder whether there's anything I couldn't be persuaded into now or to letting myself be persuaded recently into taking a trip by sea the sea was quite calm when we cast off the sky was certainly heavily overcast with a kind of dark clouds that generally break in a skull or downpour but in spite of the uncertain threatening skies I thought it would be perfectly feasible to make it across the few miles from Europa therapy over to putioli and so with the object of getting the crossing over quicker I headed straight for nieces over the Open Water to cut out all the intervening curves of the coastline now and I got so far across that had made no odds whether I went on or turned back first of all the smoothness which attempted me to my undoing disappeared there was no stormers yet but a heavy swell was running by then and the waves were steadily getting rougher I began by asking the Helmsman to put me ashore somewhere he kept saying the coast was a rugged one without a Haven anywhere that there was nothing to be feared quite so much in a storm as a Lee Shore I was in far too bad away though for any thought of possible danger to enter my head as I was suffering the torments of that sluggish brand of seasickness that will not bring one relief the kind that upsets the stomach without clearing it so I put pressure on him and compelled him willy-nilly to make for the shore once we were close in there was no waiting on my part for anything to be done in the manner commended by Virgil Bose faced seawards or anchor cast from bow remembering my training as a long-standing devotee of cold bars I dived into the sea in just the way the cold water addict ought to in my woolly clothes you could imagine what I suffered as I crawled out over the Rocks as I searched for a route to safety or fought my way there it made me realize how right Sailors are in being afraid of a leash or what I endured in my inability to endure my then self is beyond belief you can take it from me that the reason you received got himself wrecked everywhere was not so much because Neptune was against him from the day he was born but because he was given to seasickness like me it'll take me 20 years to reach my destination too if I ever have to Journey anywhere by sea as soon as I settled my stomach for stomachs as you know aren't clear of seasickness the moment they're clear of the sea and rubbed myself over with the implication to put some life back into my body I began to reflect how we are attended by an appalling forgetfulness of our weaknesses even the physical ones which are continually bringing themselves to our notice and much more so with those that are not only more serious but correspondingly less apparent a slight feverishness May deceive a person but when it has developed to the point where a genuine fever is Raging it will extract an admission that something is wrong from even a tough and hardened individual suppose our feet ache with little needling pains in the joints at this stage we pass it off and say we've sprained an ankle or strained something in some exercise or other while the disorder is in its indeterminate commencing phase its name illusions but when it starts bending the feet in just the way an ankle rack does it makes them both misshapen we have to confess that we've got the gout with affixes of the spirit though the opposite is the case the worse a person is the less he feels it you needn't feel surprised my dearest lacilius a person sleeping lightly perceives impressions in his dreams and is sometimes even aware during his sleep that he is asleep whereas a heavy Slumber blots out even dreams and plunges the mind too deep for consciousness of self why does no one admit his failings because he's still deep in them it's the person who's awakened who recounts his dream and acknowledging one's failings is a sign of health so let us Rose ourselves so that we may be able to demonstrate our errors but only philosophy will wake us only philosophy will shake us out of that heavy sleep devote yourself entirely to her you're worthy of her she's worthy of you fall into each other's arms say a firm plain no to every other occupation says no excuse for your pursuing philosophy a merely in moments when occasion allows if you were sick you would take a rest from attending to your personal affairs and drop your practice in the courts and during a swell of improvement in your condition you wouldn't look on any client as being so important that you'd undertake his case in court no you devote your entire attention to recovering from your illness in the quickest possible time well then aren't you going to do the same in these circumstances away with every obstacle and leave yourself free to acquire a sound mind no one ever attains this if he's busy with other things philosophy wields an authority of her own she doesn't just accept time she grants one it she's not something one takes up in odd moments she's an active full-time mistress ever present and demanding when some state or other offered Alexander a part of its territory and half of all its property he told them that he hadn't come to Asia with the intention of accepting whatever they care to give him but letting them keep whatever he chose to leave them philosophy likewise tells all other occupations it's not my intention to accept whatever time is left over from you you shall have instead what I reject give your whole reminder sit at her side and pay her constant court and an enormous Gap will widen between yourself and other men you'll end up far in advance of all mankind and not far behind the gods themselves would you like to know what actual difference between yourself and the gods will be they will exist for longer and yet to me what an indisputable Market is of a great artist to have captured everything in a tiny compass a wise man has as much scope before him as a God with all eternity in front of him there is one thing too in which the wise man actually surpasses any God a God has nature to thank for his immunity from Fear while the wise man can thank his own efforts for this look at that for an achievement to have all the Frailty of a human being and all the freedom from care of a god philosophers power to blunt all the blurs of circumstances beyond belief never a missile lodges in her she has strong impenetrable defenses some blow she breaks the force of parrying them with a slack of her gown as if they were trivial others she flings off and hurls back at the center letter number 54. ill health which had granted me quite a long spell of leave has attacked me without warning again what kind of ill health he'll be asking and well you may for there isn't a single kind I haven't experienced there's one particular ailment though for which I've always been singled out so to speak I see no reason why I should call it by its Greek name difficulty in breathing being a perfectly good way of describing it s Onslaught is of very brief duration like a Squall it is generally over within the hour one could hardly after all expect anyone to keep on drawing his last breath for long could one I've been visited by all the Troublesome or dangerous complaints there are and none of them in my opinion is more unpleasant than this one which is hardly surprising is it when you consider that with anything else you're merely ill well with this one you're constantly at your last gasp this is why doctors have nicknamed it rehearsing death since sooner or later the breath does just what it has been trying to do all those times you imagine that as I write this I must be feeling in High Spirits having escaped this time no it would be just as absurd for me to feel Overjoyed it as being over as if this meant I was a healthy man again as it would be for a person to think he has won his case on obtaining an extension of time before trial even as I fought for breath though I never ceased to find comfort in cheerful and courageous reflections what's this I said so death is having all these tries at me is he let him then I had a child here a long while ago myself when was this you'll say before I was born death is just not being what that is like I know already it will be the same after me as it was before me if there is any torment in the later state there must also have been torment in the period before we saw the light of day yet we never felt conscious of any distress then I ask you wouldn't you say that anyone who took the view that a lamp was worse off when it was put out and it was before it was lit was an utter idiot we too are lit and put out we suffer somewhat in the intervening period but at either end of it there is a deep tranquility for unless I'm mistaken we are wrong my dear lucillius in holding that death follows after when in fact it precedes us as well as succeeds death is all that was before us what did it matter after all whether you ceased to be or never begin when the result of either is that you do not exist I kept on talking to myself in these and similar terms silently needless to say words being out of the question then little by little the Affliction and my breathing which was coming to be a little more than a panting now came on at longer intervals and slackened away it has lasted on all the same and in spite of the passing of this attack my breathing is not yet coming naturally I feel a sort of catch and hesitation in it let it do as it pleases though so long as the size aren't heartfelt you can feel assured on my score of this I shall not be afraid when the last hour comes I'm already prepared not planning as much as a day ahead the man though whom you should admire and imitate is the one who finds it a joy to live and in spite of that is not reluctant to die for where's the virtue in going out when you're really being thrown out and yet there is this virtue about Micah's I'm in the process of being thrown out certainly but in the manner of it it is as if I were going out and the reason why it never happens to a wise man is that being thrown out signifies expulsion from a place one is reluctant to depart from and there is nothing the wise man does reluctantly he escapes necessity because he Wills what necessity is going to force on him letter number 55. I've just this moment returned from a ride in my sedan chair feeling as tired as if I'd walk the whole distance instead of being seated all the way even to be carried for any length of time is hard work and all the more so I dare say because it is unnatural nature having given us legs with which to do our walking just as she gave us eyes with which to do our own seeing soft living imposes on us the penalty of debility we cease to be able to do the things we've long been grudging about doing however I was needing to give my body a shaking up either to dislodge some phlegm perhaps that are collected in my throat or to have some thickness due to one cause or another in my actual breathing reduced by the motion which I've noticed before has done me some good so I deliberately continued the ride for quite a long way with the beach itself tempting me onwards it sweeps round between Kumar and sevilla's vatia's Country House in a sort of narrow Causeway with the sea on one side and a lagoon on the other a recent storm had left it firm for as you know a fast-running heavy surf makes a beach flat and smooth while a longest period of calm weather leads to a disintegration of this surface with The Disappearance of the moisture that binds the particles of sand together I had started looking around me in my usual way to see whether I could find anything I could turn to good account when my eyes turned to the house which had once belonged to vatia this was the place where vatia passed the latter part of his life a wealthy man who had held the office of Proto but was famed for nothing but his life of retirement and considered a fortunate man on that ground alone for whenever a man was ruined through being a friend of a sinius gallus or an enemy of saginas or devoted to suganus for it came to be as dangerous to have been a follower of his as it was to cross him people used to exclaim that's here you're the only person who knows how to live or in fact he knew was how to hide rather than how to live and there's a lot of difference between your life being a retiring one and it's being a spineless one I never used to pass this house while vatia was alive without saying hear lieth vattier but philosophy my dear lucillius is such a holy thing and inspires so much respect that even something that resembles it has a specious appeal let a man retire and the common crowd will think of him as leading a life apart free of All Care self-contented Living for himself when in fact not one of these blessings can be won by anyone other than the philosopher he alone knows how to live for himself he is the one in fact who knows the fundamental thing how to live the person who has run away from the world and his fellow men whose Exile is due to the unsuccessful outcome of his own desires who is unable to endure the sight of others more fortunate who has taken to some place of hiding in his alarm like a timid inert animal he is not living for himself but for his belly and his sleep and his passions in utter degradation in other words the fact that a person is living for nobody does not automatically mean that he's living for himself still a persevering steadfastness of purpose counts for a lot so that even inertia if stubbornly maintained may carry a certain weight I can't give you any accurate information about the house itself I only know the front of it and the parts in view the parts that it displays even to pass Us by there are two artificial grottos considerable Feats of engineering each as big as the most spacious Hall one of them not letting in the Sun at all the other retaining it right up until its setting there is a Grove of plane trees through the middle of which runs a stream flowing alternately like a tide race into the sea and into the acarusian lake a stream capable of supporting a stock of fish even if constantly exploited it is left alone though when the sea is open only when bad weather gives the fisherman a holiday do they lay hands on this ready supply but most advantageous feature of the house is that it has buy eye next door it enjoys all the amenities of that Resort and is free from its disadvantages I can speak for these attractions from personal knowledge and I am quite prepared to believe too that it is an all year round house since it lies in the path of the Western Breeze catching it to such an extent as to extrude by eye from the benefit of it that year seems to have been no fool in choosing this place as the one in which he would spend his retirement sluggish and senile as that retirement had become the place Swans in though doesn't make any contribution to peace of mind it's the spirit that makes everything agreeable to oneself I've seen for myself people sunk in gloom and cheerful and delightful country houses and people in completely secluded surroundings who looked as if they were run off their feet so there is no reason why you should feel that you're not as much at rest in your mind as you might be just because you're not here in Campania why aren't you for that matter transmit your thoughts all the way here there's nothing to stop you enjoying the company of absent friends as often as you like too and for as long as you like this pleasure in our company and there's no greater pleasure is one we enjoy them more when we're absent from one another for having our friends present makes us spoiled as a result of our talking and walking and sitting together every now and then and being separated we haven't thought for those we've just been seeing One Good Reason too why we should endure the absence patiently is the fact that every one of us is absent to a great extent from his friends even when they are around count up in this connection first the night spent away from one another then the different engagements that keep each one busy then the time passed in the privacy of one study and in trips to the country and you'll see that periods abroad don't deprive us of so very much possession of a friend should be with the spirit the spirit is never absent it sees daily whoever it likes so share with me my studies my meals my walks life would be restricted indeed if there were any barrier to our imaginations I see you my dear lucillius I hear you at this very moment I feel so very much with you that I wonder whether I shouldn't start writing you notes rather than letters letter number 56 I cannot for the life of me see that quiet is as necessary to a person who has shut himself away to do some studying but it is usually thought to be here am I with a Babel of noise going on all about me I have lodgings right over a public bath house now imagine to yourself every kind of sound that can make one weary of one's ears when the strenuous types are doing their exercises swinging weight Laden hands about I hear the grunting as they toil away or go through the motions of toiling away at them and the hissings and strident gasps every time they expel their pent-up breath when my attention turns to a less active fellow who was contenting himself with an ordinary inexpensive massage I hear the smack of a hand pummeling his shoulders the sound varying according as it comes down flat or cupped but if on top of this some ball player comes along and starts shouting at the score that's the end then add someone starting up a brawl and someone else caught thieving and the man who likes the sound of his voice in the bath and the people who leap into the pool with a tremendous splash apart from those whose voices are if nothing else natural think of the hair remover continually giving vent to his shrill and penetrating cry in order to advertise his presence never silent unless it be wild he is plucking someone's armpits and making a client yell for him then think of the various cries of the man selling drinks and the one selling sausages and the other selling pastries and all the ones Hawking for the catering shops each publicizing his words with a distinctive Cry of his own you must be made of iron you may say or else hard of hearing if your mind is unaffected by all this Babel of discordant noises around you when continual good morning greetings were enough to finish off the stoic precipus but I swear I no more notice all this Roar of noise than I do the sound of waves or falling water even if I'm here told the story of a people on the Nile who Moved their Capital solely because they could not stand the Thundering of a cataract voices I think are more inclined to distract one than General noise noise merely fills one's ears battering away at them while voices actually catch one's attention among the things which create a racket all around me without distracting me at all I include the carriages hurrying by in the street the carpenter who works in the same block a man in the neighborhood Who soars and this fellow turning horns and flutes at the trickling Fountain and emitting blasts instead of music I still find an intermittent noise more irritating than a continuous one but by now I have so steeled myself for all these things that I can even put up with the Cox and strident tones as he gives his oarsmen the Rhythm for I forced my mind to become self-absorbed and not let outside things distract it there can be absolute Bedlam without so long as there is no commotion within so long as fear and desire are not at loggerheads so long as meanness and extravagance are not at odds and harassing each other for what is the good of having silence throughout the neighborhood if one's emotions are in turmoil the peaceful Stillness of the night had lulled the world to rest this is incorrect there is no such thing as peaceful Stillness except where reason has lulled it to rest night does not remove our worries it brings them to the surface all it gives us is a change of anxieties for even when people are asleep they have dreams as troubled as their days the only true Serenity is the one which represents the free development of a sound mind look at the man whose quest for Sleep demands absolute quiet from his spacious house to prevent any sound disturbing his ears every one of his hosts of slaves preserves total silence and those who come anywhere near him walk on tiptoe naturally enough he tosses from side to side trying to snatch some fitful sleep in between the Spells of fretting and complains of having heard sounds when he never heard them at all and what do you suppose is the reason his mind is in a ferment it is this which needs to be set at peace here is the Mutiny that needs to be suppressed the fact that the body is lying down is no reason for supposing that the mind is at peace rest is sometimes far from restful hence our need to be stimulated into General activity and kept occupied and busy with Pursuits of the right nature whenever we are victims of the sort of idleness that wear is of itself when Great's military commanders notice indiscipline among their men they suppress it by giving them some work to do mounting expeditions to keep them actively employed people who are really busy never have enough time to become skittish and there is nothing so certain as the fact that the harmful consequences of inactivity are dissipated by activity we commonly give the impression that the reasons for our having gone into Political retirement are are discussed with public life and our dissatisfaction with some uncongenial and unrewarding post it every now and then ambition rears its head again in the retreat into which we were really driven by our apprehensions and our waning interests for our ambition did not cease because it had been rooted out but merely because of the tired or become peaked perhaps at its lack of success I would say the same about extravagant living which appears on occasions who have left one and then when one has declared for the simple life places Temptation in the way in the middle of one's program of frugality it sets out after Pleasures which one has discarded but not condemned its pursuit of them indeed being all the more Ardent the less one is aware of it but when they are in the open vices invariably take a more moderate form diseases too are on the way towards being cured when once they have broken out instead of being latent and made their presence felt so it is with a Love of Money the love of power and the other maladies that affect the minds of men you may be sure that it is when they Abate and give every appearance of being cured that they are at their most dangerous we give the impression of being in retirement and are nothing of the kind for if we are genuine in this if we have sounded The Retreat and really turned away from the surface show then as I was saying a little while ago nothing will distract us men and birds together in full chorus will never break into our thinking when that thinking is good and has at last come to be of a sure and steady character the temperament that starts at the sound of a voice or chance noises in general is an unstable one and one that has yet to attain inward detachment it has an element of uneasiness in it and an element of the rooted fear that makes a man pray to anxiety as in the description given by our Virgil and I who formally would never Flinch at flying Spears or surrid ranks of Greeks I'm now alarmed by every Breeze and roused by every sound to nervousness in fear for this companion and this load alike the earlier character here is the wise man who knows no fear of the hurtling of missiles or The Clash of weapons against weapons in the close-packed ranks or the thunderous noise of a city in destruction the other later one has everything to learn fearing for his belongings he pales at every noise a single cry whatever it is frustrates him being immediately taken for the yelling of the enemy the slightest movement frightens him out of his life his baggage makes him a coward pick out any one of your successful men with all their Trail or carry about Rhythm and he will have a picture of the man in fear for this companion and this load you may be sure then that you are at last lull to rest when noise never reaches you and when voices never shake you out of yourself whether they be menacing or inviting or just a meaningless hubbub of empty sound all around you this is all very well you may say but isn't it sometimes a lot simpler just to keep away from the din I concede that and in fact it is the reason why it will shortly be moving elsewhere what I wanted was to give myself a test and some practice why should I need to suffer the torture any longer than I want to when Ulysses found so easier remedy for his companions even against the sirens letter number 63 I am very sorry to hear as your friend flakka's death still I would not have you grieve unduly over it I can scarcely venture to demand that you should not grieve at all and yet I am convinced that it is better that way but who will ever be granted that strength of character unless if your man already lifted far out of Fortune's reach even he will feel the twinge of pain when a thing like this happens but only a twinge as for us we can be pardoned for having given way to tears so long as they have not run down in excessive quantities and we have checked them for ourselves when one has lost a friend one's eyes should be neither dry nor streaming tears yes there should be but not lamentation can you find the rule I'm laying down a harsh one when the greatest of Greek poets has restricted to a single day no more a person's right to cry in the passage where he tells us that even nyabi remembered to eat would you like to know what lies behind extravagant weeping and wailing in our tears we are trying to find means of proving that we feel the loss we are not being governed by our grief but parading it no one ever goes into mourning for the benefit merely of himself oh the miserable Folly of it all there should be an element of ostentation in grief come now you will be asking are you saying that I should forget a person who has been a friend well you are not proposed to keep him very long in your memory if his memory is to last just as long as your grief at any moment something or other will happen that will turn that long phase of yours into a smiling one I do not see very much time going by before the sense of loss is mitigated and even The keenest Sorrowing settled down your face will cease to be its present picture of sadness as soon as you take your eyes off yourself at the moment you are keeping a watch on your grief but even as you do it is fading away and the Keener it is the quicker it is in stopping let us say to it that the recollection of those we have lost becomes a pleasure to us nobody really cares to cast his mind back to something which he is never going to think of without pain inevitable as it is that the names of persons who were dear to us and are now lost should cause us a knowing sort of pain when we think of them that pain is not without a pleasure of its own as my teacher atalus used to say in the pleasure we find in the memory of departed friends there is a resemblance to the way in which certain bitter fruits are agreeable or the very acidity of an exceedingly old wine has its attraction but after a certain interval all that pain does is obliterated and the enjoyment comes to us unalloyed if we are to believe him thinking of friends who are alive and well is like fisty on cakes and honey recording those who are gone is pleasant but not without a touch of sourness who would deny though that even acid things like this with a harshness in their taste do stimulate the palate personally I do not agree with him there thinking of departed friends is to me something sweet and mellow for when I had them with me it was with the feeling that I was going to lose them and now that I have lost them I keep the feeling that I have them with me still so my dear lucillius behave in keeping with your usual fair-mindedness and stop misinterpreting the kindness of Fortune she has given as well as taken away let us therefore go all out to make the most of friends since no one can tell how long we shall have the opportunity let's just think how often we leave them behind when we are setting out on some long journey or other or how often we fail to see them when we are staying in the same area and we shall realize that we have lost all too much time while they are still alive can you stand people who treat their friends with complete neglect and then mourn them to distraction never caring about anyone unless they have lost it and the reason they lament them so extravagantly then is that they are afraid people may wonder whether they did care they are looking for belated means of demonstrating their devotion if we have other friends we are hardly kind or appreciative of them if they count for so very little when it comes to consoling us for the one we have buried if we have no other friends we have done ourselves a greater injury than Fortune has done us she has deprived us of a single friend but we have deprived ourselves of every friend we have failed to make a person moreover who has not been able to care about more than one friend cannot have cared even about that one too much supposing someone lost his one and only shirt in a robbery would you not think of an utter idiot if he chose to bewild his loss rather than look about him for some means of keeping out the cold and find something to put over his shoulders you have buried someone you loved Now look for someone to love it is better to make good the loss of a friend than to cry over him what I'm about to go on to say is I know a common place but I'm not going to omit it merely because everyone has said it even a person who has not deliberately put an end to his grief finds an end to it in the passing of time and merely growing weary of Sorrowing is quite shameful as a means of curing sorrow in the case of an enlightened man I should prefer to see you abandoning grief than it abandoning you much as you may wish to you will not be able to keep it up for very long so give it up as early as possible for women our forefathers fixed a period of mourning at a year with the intention not that women should continue mourning as long as that but that they should not go on any longer for men No period is prescribed at all because none would be decent yet out of all the pathetic females you know who were only dragged away from the graveside or even torn from the body itself with the greatest of difficulty can you show me one whose tears lasted for a whole month nothing makes itself unpopular quite so quickly as a person's grief when it is fresh it attracts people to its side finds someone to offered consolation but if it is perpetuated it becomes an object of ridicule deservatively too for it is either feigned or foolish and all this comes to you from me the very man who wept for a near serenis that dearest of friends to me so unrestrainedly that I must need to be included though this is the last thing I should want among examples of men who have been defeated by grief nevertheless I condemn today the way I behave then I realize now that my Sorrowing in the way I did was mainly due to the fact that I had never considered the possibility of his dying before me that he was younger than I was a good deal younger too was all that ever occurred to me as if fate paid any regard to seniority so let us bear it constantly in mind that those we are fond of are just as liable to death as we are ourselves what I should have said before was my friend serenis is younger than I am but what difference does that make he should die later than me but it is quite possible he will die before me it was just because I did not do so that fortune caught me unprepared with that sudden blow now I bear it in mind not only that all things are liable to death but that that liability is governed by no set rules whatever can happen at any time can happen today let us reflect then my dearest lucilius that we ourselves should not belong in reaching the place we mourn his having reached perhaps two if only there is truth in the story told by sages and some welcoming about awake says he who is supposed to be dead and gone has merely been sent on her head letter number 65. I shared yesterday with a bout of illness it claimed the morning but it let me have the afternoon so I started off by doing some reading to see what energy I had then as it proved up to this I ventured to make further demands on it or perhaps I should say concessions to it and did some writing I was at this with more than my customary concentration too what with the difficulty of the subject and my refusal to give in until some friends of mine put a stop to it applying Force to restrain me as if I were an invalid who was recklessly overdoing things the pen gave place to talk which included the following matter of dispute that I shall now state to you we have appointed you as arbitrator and you have more of a case on your hands than you think for the contest is a three cornered one our stoic philosophers as you know maintain that there are two elements in the universe from which all things are derived namely cause and matter Mata lies inert and inactive a substance with unlimited potential but destined to remain idle if no one sets it in motion and it is cause this meaning the same as reason which turns matter to whatever ended wishes and Fashions it into a variety of different products there must then be something out of which things come into being and something else by means of which things come into being the first is Mata and the second is cause now all art is an imitation of nature so apply what I was saying about the universe to man's handiwork take a statue it had the matter to be worked on by the sculptor and it had the sculptor to give configuration to the matter bronze in other words in the case of the statue being the matter and the Craftsman the cause it is the same with all things they consists of something which comes into being and something else which brings them into being stoics believe that there is only one cause that which brings things into being Aristotle thinks that the term cause can be used in three different ways the first cause he says is Mata without it nothing can be brought into existence the second is the Craftsman and the third is form which is impressed on every single piece of work as on a statue this last is what Aristotle calls the edos and he says there is a fourth as well the purpose of the whole work let me explain what this means the first cause of the statue is the bronze as it would never have been made unless I have been something out of which it could be cast and molded the second cause is the sculpture as the bronze could not have been shaped into the state in which it is without those skilled hands having come to it the third cause is the form as our statue could not have been called the man with the spear or the boy tying up his hair had this not been the guy is impressed on it the fourth cause is the end in view in its making for had this not existed the statue would never have been made at all what is this n It Is What attracted a sculptor what his goal was in creating it it may have been money if when he worked it he was going to sell it of Fame if the aim of his Endeavors was to win a name of religion if it was a workflow presentation to a temple this too then is a cause of the statues coming into being unless you take the view that thing is in the absence of which the statue would never have been created should not be included among the causes of the particular creation to these four causes Plato adds a fifth in the model what he himself calls the idea this being what the sculptor had constantly before his eyes as he executed the intended work it does not matter whether he has his model without one to which he can direct his eyes or within conceived and set up by the artist inside his own head God has within himself models like this of everything in the universe his mind embracing the designs and calculations for his projects He is full of these images which Plato calls ideas Eternal immutable ever dynamic so though human beings May perish Humanity in itself the pattern on which every human being is molded lasts on and while human beings go through much and pass away itself remains quite unaffected as Plato has it then there are five causes the material the agent the form the model and the end and finally we get the result of all these in the case of the statue to use the example we began with the material is the bronze the agent is the sculptor the form is the guys it is given the model is what the sculptor making it cop is the end is what the maker has in View and the final result is the statue itself the universe as well according to Plato has all these elements the maker is God Mata is a material the form is the general character and layout of the universe as we see it the model naturally enough is the pattern which God adopted for the creation of this stupendous work in all its beauty the end is what God had in view when he created it and that in case you are asking what is the end God has in view is goodness that at any rate is what Plato says what was the cause of God's creating the universe he is good and whoever is good can never be grudging with anything good so he made it as good a world as it was in his power to make it now it is for you as judge to pronounce your verdict and declare whose statement in your opinion seems to be not the truest for that here is as far out of reach as truth itself but most like the truth this assortment of causes which Aristotle and Plato have collected together Embraces either too much or too little for if they take the view that everything in the absence of which a thing cannot be brought into being as a cause of its creation they have failed to name enough there should be including time in their list of causes nothing can come into being without time they should be including place a thing will certainly not come into being if there is nowhere for this to happen they should be including motion without this nothing either comes into existence or goes out of existence without motion there is no such thing as art and no such thing as change what we are looking for at the moment is a primary and general cause and this must be something Elementary since Mata 2 is Elementary if we ask what cause is surely the answer is creative reason that is to say God all those things which you have listed are not an array of individual causes but dependent on a single one the cause that actually creates you may say form is a cause but form is something which the artist imposes on his work a part of the cause yes but not a Cause the model too is an indispensable instrument of the cause but not a cause to the sculptor his model is as indispensable as his chisel or his file his art can get nowhere without them but this does not make them parts or causes of the art the end the artist has in view our friend says the thing which induces him to set about a work of creation is a Cause even if we grant that it is it is only an accessory cause not the effective cause accessory causes our infinite in number what we are after is the general cause in any event that assertion on the part of Plato and Aristotle that the Universe in its entirety the whole completed work of creation is a cause is not in keeping with their usual acuteness as thinkers there is a very great difference between a creation and its cause now you must either pronounce your verdict or the easier course in matters of this nature declare your inability to arrive at one and order a re-hearing what pleasure you may say do you get out of frittering time away discussing those questions it's not as if you could say they rid you of any emotional drive out any desire well in raising and arguing these less deserving topics my own attitude is that they serve to calm the spirit and that whilst I examine myself first certainly I examine the universe around me afterwards I'm not even wasting time as you suppose at the moment for those questions provided they are not subjected to a mincing or dissection with the useless kind of over subtlety we have just seen as a result all Elevate and lighten the spirit the soul which yearns to win free of the heavy load it is saddled with here and return to the world where it once belonged for to it this body of ours is a burden and a torment and Harris by the body's overwhelming weight the soul is in captivity and this philosophy comes to its rescue bidding it breathe more freely in the contemplation of nature releasing it from Earthly into Heavenly surroundings this to the soul means freedom the ability to wander far and free it steals away for a while from the prison in which it is confined and has its strength renewed in the world above when Craftsmen engaged on some intricate piece of work which imposes a tiring strain on the eyes have to work by an inadequate and undependable light they go out into the open air and treat their eyes to the free sunshine in some open space or other dedicated to public Recreation in the same way the soul shut away in this dim and dismal dwelling as often as it can makes for the open and Finds Its relaxation in contemplating the natural universe the wise man and devotee of philosophy is needless to say Inseparable from his body and yet he is detached from it so far as the best part of his personality is concerned directing his thoughts towards things far above he looks on this present life of his much like the man who was signed on as a soldier as the term he has to serve out and he is so made that he neither loves life nor hates it he endures the lot of mortality even though he knows there is a final one in store for him are you telling me not to investigate the natural world are you trying to Bar me from the whole of it and restrict me to a part of it am I not to inquire how everything in the universe began who gave things form who separated them out when they were all plunged together in a single great conglomeration of inert matter am I not to inquire into the identity of the artist who created that universe or the process by which this huge mass became subject to Law and Order or the nature of the one who collected the things that were scattered apart sorted apart the things that were commingled and when all things lay in formless chaos allotted them their individual shapes or the source of the light is it fire or is it something brighter that is shed on us in such abundance am I supposed not to inquire into this sort of thing am I not to know where I'm descended from whether I am to see this world only once or be born into it again Time After Time what my destination is to be after I stay here what Abode will await my soul on this release from the terms of its serfdom on Earth are you forbidding me to associate with heaven in other words ordering me to go through life with my eyes bent on the ground I am too great was born to too great a destiny to be my body's slave so far as I'm concerned that body is nothing more or less than a Fetter on my freedom I place it squarely in the path of Fortune letting her expand her Onslaught on it not allowing any blow to get through it to my actual self for that body is all that is vulnerable about me within this dwelling so liable to injury There lives a spirit that is free never shall that flesh compel me to feel fear never shall it drive me to any pretense Unworthy of a good man never shall I tell a lie out of consideration for this Petty body I shall dissolve our partnership when this seems the proper course and even now while we are bound one to the other the partnership will not be on equal terms the soul will assume undivided Authority refusal to be influenced by one's body assures one's freedom and to this freedom to get back to the subject even the kind of inquiries we were talking about just now have a considerable contribution to make we know that everything in the universe is composed of matter and of God encompassed within them controls them all they following his leadership and guidance greater power and greater value reside in that which creates in this case God than in the matter on which God works well the place which in this universe is occupied by God is in man the place of the spirit what matter is in the Universal body is in US that the worst then serve the better let us meet with bravery Whatever May befall us let us never feel a shudder at the thought of being wounded or of being met a prisoner or of poverty or persecution what is death either a transition or an end I am not afraid of coming to an end this being the same as never having begun nor a transition for I shall never be in confinement quite so cramped anywhere else as I am here letter number 77 today we saw some boats from Alexandria the ones they call the mail packets come into view all of a sudden they were the ones which are normally sent ahead to announce the coming of the fleet that will arrive behind them the sight of them is always a welcome one to the companions the whole of putioli crowded onto the wharves all picking out the alexandrian vessels from an immense crowd of other shipping by the actual trim of their sails these boats being the only vessels allowed to keep their topsoles spread out at Sea All Ships carry these sails for nothing makes quite the same contribution to speed as the upper canvas the area from which a boat derives the greatest part of its propulsion that is why whenever the wind stiffens and becomes undulous strong sail is shortened the wind having less Force lowered down on entering the channel between Capri and the Headland from which upon the storm swept Summit Palace keeps a high Lookout regulations require all other vessels to confine themselves to carrying a mainsaw and the Topsail is accordingly conspicuous on the alexandrian boats while everyone around me was hurrying thus from all directions to The Waterfront I found a great deal of pleasure in refusing to bestir myself although there would be letters for me from my people over there I was in no hurry to know what reports they might be carrying or what might be the state of my financial interests there for a long time now I have not been concerned about any profit or loss this particular pleasure was one that I ought to have been experiencing even if I were not an old man but being old in fact made it all the greater for it meant that however little money I might have I should still have more left to cover the journey than distance left to be covered especially as the journey on which we have all set out is one which does not have to be traveled to the very end an ordinary Journey will be incomplete if you come to a stop in the middle of it or anywhere short of your destination but life is never incomplete if it is an honorable one at whatever point you leave life if you leave it in the right way it is a whole and there are many occasions on which a man should leave life not only bravely but for reasons which are not as pressing as they might be the reasons which restrain us being not so pressing either whom you knew very well a man owed before his years who found Tranquility early in life began to meditate suicide after he had gone down with a disease which was not an incurable one but at the same time was a protracted Troublesome one important in its demands he called together a large number of his friends and each one offered him advice this consisted either of urgings from the timid among them that he should just take whichever course he himself felt urged to take or of whatever Council flattering at Mara's thought would be the most likely to gratify someone meditating suicide until a stoic friend of mine an outstanding personality for whom I could find no more fitting compliment than that of calling him a man of fighting courage gave what I thought was the most inspiring advice and this was how he began my dear marcelon as he said you mustn't let this worry you as if you were having to make a great decision there's nothing so very great about living all your slaves and all the animals do it what is however a great thing is to die in a manner which is Honorable enlightened and courageous think how long now you've been doing the same as them food sleep sex the never-ending cycle the desire for death can be experienced not merely by the enlightened or the brave or the unhappy but even by the squeamish well marcelinus wanted no urging only a helper his slaves refused to obey him in this when Upon Our stoic talked away their fears letting them know that the household staff could only be in danger if there had been any room for doubt as to whether their Master's death had been a voluntary one besides he told them it was just as bad to let other people see you ordering your master not to kill himself as actually to kill him he then suggested to marcelonus himself that it would not be an unkind gesture if in the same way as at the end of a dinner The Leftovers are divided among the attendants something were offered at the end of his life to those who had served throughout it marcelynus had a generous and good-natured disposition which was no less evident where it meant personal expense and he distributed accordingly little sums of money among his slaves who were now in teared and went out of his way to comfort them all he did not need to resort to a weapon or to shedding blood after going without food for three days he had a steam tent put up in his own bedroom a bath was brought in in which he lay for a long time and as fresh supplies of hot water were continually poured in he passed almost imperceptibly away not without as he commented more than once a kind of pleasurable sensation one that is apt to be produced by The Gentle fading out of which those of us who have ever fainted will have some experience I have digressed but you will not have minded hearing this story since you will gather from it that your friend's departure was not a difficult or unhappy one although his death was self-inflicted the manner of his passing was supremely relaxed a mere gliding out of life yet the story is not without its practical value for the future for frequently enough necessity demands just such examples the times are frequent enough when we cannot reconcile ourselves to dying or to knowing that we ought to die no one is so ignorant as not to know that someday he must die nevertheless When Death draws near he turns wailing and trembling looking for a way out wouldn't you think a man a prize fool if he burst into tears because he didn't live a thousand years ago a man is as much a fool for shedding tears because he isn't going to be alive a thousand years from now there's no difference between the one and the other you didn't exist and you won't exist you've no concern with either period This Is The Moment you've been pitched into supposing you were to make it longer how long would you make it what's the point of Tears what's the point of prayers you're only wasting your breath so give up hoping that your prayers can bring some change in the decisions of the Gods those decisions are fixed and permanent part of the mighty and eternal train of Destiny you will go the way that all things go what is strange about that that is the law to which you were born it was the lot of your father your mother your ancestors and of all who came before you as it will be of all who come after you there's no means of altering the irresistible succession of events which carries all things along in its binding grip think of the multitudes of people doomed to die that will be following you that will be keeping you company I imagine you'd be braver about it if thousands upon thousands were dying with you the fact is that men as well as other creatures are breathing their last in one way or another in just such numbers at the very instant when you're unable to make your mind up about death you weren't thinking surely that you wouldn't yourself one day arrive at the destination towards which you've been heading from the beginning every Journey has its end here I imagine you'll be expecting me to tell you the stories of examples set by heroic men well I'll tell you about ones which children have said history relates the story of the famous Spartan a mere boy who when he was taken prisoner kept shouting in his native Doric I shall not be a slave he was as good as his word the first time he was ordered to perform a slave's task some humiliating household job his actual orders were to fetch a disgusting chamber pod he dashed his head against a wall and cracked his skull open freedom is as near as that is anyone really still a slave would you not rather your own son died like that than lived by reason of spinelessness to an advanced age why be perturbed then about death when even a child committed bravely suppose you refuse to follow him you will just be dragged after him assume the authority which at present lies with others surely you can adopt the spirited attitude of that boy and say no slave am I at present you unhappy creature slave you are slave to your fellow men slave to circumstance and slave to life for life itself is slavery it's the courage to die be absent have you anything that might induce you to wait you have exhorted the very Pleasures that make you hesitate and hold you back not one of them has any novelty for you not one of them now fails to bore you out of sheer excess you know what wine or honey wine tastes like it makes no difference with a hundred or a thousand flagons go through your bladder all you are is a strainer you are perfectly familiar with the taste of oysters or mullet your luxurious way of life has kept back not a single fresh experience for you to try in coming years and yet these are the things from which you are reluctant to be torn away what else is there which you would be sorry to be deprived of friends do you know how to be a friend your country do you really value her so highly that you would put off your dinner for her the sunlight if you could you would put out that light for what have you ever done that deserved a place in it confess it it is no attachment to the world of politics or business or even the world of nature that makes you put off dying the delicatessens in which there is nothing you have left untried are what you are reluctant to leave you are scared of death but how magnificently heedless of it you are while you are dealing with a dish of choice mushrooms you want to live but do you know how to live you're scared of dying and tell me is the kind of life you lead really any different from being dead Caligula was once passing a column of captives on the Latin Road when one of them with a hoary old beard of reaching down to his breast begged to be put to death so replied Caligula you're alive then as you are that is the answer to give to people to whom death would actually come as a release you are scared of dying so you are alive then as you are someone there will say but I want to live because of all the worthy activities I'm engaged in I'm performing life's duties conscientiously and energetically and I'm reluctant to leave them undone come now surely you know that dying is also one of life's duties you're living no Duty undone for there's no fixed number of Duties laid down which you're supposed to complete every life without exception is a short one looked at in relation to the universe even the lives of Nesta and Satya were short in Satya who ordered that her Epitaph should record that she had lived to the age of 99 you have an example of someone actually boasting of a prolonged old age had it so happened that she had lasted out the hundredth Year everybody surely would have found her quite insufferable as it is with a play so it is with life what matters is not how long the acting lasts but how good it is it is not important at what point you stop whatever you will only make sure that you round it off with a good ending letter number 78. I'm all the more sorry to hear of the trouble you were having with constant guitar and the Spells of feverishness with go with it when it becomes retracted to the point of being chronic because this kind of ill health is something I have experienced myself in his early stages I refuse to let it bother me being still young enough then to adopt a defiant attitude to sickness and put up with hardships but eventually I succumb to it all together reduced to a set of complete emaciation I had arrived at a point where the Katara discharges were virtually carrying me away with them altogether on many an occasion I felt an urge to cut my life short there and then and was only held back by the thought of my father who had been the kindest of fathers to me and was then in his old age having in mind not how bravely I was capable of dying but how far from bravely he was capable of bearing the loss I commanded myself to live there are times when even to live is an act of Bravery let me tell you the things that provided me with consolation in those days telling you to begin with that the thoughts which brought me this Peace of Mind had all the effect of medical treatment comforting thoughts provided they are not of a discreditable Kind contribute to a person's cure anything which raises his spirits benefits him physically as well it was my stoic studies that really saved me for the fact that I was able to leave my bed I was restored to health I give the credit to philosophy I owe her and it is the least of my obligations to her my life but my friends also made a considerable contribution to my return to health I found a great deal of relief in their cheering remarks in the hours they spent at my bedside and in their conversations with me there is nothing my good Lucille is quite like the devotion of one's friends for supporting one in illness and restoring one to health offered dispelling one's anticipation and Dread of death I even came to feel that I could not really die when these were the people I would leave surviving me or perhaps I should say I came to think I would continue to live because of them if not among them but it seemed to me that in death I would not be passing away but passing on my spirit to them these things gave me the willingness to help my own recovery and to endure all the pain it is quite pathetic after all if one has put the will to die behind one to be without the will to live there are then are your remedies the doctor will be telling you how much walking you should do how much exercise you should take he will be telling you not to overdo the inactivity as is the tendency with invalids and recommending reading aloud to exercise the breathing its passages and Reservoir being the areas affected he will recommend that you take a trip by sea and derive some stimulation for the internal organs from the gentle motion of the boat he will prescribe a diet for you and tell you when to make use of wine as restorative and when to give it up in case it starts you coughing or aggravates your cough my own advice to you and not only in the present Illness but in your whole life as well as this refuse to let the thought of death bother you nothing is grim when we have escaped that fear there are three upsetting things about any illness the fear of dying the physical suffering and the interruption of our pleasures I've said enough about the first but we'll just say this that the fear is due to the facts of nature not of illness illness is actually given many people a new lease of Life the experience of being near to death has been their preservation you will die not because you are sick but because you are alive that end still awaits you when you have been cured in getting well again you may be escaping some ill health but not death but now let us go back and deal with the disadvantage which really does belong to illness the fact that it involves considerable physical torments these are made bearable by their intermittency for when pain is at its most severe the very intensity finds means of ending it nobody can be in acute pain and feed it for long nature in her unlimited kindness to us so arranged things as to make pain either bearable or brief the severest pains have their seat in the most attenuated parts of the body any area of slight Dimensions like a tendon or a joint causes excruciating Agony when trouble arises within its small confines but these parts of our anatomy go numb very quickly the pain itself giving rise to a loss of all sensation of pain either because the life force is impaired by being held up in its natural circulation and so loses its active power the power which enables it to give us warning of pain or because the disease secretions no longer able to drain away become self-obliterated and deprive the areas they have congested of sensation thus gout in the feet or the hand or any pain in the vertebrae or tendons has intermittent lulls when it has dulled the area it is torturing these are all cases in which the distress is caused by the initial twinges and the violence of the pain disappears as time goes on the suffering ending in a state of insensibility the reason why pain in an eye or ear or a tooth is exceptionally severe is the fact that it develops in a limited area and indeed this applies just as much to pains in the head nevertheless if its intensity goes beyond a certain point it has turned into a set of days to Perfection so there is a comforting thing about extremities of pain if you feel it too much you're bound to stop feeling it what in fact makes people who are morally unenlightened upset by the experience of physical distress is the failure to acquire the habit of contentment with the spirit they have instead been preoccupied by the body that is why a man of noble and enlightened character separates body from Spirit and has just as much to do with the former the frail and complaining part of our nature as is necessary and no more and a lot to do with the better the Divine element but it's hard having to do without Pleasures we're used to having to give up food and go thirsty as well as hungry it is in the first stages of abstinence later as the organs of appetite decline in strength with exhaustion the Cravings die down thereafter the stomach becomes fussy unable to stand things it could ever have enough of before the desires themselves die away and there is nothing harsh about having to do without things for which you have ceased to have any craving another point is that every pain leaves off altogether or at least falls off in intensity from time to time moreover one can guard against its arrival and employ drugs to forestall it just as it is coming on for every pain or at least every pain with a habit of regular recurrence gives one advanced warning of its coming in illness the suffering is always bearable so long as you refuse to be affected by the ultimate threat so do not go out of your way to make your troubles any more tiresome than they are and burden yourself with fretting provided that one's thinking has not been adding anything to it pain is a trivial sort of thing if by contrast you start giving yourself encouragement saying to yourself it's nothing or nothing much anyway let's stick it out it'll be over presently then in thinking at a trivial matter you will be ensuring that it actually is everything hangs on one's thinking the love of power or money or luxurious living are not the only things which are Guided by popular thinking we take our cue from people's thinking even in the way we feel pain a man is as unhappy as he has convinced himself he is and complaining away about one's sufferings after they are over you know the kind of language no one has ever been in such a bad State the torments and hardships are endured no one thought I would recover the number of times I was given up for lost by the family the number of times I was despaired of by the doctors a man on the rack isn't torn with pain the way I was something I think should be banned even if all this is true it is past history what's the good of dragging up sufferings which are over of being unhappy now just because you were then what is more doesn't everyone add a good deal to his tale of hardships and deceive himself as well in the matter besides there is a pleasure in having succeeded in enduring something the actual enduring of which was very far from pleasant when some trouble or other comes to an end the natural thing is to be glad there are two things then the recollecting of trouble in the past as well as the fear of troubles to come that I have to root out the first is no longer any concern to me and the second is yet to be so and when a man is in the grip of difficulties he should say there may be pleasure in the memory of even these events one day he should put his whole heart into the fight against them if he gives way before them he will lose the battle if he exerts himself against them he will win what in fact most people do is pull down on their own heads what they should be holding up against when something is in imminent danger of falling on you the pressure of it bearing heavily on you it will only move after you and become an even greater weight to support if you back away from it if instead you stand your ground willing yourself to resist it will be forced back look at the amount of punishment that boxers and wrestlers take to the face and the body generally they will put up nonetheless with any suffering in their desire for fame and will undergo it all not merely in the course of fighting but in preparing for their fights as well that training in itself constitutes suffering that us to overcome all things with our reward consisting not in any wreath or Garland not in trumpet calls for silence for the ceremonial proclamation of our name but in moral worth in strength of spirit in a peace that is won forever once in any contest Fortune has been utterly defeated I'm suffering severe pain you may say well does it stop you suffering it if you endure it in a womanish fashion in the same way as the enemy can do far more damage to your army if it is in full Retreat every trouble that may come our way presses harder on the one who has turned tail and is giving ground but it's really severe well his courage only meant to enable us to Bear up under what is not severe would you rather have an illness that's long drawn out or ones short and quick if it's a long one it will have the odd interval giving one opportunity for rallying granting one a good deal of Time free of it having a necessity to pause in order to build up again an illness that's Swift and short will have one of two results either oneself or it will be snuffed out and what difference does it make with the eye or it disappears either way there's an end to the pain another thing which will help is to turn your mind to other thoughts and that way get away from your suffering call to mind things which you have done that have been upright or courageous run over in your mind the finest parts that you have played and cast your memory over the things you have most admired this is a time for recollecting all those individuals of exceptional courage who have triumphed over pain the man who steadily went on reading a book while he was having varicose veins cut out the man who never stopped smiling under torture albeit that this angered his tormentors into trying on him every instrument of Cruelty they had pain has been conquered by a smile would it not be conquered by reason and here you may mention anything you care to name Qatar a fit of uninterrupted coughing so violent that it brings up parts of the internal organs having one's very entrails sealed by a fever first having limbs wrenched in different directions with dissircation of the joints or worse than these being stretched on the rack or burnt alive or subjected to the red hot plates and instruments designed to reopen undeepen swelling wounds there have been men who have undergone these experiences and never uttered a groan he needs more he hasn't asked for Mercy he needs more he still hasn't answered he needs more he's actually smiled and not a forced smile either surely pain is something you will want to smile at after this but my illness has taken me away from my duties and won't allow me to achieve anything that is your body not your mind as well that is in the grip of ill health hence it may slow the feet of a runner and make the hands of a Smith or cobbler less efficient but if your mind is by habit of an active turn you may still give instruction and advice listen and learn inquire and remember besides if you meet sickness in a sensible manner do you really think you are achieving nothing you will be demonstrating that even if one cannot always beat it one can always bear an illness there is room for heroism I assure you in bed as anywhere else war in the Battlefront are not the only spheres in which proof is to be had of a spirited and fearless character a person's bravery is no less evident under the bedrose there is something it lies open to you to achieve and that is making the fight with illness a good one if it's threats or opportunities leave you quite unmoved you are setting others a signal example how much scope there would be for a noun if whenever we were sick we had an audience of Spectators be your own spectator anyway your own applauding audience Pleasures moreover are of two kinds the physical pressures are the ones which illness interferes with though it does not do away with them altogether indeed if you take a true view of the matter they are actually sharpened by illness a man deriving greater pleasure from drinking something when he is thirsty and finding food all the more welcome through being hungry anything set before one after one has had to fast being greeted with a heightened appetite but no doctor can refuse his patient those other greater and surer Pleasures the pleasures of the Mind and Spirit anyone who follows these and genuinely knows them pays no attention whatever to all the enticements of the senses how very unfortunate he is people say to be sick like that why because he isn't melting snow in his wine because he isn't breaking ice into a bumper goblet to keep the drink ears mixed in it chilled because Luke green oysters aren't being opened before him at his table because there isn't any bustling of cooks about the dining room bringing in not just the villains themselves but the actual cooking apparatus along with them for this is the latest innovation in luxurious living having the kitchen accompany the dinner end to the table so as to prevent any of the food losing his heat and avoid anything being at a temperature insufficiently scolding for pallets which are nowadays like leather how very unfortunate he is to be sick they say in fact he'll be eating just as much as he'll digest there won't be a whole boar lying somewhere where people can see it conveying the impression that it has been banished from the table as being too cheap an ordinary piece of meat to be on it nor will he have his trolley piled high with now that people think it not quite nice to see the whole bird carved rest of foul and what's so bad about your being deprived of that you may be eating like a sick man but you'll at last be eating in the way a healthy man should but given one thing we shall find it easy to put up with the potions and warm drinks and all the rest of it all the things that seem unbearable to people who have become spoiled who have become soft through a life of luxury ailing more in the mind than they ever are in the body the One requirement is that we cease to dread death and so we shall as soon as we have learned to distinguish the good things and the bad things in this world then and only shall we stop being weary of living as well as scared of dying for a life spent viewing all the variety the Majesty the Sublimity and things around us can never succumb to ornery the feeling that one is tired of being of existing is usually the result of an idol and inactive leisure truth will never pull on someone who explores the world of nature wear it as a person will be by the spurious things moreover even if death is on the way with a summons for him though it come all too early though it cut him off in the prime of life he has experienced every reward that the very longest life can offer having gained extensive knowledge of the world we live in Having learned that time adds nothing to the Finer Things in life without any life must need seem short to people who measure it in terms of Pleasures which through their empty nature are incapable of completeness let these Reflections promote your recovery and meanwhile do find time for our correspondence time will bring us together again one of these days and when as it will the reunion comes however short it may last knowing how to make the most of it will turn it into a long one as posedonia said in a single day there lies open to Men of learning more than there ever does to the unenlightened in the longest of lifetimes in the meantime cling tooth and nail to the following rule not to give in to adversity never to trust prosperity and always take full note of Fortune's habit of Behaving just as she pleases treating her as if she were actually going to do everything it is in her power to do whatever you have been expecting for some time comes as less of a shock letter number 83. you demand an account of my days generally as well as individually you think well of me if you suppose that there is nothing in them for me to hide and we should indeed live as if we were in public View and think too as if someone could peer into the inmost recesses of our hearts which someone can for what is to be gained if something is concealed from man where nothing is barred from God he is present in our minds in attendance in the midst of our thoughts although by attendance I do not mean to suggest that he is not at times absent from our thoughts I shall do as you say then and gladly give you a record of what I do and in what order I shall put myself under observation straight away and undertake a review of my day a course which is of the utmost benefit what really ruins our characters is the fact that none of us looks back over his life we think about what we are going to do and only rarely of that and fail to think about what we have done yet any plans for the future are dependent on the past today has been Unbroken no one has robbed me of any part of it it has been wholly divided between my bed and my reading a very small part of it has been given over to physical exercise and on this account I'm grateful for old age for the exercise costs me little trouble I only have to stir and I'm weary and that after all is the end of exercise even for the strongest interested in having my trainers wand enough for me Furious a likable young fellow as you know but he's due for a change I'm looking now for someone rather more youthful he in fact declares that we're both at the same climactic since we're both losing our teeth but I've reached the stage where I can only keep up with him with difficulty when we're out for a run and before many days are out I won't be able to keep up with him at all see what daily exercise does for one when two people are going in opposite directions the sooner big distance between them he's coming up at the same time as I'm going downwards and you know how much quicker travel is in the second of these directions but I'm wrong the age I'm at isn't one that is going downwards it's one that's in headlong descent however if you would like to hear how today's race ended well we've made it a tie something that doesn't often happen with Runners after this more a spell of exhaustion and of exercise I had a cold plunge cold with me meaning just short of warm here I am once celebrated at a devotee of cold baths regularly paying my respects to the canal on the 1st of January and jumping into the maiden pool in just the same way as I read wrote and spoke some sentence or other every new year in order to ensure good luck in the coming year and now I've shifted my scene of operation first to the Tiber then to my own pool here but even when I'm feeling my heart yes and don't cheat has had the chill taken off it by the Sun is a short step to a hot bath the next thing is breakfast which consists of some dry bread no table laid and no need to wash the hands after such a meal I then have the briefest of naps you know this habit of mine of dropping off for a moment or two just slipping off the harness as you might say I find it enough to have simply stopped being awake sometimes I know I've been asleep sometimes merely guess I have been Zeno was a very great man as well as the founder of our stoic school a school with an unequaled record for courageous and saintly living well listen to the way in which Desiring to deter us from drunkenness he deduces the principle that the good man won't get drunk no person who is drunk he says is entrusted with a secret a good man is entrusted with a secret therefore the good man will not get drunk watch how ridiculous he's made to look when we count up with a single syllogism on the same pattern of the many we could Advance it's sufficient to instance one no person who is asleep is entrusted with a secret the good man is entrusted with a secret therefore the good man does not go to sleep now just at each of us name for himself the people he knows can be trusted with the secret though they can't be trusted with a bottle I'll give all the same one solitary example myself just to prevent it being lost to human memory life needs a stock of noteworthy examples nor need we always go running to Antiquity for them Lucius piso was drunk from the very moment of his appointment as Warden of the city of Rome he regularly spent most of the night whining and dining and Company and slept from then until around midday noon to him being early morning he nevertheless discharged his duties which embraced the general welfare of the whole city with the utmost efficiency the late Emperor Augustus as well as Tiberius entrusted him with secret orders the former on appointing him governor of Thrace the conquest of which he completed the latter when he left Rome for compania leaving behind him in the capital many objects of distrust and hostility I imagine it was because pisa's drunken habits had been such a success so far as he was concerned that Tiberius later appointed Casas to be prefect of the city this man otherwise dignified and self-controlled steeped himself in liquor soaking it up to such an extent that on one occasion in the Senate having come there straight from a party he succumbed to a slumber from which nothing could Rouse him and had to be carried out yet this did not stop Tiberius writing in his own hand a number of letters to kossus the contents of which she did not consider suitable for communication even to his ministers and Casas never let slip a single secret whether private or official if you want to arrive at the conclusion that the good man ought not to get drunk why set about it with synergisms tell people how disgusting it is for a man to pump more into himself than he can hold and not to know the capacity of his own stomach tell them of all the things men do that they would blush out sober and that drunkenness is nothing but a state of self-induced insanity for imagine the drunken man's behavior extended over several days would you hesitate to think him out of his mind as it is the difference is simply one of duration not of degree point to the example of Alexander of Macedon stabbing his dearest and truest friend clitus at a banquet and wanting to die as indeed he should have done when he realized the enormity of what he had done drunkenness in flames and lays bare every Vice removing the reserve that acts as a check on impulses to wrong Behavior for people abstained from forbidden things far more often through feelings of inhibition when it comes to doing what is wrong than through any will for good add to this the drunkard's ignorance of his situation his indistinct uncertain speech his inability to walk straight his unsteady eye and swimming head with his very home in a state of motion as if the whole house had been set spinning by some cyclone and the tortures in his stomach as the wine ferments where is the glory and mere capacity when the victory rests with you when all the company lie prostrate around you slumbering or vomiting declining all your calls for another toast when you find yourself the only person at the party is still on your feet when your Mighty prowess has enabled you to beat all comers and no one has proved able to match your intake a barrel is nonetheless enough to beat you what else was it but drinking to excess together with a passion for Cleopatra itself as potent as drink that ruined that great and Gifted Man Marc Anthony dragging him down into foreign ways of living and non-roman vices this it was that made him an Enemy of the State this is what made him no match for his enemies it was this that made him cruel having the heads of his country's Leading Men brought into him at the dinner table identifying the hands and features of liquidated opponents in the course of Banquets marked by Sumptuous magnificence and Regal pomp still thirsting for blood when filled to the full with wine explain then why the good man should avoid getting drunk using facts not words to show his ugliness and offensiveness prove and an easy task it is that so-called Pleasures when they go beyond a certain limit are but punishments letter number 86 here I am staying at the country house which once belonged to Scipio of Africa himself I'm writing after paying my respects to his departed Spirit as well as to an altar which I rather think may be the actual tomb of that great Soldier his soul will have gone to heaven returned in fact to the place from which it came what convinces me of this is not the size of the armies he commanded for kambisi's equally had such armies and kambisis was merely a Madman who turned his Madness to good account but is quite exceptional self-restraint and sense of Duty this is something in him which I find even more deserving of admiration of the time when he finally left his country then during the time when he was fighting for her was Scipio to stay in Rome or was Rome to stay a free democracy that was in the choice what did Scipio say I have no wish he said to have the effect of weakening in the least degree our laws or institutions all Roman citizens must be equal before the law I ask my country then to make the most of what I have done for her but without me if she owes it to me that she is today a free country let me also prove that she is free if my stature has grown too great for her best interests then out I go am I not justified in admiring that nobility of character which led him to retire to go into voluntary exile to relieve the set of an embarrassing burden events had come to the point where either Scipio or democracy was going to suffer at the other's hands neither of these two things could justly be permitted to happen so he gave way to her Constitution and proposing that the nation should be no less indebted to him for his absence from the scene than for hannibals he went off into retirement at latournam I've seen the house which is built of squared stone blocks the wall surrounding the park and the towers built out on both sides of the house for purposes of Defense the well concealed Among The Greenery and outbuildings with sufficient water to provide for the needs of a whole Army and the tiny little bath situated after the old-fashioned custom in an ill-lit Corner our ancestors believing that the only place where one could properly have a hot bath was in the dark it was this which started in my mind Reflections that occursioned me a good deal of enjoyment as I compared scipio's way of life and our own in this corner the famous Terror of Carthage to whom Rome owes it that she has only once in her history being captured used to wash her body weary from work on the farm for he kept himself fit through toil cultivating his Feels by his own labor as was the regular way in the old days and this was the ceiling dingy in the extreme under which he stood and this the equally undistinguished Paving that carried his weight who is there who could bear to have a bath in such surroundings nowadays we think ourselves poorly off living like Paupers if the walls are not ablazed with large and costly circular mirrors if our alexandrian marbles are not decorated with panels of numidian marble if the whole of the surface has not been given a decorative overlay of elaborate patterns having all the variety of Fresco murals unless the ceiling cannot be seen for glass unless the pools into which we lower borders with all the strength drained out of them by lengthy periods in the sweating room are edged with faceian marble which was once the rarest of sites even in a temple unless the water pours from Silver taps and so far we have only been talking about the ordinary fellows Plumbing what about the bath houses of certain former slaves look at their arrays of statues they're Assemblies of columns that do not support a thing but are put up purely for ornament just for the sake of spending money look at the Cascades of water splashing normally down from one level to the next we have actually come to such a pitch of choosiness that we object to walking on anything other than precious stones in this bathroom of scipios there are tiny chinks you could hardly call them windows pierced in the mercenary of the wall in such a way as to let in light without in any way weakening its defensive character nowadays moth hole is the way some people speak of a bathroom unless it has been designed to catch the sun through enormous Windows all day long unless a person can acquire a tan at the same time as he is having a bath unless he has views from the bath over Countryside and sea the result is that bath houses which Drew admiring crowds when they were first opened are actually dismissed as Antiquated as soon as extravagance has hit on any novelty calculated to put its own best previous efforts in the shade there was a time when bathhouses were few and far between and never in the least luxuriously appointed and why should they have been considering that they were designed for use not for diversion and that admission only cost you a copper there were no showers in those days and the water did not come in a continuous gush as if from a hot spring people did not think it mattered then how clear the water was in which they were going to get rid of the dirt Heavens what a pleasure it is to go into one of those half lit bath houses with their ordinary plastered ceilings where you knew that cater himself as edile or Fabius Maximus or one of the Cornelius regulated the warmth of your water with his own hand for however High their rank it was one of the duties of the edials to enter all such premises as were open to the public and enforce standards of cleanliness and a healthy sort of temperature sufficient for practical purposes not the kind of heat which has recently come into fashion more like that of a furnace so much so indeed that a slave convicted on a criminal charge might well be sentenced to be bathed alive that doesn't seem to me to be any difference now between your Bath's warm and your baths boiling how primitive such as some people's verdict these days on Scipio because he did not have extensive areas of glass to let the daylight into the perspiring room because it was not a habit with him to Stew in strong sunlight letting the time go by until he was perfectly cooked in his own bathroom what a sorry wretch of a man he didn't know how to live he'd take his bath in water that was never filtered and often cloudy practically muddy in fact after heavy rain well it did not make much difference to Scipio if this was the kind of bath he had he went there to wash off sweat not scent and what do you think some people will say to this well I don't envy Scipio if that was the kind of bath he had all the time it was a real exile's life that he was leading yes and what's more if you must know he didn't even have a bath every day writers who have left us a record of life in ancient Rome tell us that it was just their arms and legs which of course they dirtied working that people washed every day bathing all over only once a week on Market Day obviously someone will comment there must have been times when they were positively disgusting and why do you think they stank of I'll tell you a hard soldiering of hard work of all that goes to make up a man men are dirtier creatures now than they ever were in the days before the coming of a spotlessly clean bathrooms what is it Horus says when he wants to describe a man noted and indeed notorious for the inordinate length to which he carried personal fastidiousness bucilla stinks of scented lozenges produce bacillus today and he might just as well stink like a goat he would be in the same position as the gargonias with whom Horus contrasted him for nowadays it is not even enough to use some scented ointment it must be reapplied two or three times a day as a precaution against its evaporation on the person I say nothing about the way people Preen themselves on the perfume it carries as if it were their own if all this strikes she was being excessively disapproving you must put it down to the House's atmosphere during my stay in it I've learned from agialis Who's the present owner of the estate and gives a great deal of attention to his management that trees can be transplanted even when quite old a lesson that we old men need to learn when we reckon that every one of us who puts down our new Olive Plantation is doing so for someone else's benefit now that I've seen him carefully transplanting one of a number of trees that had given fruit unstintingly over three and even Four Seasons so you too can enjoy the shade of the tree which is slow in coming up is there to give your grandson shade in later years long hence according to our Virgil who was not concerned with the facts but with poetic effect his object being the pleasure of the reader not the instruction of the farmer to pick out only one example let me quote the following passage which I felt compelled to find fault with today in Springs the time for sowing beans then to the crumbling furrows Clover welcome you and Millet too receives her yearly care I leave you to conclude from this whether the crops mentioned are to be planted at the same time as each other and whether in each case that it was sown in Spring as I write it's June getting on for July now too and I've seen people harvesting beans and sowing Millet on the same day to get back to our Olive Plantation I saw two different methods of planting used here in the first taking sizable trees and lopping off the branches cutting them back to a foot from the stem ideal has transplanted them complete with crown pruning away the roots and leaving only the actual base the part to which the roots are attached this he placed in the hole with an application of manure and not only earthed it in but trod and stamped the soil down hard he says that nothing gives such good results as this packing them down as he calls it what it does of course is to keep out cold and wind and apart from that the tree is less liable to be shifted thus allowing the young roots to sprout and get a grip on the soil when they are inevitably tender and torn from their precarious holes while the slightest disturbance he also strips the crown of the tree before covering it up because he says new Roots emerge wherever the wood underneath has been laid bare the tree again should not stand higher than three or four feet above the ground this will ensure right from the start green growth from the bottom upwards instead of a large area of dry and withered stem of the sort one season Old Olive Groves the second method was as follows taking branches of the type one normally finds on very young trees strong but at the same time having soft bark he planted them out in the same sort of way these grow rather more slowly but since they spring from what is virtually a cutting there is nothing Scraggy or unsightly about them oh another thing I've seen is the transplanting of an Old Vine from its supporting Tree in this case one has to gather up with it if possible even the minute routers and in addition give it a more generous covering of soil so that it throws out roots from the stem as well I have seen such plantings not only in the month of February but even at the end of March the vines going on to embrace and take good hold of the new elm trees also says that all trees which are stout in the stem if one may so term them it should have the benefit of a supply of water stored in tanks if this is a success we have brought the rain under our control but I don't propose to tell you anymore in case I turn you into a rival grower in the same way as igialis has turned me into a competitor of his letter number 88. you want to know my attitude towards liberal studies well I have no respect for any study whatsoever if its end is the making of money such studies are to me unworthy ones they involve the putting out of skills to hire and are only a value in so far as they may develop the mind without occupying it for long time should be spent on them only so long as one's mental abilities are not up to dealing with higher things they are our apprenticeship not our real work why liberal studies are so called as obvious it is because they're the ones considered worthy of a free man but there is really only one liberal study that deserves the name because it makes a person free and that is the pursuit of wisdom its high ideals its steadfastness and spirit make all other studies pure oil and puny in comparison do you really think there is anything to be said for the others when you find among the people who profess to teach them quite the most reprehensible and worthless characters you could have as teachers all right to have studied that sort of thing once but not to be studying them now the question has sometimes been posed whether these liberal studies make a man a better person but in fact they do not aspire to any knowledge of how to do this let alone claim to do it literary scholarship concerns itself with Research into language or history if a rather broader field is preferred or extending its range to the very limit poetry which of these paves the way to virtue attempted Mr worlds analysis of syllables accounts of myths laying down the principles of prosody what is there in all this that dispels fear Roots out desire or Reigns in passion or let us take a look at music a geometry you will not find anything in them which tells us not to be afraid of this or desire that and if anyone lacks this kind of knowledge all his other knowledge is valuable as to him the question is whether or not that sort of scholar is teaching virtue for if he is not he will not even be imparting it incidentally if he is teaching it he is a philosopher if you really want to know how far these persons are from the position of being moral teachers observe the absence of connection between all the things they study if they were teaching one and the same thing a connection would be evident unless perhaps they managed to persuade you that Homer was actually a philosopher though they refute their case by means of the very passages which lead them to infer it for at one moment they make him a stoic giving nothing but virtue his approval steering clear of pleasure not even an offer of immortality inducing him to stoop to the dishonorable and another they make him an Epicurean praising the way of life of the society passing its days at peace and ease in an atmosphere of dinner parties and music making and another he becomes a peripatetic with a three-fold classification of things good at another an academic stating that nothing is certain it is obvious that none of these philosophies is to be found in Homer for the very reason that they all are the doctrines being mutually incompatible even suppose we Grant these people that Homer was a philosopher he became a wise man surely before he could recite any epics so that what we should be learning are the things which made him wise and there is no more point in my investigating which was the earlier Homer or hesiod than they would be in my knowing the reason why hecuba though younger than Helen carried her years so unsuccessfully and what I would ask this kind of scholar do you suppose is the point of trying to establish the ages of patroclus and achilles and are you more concerned to find out where Ulysses wanderings took him than to find a way of putting an end to our own Perpetual wanderings we haven't the time to spare to hear whether it was between Italy and Sicily that he ran into a storm or somewhere outside the area of the world we know wanderings as extensive as his could never in fact have taken place inside so limited an area but every day we're running into our own storms spiritual storms and driven by Vice into All the Troubles that Eunice has ever knew we are not spared those eye distracting Beauties or attackers we too have to contend in various places with Savage monsters reveling in human blood Insidious voices that beguile our ears shipwrecks and all manner of Misfortune what you should be teaching me is how I may attain such a love for my country my father and my wife and keep on calls for those ideals even after shipwreck why go into the question whether or not Penelope completely took in her contemporaries and was far from being a model of rightfully Purity any more than the question whether or not she had a feeling that the man she was looking at was Ulysses before she actually knew it teach me instead what Purity is how much value there is in it whether it lies in the body or in the mind turning to the musical scholar I say this you teach me how bass and treble harmonize or how strings producing different notes can give rise to Concord I would rather you brought about some Harmony in my mind and got my thoughts into tune you show me which other plaintiff keys I would rather you assured me how to avoid uttering plenty of notes when things go against me in life the geometrician teaches me how to work out the size of my Estates rather than how to work out how much a man needs in order to have enough he teaches me to calculate putting my fingers into the service of avarice instead of teaching me that there is no point whatsoever in that sort of computation and that a person is none the happier for having properties which Tire accountants out or to put it another way how Superfluous a man's possessions are when he would be a picture of misery if you force him to start counting up single-handed how much he possessed what use is it to me to be able to divide a piece of land into equal areas if I'm unable to divide it with a brother what use is the ability to measure out a portion of an acre with an accuracy is sending even to the bits which elude the measuring Rod if I'm upset when some high-handed neighbor encroaches slightly on my property the geometrician teaches me how I may avoid losing any fraction of my Estates but what I really want to learn is how to lose the lot and still keep smiling but I'm being turned off for land my father and grandfather owned before me well so what who owned the land before your grandfather are you in a position to identify the community let alone the individual To Whom It originally belonged you entered on it as a tenant not an absolute owner who's tenant you may ask your heirs and that only if you're lucky the illegal experts say that acquisition by prescription never applies whether property concerned is actually public property well what you possess and call your own is really public property or Mankind's property for that matter oh the marvels of geometry you geometers can calculate the areas of circles can reduce any given shape to a square can State the distances separating Stars nothing's outside your scope when it comes to measurement well if you're such an expert measure a man's soul tell me how large or how small that is you can define a straight line what use is that to you if you have no idea what straightness means in life I come now to the person who prides himself on his familiarity with the heavenly bodies towards which quarter Chile's Saturn draws the orbits in which burning Mercury roams what has to be gained from this sort of knowledge am I supposed to feel anxious when Saturn and Mars are in opposition or Mercury sets in the evening in full view of Saturn instead of coming to learn that bodies like these are equally propitious wherever they are and incapable of change in any case they are swept on in a path from which they cannot Escape their motion governed by an uninterrupted sequence of destined events making their reappearance in cycles that are fixed they either actuate or signalize all that comes about in the universe if every event is brought about by them how is mere familiarity with a process which is unchangeable going to be of any help if they are Pointers to events what difference does it make to be aware in advance of things you cannot Escape that are going to happen whether you know about them or not If You observe the Hasting sun and watch the Stars processing through the skies the day that follows will not prove you wrong nor will deceptive cloud-free Knights then take you in I've taken sufficient precautions more than sufficient precautions to ensure that I'm not taken in by deceptive phenomena I'll add this your protest can you really say the day that follows never proved me wrong surely anything that happens which one didn't know in advance was going to happen proves one wrong well I don't know what's going to happen but I do know what's capable of happening and none of this will give rise to any protest on my part I'm ready for everything if I'm let off in any way I'm pleased the day in question proved me wrong in a sense if it treats me leniently but even so not really wrong for just as I know that anything is capable of happening so also do I know that it's not bound to happen so I look for the best and I'm prepared for the opposite you'll have to bear with me if I digress here nothing will induce me to accept painters into the list of liberal arts any more than sculptors marble Masons and all the other attendants on extravagance I must equally reject those oil and dust practitioners the wrestlers or else I shall have to include in the list the perfumers and cooks and all the others who place their talents at the service of our Pleasures what is there I ask you that's liberal about those characters who vomit up their food to empty their stomachs for more with their bodies stuffed full and their minds all starved and inactive can we possibly look on this as a liberal accomplishment for the Youth of Rome whom our ancestors trained to stand up straight and throw a javelin to toss the caber and manage a horse and handle weapons they never used to teach their children anything which could be learned in a reclining posture that kind of training nevertheless doesn't teach or Foster moral values any more than the other what's the use after all of mastering a horse and controlling him with the reins at full Gallop if you're carried away Yourself by totally unbridled emotions what's the use of overcoming opponent after opponent in the wrestling or boxing Rings if you can be overcome by old temper so why don't you may ask in fact gain anything from the liberal studies as far as character is concerned no but we gain a good deal from them in other directions just as even these admittedly inferior Arts which we've been talking about the ones that are based on the use of the hands make important contributions to the amenities of Life although they have nothing to do with character why then do we give our sons a liberal education not because it can make them morally good but because It prepares the mind for the acquisition of moral values just as that grounding in grammar as they called it in the old days in which boys are given their Elementary schooling does not teach them the liberal arts but prepares the ground for knowledge of them in due course so when it comes to character the liberal arts open the way to it rather than carry the personality all the way there in this connection I feel prompted to take a look at individual qualities of character bravery is the one which treats with contempt things ordinary inspiring fear despising and defying and demolishing all the things that terrify us and set chains on human freedom is she in any way fortified by liberal studies or take loyalty the most sacred quality that can be found in a human breast never corrupted by a bribe never driven to betray by any form of compulsion crying beat me burn me put me to death I shall not talk the more the torture probes my secrets the deeper I'll hide them can liberal studies create that kind of spirit take self-control the quality which takes command of the pleasures some she dismisses out of hand unable to tolerate them others she merely regulates ensuring that they are brought within healthy limits never approaching Pleasures for their own sake she realizes that the ideal limit with things you desire is not the amount you would like to but the amount you ought to take humanity is the quality which stops one being arrogant towards one's fellows or being acrimonious in words in actions in emotions she reveals herself as kind and good-natured towards all to her the Troubles of anyone else are her own and anything that benefits herself she welcomes primarily because it will be of benefit to someone else do the liberal studies inculcate these attitudes no more than they do Simplicity or modesty and restraint or frugality and Thrift or Mercy the mercy that it is sparing with another's blood as though it were its own knowing that it is not for man to make wasteful use of man someone will ask me how I could say that liberal studies are of no help towards morality when I've just been saying that there's no attorney morality without them my answer would be this there's no attaining morality without food either but there's no connection between morality and food the fact that a ship can't begin to exist without the Timbers of which is built doesn't mean that the Timbers are of help to it there is no reason for you to assume that X being something without which y could never have come about why came about as a result of the assistance of X and indeed it can actually be argued that the attainment of wisdom is perfectly possible without the liberal studies although moral values are things which have to be learned they are not learned through these studies besides what grounds could I possibly have for supposing that a person who has no acquaintance with books will never be a wise man for wisdom does not lie in books wisdom Publishers not words but truths and I'm not sure that the memory isn't more reliable when it has no external age to fall back on there is nothing small or cramped about wisdom it is something calling for a lot of room to move there are questions to be answered concerning physical as well as human matters questions about the past and about the future questions about things Eternal and things ephemeral questions about time itself on this one subject of time just look how many questions there are to start with does it have an existence of his own next does anything exist prior to time independently of it did it begin with the universe or did it exist even before then on the ground that there was something in existence before the universe there are Countess questions about the soul alone where it comes from what its nature is when it begins to exist and how long it is in existence whether it passes from one place to another moving house so to speak on transfer to successive living creatures taking on a different form with each or is no more than once in service and is then released to roam the universe whether it is a corporeal substance or not what it will do when it ceases to act through us how it will employ its freedom once it has escaped its cage here whether it will forget its past and become conscious of its real nature from the actual moment of his parting from the body and departure for its new home on high whatever the field of physical or moral Sciences you deal with you will be given No Rest by the mass of things to be learned or investigated and to enable matters of this range and scale to find unrestricted Hospitality in our minds everything Superfluous must be turned out virtue will not bring herself to enter The Limited space we offer something of great size requires plenty of room let everything else be evicted and your heart completely opened to her but it's a nice thing surely to be familiar with a lot of subjects well in that case let us retain just as much of them as we need would you consider a person open to criticism for putting Superfluous objects on the same level as really useful ones by ranging on display in his house a whole array of costly articles but not for cluttering himself up with a lot of Superfluous Furniture in the way of learning to want to know more than is sufficient is a form of intemperance apart from which this kind of obsession with the liberal arts turns people into pedantic irritating tactless self-satisfied balls not learning what they need simply because they spend their time learning things they will never need The Scholar didymus wrote four thousand works I should feel sorry for him if he had merely read so many useless works in these Works he discusses such questions as Homer's origin who was Aeneas real mother whether anachron's manner of life was more that of a lecture or that of a drunkard where the sappho slept with anyone who asked her and other things that would be better unlearned if one actually knew them don't you go and tell me now that life is long enough for this sort of thing when you come to writers in our own school for that matter I'll show you plenty of Works which could do with some ruthless pruning it costs a person an enormous amount of time and other people's ears an enormous amount of boredom before he earned such compliments as what a learned person let's be content with a much less fashionable label what a good man what about thinking how much time you lose through constantly being taken up with official matters private matters or ordinary everyday matters through sleep through ill health measure your life it just does not have room for so much I've been speaking about liberal studies yet look at the amount of useless and Superfluous matter to be found in the philosophers even they have descended to the level of drawing distinctions between the uses of different syllables And discussing the proper meanings of prepositions and conjunctions they have come to end with a philologists and the mathematician and they have taken over all the inessential elements in those studies with the result that they know more about devoting care and attention to their speech than about devoting such attention to their lives listen let me show you the sorry consequences to which subtlety carried too far can lead and what an enemy it is to truth protagoras declares that it is possible to argue either side of any question with equal force even the question whether or not one can equally argue either side of any question now Symphonies declares that of the things which appear to us to exist non-exists any more than it does not exist pomenides declares that of all these phenomena non-exists except the whole xenover Leia has dismissed all such difficulties by introducing another he declares that nothing exists the peroneian magarian Eritrean and academic schools pursue more or less similar lines the last named have introduced a new branch of knowledge non-knowledge well all these theories you should just toss on top of that heap of Superfluous liberal studies the people I first mentioned provide me with knowledge which is not going to be of any use to me while the others snatch away from me any hopes of ever acquiring any knowledge at all Superfluous knowledge would be preferable to no knowledge one side offers me no Guiding Light to direct my vision towards the truth while the other just gouges my eyes out if I believe protagoras there is nothing certain in the universe if I believe narsiphonies there is just the one certainty that nothing is certain if Parmenides only one thing exists if Zeno not even one then what are we the things that surround us the things on which we live what are they our whole universe is no more than a semblance of reality perhaps a deceptive semblance perhaps one without substance altogether I should find it difficult to say which of these people annoy me most those who would have us know nothing or the ones who refuse even to leave us the small satisfaction of knowing that we know nothing letter number 90. who can doubt my dear lucillius that life is the gift of the immortal Gods but that living well is the gift of philosophy a corollary of this would be the certain conclusion that our debt to philosophy is greater than the debt we owe to the Gods by just so much as a good life is more of a blessing than Simply Life had it not been for the fact that philosophy itself was something bestowed by the Gods they have given no one the present of a knowledge of philosophy but everyone the means of acquiring it for if they have made philosophy a blessing given to all and Sundry if we were born in a state of moral Enlightenment wisdom would have been deprived of the best thing about her that she isn't one of the things which Fortune either gives us or doesn't as things are there is about wisdom a nobility and magnificence in the fact that she doesn't just fall to a person's lot that each man owes her to his own efforts that one doesn't go to anyone other than oneself to find her what would you have worth looking up to in philosophy if she were handed out free philosophy has the single task of discovering the truth about the Divine and human worlds the religious conscience the sense of Duty Justice and all the rest of the close-knit interdependent company of Virtues never leave her side philosophy has taught men to worship what is divine to love what is human telling us that with the gods belongs Authority and among human beings Fellowship that Fellowship lasted for a long time intact before men's greed broke Society up and impoverished even though she had brought most riches for people ceased to possess everything as soon as they want everything for themselves the first men on this Earth however and their immediate descendants followed nature unspoiled they took a single person as their leader and their law freely submitting to the decisions of an individual of superior Merit it is Nature's Way to subordinate the worst to the better with dumb animals indeed the ones who dominate the group are either the biggest or the fiercest the bull who leads the herd is not the weakling but the one who's Balkan Brawn has brought it victory over the other males in a herd of elephants the tallest is the leader among human beings the highest Merit means the highest position so they used to choose their ruler for his character hence peoples were supremely fortunate when among them a man could never be more powerful than others unless he was a better man than they were for there is nothing dangerous in a man's having as much power as he likes if he takes the view that he has power to do only what it is his duty to do in that age then which people commonly refer to as the Golden Age government so posedonius maintains was in the hands of the wise they kept the peace protected the weaker from the stronger urged and dissuaded pointed out what was advantageous and what was not their ability to look ahead ensure that their peoples never went short of anything whilst The Bravery averted dangers and their devotedness brought well-being and prosperity to their subjects to govern was to serve not to rule no one used to try out the extent of his power over Those whom he owed that bar in the first place and no one had either reason or inclination to perpetuate Injustice since people governing well were equally well obeyed and a king could issue no greater threat to disobedient subjects than that of his own abdication but with the gradual infiltration of the vices and the resultant transformation of kingships into tyrannies the need arose for laws laws which were themselves to begin with drafted by the wise so long who established Athens as a democratic state was one of the seven men of antiquity celebrated for their wisdom if the same age had produced like kyrgus an eighth name would have been added to that revered number the laws of the Lucas and carandus are still admired and it was not in public life or in the chambers of lawyers that these two men learned the constitutional principles which they were to establish in Sicily then in its Heyday and throughout the Greek areas of Italy but in the secret Retreat now hallowed and famous of Pythagoras thus far I agree with posidonia's but that philosophy discovered the techniques employed in everyday life that I refuse to admit I will not claim for philosophy a Fame that belongs to technology it was philosophies as posedonius that taught men how to raise buildings at a time when they were widely dispersed and their shelter consisted of Huts or burrowed out Cliffs or hollowed tree trunks I for my part cannot believe that philosophy was responsible for the invention of these modern Feats of engineering that rise up story after story of the cities of today crowding one against the next any more than of our fish tanks those enclosures designed to save men's gluttony from having to run the risk of Storms and to ensure extravagance safe harbors of her own however wildly the high seas may be raging in which to fatten separately the different kinds of fish are you really going to tell me that philosopher taught the world to use keys and bolts on doors which was surely nothing but a signal for greed was it philosophy that reared The Towering buildings we know today with all the danger they mean to the people living in them it was not enough presumably for man to Avail himself of whatever cover came to hand to have found a shelter of some kind or other in nature without trouble and without the use of skills believe me that age before there ever existed Architects or Builders was a happy age the squaring off of Timbers the accurate cutting of beams with a saw that travels along a marked out line all these things came in with extravagance the first of men with wedges split their wood yes for they were not preparing a roof for a future banqueting Hall and Pines or Furs were not continually being drawn through streets trembling at their passage on a long Convoy of vehicles to support paneled ceilings heavy with gold their Huts were held up by a forked pole stood at either end and with close packed branches and a sloping pile of leaves a runoff was arranged for even heavy rains this was the kind of roof under which they lived and yet their lives were free of care for men in a state of Freedom had thatch for their shelter while slavery dwells beneath marble and gold another matter on which I disagree with posidonius is his belief that it was by wise men that tools were originally invented on that sort of basis there is nothing to stop him saying that it was by philosophers that discovered next were ways of snaring game of catching birds with lime of setting dogs all round Deep Woods it was human Ingenuity not wisdom which discovered all that I disagree with him again where he maintains that it was wise men who discovered iron and copper mining when the Earth had been scorched by a forest fire and had melted to produce a flow from surface veins of all the person who discovers that sort of thing is the kind of person who makes it his business to be interested in just that sort of thing nor for that matter do I find it as nicer question as posedonius does whether the hammer started to come into General use before The tongs or the other way around they were both invented by some individual of an alert perceptive tone of mind for not one with the qualities of greatness or of inspiration and the same applies to anything else the quest of which involves a bent back and an earthward gaze the wise men Then followed a simple way of life which is hardly surprising when you consider how even in this Modern Age he seeks to be as little incumbent as he possibly can how I ask you can you consistently admire both Doodles and diogenes tell me which of these two you would say was a wise man the one who hit on the saw or the one who in seeing a boy drinking water from the hollow of his hand immediately took the cup out of his knapsack and smashed it telling himself off for his stupidity and having Superfluous luggage about him all that time and curled himself up in a jar and went to sleep and today just tell me which of the following you consider the wiser man the one who discovers a means of spraying saffron perfumes to a tremendous height from hidden pipes who fills or empties channels in one Sudden Rush of water who constructs a set of interchangeable ceilings for a dining room in such a way as to produce a constant succession of different patterns with a change of ceiling at each course or the one who proves to others and to himself that nature makes no Demand on us that it's difficult or hard to meet and that we can live without the marble worker and the engineer but we can clothe ourselves without importing silks that we can have the things we need for our ordinary purposes if we will only be content with what the Earth has made available on its surface if they only care to listen to this man a human race would realize that cooks are as unnecessary to them as our soldiers that race of man to whom taking care of the body was a straightforward enough matter were if not philosophers something very like it the thing is that are essential are required with little bother it is the luxuries that call for toil and effort follow nature and you will feel no need of Craftsmen it was Nature's desire that we should not be kept occupied thus she equipped us for everything she required us to contend with but the naked body can't stand cold so what other skins of wild beasts and other creatures not capable of giving us more than adequate protection against the cold is it not a fact that many peoples make a covering for their bodies out of bark that feathers are sewn together to serve as clothing that even today the majority of the scythians were the pelts of fox and mice which are soft to the touch and impervious to wind are you going to tell me too that any people you care to mention never use their hands to weave a basket work of wattles smear it all over with a common mud and then cover the whole roof with long grass stems and other material growing wild and went through winter weather the rain streaming down the slopes of the roof without any worry but we need some pretty dense shade to keep off the heat of the Sun in summer so what have passed ages not left us plenty of hiding places that have been carved out by the ravages of time or whatever other cause one curse to suppose and have developed into caves and again is it not a fact that certain tribes take shelter in pits dug into the ground as do other people who because of extreme Sun temperatures find nothing less than the baked Earth itself sufficiently substantial as a protective covering against the Heat when Nature granted all the other animals a simple Passage through life she was not so unfair to man as to make it impossible for him for him alone to live without all these skills nature demanded nothing hard from us and nothing needs painful contriving to enable life to be kept going we were born into a world in which things were ready to our hands it is we who have made everything difficult to come by through our own disdain for what is easily come by shelter and apparel and the means of warming body and food all the things which nowadays entail tremendous trouble were there for the taking free to all obtainable at trifling effort with everything the limit corresponded to the need it is we and no one else who have made those same things costly spectacular and obtainable only by means of a large number of full-scale techniques nature suffices for all she asks of us luxury has turned her back on nature Daley urging herself on and growing through all the centuries pressing men's intelligence into development of the voices first she began to hanker after things that were inessential and then after things that were injurious and finally she handed the mind over to the body and commanded it to be the out and out slave of the body's whim and pleasure all those trades that give rise to noise or hectic activity in the city are in business for the body which was once in the position of the slave having everything issued to it and is now the master having everything procured for it this is the starting point for textile and Engineering workshops for the perfumes used by chefs the sensual movements of our dancing teachers even sensual and unmanly songs and why because the bones of nature which set a limit to man's wants by relieving them only where there is necessity for such relief have been lost sight of to want simply what is enough nowadays suggest to people primitiveness and squalor it is incredible lucilius how easily even great men can be carried away from the truth by the sheer pleasure of holding forth on her subject look at posidonius in my opinion one of those who have contributed most to philosophy when he wants to give a description of how in the first place some threads are twisted and others drawn out from the soft loose hanger wall then how the warp has its threads stretched perpendicularly by means of hanging weights and how the weft worked in to soften the hard texture of the warp threads which compress it on either side is made Compact and close by means of the Baton he declares that philosophers invented the art of the Weaver too forgetting that philosophers had disappeared by the time this comparatively Advanced type of weaving had been evolved the warp is bound to the beam and then its threads are parted by the Reed the wolf worked in between with pointed shuttles and pressed home by the broadcomb's fretted teeth he might have thought differently if he had only had the opportunity of seeing the Looms of the present day the end product of which is clothing which is not going to conceal a thing clothing which is no help to modesty let alone the body he then goes on to Farmers and gives an equally eloquent description of how the soil is broken up by the plow for the first time and then gone over again in order for the Earth thus loosened may allow the roots more room to develop and continues with the sowing of the seed and the lifting of the weeds to prevent any stray wild plants springing up and ruining the crop all this too he represents as being the work of philosophers as if agriculturists were not now as ever discovering plenty of new methods of increasing the soil's productivity nor contend with these occupations he proceeds to demean the philosopher to the bakery he tells us how by imitating nature he began producing bread the grain he said is taken into the mouth and crushed by the coming together of the hard surfaces of the teeth anything that escapes is carried back to the teeth Again by the Tongue and the grain is finally mixed with saliva to enable it to pass down the lubricated throat with greater facility on reaching the stomach where it is cooked in an even heat it is finally absorbed into the system taking this process as a model someone or rather placed one rough Stone on top of another an imitation of the teeth one set of which remains immobile and awaits the action of the other the grains are then crushed by the friction of one against the other and are constantly re-subjected to it until they are reduced by this repeated grinding to a fine powder he then sprinkled the resulting meal with water and by going on manipulating it he made it plastic and shaped it into the form of a loaf this he first poked in a glowing hot earthenware vessel in hot ashes later came the gradual discovery of ovens and other devices the heat of which is controllable at will posedonius was not far off maintaining that the shoemaker's trade as well was invented by philosophers now all these things were indeed discovered by the exercise of reason but not by reason in its perfect form they were invented by ordinary men not by philosophers just as let me add were the vessels we cross rivers and season with sails designed to catch the drive of the Winds and Rudders at the stern to alter the vessels course in this or that direction the idea being taken from the fish who steers with his tail one slight movement of it to either side being enough to alter the direction of his darting course all these things says posidonius were invented by our philosopher they were however rather too unimportant for him to handle personally and so he passed them over to the minions among his assistants no the fact is that this sort of thing was not thought up by anyone other than the people who make them their concern today we know very well that some have only appeared within living memory the use for example of Windows letting in the full daylight through transparent pains or bathrooms heated from beneath with pipes set in the walls in order to refuse the Heat and thus maintain an even temperature at the highest as well as the lowest room levels need I mention the marble with which our temples and even houses are resplendent or the rounded and Polished blocks on which we rest whole Colonnades and buildings capable of holding large crowds of people or the shorthand symbols by means of which even a rapidly delivered speech is taken down and the hand is able to keep up with the quickness of the tongue these are inventions of the lowest slaves philosophy is far above all this she does not train men's hands she is the instructress of men's Minds you want to know do you what philosophy has Unearthed what philosophy has achieved it is not the gracefulness of dance movements nor the variety of sounds produced by horn or fruit as they take in breath and transform it in its Passage through or out of the instrument into notes she does not set about constructing arms or walls or anything of use in war on the contrary her voice is for peace calling all mankind to live in harmony and she is not I insist the manufacturer of equipment for everyday essential purposes why must you make her responsible for such insignificant things in her you see the Mistress of the art of life itself she has indeed authority over others in as much as all activities that provide life with his apparatus must also be the Servants of that of which life itself is the servant philosophy however takes us her aim the state of happiness that is the direction in which he opens roots and guides us she shows us what a real and what are only apparent evils she strips men's minds of empty thinking bestows a greatness that is solid and administs as a check to Greatness where it is puffed up and all an empty show she sees that we are left in no doubt about the difference between what is great and what is bloated and she imparts her knowledge of the whole of nature as well as herself she explains what the gods are and what they are like discovered the potter's wheel the rotary emotion of Which shapes earthenware then mention of The Potter's Wheel being found in Homer he would have us think that it is the passage in Homer rather than his story that is furious I maintain that anacas was not responsible for this invention and that even if he was he discovered it as a philosopher yes but not in his capacity as a philosopher in the same way as philosophers do plenty of things as men without doing them in their capacity as philosophers suppose for example a philosopher happens to be a very fast runner in a race he will come first by virtue of his ability as a runner not by virtue of his being a philosopher I should like to show posidonius some glass spur molding Glass by means of his breath into a whole variety of shapes that could hardly be fashioned by the most careful hand discoverers that have occurred in the period since The Disappearance of the wise man Democritus he says is reported to be the discoverer of the arch the idea of which is to bind a curving line of stones set at slightly differing angles from each other with a keystone this I should say was quite untrue for there must have been both Bridges and gateways Before democritus's Time and the upper parts of these generally have a curve to them and it seems to have escaped your memory posidonius that the same Democritus discovered a means of softening Ivory and a means of turning a pebble into an emerald by boiling it a method employed even today for coloring certain stones that man has discovered and found amenable to the process these techniques May indeed have been discovered by a philosopher but not in his capacity as a philosopher for there are plenty of things which he does which one sees being done just as well if not with greater skill and dexterity by persons totally lacking in wisdom what has the philosopher investigated what has the philosopher brought to light in the first place truth and nature having unlike the rest of the animal world followed nature with more than just a pair of eyes things slow to grasp divinity and secondly a rule of life in which he has brought life into line with things Universal and he has taught us not just to recognize but to obey the gods and to accept all that happens exactly as if it were an order from above he has told us not to listen to false opinions and has weighed and valued everything against standards which are true he has condemned Pleasures an Inseparable element of which is subsequent regret has commended the good things which will always satisfy and for all to see has made the man who has no need of luck the luckiest man of all and the man who is master of himself the master of all the philosophy I speak of is not the one which takes the citizen out of public life and the gods out of the world we live in and hands morality over to pleasure but the philosophy which thinks nothing good unless it is Honorable which is incapable of being enticed astray by the rewards of men or fortune and the Very presslessness of which lies in the fact that it cannot be bought at any price and I do not believe that this philosophy was in existence in that primitive era in which technical skills were still unknown and useful knowledge was acquired through actual practical experience all that it dates from an age that was happy an age in which the bounties of nature were freely available for the use of all without discrimination before avarice and luxury split human beings up and got them to abandon partnership for plunder the men of that era were not philosophers even if they acted as philosophers are supposed to act no other state of man could cause anyone greater admiration if God were to allow our Mount of fashion the things of this Earth and allot its peoples their social Customs that man would not be satisfied with any other system than the one which tradition says existed in those people's time among whom no Farmers tilled plowed Fields merely to Mark the line of boundaries dividing land between its owners was a sin men shared their findings and the Earth herself then gave all things more freely unsolicited what race of men could be luckier share and share alike they enjoyed nature she saw to each and every man's requirements for survival like a parent what it all amounted to was undisturbed possession of resources owned by the community I can surely call that race of men one of unparalleled riches it being impossible to find a single Pauper in it into this ideal state of things burst avarice avarice which in seeking to put aside some article or other and appropriate it to his own use only succeeded in making everything somebody else's property and reducing its possessions to a fraction of its previously unlimited wealth avarice brought in poverty by coveting a lot of possessions losing all that it had this is why although it may Endeavor to make good its losses May acquire a state after a state by buying out or forcing out its neighbors in large country properties so the dimensions of whole provinces speak of owning some property when it can go on a long tour overseas without once stepping off his own land there is no extension of our boundaries that can bring us back to our starting point when we have done everything within our power we shall possess a great deal but we once possess the world the Earth herself untilled was more productive her Years be more than ample for the needs of peoples who do don't read each other with any of Nature's products men found as much pleasure in showing others what they had discovered as they did in discovering it no one could outdo or be outdone by any other all was equally divided among people living in complete Harmony the stronger had not yet started laying hands on the weaker the avaricious person had not yet started hiding things away to be hoarded for his own private use so shutting the next man off from actual necessities of life each cared as much about the other as about himself weapons were unused hands still unstained with human blood had directed their hostility exclusively against wild beasts protected from the Sun in some thick wood living in some very ordinary shelter under a covering of leaves preserving them from the rigors of winter or the rain those people past Tranquil Nights with never a sigh we in our Crimson luxury toss and turn with worry stabbed by needling curse what soft sleep the hard Earth gave those people they had no carved or paneled ceilings hanging over them they lay out in the open with the Stars slipping past above them and the firmament silently conveying onward that Mighty work of creation as it was carried headlong below the Horizon in the Magnificent pageant of the night sky and they had clear views by day as well as By Night of this loveliest of mansions enjoying the pleasure of watching constellations falling away from the Zenith and others Rising again from out of sight beneath the horizon surely it was a joy to roam the Earth with Marvels scattered so widely around one you know by contrast go pale at every noise your houses make and if there is a creaking sound you run away among your frescoed passages in alarm those people had no mansions on the scale of towns fresh air and the untrammeled breezes of the Open Spaces the unoppressive shade of a tree or Rock Springs of Crystal Clarity streams which chose their own course streams unsullied by the work of Man by pipes or any other interference with their natural channels Meadows whose Beauty owed nothing to man's art that was the environment around their Dwelling Places in the countryside Dwelling Places given a simple contramance finish this was a home in Conformity with nature a home in which one enjoyed living and which occasions neither fear of it nor fears for it whereas nowadays our own homes come for a large part of our feeling of insecurity but however wonderful and guileless the life they LED they were not wise men this is a title that has come to be reserved for the highest of all achievements all the same I should be the last to deny that there were men of exalted Spirit only one step removed so to speak from the gods there can be no doubt that before this Earth was worn out It produced a better type of offspring but though they all possessed a character more robust than that of today and one with a greater aptitude for hard work it is equally true that their personalities fell short of genuine Perfection for nature does not give a man virtue the process of becoming a good man is an art certainly they did not go in search of gold or silver or the various crystalline stones to be found in the nethermost drugs of the Earth they were still merciful even to dumb animals man was Far and Away from killing man not out of fear or provocation but simply for entertainment they had yet to wear embroidered clothing and had yet to have gold woven into robes or even mine it but the fact remains that their innocence was due to ignorance and nothing else and there is a world of difference between on the one hand choosing not to do what is wrong and on the other not knowing how to do it in the first place they lacked the cardinal virtues of Justice moral Insight self-control and courage there were corresponding qualities in each case not unlike these that had a place in their primitive lives but virtue only comes to a character which has been thoroughly schooled and trained and brought to a pitch of perfection by unremitting practice we are born for it but not with it and even in the best of people until you cultivate it there is only the material for virtue not virtue itself letter number 91. my friend liberalis is in some distress at the present moment following the news of the complete destruction of Leon by fire it is a disaster by which anyone might be shaken let alone a person quite devoted to his hometown this event has left him groping for that staunchness of spirit which naturally enough he cultivated when it was a case of facing what to him were conceivable fears one is not surprised though that there were never any advanced fears of such an unexpected virtually unheard of catastrophe considering that there was no precedent for it plenty of cities have suffered damage by fire but none has ever been blotted out by one even when its buildings have been set aflame by enemy hands in many places the Flames die out and even if they are continually rekindled they are seldom so all-consuming as to leave nothing for tools to demolish earthquakes too have hardly ever been so ruinous and violent as to raise whole towns there was never in fact been a fire so destructive as to leave nothing for a future fire to consume but here a single night has laid low a host of architectural splendors any one of which might have been the glory of a separate City in the depth of peace there has come such a blow as could not have been dreaded in war itself who would believe it at a time when military conflict is in abeyance everywhere when an International Peace covers all parts of the globe Leon the showpiece of Gaul is lost of you Fortune invariably allows Those whom she strikes down in the sight of all a chance to fear what they were going to suffer the fall of anything great generally takes time but here a single night is all there was between a mighty City and no City at all it was destroyed in fact in less time that I have taken telling you of its destruction sturdy and Resolute though he is when it comes to facing his own troubles our liberalis has been deeply shocked by the whole thing and he has some reason to be shaken what is quite unlooked for is more crushing in its effect and unexpectedness adds to the weight of a disaster the fact that it was unforeseen has never failed to intensify a person's grief this is a reason for ensuring that nothing ever takes us by surprise we should project our thoughts ahead of us at every turn and have in mind every possible eventuality instead of only the usual course of events for what is there that fortune does not when she pleases fell at the height of its powers what is there that is not the more assailed and buffeted by her the more lustrous this attraction what is there that is troublesome or difficult for her assaults do not always come along a single path or even a well-recognized path at one time she will call in the aid of her own hands and attacking us at another she will be content with her own powers and devising for us dangers for which no one is responsible no moment is exempt in the midst of Pleasures there are found the Springs of suffering in the middle of Peace War rears its head and the bulwarks of One Security are transformed into sources of alarm friend turning Foe and Ally turning enemy The Summer's calm is upset by sudden storms more severe than those of winter in the absence of any enemy we suffer all that an enemy might wreak on us over much Prosperity if all else fails will hit on the instruments of his own destruction sickness assails those leading the most sensible lives tuberculosis those with the strongest constitutions retribution the utterly Guiltless violence the most secluded Misfortune has a way of choosing some unprecedented means or other of impressing its power on those who might be said to have forgotten it a single day strews in Ruins all that was raised by a train of construction extending over a long span of time and involving a great number of separate works and a great deal of favor on the part of Heaven to say a day indeed is to put too much of a break on the calamities that hastened on upon us an hour an instant of time suffices for the overthrow of Empires it would be some relief to our condition and our Frailty if all things were as slow in their perishing as they were in their coming into being but as it is the growth of things is a tardy process and their undoing is a rapid matter nothing is durable whether for an individual or for a society the Destinies of men and cities alike sweep onwards terror strikes amid the most tranquil surroundings and without any disturbance in the background to give rise to them calamities spring from the least expected quarter states which stood firm through Civil War as well as Wars external collapse without a hand being raised against them how few Nations have made of their prosperity a lasting thing this is why we need to envisage every possibility and to strengthen the spirit to deal with the things which may conceivably come about rehearse them in your mind Exile torture War shipwreck Misfortune May snatch you away from your country or your country away from you may banish you into some Wilderness these very surroundings in which the masses suffocate may become a Wilderness all the terms of our human Lodge should be before our eyes we should be anticipating not merely all that commonly happens but all that is conceivably capable of happening if we do not want to be overwhelmed and struck none by rare events as if they were unprecedented ones Fortune needs envisaging in a thoroughly comprehensive way think how often towns in Asia or in Greece have fallen at a single Earth Tremor how many villages in Syria or Macedonia have been engulfed how often this form of disaster has wrought Devastation in Cyprus how often pathos has stumbled about itself time and again we hear the news of the annihilation of a whole city and how small a fraction of mankind are we who hear such news thus often so let us face up to the blows of circumstance and be aware that whatever happens is never as serious as rumor makes it out to be so a city has burned a wealthy City and the glory of the provinces of which it was a feature though it stood in a class of its own perched as it was on a single Hill and that not a hill of very great dimensions but time will sweep away the very traces of every one of those cities of whose Splendor and magnificence you nowadays hear look at the way the very foundations of once famous cities of Greece have been eroded by now to the point where nothing is left to show that they ever even existed and it is not only the works of human hands that waste away nor only structures raised by human skill and Industry that the passing day is demolish Mountain massives crumble away whole regions have subsided the waves of covered landmarks once far out of the sight of the sea the immense force of volcanic fires that once made the mountaintops glow as each of them away and reduced to lowly stature what once were soaring Peaks reassuring beacons to the Mariner The Works of nature herself suffer so it is only right that we should bear the overthrow of cities with resignation they stand just to fall such is the sum total of the end that awaits them whether it be the blast of a Subterranean explosion throwing off the restraining weight above it or the violence of flood waters increasing to a prodigious degree underground until it breaks down everything in its way or a volcanic Outburst fracturing the Earth's crust or age to which nothing is immune overcoming them little by little or plague carrying off its population and causing the deserted area to decay it would be tedious to recount all the different ways by which fate May overtake them one thing I know all the works of mortal man lie under sentence of mortality we live among things that are destined to perish such then other comforting Reflections which I would offer are liberalis who burns with a kind of passion beyond belief for his birthplace which it may be has only been consumed so as to be called to hire things a setback has often cleared the way for greater Prosperity many things have fallen only to rise to more exalted Heights that opponent of affluence in the capital temagenes used to declare that the one reason fires distressed him was the knowledge that what would rise up afterwards would be of a better standard than what had burned in the city of Leon too one may presume that everyone will endeavor to make the work of restoration a greater more noble achievement than what they have lost May that work be of lasting duration and may the New Foundation be attended by happier auspices with a view to its lasting for a longer and indeed for all time this is the hundredth year since the town came into being and even for a human being such an age is by no means the uttermost limit founded by plankus in an area of concentrated population it owes its growth to its favorable situation yet how many Grievous blows as it had to suffer in the time it takes for a man to grow old so the spirit must be trained to a realization and an acceptance of its lot it must come to see that there is nothing Fortune will shrink from that she wields the same authority over Emperor and Empire alike and the same power over cities as over men there's no ground for resentment in all this we've entered into a world in which these are the terms life is lived on if you're satisfied with that submit to them if you're not get out whatever way you please present A Thing by all means if it represents an injustice decrete against yourself personally but if this same constraint is binding on the lowest and the highest alike then make your peace again with destiny the destiny that unravels all ties there's no justification for using our Graves and all the variety of monuments we see bordering the highways as a measure of our stature in the ashes all men are leveled we're born unequal we die equal and my words apply as much to cities as to those who live in them ardeo was taken and so was Rome the great lawgiver draws no distinctions between us according to our birth or the celebrity of our names save only while we exist on the reaching of mortality's end he declares away with snobbery all of the earth carriers shall forthwith be subject to one Law Without discrimination when it comes to all we're required to go through were equals no one is more vulnerable than the next man and no one can be more sure of his surviving to the morrow King Alexander of Macedon once took up the study of geometry poor fellow in as much as he would thus find out how minute the Earth really was the earth of which he had possessed himself of a tiny part yes poor fellow I call him for the reason that he was bound to discover that his title was a false one for who can be great in an area of my New Dimensions anyway the points he was being instructed in were of some subtlety and such that the learning of them demanded the closest concentration not the sort of thing that would be grasped by a crazed individual projecting his thoughts across the seas teach me he said the easy things to which his instructor answered these things are the same for everyone equally difficult for all well imagine that nature is saying to you those things you Grumble about are the same for everyone I can give no one anything easier but anyone who likes may make them easier for himself how by viewing them with equanimity you must needs experience pain and hunger and thirst and grow old assuming that you are vouch-safed a relatively long stay among men and be ill and suffer loss and finally perish but you needn't believe the chatter of the people around you there's nothing in all this that's evil insupportable or even hard those people are afraid of these things by a kind of General consent are you going to feel alarm at death then in the same way as you imagine some common report what could be more foolish than a man's being afraid of people's words my friend Demetrius has a nice way of putting things when he says as he commonly does that to him the utterances of the unenlightened are as noises emanating from the belly what difference does it make to me he asks whether their Rumblings come from their upper or their nether regions what out of foolishness it is to be afraid that those who have a bad name can rob you of a good one just as the dread arrives in You by some common report has proved groundless so too is the dread of things of which you would never be afraid if common report did not tell you to be what harm could ever come to a good man from being besmirched by unwarranted gossip we shouldn't even let it Prejudice us against death which itself has an evil reputation yet none of the people who've been lying it has put it to the test until one does it's rather rashed to condemn a thing one knows nothing about and yet one thing you do know and that is this how many people it's a blessing to how many people it freeze from torture want maladies suffering weariness and no one has power over us when death is within our own power letter number 104 I've got away to my place at momentum getting away from what guess the city no a fever and just as it was infiltrating my defenses too it had already taken hold on me my doctor being decided in his opinion that a disturbed irregular pulse its natural Rhythm upset was the start of it whereupona immediately ordered my Carriage out and although my Paulina tried to hold me back insisted on driving away I kept saying the same thing as my mentor galio when he started sickening for a fever in a Kia he immediately boarded a ship assuring every one of the disorder was to be put down to the place where he was living and not to his Constitution I told Paulina this she is forever urging me to take care of my health and indeed as I come to realize the way her very being depends on mine I'm beginning in my concern for her to feel some concern for myself so although old age has made me better at putting up with a lot of things here I'm coming to lose this advantage of being old the notion occurs to me that inside this old frame there exists a young man as well and one is always less severe on a young man the consequences that since I haven't managed to get her to put a little more bravery into her love for me she has managed to induce me to show a little more love and care for myself for concessions have to be made to legitimate emotions there are times when however pressing one's reasons to the contrary one's dying breath requires to be summoned back and held back even as it is passing one's lips even if this amounts to torture simply out of consideration for one's dear ones the good man should go on living as long as he ought to not just as long as he likes the man who does not value his wife or a friend highly enough to stay on a little longer in life who persists in dying in spite of them is a thoroughly self-indulgent character this is a duty which the soul should also impose on itself when it is merely the convenience of near and dear ones that demands it are not only if and when it feels the wish to die but also if and when it's begun to carry out the wish it should pause a while to fit in with their interests to return to life for another sake is a sign of a noble spirit it is something that great men have done and a number of occursions yet to give your old age greater care and attentiveness and the realization that this pleases any of the persons closest to you or is in their interests or would be likely to gratify them uh this in spite of the fact that the greatest reward of that period is the opportunity it gives you to adopt a relatively Carefree attitude towards looking after yourself and a more adventurous manner of living is also to my mind a mark of the highest possible kindness besides it brings you more than a little pleasure and recompense for can anything be sweeter than to find that you are so dear to your wife that this makes you dearer to yourself so it comes about that my Paulina succeeds in making me responsible for anxiety of my own as well as hers on my behalf I expect you're Keen to hear what effect it had on my health this decision of mine to leave well no sooner had I left behind the oppressive atmosphere of the city and that reek of smoking cookers which pour out along with a cloud of Ashes all the poisonous fumes they've accumulated in their Interiors whenever they're started up that I noticed the change in my condition at once you could imagine how much stronger I felt after reaching my Vineyards I fairly waded into my food talk about animals just turned out onto Spring grass so by now I'm quite my old self again that feeling of listlessness being bodily ill at ease and mentally inefficient didn't last I'm beginning to get down to some wholehearted work this is not something however to which mere surroundings are conducive unless the mind is at its own disposal able at will to provide his own seclusion even in crowded moments on the contrary the man who spends his time choosing one Resort after another in a hunt for peace and quiet will in every place he visits find something to prevent him from relaxing the story is told that someone complained to Socrates that traveling abroad had never done him any good and received the reply what else can you expect seeing that you always take yourself along with you when you go abroad what a blessing it would be for some people if they could only lose themselves those things are these peasants are a worry and a burden a source of demoralization and anxiety to their own selves what good does it do you to go overseas to move from City to City if you really want to escape the things that harass you what you're needing is not to be in a different place but to be a different person suppose you've arrived in Athens or supposed roads choose any country you like what difference does the character of the place make you'll only be importing your own with you you'll still look on wealth as a thing to be valued your poverty will be causing you torment while this being the most pathetic thing about it all your poverty will be imaginary however much you possess there's someone else who has more and you'll be fancing yourself to be short of things you need to the exact extent to which you lag behind him another thing that you'll regard as something to be valued is success in public life in which case you're going to feel resentment when so and so is elected Consul or when so-and-so is re-elected for that matter and be jealous whenever you see a person's name appearing too often in the honors lists your ambition will be running it so feverish a pitch that if anyone's ahead of you in the race you'll see yourself as coming last death you'll think of as the worst of all bad things though in fact there's nothing bad about it at all except the thing which comes before it the fear of it you'll be scared stiff by illusory as well as genuine dangers haunted by imaginary alarms what good will it do you to have found a route past all those Argyle thoughts on one Escape right through the enemy's lines peace itself will supply you with new fears if your mind is once experienced the shocks of fright you'll no longer have any confidence even in things which are perfectly safe once it has acquired the habit of unthinking panic it is incapable even of attending to his own self-preservation for it runs away from dangers instead of taking steps to avert them and we're far more exposed to them once our backs are turned to lose someone you love is something you'll regard as the hardest of all blows to Bear while all the time this will be as silly as crying because the leaves fall from the beautiful trees that add to the charm of your home preserve a sense of proportion in your attitude to everything that pleases you and make the most of them while they're at their best at one moment chance will carry off one of them at another moment another but the falling of the leaves is not difficult to Bear since they grow again and it is no more hard to Bear the loss of Those whom you love and regard as brightening your existence but even if they do not grow again they are replaced but their successors will never be quite the same no and neither will you every day every hour sees a change in you although the ravages of time are easier to see in others in your own case they are far less obvious because to you they do not show while other people are snatched away from us we are being filtered away surreptitiously from ourselves are you never going to give any of these considerations any thought and never going to apply any healing treatment to your wounds instead of sowing the seeds of worry for yourself by hoping for this or that or despairing of obtaining this or that other thing if you're sensible you'll run the two together and never hope without an element of Despair never despair without an element of Hope what good has travel of itself ever been able to do anyone it has never acted as a check on Pleasure or restraining influence on desires it has never controlled The Temper of an angry man or quell The Reckless impulses of a lover never in fact has it read the personality of a fault it has not granted us the gift of judgment it has not put an end to mistaken attitudes all it has ever done is distract us for a little while through the novelty of our surroundings like children fascinated by something they haven't come across before the instability moreover of a mind which is seriously unwell is aggravated by it the motion itself increasing the fitfulness and restlessness this explains why people after setting out for a place with the greatest of enthusiasm are often more enthusiastic about getting away from it like migrant Birds they fly on away even quicker than they came travel will give you a knowledge of other countries it will show you mountains whose outlines are quite New To You stretches of unfamiliar planes valleys watered by perennial streams it will allow you to observe the unique features of this or that River the way in which for example the Nile rises in summer flood or the Tigris vanishes from sight and at the completion of its journey through hidden Subterranean regions is restored to view with its volume undiminished or the weather Meander theme of every poet's early training exercises whines about loop after Loop and again and again is carried close to its own bed and then once more diverted into a different court before it can flow into his own stream but travel won't make a better or saneer man of you for this we must spend time in study and in the writings of wise men to learn the truths that have emerged from their researches and carry on the search ourselves for the answers that have not yet been discovered this is the way to liberate the spirit there still needs to be rescued from its miserable state of slavery so long in fact as you remain in ignorance of what to aim at and what to avoid what is essential and what is Superfluous what is upright or honorable conduct and what is not it will not be traveling but drifting all this hurrying from place to place won't bring you any relief for your traveling in the company of your own emotions followed by your troubles all the way If Only They were really following you they'd be farther away from you as it is they're not at your back but on it that's why they weigh you down with just the same uncomfortable chafing Wherever You Are it's medicine not a particular part of the world that a person needs of is ill suppose someone has broken his leg or dislocated a joint he doesn't get into a carriage or board a ship he calls in a doctor to have the fracture set or the dislocation reduced well then when a person's spirit is wrenched or broken at so many points do you imagine that it can be put right by a change of scenery to that sort of trouble isn't so serious that it can't be cured by an outing traveling doesn't make a man a doctor or a public speaker there isn't a single art which is acquired merely by being in one place rather than another can wisdom then the greatest art of all be picked up in the course of taking a trip take my word for it the trip doesn't exist that can set you beyond the reach of Cravings fits of temper or fears if it did the human race will be off there in a body so long as you carry the sources of your troubles about with you those troubles will continue to harass and plague you wherever you wander on land or on sea does it surprise you that running away doesn't do you any good for things you're running away from are with you all the time what you must do is mend your ways and get rid of the burden you're carrying keep your Cravings within safe limits scour every trace of evil from your personality if you want to enjoy your travel you must make your traveling companion a healthy one so long as you associate with a person who's mean and grasping you will remain a money-minded individual yourself so long as you keep arrogant company just so long will conceit stick to you cruelty you'll never say goodbye to while you share the same roof with a torturer familiarity with adulterers will only inflame your desires if you wish to be stripped of your vices you must get right away from the examples others set of them The Miser the swindler the bully the cheat who would do you a lot of harm by simply being near you are actually inside you move to better company live with the Catos with lilius with tubero if you like Greek company too attach yourself to Socrates and Zeno the one would teach you how to die should it be forced upon you the other had to die before it is forced upon you live with crucipus live with positonias they will give you a knowledge of man and the universe they will tell you to be a practical philosopher not just to entertain your listeners to a clever display of language but to steal your spirit embrace it against whatever threatens for the only Safe Harbor in this life's tossing trouble see is to refuse to be bothered about what the future will bring and to stand ready and confident squaring the breast to take without skulking or flinching whatever Fortune holds at us when she created us nature endowed us with Noble aspirations and just as she gave certain animals ferocity others timidity others cunning so to us she gave a spirit of exalted ambition a spirit that takes us in search of a life of not the greatest safety but the greatest honor a spirit very like the universe which so far as mortal footsteps may it follows and adopts as a model it is self-assertive it feels assured of honor and respect it is master of all things it is above all things it should accordingly give in to nothing in nothing should it see a burden calculated to Bow the shoulders of a man shapes frightening to the sight hardship and death are not so at all if one can break through the surrounding darkness and look directly at them many other things that have caused Terror during the night and been turned into matter of laughter with the coming of daylight shapes frightening to the sight hardship and death are Virgil perfectly rightly says that they are frightening not in reality but to the site in other words that they seem so but in fact are not just what is there about them that is as terrifying as Legend would have us believe why lucillius I ask you why should any real man be afraid of hardship or any human being be afraid of death I constantly meet people who think that what they themselves can't do can't be done who say that to Bear up under the things we stoic speak of is beyond the capacity of human nature how much more highly irate these people's abilities than they do themselves I say that they are just as capable as others of doing these things but won't in any event one person actually trying them has found them prove Beyond him who hasn't noticed how much easier they are in the actual doing it's not because they're hard that we lose confidence they're hard because we lack the confidence if you still need an example take Socrates an old man who had known his full share of suffering who had taken every blow life could inflict and still remained unbeaten either by poverty a burden for him aggravated by domestic worries or by constant hardships including those endured on military service apart from what he had to contend with at home whether one thinks of his wife with the surest ways a nagging tongue or his intractable children more like their mother than their father his whole life was lived either in Wartime or under tyranny or under a democracy that outdid even Wars and tyrants in its cruelties the wall went on for 27 years after the fighting was ended the state was handed over to the mercy of the 30 tyrants a considerable number of whom were hostile to him the final blow was his conviction and sentence on the most serious of charges he was accused of blasphemy and of corrupting the younger generation whom it was alleged he turned into Rebels against God their fathers and the state after that came the prison and the poison and so little effect did all this have on Socrates Spirit it did not even affect the expression on his face what of rare and wonderful story of achievement to the very last no one ever saw Socrates in any particular mood of gaiety or depression through all the ups and downs of Fortune his was a level temperament would you like another example take the modern one of Marcus Cato with whom Fortune dealt in an even more belligerent and unremitting fashion at every Point she stood in his way even at the end at his death yet he demonstrated that a brave man can live in Defiance a fortune and can die in defiance of Fortune the whole of his life was passed either in Civil War or in conditions of developing civil conflict and of him no less than of Socrates it is possible to say that he carried himself clear of slavery unless perhaps you take the view that Pompeii Caesar and Crassus were friends of freedom when his country was in a state of constant change no one ever saw a change in Cato in every situation he was placed in he showed himself always the same man whether in office as Proto in defeat at the polls under attack in court as governor in his Province on the public platform in the field or in death itself in that moment too a panic for the Republic when Caesar stood on the one side backed by ten Legions of the finest fighting men and the entire resources and support of foreign countries as well and on the other stood Pompey by himself a match for all comers and when people were moving to join either the one or the other Cato all on his own established something of a party pledged to fight for the Republic if you try to picture the period to yourself you will see on the one side the populace the mob all the Gog for revolution on the other the time on an elect of Rome the aristocracy and Knighthood and two forlorn figures Cato and republicanism between them you will find it an impressive site I can assure you as you watch the son of atreus and King Priam with Achilles wrath with both for there is Cato denouncing each of them trying to disarm the pair of them and the way he casts his vote between them is if Caesar wins I kill myself if Pompeii I go into exile what that amount of fear who win or lose had dictated to himself such a choice of Fates as might have been decreed him by an utterly exasperated enemy and that is how he came to die carrying out his own self-sentence you will see too the capacity of man for hardship on foot at the end of his troops he crossed the deserts of North Africa you see that thirst can be endured as well always in armor trailing over a sun-baked plateau the remnants of a beaten Army an army without supplies he was invariably the last to drink whenever they came upon water do you see that a man can think equally little of either the distinction of office or the stigma of rejection on the day of his election defeat he played fives at the place of polling you see that men can defy the might of their superiors for with no one daring offend either Caesar or Pompey except to Curry favor with the other Cato challenged the pair of them simultaneously you see that a man can think as little of death as of Exile he condemned himself to both and War in the meantime we then can show a spirited an attitude to just the same things if we will only choose to slip the Yoke from our necks but first we have to reject the life of Pleasures they make us soft and womanish they are insistent in their demands and what is more requires to make consistent demands on Fortune and then we need to look down on wealth which is the wage of slavery gold and silver and everything else that clutters our prosperous homes should be discarded Freedom cannot be won without sacrifice if you set a high value on her everything else must be valued at little letter 105. yes I'll give you some rules to observe that will enable you to live in Greater safety you for your part I suggest should listeners carefully to the advice I give you as you would if I are advising you on how to look after your health that are there now think of the things which gold man into destroying man you'll find that they are hope Envy hatred fear and contempt contempt is the least important of a lot so much so that a number of men have actually taken shelter behind it for protection's sake for if a person feels contempt for someone he tramples on him Douglas but he passes on no one pursues an unremitting and persistent policy of injury to a man for whom he feels nothing but contempt even in battle the man on the ground is left alone the fighting being with those still on their feet coming to a hope so long as you own nothing likely to arouse the greed or grasping Instinct of others so long as you possess nothing out of the ordinary for people covered even the smallest things if they are rare or little known you'll have nothing to worry about from the hopes of grasping characters Envy you'll Escape if you haven't intruded yourself on other people's notice if you haven't flaunted your possessions if you've learned to keep your satisfactions yourself hatred either comes from giving offense and that you'll avoid by referringing from deliberately provoking anyone or is quite uncalled for here your Safeguard will be ordinary tact it is a kind of hatred that has been a source of danger to a lot of people men have been hated without having any actual enemy as regards not being feared a moderate fortune and an easygoing nature will secure you that people should see that you are not a person that is dangerous to offend and with you a Reconciliation should be both easy and dependable to be feared inside your own home it may be added is as much a source of trouble is being feared outside it slave or free there isn't a man who hadn't power enough to do you injury besides to be feared is to fear no one has been able to strike Terror into others and at the same time enjoy Peace of Mind himself there remains contempt the person who has made contempt is Ally who has been despised because he has chosen to be despised has the measure of it under his control its disadvantages are negative by the possession of respected qualities and of friends having influence with some person with the necessary influence such influential friends are people with whom it is well worth having ties without being so tied up with them their protection costs you more than the original danger might have done but nothing will help quite so much as just keeping quiet talking with other people as little as possible with yourself as much as possible for conversation has a kind of charm about it an insinuating and Insidious something that elicits secrets from us just like love or liquor nobody will keep the things he hears to himself and nobody will repeat just what he hears and no more neither will anyone who has failed to keep a story to himself keep the name of his informant to himself every person without exception has someone to whom he confides everything that is confided to himself even supposing he put some guard on his garrulous tongue and is content with a single pair of ears he will be the creator of a host of later listeners such as the way in which what was but a little while before a secret becomes common rumor never to wrong others takes one a long way towards peace of mind people who know no self-restraint lead stormy and disordered lives passing their time in a state of fear commensurate with the injuries they do to others never able to relax after every act they tremble paralyzed their consciences continually demanding an answer not allowing them to get on with other things to expect punishment is to suffer it and to earn it is to expect it where there is a bad conscience some circumstances or other May provide one with impunity but never with freedom from anxiety for a person takes the attitude that even if he isn't found out there's always the possibility of it his sleep is troubled whenever he talks about someone else's misdeed he thinks of his own which seems to him all too inadequately hidden all too inadequately blotted out of people's memories a guilty person sometimes has the luck to escape detection but never to feel sure of it letter number 107. where's that moral inside of yours where's that acuteness of perception or magnanimity does something as trivial as that upset you your slaves have seen your absorption in business as their chance to run away so be it you have been let down by friends for by all means keep the name we mistakenly bestowed on them and be called such and just to heighten their disgrace but the fact is that your Affairs have been freed for good and all of a number of people on whom all your trouble with being wasted and who considered you insufferable to anyone but yourself there's nothing unusual or surprising about it all to be put out by this sort of thing is as ridiculous as grumbling about being spattered in the street or getting dirty where it's muddy one has to accept life on the same terms as the public bars or crows or travel things will get thrown at you and things will hit you life's no soft Affair it's a long road you started on you can't but expect to have slips and knocks and falls and get tired and openly wish a lie for death that one place you will part from a companion at another Berry one and be afraid of one at another these are the kind of things you'll come up against all along this rugged Journey wanting to die let the personality be made ready to face everything let it be made to realize that it has come to terrain on which thunder and lightning play terrain on which grief and vengeful care have set their couch and padded sickness dwells and Drew old age this is the company in which you must live out your days Escape them you cannot scorn them you can and Scorn them you will if by constant reflection you have anticipated future happenings everyone faces up more bravery to a thing for which he has long prepared himself sufferings even being withstood if they have been trained for in advance those who are unprepared on the other hand are panic-stricken by the most insignificant happenings we must see to it that nothing takes us by surprise and since it is invariably unfamiliarity that makes a thing more formidable than it really is this habit of continual reflection would ensure that no form of adversity finds you a complete beginner I've been deserted by my slaves others have been plundered incriminated set upon betrayed beaten up attacked with poison or with calumny mention anything you like it has happened to plenty of people a vast variety of missiles are launched with us as their target some are planted in our flesh already some are hurtling towards us at this very moment others merely grazing Us in passing on their way to other targets let's not be taken aback by any of the things we're born to Things No One need complain at for the simple reason that they're the same for everybody yes the same for everybody for even if a man does escape something it was a thing which he might have suffered the fairness of a law does not consist in its effect being actually felt by all alike but it is having been laid down for all alike let's get this sense of justice firmly into our heads and pay up without grumbling the taxes arising from our mortal state winter brings in the cold and we have to shiver summer brings back the Heat and we have to swelter bad weather tries the health and we have to be ill somewhere or other we are going to have encounters with wild beasts and with Man Too more dangerous than all those beasts floods were robbers of one thing fire of another these are conditions of our existence which we cannot change what we can do is Adopt a noble Spirit such as Spirit as befits a good man so that we may bear up bravery and all that fortune centers and bring our Wills into tune with Natures reversals after all are the means by which nature regulates this visible realm of hers clear skies follow cloudly after the calm comes the storm the winds take turns to blow days exceeds night while part of the heavens is in the ascendant another is sinking It Is by means of opposites that eternity endures this is the law to which our minds are needing to be reconciled this is the law they should be following and obeying they should assume that whatever happens was bound to happen and refrain from reigning at nature one can do nothing better than endure what cannot be cured and attend uncomplainingly the god at whose instance all things come about it is a poor soldier that follows his Commander grumbling so let us receive our orders readily and cheerfully and not desert the ranks along the March the march of this glorious fabric of Creation in which everything we shall suffer is a strand and let us address Jupiter whose guiding hand directs this Mighty work in the way our own Clan thieves did in some most expressive lines which I may perhaps be part of a translating in view of the example set here by that Master of expressiveness Cicero if you like them so much the better if not you will at least know that I was following Cicero's example Lead Me Master The Soaring Vault of Heaven Lead Me father where you will I stand Here prompt and eager to obey and even suppose I were unwilling still I should attend you and no suffering dishonorably and grumbling when I might have done so and been good as well for fate the Willing leads the unwilling drags along let us speak and live like that fate find us ready and eager here is your Noble Spirit the one which has put itself in the hands of Fate on the other side we have the puny degenerate Spirit which struggles and which sees nothing right in the way the universe is ordered and would rather reform the gods than reform itself letter number 108 the subject you asked me about is one of those in which knowledge has no other justification than the knowledge itself nevertheless and just because it is so Justified you're in a great hurry and reluctant to wait for the Encyclopedia of Ethics I'm compiling at this very moment well I shall let you have your answer immediately but first I'm going to tell you how this enthusiasm for learning with which I can see you're on fire is to be brought under control if it isn't going to stand in its own way what it wanted is neither hap Hazard dipping nor a greedy Onslaught on knowledge in the mass the hole will be reached through its parts and the burden must be adjusted to our strength we mustn't take on more than we can manage you shouldn't attempt to absorb all you want to just what you've roomed for simply adopt the right approach and you will end up with room for all you want the more the mind takes in the more it expands I remember a piece of advice which a Talus gave me in the days when I practically laid Siege to his lecture hall always first to arrive and last to go and would draw him into a discussion of some point or other even when he was out taking a walk but he was always readily available to his students not just accessible a person teaching and a person learning he said should have the same end in view the Improvement of the latter a person who goes to a philosopher should carry away with him something or other of value every day he should return home asunder man or at least more capable of becoming one and he will for the power of philosophy is such that she helps not only those who devote themselves to her but also those who come into contact with her a person going out into the sun whether or not this is what he is going out for will require a tan customers who sit around rather too long in a shop selling perfumes carry the scent of the place away with them and people who have been with a philosopher are bound to have derived from it something of benefit even to the inattentive note that I say inattentive not the hostile that's all very well but don't we all know certain people who have sat at the Philosopher's feet year after year without acquiring even a semblance of wisdom of course I do persevering conscientious people too I prefer to call them a philosopher's squatters not students some come not to learn but just to hear him in the same way as we're drawn to a theater for the sake of entertainment to treat our ears to a play or music or an address you'll find that a large proportion of the Philosopher's audience is made up of this element which regards his lecture hall as a place of lodging for periods of leisure they're not concerned to rid themselves of any faults there or acquire any rule of life I wish to test their characters but simply to enjoy to the full the pleasures the ear has to offer admittedly some of them actually come with notebooks but for the future recording not the content of the lecture but words from it to be passed on to others with the same lack of profit to the hearer as they themselves arrived from hearing them some of them are stirred by the noble sentiments they hear their faces and Spirits light up and they enter into the emotions of the speaker going into a transport just like the eunuch priests who worked themselves into a frenzy to order at the sound of a phrygian flute they're captivated and aroused not by A din of empty words but by the Splendor of the actual content of the speaker's words any expression of bold or spirited Defiance of death or Fortune making you Keen to translate what you've heard into actions straight away they are deeply affected by the words and become the persons they are told to be or would if the impression on their minds were to last If This Magnificent enthusiasm were not immediately intercepted by that discourager of noble conduct the crowd very few succeed in getting home in the same frame of mind it is easy enough to arouse a listener a desire for what is Honorable for in every one of us Nature has led the foundations or sown the seeds of the virtues we are born to them all all of us and when a person comes along with a necessary stimulus then those qualities of the personality are awakened so to speak from their slumber haven't you noticed how the theater murmur's agreement whenever something is spoken the truth of which we generally recognize and unanimously confirm the poor lack much the greedy everything the greedy man does no one any good but harms no person more than his own self your worst Miser will clap these lines and be delighted at hearing his own faults lashed in this manner imagine how much more likely it is that this will happen when such things are being said by a philosopher interspersing passages of Sound Advice with lines of poetry calculated to deepen their hold on unenlightened Minds for the constricting requirements of verse as cleothes used to say give one's meaning all the greater force in the same way as one's breath produces a far greater noise when it is channeled through a trumpet's long and narrow Tube before its final expulsion through the widening opening at the end the same thing stated in prose are listened to with less attention and have much less impact when a rhythm is introduced when a fine idea is compressed into a definite meter the very same thought comes hurtling at one like a missile launched from a fully extended arm a lot for example is said about despising money the Lister is told at very considerable length that men should look on riches as consisting in the spirit and not in inherited State and that a man is wealthy if he has attuned himself to his restricted means and has made himself rich on little but verses such as the following he finds a good deal more striking he needs but little who desires but little he has his wish whose wish can be to have what is enough when we hear these lines and others like them we feel impelled to admit the truth the people for whom nothing is ever enough admire and applaud such a verse and publicly declare their distaste for money when you see them in such a mood keep at them and drive this home piling it on them having nothing to do with plays on Words syllogisms sophistries and all the other toys of sterile intellectual cleverness speak out against the Love of Money speak out against extravagance when you see that you've achieved something and had an effect on your listeners they aren't all the harder it's hardly believable how much can be achieved by this sort of speech aimed at curing people wholly directed to the good of people listening when the character is impressionable it is easily won over to a passion for what is noble and honorable while a person's character is still malleable and only corrupted to a mild degree truth strikes deep if she finds the right kind of advocate for my part at any rate when I hear a Talus winding up the case against the faults of character the mistaken attitudes of the evils generally of the lives we lead I frequently felt a sense of the sorry plight of the human race and looked on him as a kind of sublime being who has risen higher than the limits of human aspiration he himself would use the stoic term king of himself but to me he seemed more than a king as being a man who had the right to pass judgment on the conduct on the character of monarchs and when he began extoring to us the virtues of poverty and showing us how everything which went beyond our actual needs was just so much unnecessary weight a burden to the man who had to carry it often had a longing to walk out of that lecture hall a poor man when he started exposing our pleasures and commending to us along with moderation in our diet physical Purity and a mind equally uncontaminated uncontaminated not only by illicit Pleasures but by unnecessary ones as well I would become enthusiastic about keeping the appetites for food and drink firmly in their place with the result of some of this lucilius has lasted with me right through life for I started out on it all with tremendous energy and enthusiasm and later after my return to public life I managed to retain a few of the principles as regards which I had made this promising beginning this is how I came to give up oysters and mushrooms for the rest of my life but they aren't really food to us but tidbits which induce people who have already had as much as they can take to go on eating the object most desired by gluttons and others who stuff themselves with more than they can hold the items which will come up again as easily as they go down this too is why throughout life I've always abstained from using scent as the best smaller body can have is no smell at all this is why no wine ever finds its way into my stomach this is the reason for my lifelong avoidance of hot baths believing as I do that it is effeminate as well as pointless to Stew one's body and exhaust it with continual sweating some other things to which I once said goodbye have made their reappearance but nevertheless in these cases in which I have ceased to practice total abstinence I succeed in observing a limit which is something hardly more than a step removed from Total abstinence and even perhaps more difficult with some things less effort of Willis required to cut them out altogether and to have recourse of them in moderation now that I started disclosing to you how much greater my enthusiasm was in taking up philosophy as a young man than it is when it comes to keeping it up in my old age I shan't be ashamed to confess the passionate feelings which Pythagoras inspired in me used to tell us why Pythagoras and later sexiest was a vegetarian each had a quite different reason but each was a striking one sexiest believed that man had enough food to sustain him without shedding blood and that when men took this tearing of Flesh so far that it became a pleasure a habit of Cruelty was formed he argued in addition that the scope for people's extravagance was in any case something that should be reduced and he gave reasons for inferring the variety of diet was incompatible with our physical makeup and inimical to health Pythagoras on the other hand maintained that all creatures were interrelated and that there was a system of exchange of souls involving transmigration from one bodily form to another if we are to believe Pythagoras no soul ever undergoes death or even a suspension of his existence except perhaps for the actual moment of transfusion into another body this is not the moment for inquiring by What stages or at what point a soul completes its wanderings through a succession of other habitations and reverts to human form it is enough for our present purposes that he has instilled into people a dread of committing the crime of parasite in view of the possibility that they might all unknowing come across the soul of an ancestor with a knife or teeth do a dreadful outrage assuming that the spirit of a relative might be lodging in the flesh concerned after setting out this Theory and supplementing it with arguments of his own sotion would say you cannot accept the idea of souls being assigned to one body after another and the notion that what we call death is only a move to another home you cannot accept that the soul which was once that of a man May sudden in wild beasts or in our own domestic animals or in the creatures of the deep you cannot accept that nothing ever perishes on this Earth instead merely undergoing a change in its whereabouts and that the animal world not just the heavenly bodies that revolve in their unalterable tract moves in Cycles with its Souls propelled along an orbital part of their own well the fact that these ideas are ones which have been accepted by great men should make you suspend judgment you should preserve an open mind on the whole subject anyway but if these ideas are correct to abstain from eating the Flesh of animals will mean guiltlessness and even if they are not it will still mean frugal living what do you lose by believing in it all all I am depriving you of is what the Lions and the vultures feed on fired by this teaching I became a vegetarian and by the time A year had gone by was finding it an enjoyable as well as an easy habit I was beginning to feel that my mind was more active as a result of it though I would not take my oath to you now that it really was I suppose you want to know how I came to give up the practice well my years as a young man coincided with the early part of tiberia's Reign when certain religious cults of foreign origin were being promoted and among other things abstinence from certain kinds of animal food was regarded as evidence of adherence to such superstitions so at the request of my father who did not really fear my being prosecuted but who detested philosophy I resumed my normal habits and in fact he had little difficulty in betraying me to adopt a fuller diet another thing though which artalis used to recommend was a hard mattress and that is the kind I still use even in my old age the kind which shows no trace of our body having slept on it I tell you all this just to show you the tremendous enthusiasm with which samira's beginner will set about attaining the very highest goals provided someone gives him the necessary prompting and encouragement things tend in fact to go wrong part of the bloem lies on the teachers of philosophy who today teaches how to argue instead of how to live part on their students who come to the teachers in the first place with a view to developing not their character but their intellect the result has been the transformation of philosophy the study of wisdom into philology the study of words the object which we have in view after all makes a great deal of difference to the manner in which we approach any subject if he intends to become a literary scholar a person examining his Virgil does not say to himself when he reads that magnificent phrase irrestorable time flies we need to bestow ourselves life will leave us behind unless we make haste the days are fleeting by carried away at a Gallop carrying us with them we fail to realize the pace at which we are being swept along here we are making comprehensive plans for the future and generally behaving as if we had all the leisure in the world when there are precipices all around us no his purpose is to note that Virgil invariably uses this word flies whenever he speaks of the Swift passage of time life's finest days for us poor human beings fly first the sicknesses and sufferings oblique old age the snatching hand implacable