Letter 3

You handed letters to be brought to me, as you write, to a friend of yours; then you warn me not to share with him all that concerns you, since you yourself are not in the habit of doing so: thus in one and the same letter you have both called him a friend and denied it. And so, if you used that word in a general sense, as we call all candidates "good men," as we greet passers-by, when their name does not come to mind, by the title of "master," let it pass.

But if you consider anyone a friend in whom you do not trust as much as in yourself, you are gravely mistaken, and you do not sufficiently know the force of true friendship. With a friend, indeed, deliberate about everything, but first about the friend himself. After friendship begins, you must trust; before friendship, you must judge. Those men confound their duties in the wrong order who, against the precepts of Theophrastus, judge after they have come to love, and do not love after they have judged. Consider long whether anyone is to be received into your friendship. When it has pleased you that it should be, admit him with your whole heart; speak as boldly with him as with yourself.

Live, indeed, in such a way that you commit nothing to yourself that you could not also commit to your enemy; but since certain things intervene that custom has made secret, share with a friend all your cares, all your thoughts. If you believe him faithful, you will make him so. For some men have taught others to deceive while they themselves feared being deceived, and by their suspicion have given them the right to do wrong. Why should I hold back any words in my friend's presence? Why should I not think myself alone when I am with him?

Some men tell to any chance comer what should be entrusted only to friends, and into whatever ears unburden whatever has weighed upon them. Others, again, dread even the knowledge of their dearest, and, if they could, would not trust even themselves, but press every secret deeper within. Neither course should be followed. For both are faults—to trust everyone, and to trust no one. But the one I would call the more honourable fault, the other the safer.

So you may rightly find fault with both kinds: those who are always restless, and those who are always at rest. For that delight in turmoil is not industry, but the running to and fro of an agitated mind; and this is not repose, which judges all motion a trouble, but slackness and languor.

Therefore let this saying, which I read in Pomponius, be committed to memory: "Some men have fled so far into their hiding-places that they think whatever is in the light is in confusion." These things must be blended together: the man at rest should act, and the man who acts should rest. Take counsel with Nature; she will tell you that she has made both day and night. Farewell.