Letter 4

Persevere as you have begun, and hasten as much as you can, that you may the longer enjoy a mind corrected and set in order. You enjoy it, indeed, even while you are correcting it, even while you are setting it in order; yet that other pleasure is of a different kind which is gathered from the contemplation of a mind pure and shining and free from every stain.

You surely keep in memory how great a joy you felt when, laying aside the bordered toga of boyhood, you put on the toga of manhood and were escorted into the forum; expect a greater joy when you have laid aside the boyish mind and philosophy has enrolled you among men. For as yet it is not boyhood, but, what is more serious, childishness that remains; and this is the worse, that we have the authority of old men together with the faults of boys—and not of boys only, but of infants. They fear trifling things, infants fear false things, while we fear both.

Only make progress; you will understand that some things are to be feared the less because they bring much fear. No evil is great that is the last. Death comes to you; it would be to be feared, if it could remain with you; but it must either not arrive at all or pass on.

"It is hard," you say, "to bring the mind to a contempt of life." Do you not see from what trifling causes it is held in contempt? One man has hanged himself before his mistress's door; another has hurled himself from the roof to escape his master's longer ranting; a third, to keep from being brought back from flight, has driven a sword into his vitals. Do you not believe that virtue will accomplish what excessive dread accomplishes? No man can have an untroubled life who thinks too much of prolonging it, who counts many consulships among the great goods.

Ponder this daily, that you may be able to leave life with an even mind—a life which many embrace and cling to in the way that those swept along by a raging torrent clutch at thorns and rough places. Most men drift miserably between the fear of death and the torments of life: they neither wish to live nor know how to die.

Therefore make your whole life pleasant for yourself by laying aside anxiety over it. No good thing benefits its possessor unless the mind is prepared for its loss; and of nothing is the loss easier than of that which, once lost, cannot be missed. Therefore harden yourself and exhort yourself against these things, which can befall even the most powerful.

Over the head of Pompey a ward and a eunuch pronounced sentence; over Crassus a cruel and insolent Parthian. Gaius Caesar ordered Lepidus to offer his neck to the tribune Dexter, and himself offered his to Chaerea. Fortune has raised no man so high that she did not threaten him with as much as she had granted him. Do not trust this calm; in a moment the sea is overturned. On the very same day on which the ships sported, they are swallowed up.

Reflect that both a robber and an enemy can set a sword to your throat: even if no higher power threatens, every slave holds over you the power of life and death. I say this: whoever has despised his own life is master of yours. Recall the examples of those who have perished through plots within their own household, whether by open force or by treachery; you will understand that no fewer have fallen through the anger of slaves than of kings. What does it matter to you, then, how powerful is the man you fear, when that for which you fear is in the power of anyone?

But if by chance you fall into the enemy's hands, the victor will order you to be led away—to the very place, of course, to which you are already being led. Why do you deceive yourself, and only now grasp what you have long been suffering? I say this: from the day you were born, you are being led to death. These and like thoughts must be turned over in the mind, if we wish to await calmly that last hour, the fear of which makes all the others restless.

But, to set an end to the letter, take what pleased me this very day. This too is plucked from another's little garden: "Great riches are poverty brought into accord with the law of Nature." Do you know what limits that law of Nature sets for us? Not to be hungry, not to be thirsty, not to be cold. To drive off hunger and thirst, there is no need to dance attendance at haughty thresholds, nor to endure the heavy frown and even the insulting courtesy of the great; there is no need to brave the seas, nor to follow the camp. What Nature requires is easily got and ready to hand.

It is for the superfluous that men sweat. It is the superfluous that wears out our togas, that forces us to grow old under the tent, that drives us upon foreign shores. What is enough lies ready at hand. The man who is on good terms with poverty is rich. Farewell.