Letter 5

That you study so stubbornly and, laying all else aside, pursue this one thing, that you make yourself better day by day, I both approve and rejoice; and I not only urge you to persevere, but even beg you to do so. But this I warn you: do not, after the fashion of those who desire not to make progress but to be noticed, do anything in your dress or manner of life that would be conspicuous.

Avoid a rough exterior, an unshorn head, a too-neglected beard, a professed hatred of silver, a bed laid on the bare ground, and whatever else a perverse ambition pursues by the wrong road. The very name of philosophy is hateful enough, even if it is handled with moderation; what if we begin to set ourselves apart from the usage of mankind? Let everything within be unlike the crowd, but let our outward face match the people's.

Let our toga not be gleaming, but neither let it be squalid. Let us not own silver into which solid gold has been chased; but neither let us think that to lack gold and silver is a proof of frugality. Let us aim to follow a better life than the crowd's, not one opposed to it; otherwise we drive away and turn from us the very men we wish to reform. We bring this about too, that they are unwilling to imitate us in anything, fearing they must imitate us in everything.

This is the first thing philosophy promises: fellow-feeling, kindliness, and the bond of human society. From this profession unlikeness will cut us off. Let us see to it that the very things by which we wish to win admiration are not ridiculous and odious. Surely our purpose is to live according to Nature; but it is against Nature to torture one's body, to hate easy cleanliness, to court squalor, and to use foods that are not merely cheap but foul and forbidding.

As to crave dainty things is the part of luxury, so to flee the customary and the things procurable at no great cost is the part of madness. Philosophy demands frugality, not punishment; and frugality may be had without unkemptness. This measure pleases me: let life be tempered between good morals and the common ones; let all men admire our life, but let them recognize it as their own.

"What then? Shall we do the same things as the rest? Will there be no difference between us and them?" A very great difference. Let anyone who looks more closely know that we are unlike the crowd. Let the man who enters our house wonder at us rather than at our furniture. He is a great man who uses earthenware as if it were silver; nor is he less great who uses silver as if it were earthenware. It is the mark of a feeble mind to be unable to endure wealth.

But, to share with you the small gain of this day too, I have found in our Hecato that the setting of a limit to desires avails also as a remedy for fear. "You will cease," he says, "to fear, if you cease to hope." You will say: "How do these so different things go side by side?" It is so, my Lucilius: though they seem at variance, they are joined. As the same chain binds together the guard and the prisoner, so these things, unlike as they are, advance together: fear follows hope.

Nor do I wonder that they go so; both belong to a mind in suspense, both to a mind anxious in the expectation of the future. But the chief cause of both is that we do not adapt ourselves to the present, but send our thoughts ahead into the far distance. And so foresight, the greatest good of the human condition, is turned to an evil.

Wild beasts flee the dangers they see; once they have escaped, they are free from care. But we are tormented both by what is to come and by what is past. Many of our goods do us harm; for memory brings back the torment of fear, foresight anticipates it. No one is wretched merely by reason of the present. Farewell.