Letter 9

You desire to know whether Epicurus is right when, in a certain letter, he blames those who say that the wise man is content with himself and for that reason has no need of a friend. This is the charge Epicurus brings against Stilbo and those to whom the highest good seemed to be a mind incapable of feeling.

We are bound to fall into ambiguity if we wish to render the Greek apatheia hastily by a single word and to say "impassibility." For the opposite of what we mean may be understood. We mean to describe the man who rejects all sense of evil; but he will be taken to mean the man who can endure no evil. See, then, whether it is not better to speak of an "invulnerable mind," or a "mind placed beyond all suffering."

This is the difference between us and them: our wise man indeed conquers every hardship, but he feels it; theirs does not even feel it. This we and they have in common: that the wise man is content with himself. And yet, though he is sufficient to himself, he still wishes to have a friend, a neighbour, a companion.

See how content with himself he is: at times he is content with a part of himself. If disease or an enemy has lopped off his hand, if some accident has knocked out an eye or both eyes, what remains of him will satisfy him, and with his body maimed and cut short he will be as glad as he was when it was whole. Yet, though he does not miss what is lacking, he would prefer that it not be lacking.

Thus the wise man is content with himself—not in that he wishes to be without a friend, but in that he is able to be. And this "is able" that I speak of means this: he bears the loss with an even mind. But indeed he will never be without a friend; he has it in his own power how quickly he may replace one. As Phidias, if he has lost a statue, will at once make another, so this craftsman in the making of friendships will put another in the place of the one lost.

You ask how he is to make a friend quickly; I will tell you, if you will allow me to settle that account with you, so that I may pay you at once what I owe, and, so far as this letter is concerned, we may be quits. Hecato says: "I will show you a love-charm without drug, without herb, without any sorceress's spell: if you wish to be loved, love." Now there is great pleasure not only in the enjoyment of an old and sure friendship, but also in the beginning and the forming of a new one.

The difference between the farmer who reaps and the one who sows is the same as the difference between the man who has gained a friend and the man who is gaining one. The philosopher Attalus used to say that it is more pleasant to make a friend than to have one, just as it is more pleasant for the artist to paint than to have painted. That anxiety occupied upon its work has a great delight in the very occupation. He who has taken his hand from the finished work does not feel an equal delight. Now he enjoys the fruit of his art; while he was painting, he enjoyed the art itself. The growing youth of our children is more fruitful, but their infancy is sweeter.

Now let us return to the matter in hand. The wise man, even if he is content with himself, nevertheless wishes to have a friend, if for nothing else, that he may exercise friendship, that so great a virtue may not lie idle—not for the purpose Epicurus mentioned in this very letter, namely, to have someone to sit by him when he is sick, to come to his aid when he is cast into chains or in want, but to have someone by whom he himself may sit when that one is sick, whom he himself may free when he is beset by a hostile guard. He who looks to himself, and comes to friendship for that reason, thinks ill. As he began, so he will end: he provided a friend to bring help against the chains; at the first rattle of the chain, that friend will depart.

These are the friendships that the people call friendships of the season; he who has been taken up for the sake of advantage will please only as long as he is useful. For this reason a throng of friends besieges the prosperous; around the fallen there is solitude, and friends flee from the very place where they are put to the test. For this reason there are so many wicked examples of men who, out of fear, forsake or betray others. The beginning and the end must of necessity agree. He who has begun to be a friend because it is profitable will also cease to be one because it is profitable: some reward, set against the friendship, if anything in it shall please more than the friendship itself, will tear him away.

"To what end do I provide a friend?" That I may have one for whom I can die, one whom I may follow into exile, against whose death I may set myself and pay the price. The thing you describe is a bargain, not a friendship, which looks to its own advantage and considers what it will gain.

Beyond doubt the passion of lovers has something resembling friendship; you might call it a friendship gone mad. Does anyone, then, love for the sake of gain? Or for the sake of ambition or glory? Love itself, in itself, careless of all other things, kindles minds with a desire for beauty, not without the hope of an answering affection. What then? Does a baser passion arise from a more honourable cause?

"The question now," you say, "is not whether friendship is to be sought for its own sake." Nay, rather, nothing is more to be proved. For if it is to be sought for its own sake, the man who is content with himself can approach it. How, then, does he approach it? As one approaches a thing most beautiful, not lured by gain nor terrified by the changes of fortune. He strips friendship of its majesty who provides it as a resource for prosperous chances.

The wise man is content with himself. This, my Lucilius, most men wrongly interpret: they remove the wise man from everything on every side and force him within his own skin. But we must distinguish what this saying promises, and how far. The wise man is content with himself for living happily, not for living at all. For the latter he has need of many things; for the former, only of a sound and upright mind that looks down upon fortune.

I wish to point out to you Chrysippus's distinction as well. He says that the wise man lacks nothing, and yet has need of many things; whereas the fool has need of nothing—for he knows how to use nothing—but lacks everything. The wise man has need of hands and eyes and many things necessary for daily use, but he lacks nothing; for to lack belongs to necessity, and to the wise man nothing is necessary.

Therefore, although he is content with himself, he has need of friends. These he wishes to have as many as possible—not that he may live happily, for he will live happily even without friends. The highest good does not seek instruments from without. It is cultivated at home; it is wholly from itself. It begins to be subject to fortune if it seeks any part of itself from outside.

Yet what will the life of the wise man be like, if he is left without friends—cast into prison, or stranded among some foreign people, or detained on a long voyage, or thrown out upon a desert shore? It will be like the life of Jupiter, who, when the universe is dissolved and the gods are merged into one and Nature for a little while is at rest, reposes upon himself, given over to his own thoughts. Something of this kind the wise man does: he withdraws into himself, he is with himself.

So long, indeed, as he is permitted to order his affairs by his own judgment, he is content with himself, and yet takes a wife; he is content with himself, and yet rears children; he is content with himself, and yet would not live at all if he had to live without any human being.

Nonetheless, although he is the most loving of friends, although he sets them on a level with himself and often above himself, he will limit every good within himself and will say what Stilbo said—that Stilbo whom Epicurus's letter assails. For he, when his country was captured, his children lost, his wife lost, came forth from the public conflagration alone and yet happy; and when Demetrius, surnamed Poliorcetes, "Sacker of Cities," asked him whether he had lost anything, he replied: "All my goods are with me."

Behold a man brave and strenuous! He conquered the very victory of his enemy. "I have lost nothing," he said; he forced his conqueror to doubt whether he had really conquered. "All my goods are with me"—this is to count nothing a good that can be snatched away. We marvel at certain animals that pass through the midst of flames without harm to their bodies; how much more marvellous is this man, who came forth through steel and ruin and fire unhurt and unharmed! Do you see how much easier it is to conquer a whole nation than one man? This saying of his is shared with the Stoic; he too carries his goods untouched through cities burned to the ground. For he is content with himself. By this boundary he marks off his happiness.

Do not suppose that we alone fling out high-sounding words; Epicurus himself, the very censurer of Stilbo, uttered a like saying, which you must take in good part, even though I have already cancelled today's debt. "If to anyone," he says, "his own possessions seem not most ample, though he be lord of the whole world, yet is he wretched." Or, if it seems to you better put in this way—for our business is to be slaves not to words but to meanings—: "He is wretched who does not judge himself most happy, though he rule the world."

And that you may know these meanings to be common, with Nature herself dictating them, you will find in the comic poet: "He is not happy who does not think himself so." For what does it matter what your condition is, if it seems to you a bad one?

"What then?" you say. "If that man basely rich, and that lord of many but slave of more, shall call himself happy, will he become happy by his own verdict?" It matters not what he says, but what he feels—and not what he feels for one day, but what he feels continually. But you have no reason to fear that so great a thing should fall to an unworthy man; none but the wise man is pleased with his own. All folly suffers from disgust with itself. Farewell.