Letter 105

I will tell you what you must observe, that you may live more safely. Yet I think you should listen to these precepts as if I were teaching you by what method you should keep good health on your estate at Ardea. Consider what the things are that goad a man to the destruction of a man: you will find hope, envy, hatred, fear, contempt.

Of all these, contempt is so much the slightest that many have taken refuge in it as a remedy. Whomever a man despises, he wrongs no doubt, but he passes him by; no one harms a man he despises persistently, no one harms him carefully. Even in the battle-line the man who lies down is passed over; the fight is with the man who stands.

You will avoid the hope of the wicked, if you have nothing that may rouse another's covetous and wicked desire, if you possess nothing conspicuous. For even small things are coveted, if they are notable, if they are rare. You will escape envy, if you have not thrust yourself upon men's eyes, if you have not flaunted your goods, if you have learned to rejoice in your own bosom.

Hatred either arises from an offence: this you will avoid by provoking no one; or it is unprovoked: from this common sense will protect you. This has been dangerous to many; some have had hatred without having an enemy. As to not being feared, a moderate fortune and a mild disposition will secure that for you; let men know you to be one whom they can offend without danger; let your reconciliation be both easy and sure. But to be feared is as troublesome at home as abroad, as much from slaves as from free men. No one lacks strength enough to do harm. Add to this that he who is feared, fears; no one has been able to be terrible in security.

Contempt remains, the measure of which he has in his own power who has joined it to himself, who is despised because he wished it, not because he deserved it. The drawback of this both good accomplishments dispel, and the friendships of those who are powerful with some powerful person, to whom it will be expedient to attach oneself but not to be entangled, lest the remedy cost more than the danger.

Yet nothing will be of equal profit as to keep quiet and to speak very little with others, very much with oneself. There is a certain sweetness in conversation, which creeps in and coaxes us, and, no otherwise than drunkenness or love, draws out our secrets. No one will keep silent about what he has heard. No one will tell only as much as he has heard. He who has not kept the matter silent will not keep silent about its author. Every man has someone to whom he confides as much as has been confided to him. Though he restrain his own talkativeness and be content with a single pair of ears, he will make a crowd, if what was just now a secret becomes rumour.

A great part of security is to do nothing unjust. The intemperate lead a confused and disordered life; they fear as much as they harm, and at no time are they free from care. For they tremble when they have done the deed, they are in a fix; their conscience does not let them attend to anything else, and again and again forces them to answer to itself. Whoever waits for punishment suffers it; and whoever has deserved it, waits.

Some thing may grant safety amid a bad conscience, nothing grants security; for a man thinks that, even if he is not caught, he can be caught. He is restless even in his sleep, and as often as he speaks of another's crime, he thinks of his own; it does not seem to him sufficiently blotted out, sufficiently covered. The guilty man has sometimes had the luck to lie hidden, never the confidence of it. Farewell.