Letter 106

I answer your letters rather late, not because I am hard pressed by business. Beware of accepting that excuse; I am at leisure, and all are at leisure who wish to be. No affairs pursue a man. Men themselves embrace them and think busyness to be a proof of happiness. What, then, was the reason why I did not answer at once? The matter you were inquiring about was coming up in the framework of my own work.

For you know that I wish to embrace moral philosophy and to unfold all the questions belonging to it. And so I doubted whether to put you off, until its proper place came round for this matter, or to give you a ruling out of turn; it seemed more humane not to keep waiting one who came from so far.

And so I will both pluck this point out from that connected series of topics, and, if there be any of the kind, will send them to you unasked. You ask what these are? Those which it is more pleasant to know than profitable, such as this about which you ask: whether the good is a body.

The good acts, for it does good. What acts is a body. The good stirs the mind, and in a manner shapes and contains it, which are the properties of a body. The goods that belong to the body are bodies; therefore the goods that belong to the mind are too.

For this also is a body. The good of man must necessarily be a body, since he himself is corporeal. I lie, if both the things that nourish him and the things that either preserve or restore his health are not bodies; therefore his good too is a body. You will not, I think, doubt that the passions are bodies, that I may stuff in something else also which you do not ask about, such as anger, love, sorrow, unless you doubt whether they change our countenance, draw the brow tight, spread over the face, call up a blush, or put the blood to flight. What then? Do you believe that marks of the body so manifest are imprinted by anything but a body?

If the passions are bodies, so too are the diseases of the mind, such as avarice, cruelty, vices that have hardened and been brought into an incurable state; therefore so too is wickedness and all its kinds, malignity, envy, pride;

therefore so too are the goods, first because they are contrary to those, and next because they will afford you the same signs. Do you not see how much vigour courage gives to the eyes? What concentration prudence gives? What modesty and quiet reverence? What serenity gladness? What firmness severity? What relaxation gentleness? They are bodies, then, which change the colour and bearing of bodies, which exercise their dominion over them. But all the virtues which I have mentioned are goods, and so is whatever springs from them.

Is there any doubt whether that by which a thing can be touched is a body? For nothing can touch or be touched save a body, as Lucretius says. But all those things which I have named would not change the body unless they touched it; therefore they are bodies.

Even now, that which has such force as to impel and compel, to hold back and check, is a body. What then? Does not fear hold us back? Does not boldness impel us? Does not courage launch us forward and give the charge? Does not moderation rein us in and call us back? Does not joy lift us up? Does not sorrow cast us down?

In short, whatever we do, we do at the bidding either of wickedness or of virtue. What commands a body is a body, what brings force to bear upon a body is a body. The good of the body is corporeal; the good of man is also the good of the body; therefore it is corporeal.

Since, as you wished, I have humoured you, now I will say to myself what I see you are going to say: we are playing at draughts. Subtlety is worn away upon superfluous matters; these things do not make men good, but learned.

Wisdom is a plainer matter; nay, it is better simply to use letters for a sound mind, but we, as with everything else, so spill out into the superfluous philosophy itself. As in all things, so in letters too we labour under intemperance; we learn not for life but for the school. Farewell.