Letter 107

Where is that prudence of yours? Where your subtlety in discerning things? Where your greatness of soul? Does so trifling a matter already vex you? Your slaves thought your busyness an opportunity for flight. If friends were deceiving you—for let them by all means keep the name which our error has imposed on them, and be called by it, that they may be no more disgraceful—then something would be lacking in all your affairs; as it is, those are lacking who were both wasting your effort and believing you to be a nuisance to others.

None of this is unusual, none of it unexpected. To be offended at such things is as ridiculous as to complain that you are splashed in public or bespattered in the mud. The condition of life is the same as that of the bath, the crowd, a journey: some things will be thrown at you, some will fall upon you by chance. Living is no dainty business. You have set out on a long road; you must needs slip and collide and fall and grow weary and cry out, "O death!"—that is, you must lie. At one stage you will leave behind a companion, at another bury one, at another fear for one; through offences of this kind must this rough journey be measured out.

Does a man wish to die? Let the mind be prepared against all things; let it know that it has come where the thunderbolt strikes. Let it know that it has come where "Grief and avenging Cares have set their beds, and pale Diseases dwell, and gloomy Old Age." In this fellowship life must be passed. You cannot escape these things, you can despise them. And you will despise them if you have often pondered them and anticipated what is to come.

Everyone has approached more bravely that for which he had long composed himself, and has withstood hardships too, if they had been thought over beforehand. But, on the contrary, the unprepared man has been terrified even by the lightest. We must see to it that nothing be unforeseen by us. And because all things are heavier by their novelty, constant reflection will secure this, that you be a raw recruit to no misfortune.

"My slaves have left me." Another man has been robbed, another accused, another killed, another betrayed, another trampled, another assailed by poison, another by slander; whatever you may name has befallen many. Next, many and various are the weapons aimed at us. Some are fixed in us, some are quivering and at this very moment coming, some, on their way to others, graze us.

Let us marvel at none of those things for which we were born, which therefore are to be lamented by no one, because they are equal for all. So I say, they are equal; for even what someone has escaped, he might have suffered. But an equal right is not that which all have used, but that which has been enacted for all. Let fairness be commanded to the mind, and let us pay without complaint the tributes of mortality.

Winter brings cold: we must shiver. Summer brings back heat: we must swelter. The inclemency of the sky makes trial of our health: we must fall ill. Somewhere a wild beast will meet us, and a man more pernicious than all beasts. One thing water will snatch from us, another fire. This condition of things we cannot change; this we can: to take up a great spirit, worthy of a good man, by which we may bear bravely the strokes of chance and be in agreement with Nature.

But Nature governs this realm which you behold by changes: clear skies follow cloudy; the seas are stirred when they have been calm; the winds blow in turn; day follows night; one part of the sky rises, another sets. By contraries the eternity of things is sustained.

To this law our mind must be adapted; let it follow this, let it obey this. And whatever happens, let it think that it had to happen, and let it not wish to rebuke Nature. It is best to suffer what you cannot mend, and to attend without murmuring upon God, by whose authorship all things come to pass; he is a bad soldier who follows his commander groaning.

Therefore let us receive commands eagerly and briskly, and not desert the course of this most beautiful work, into which whatever we shall suffer is woven. And let us so address Jupiter, by whose helm this whole mass is steered, as our Cleanthes addresses him in most eloquent verses, which I am permitted to render into our own tongue after the example of Cicero, a most eloquent man. If they please you, you will think well of them; if they displease, you will know that in this I have followed Cicero's example:

"Lead me, O Father and Lord of the lofty sky, wherever you have pleased; there is no delay in obeying. I am here, ready. Suppose I were unwilling, I shall follow groaning, and shall suffer as a base man what I might have done as a good one. The Fates lead the willing, the unwilling they drag."

So let us live, so let us speak; let fate find us ready and eager. This is the great spirit, which has surrendered itself to it; but, on the contrary, that one is petty and degenerate which struggles against it, and thinks ill of the order of the world, and would rather amend the gods than itself. Farewell.