Letter 110

From my villa at Nomentum I send you greeting, and bid you have a good mind, that is, the gods all propitious, whom that man has appeased and favourable who has made himself propitious to himself. Set aside for the present the view that pleases certain people, that to each of us a god is given as a tutor, not indeed of the regular order, but one of a lower rank, of the number of those whom Ovid calls "the gods of the commons." Yet I would have you set this aside in such a way as to remember that our ancestors, who believed it, were Stoics; for they gave to each man both a Genius and a Juno.

Later we shall see whether the gods have so much leisure as to manage the affairs of private men; in the meantime know this, that whether we are assigned to a guardian, or neglected and given over to fortune, you can imprecate nothing heavier upon anyone than to pray that he have himself for an enemy. But there is no reason to wish that anyone whom you have thought worthy of punishment should have the gods hostile to him; he has them so, I say, even though he seems to be advanced by their favour.

Apply your diligence and look at what our affairs are, not what they are called; and you will know that more evils befall us than happen to us. For how often has that been the cause and beginning of happiness which was called a calamity? How often has a thing received with great congratulation built itself a step toward ruin, and lifted one already eminent still higher, as though he still stood where men fall in safety?

But that very falling has in it nothing of evil, if you look at the end, beyond which Nature has cast down no one. The boundary of all things is near; near, I say, is both that point from which the fortunate man is hurled, and that from which the unfortunate is dismissed; we ourselves extend both, and make them long by hope and fear. But if you are wise, measure all things by the human condition; contract at once both what you rejoice in and what you fear. And it is worth so much, to rejoice in nothing for long, that you may fear nothing for long.

But why do I narrow down this evil? There is no reason for you to think anything is to be feared. Empty are those things that move us, that hold us thunderstruck. None of us has sifted out what was true, but each has handed on fear to the other; no one has dared to approach that by which he was disturbed and to know the nature and the good of his own fear. And so a false and empty thing still keeps credit, because it is not convicted.

Let us think it worth while to bend our eyes upon it; it will at once appear how brief, how uncertain, how harmless are the things that are feared. Such is the confusion of our minds as Lucretius saw it: "For just as children tremble and fear everything in the blind darkness, so we fear in the light." What then? Are we not more foolish than any child, we who fear in the light?

But it is false, Lucretius; we do not fear in the light; we have made all things darkness for ourselves. We see nothing, neither what harms nor what profits; through our whole life we go blundering, nor for this do we halt or set our foot more circumspectly. But you see how mad a thing it is to rush headlong in the dark. And yet, by Hercules, we so act that we must be recalled from further off, and, though we are ignorant whither we are being carried, yet we persist swiftly toward that to which we are bent.

But it can grow light, if we wish. And in one way only can it: if a man has received by knowledge this acquaintance with things human and divine, if he has not merely sprinkled himself with it but steeped himself, if he has gone over the same things, though he knows them, and has often referred them to himself, if he has asked what things are good, what evil, to which this name is falsely ascribed, if he has inquired about the honourable and the base, about providence.

Nor does the sagacity of the human mind halt within these things; it pleases it to look out even beyond the world, whither it is borne, whence it has arisen, to what end so great a speed of things hastens. Drawn away from this divine contemplation, we have dragged the mind down to sordid and lowly things, that it might be a slave to avarice, that, forsaking the world and its boundaries and the lords who turn all things, it might rummage the earth and seek what evil it might dig out of it, not content with what is offered.

Whatever was going to be a good for us, God and our Father has set close at hand; he did not wait for our search, but gave it unasked. The things that would harm he has buried deepest. We can complain of nothing but ourselves; the things by which we should perish we have brought forth though Nature was unwilling and hiding them. We have made over the mind to pleasure, to indulge which is the beginning of all evils; we have handed it over to ambition and to fame, and to the rest, equally vain and empty.

What, then, do I now urge you to do? Nothing new—for remedies are not sought for new evils—but this first, that you should consider with yourself what is necessary, what superfluous. The necessary things will meet you everywhere; the superfluous must always, and with the whole mind, be sought after.

But there is no reason for you to praise yourself too much, if you have despised golden couches and furniture set with jewels. For what virtue is there in despising the superfluous? Admire yourself then, when you have despised the necessary. You do no great thing in being able to live without royal pomp, in not longing for boars of a thousand pounds nor for the tongues of flamingos and the other monstrosities of a luxury that already disdains whole animals and picks out certain limbs from each; I shall admire you when you have despised even coarse bread, when you have persuaded yourself that grass, where it is necessary, grows not only for the herd but for man, when you have learned that the tops of trees are the stuffing of a belly into which we so heap up precious things as though it kept what it received. It must be filled without fastidiousness. For what does it matter what it receives, since it will lose whatever it has received?

You are delighted by well-arranged things, the catches of land and sea, some the more pleasing if they are brought fresh to the table, others if, after being long fed and forced to fatten, they run with fat and scarcely hold their own bulk. You are delighted by the savour of these, hunted out by art. But, by Hercules, those things, anxiously sought out and seasoned in varied ways, when they have entered the belly, one and the same foulness will seize upon. Do you wish to despise the pleasure of food? Look to its outcome.

I remember Attalus saying these things to the great admiration of all: "Long," he said, "did riches impose upon me. I used to be amazed whenever something of them flashed out in one place and another. I supposed the things that were hidden to be like those that were displayed. But at a certain show I saw the whole wealth of the city, embossed in gold and silver and in things that surpassed the value of gold and silver, choice colours and garments brought not only from beyond our own border but beyond the border of our enemies; here troops of boys conspicuous in dress and beauty, here of women, and other things which the fortune of the supreme empire, reviewing its possessions, had brought forth."

"What is this," I said, "other than to provoke the desires of men already of themselves goaded? What does this parade of money mean? Have we come together to learn avarice? But, by Hercules, I carry away from here less of desire than I had brought. I despised riches, not because they are superfluous, but because they are paltry. Did you see how, within a few hours, that procession, however slow and well-arranged, passed by?"

Has that which could not fill up a whole day taken up our whole life? And this too was added: they seemed to me as superfluous to those who had them as they were to those who looked on.

This, then, I say to myself, as often as some such thing has dazzled my eyes, as often as there comes before me a splendid house, a polished troop of slaves, a litter borne on handsome carriers: "Why do you marvel? Why are you amazed? It is a parade. These things are shown, not possessed; and while they please, they pass by."

Turn yourself rather to the true riches. Learn to be content with little, and cry out, great and high of spirit: "We have water, we have barley-meal; let us contend with Jupiter himself for happiness." Let us contend, I beg you, even if these things shall be lacking. It is base to set the happy life in gold and silver, equally base to set it in water and barley-meal.

"What then shall I do, if these things shall not be?" You ask what is the remedy for want? Hunger ends hunger; otherwise, what does it matter whether the things that force you to be a slave are great or small? What does it matter how little it is that fortune can deny you?

This very water and barley-meal falls under another's arbitration. But a man is free, not he over whom fortune has little power, but he over whom it has none. So it is: you must desire nothing, if you wish to challenge Jupiter, who desires nothing. These things Attalus said to us; and if you will reflect on them often, you will work to be happy, not to seem so, and to seem so to yourself, not to others. Farewell.