Letter 116

Whether it is better to have moderate passions or none has often been inquired. Our school drive them out, the Peripatetics moderate them. I do not see how any moderate amount of a disease can be wholesome or useful. Do not be afraid; I take from you none of the things you do not wish to be denied. I will show myself easy and indulgent toward the things you cling to and think either necessary to life or useful or pleasant; I will only take away the fault. For when I have forbidden you to crave, I will permit you to wish, that you may do those very same things undismayed, with a surer counsel, that you may feel pleasures themselves more keenly; why should they not come to you the more, if you command them rather than serve them?

"But it is natural," you say, "for me to be tormented by longing for a friend; grant their right to tears that fall so justly. It is natural to be touched by the opinions of men and to be saddened by adverse ones; why will you not permit me this so honourable fear of a bad opinion?" There is no vice without its patronage; every one has a beginning that is modest and pardonable, but from this it spreads further. You will not bring it about that it should cease, if you permit it to begin.

Every passion is weak at first. Then it rouses itself and gathers strength as it advances; it is more easily shut out than driven out. Who denies that all passions flow from a certain, as it were, natural source? Nature has committed to us the care of ourselves, but when you have indulged this too much, it is a vice. Nature has mingled pleasure with necessary things, not that we should seek it, but that the addition of it should make welcome to us the things without which we cannot live; let it come by its own right, it is luxury. Let us, then, resist them as they enter, because, as I said, they are not received more easily than they go out. "Permit me," you say, "to grieve to a certain degree, to fear to a certain degree." But that "to a certain degree" is drawn out far, and does not receive an end where you wish.

It is safe for the wise man not to keep watch over himself anxiously, and he will stop both his tears and his pleasures where he wishes; but for us, because it is not easy to turn back, the best thing is not to advance at all.

It seems to me that Panaetius answered elegantly a certain young man who asked whether the wise man would fall in love. "As for the wise man," he said, "we shall see; but to you and me, who are still far from the wise man, it is not to be entrusted to fall into a thing disturbed, uncontrolled, enslaved to another, cheap in its own eyes. For if it does not spurn us, we are stirred by its kindness; if it has scorned us, we are inflamed by its pride. The easiness of love does as much harm as its difficulty; by easiness we are captured, with difficulty we struggle. And so, conscious of our own weakness, let us keep quiet. Let us entrust a weak mind neither to wine, nor to beauty, nor to flattery, nor to any things that draw us coaxingly."

What Panaetius answered to the man who asked about love, this I say about all the passions. So far as we can, let us withdraw from the slippery ground; even on dry ground we stand none too firmly.

At this point you will meet me with that public outcry against the Stoics: "You promise things too great, you prescribe things too hard. We are but poor little men; we cannot deny ourselves everything. We shall grieve, but a little; we shall covet, but with moderation; we shall be angry, but we shall be appeased." Do you know why we cannot do these things?

Because we do not believe we can. Nay, by Hercules, there is something else in the matter: because we love our vices, we defend them, and prefer to excuse them rather than to shake them off. Nature has given man strength enough, if we will use it, if we will gather our forces and rouse them all on our own behalf, or at least certainly not against ourselves. It is unwillingness that is the cause; inability is pretended. Farewell.