Letter 117

You will contrive much trouble for me and, while you know it not, will thrust me into a great quarrel and vexation, you who set me such little questions, in which I can neither dissent from our school without loss of their goodwill, nor agree with them without loss of my conscience. You ask whether it is true, what the Stoics hold, that wisdom is a good, but to be wise is not a good. First I will set forth what the Stoics think; then I will venture to give my own opinion.

It is the view of our school that what is good is a body, because what is good acts: whatever acts is a body. What is good is of profit. But it must do something in order to profit; if it does, it is a body. They say that wisdom is a good; it follows that they must necessarily say that it too is corporeal.

But to be wise they do not think to be of the same condition. It is incorporeal and an accident of something else, that is, of wisdom; and so it neither does anything nor is of profit. "What then?" he says. "Do we not say, it is good to be wise?" We do say it, referring it to that on which it depends, that is, to wisdom itself.

Hear what is answered by others against these men, before I myself begin to withdraw and to take my seat on another side. "In that way," they say, "to live happily is not a good either." Whether they will or no, they must answer that the happy life is a good, but to live happily is not a good.

Even now this too is urged against our school: "You wish to be wise. Therefore to be wise is a thing to be sought. If it is a thing to be sought, it is good." Our school are forced to twist their words and to insert into "to be sought" one syllable which our language does not allow to be inserted. I will add it, if you permit me. "That is to be sought (expetendum)," they say, "which is good; but that is desirable (expetibile) which falls to us when we have attained the good. It is not sought as a good, but is added when the good has been sought."

I do not think the same, and I judge that our school come down to this because they are already held by the first bond and are not permitted to change their formula. We are wont to give much weight to the presumption of all men, and with us it is an argument of truth that something seems so to all. Thus, among other proofs, we conclude that there are gods from this, that the belief about the gods is innate in all, and there is no nation anywhere so cast out beyond laws and customs as not to believe in some gods. When we discourse about the eternity of souls, the agreement of men, whether they fear or worship the powers below, has no light weight with us. I use this public conviction: you will find no one who does not think both wisdom and to be wise a good.

I will not do what the vanquished are wont to do, and appeal to the people; let us begin to fight with our own arms. What befalls anything, is it outside that to which it befalls, or in that to which it befalls? If it is in that to which it befalls, it is as much a body as that to which it befalls. For nothing can befall without touch; what touches is a body. If it is outside, then, after it had befallen, it withdrew. What has withdrawn has motion. What has motion is a body. You expect me to say that running is not one thing and to run another, nor heat one thing and to be hot another, nor light one thing and to shine another; I grant that these are different things, but not of another lot.

If health is indifferent, so is to be healthy; if beauty is indifferent, so is to be beautiful. If justice is a good, so is to be just. If baseness is an evil, so is to be base an evil, as much, by Hercules, as, if inflammation of the eyes is an evil, to have inflamed eyes is also an evil. That you may know this: neither can be without the other. He who is wise, is a wise man; he who is a wise man, is wise. So far is it from being possible to doubt whether the one is of such a kind as the other, that to some both seem one and the same.

But this I would gladly inquire: since all things are either evil or good or indifferent, in which number is to be wise? They deny it to be a good; it is certainly not an evil; it follows that it is in the middle. But that we call middle and indifferent which can befall the evil man as well as the good, such as money, beauty, noble birth. But this, to be wise, can befall no one but the good; therefore it is not indifferent. And yet it is not even an evil, for it cannot befall the evil man; therefore it is a good. What no one but a good man has is a good. To be wise none but a good man has; therefore it is a good.

"It is," he says, "an accident of wisdom." This, then, which you call to be wise—does it make wisdom or undergo it? In either way it is a body. For both that which is made and that which makes is a body; if it is a body, it is good. One thing only was lacking to it, to keep it from being good, namely, that it was incorporeal.

It is the view of the Peripatetics that there is no difference between wisdom and to be wise, since in either of them the other also is. For do you suppose that anyone is wise except one who has wisdom? Do you suppose that anyone who is wise does not have wisdom?

The old dialecticians distinguish these things; from them the division has come down to the Stoics. I will tell you what sort it is. One thing is a field, another to have a field, why not? Since to have a field belongs to the haver, not to the field. So one thing is wisdom, another to be wise. I think you will grant that these are two, that which is had, and he who has it; wisdom is had, he who is wise has it. Wisdom is a perfect mind, or one brought to the highest and best. For it is the art of life. What is to be wise? I cannot say a perfect mind, but that which falls to one who has a perfect mind; so the one is a good mind, the other, as it were, to have a good mind.

"There are," he says, "natures of bodies, as: here is a man, here a horse. These are then followed by motions of the mind which make statements about the bodies. These have something proper to themselves and separated from bodies, as: I see Cato walking. The sense shows this, the mind believes it. What I see is a body, on which I have fixed both my eyes and my mind. Then I say: Cato walks. What I now utter," he says, "is not a body, but a certain statement about a body, which some call an utterance, others a proposition, others a saying. So when we say 'wisdom,' we understand something corporeal; when we say 'he is wise,' we speak about a body. And it makes a great difference whether you name the man or speak about the man."

Let us suppose for the present that these are two things—for I do not yet pronounce what seems true to me—what prevents the one from being indeed a different thing, but none the less a good? I was saying a little before that one thing is a field, another to have a field. Why not? For he who has is of one nature, what is had of another. That is earth, this is a man. But in the case under discussion both are of the same nature, both he who has wisdom and wisdom itself.

Besides, there one thing is what is had, another he who has; here in the same thing are both what is had and he who has. A field is possessed by right, wisdom by nature. The one can be alienated and handed over to another, the other does not depart from its owner. There is no reason, then, for you to compare unlike things with each other. I had begun to say that these two things can exist and yet both be good, just as wisdom and the wise man are two and you grant that each is a good. As nothing prevents both wisdom from being a good and him who has wisdom, so nothing prevents both wisdom from being a good and to have wisdom, that is, to be wise.

I wish to be a wise man for this, that I may be wise. What then? Is that not a good, without which the other is not a good either? You at least say that wisdom, if it were given without use, would not be worth receiving. What is the use of wisdom? To be wise; this is the most precious thing in it, and if you take it away, it becomes superfluous. If tortures are evil, to be tortured is an evil, so much so indeed that those things would not be evil, if you took away what follows. Wisdom is the habit of a perfect mind, to be wise the use of a perfect mind. How can the use of that be not a good, which without use is not a good?

I ask you whether wisdom is to be sought; you admit it. I ask whether the use of wisdom is to be sought; you admit it; for you say you would not receive wisdom if you were forbidden to use it. What is to be sought is good. To be wise is the use of wisdom, as to be eloquent is of eloquence, as to see is of the eyes. Therefore to be wise is the use of wisdom; but the use of wisdom is to be sought; therefore to be wise is to be sought. If it is to be sought, it is good.

For a long time now I condemn myself, who imitate those men while I accuse them, and spend words upon a plain matter. For to whom can it be doubtful that, if heat is an evil, to be hot is also an evil? If cold is an evil, to be cold is an evil? If life is a good, to live is also a good? All these things are about wisdom, not in it. But we must dwell in it itself.

Even if it pleases us to wander somewhat, it has ample and spacious retreats: let us inquire about the nature of the gods, about the nourishment of the heavenly bodies, about these so various courses of the stars, whether our affairs are moved by their motions, whether the impulse to the bodies and minds of all things comes from there, whether even these things which are called fortuitous are bound by a fixed law and nothing in this world rolls on suddenly or void of order. These things have now departed from the shaping of morals, but they lift the mind and raise it to the greatness of the very matters which it handles; those things, however, of which I was speaking a little before, diminish and depress it, and do not, as you think, sharpen it, but make it thin.

I beg you, do we wear out a care so necessary, owed to greater and better things, upon a matter I know not whether false, but certainly useless? What will it profit me to know whether wisdom is one thing, to be wise another? What will it profit me to know that the one is a good, the other is not? I will act rashly, I will undergo the hazard of this prayer: let wisdom fall to you, to be wise to me; we shall be equals.

Do this rather, that you show me the road by which I may reach these things. Tell me what I ought to avoid, what to seek after, by what studies I may strengthen my tottering mind, how I may repel far from me the things that strike me athwart and drive me on, how I may be equal to so many evils, how I may remove those calamities which have burst in upon me, how those into which I myself have burst. Teach me how I may bear distress without a groan of my own, prosperity without another's, how I may not wait for the last and necessary hour, but myself, when it shall seem good, take my leave.

Nothing seems to me more base than to pray for death. For if you wish to live, why do you pray to die? Or if you do not wish to live, why do you ask of the gods what they gave you at your birth? For that you shall die at some time is appointed even against your will; that you may die when you wish lies in your own hand. The one is necessary for you, the other is permitted.

I read these days a most base opening of a man, by Hercules, eloquent: "So," he says, "may I die as soon as possible." Madman, you are praying for what is your own. "So may I die as soon as possible." Perhaps amid these words you have grown old. Otherwise, what is the delay? No one holds you; escape by what way you please. Choose any part of the nature of things, and bid it furnish you an exit. These, surely, are the elements by which this world is governed, water, earth, breath. All these are as much the causes of living as the roads of death.

"So may I die as soon as possible." What do you wish that "as soon as possible" to be? What day do you set for it? It can happen sooner than you pray. These are the words of a weak mind, hunting for pity by this curse; he who prays to die does not wish to die. Ask the gods for life and safety; if you have resolved to die, this is the fruit of death, to cease praying.

These things, my dear Lucilius, let us handle, with these let us shape the mind. This is wisdom, this is to be wise, not to drive a most empty subtlety to and fro in idle little disputations. Fortune has set you so many questions, and you have not yet solved them; do you already quibble? How foolish it is, when you have received the signal for battle, to brandish your weapons in the air. Put away those play-arms; you need the deciding ones. Tell me by what reasoning no sadness, no dread may disturb the mind, by what reasoning I may pour out this weight of secret cravings. Let something be done.

"Wisdom is a good, to be wise is not a good"; so it comes about that we are said not to be wise, that this whole study is laughed at as busied with superfluities. What, if you knew that even this is asked, whether future wisdom is a good? For what doubt is there, I beg you, that the granary does not yet feel the coming harvest, nor does boyhood understand the coming youth by any strength or vigour? To the sick man, meanwhile, coming health is of no use, no more than rest, to follow after many months, refreshes a man running and struggling now.

Who does not know that, for this very reason, that which is to be is not a good, because it is to be? For what is good is certainly of profit. Only present things can be of profit; if it is not of profit, it is not a good; if it is of profit, it already exists. I am to be wise; this will be a good when I shall have been so, meanwhile it is not. A thing must first be, then be of such a kind.

How, I beg you, is that already a good which as yet is nothing? But how do you wish it better proved to you that a thing does not yet exist than if I say: it is to be? For it is plain that what comes has not yet come. Spring is to follow: I know it is now winter. Summer is to follow: I know it is not summer. I have the greatest proof that a thing is future from its not being present.

I shall be wise, I hope, but meanwhile I am not wise. If I had that good, I should now lack this evil. It is to be that I shall be wise; from this you may understand that I am not yet wise. I cannot be at once both in that good and in this evil; these two do not come together, nor are an evil and a good present at once in the same man.

Let us run past these most cunning trifles and hasten to the things that will bring us some aid. No one who in anxiety summons a midwife for his daughter in labour reads through the edict and the programme of the games. No one who runs to the fire of his own house gazes at the draughts-board to learn how the bound piece may get out.

But, by Hercules, all things are announced to you from every side, both the fire of your house and the danger of your children and the siege of your country and the plundering of your goods; add to this shipwrecks and earthquakes and whatever else can be feared; amid these things, distracted, do you find leisure for nothing but what amuses the mind? Do you ask what the difference is between wisdom and to be wise? Do you tie knots and untie them, while so great a mass hangs over your head?

Nature has not given us a time so bountiful and ample that anything of it may be wasted. And see how much is lost even by the most diligent: one man's health has taken something from him, his kindred's something else; necessary business has occupied one part, public affairs another; sleep divides life with us. Out of this time so narrow and rapid, and bearing us away, what good is it to send the greater part into emptiness?

Add now that the mind grows accustomed to amuse itself rather than to heal itself, and to make of philosophy a pastime, when it is a remedy. What the difference is between wisdom and to be wise I do not know; I know it makes no difference to me, whether I know these things or not. Tell me: when I have learned what the difference is between wisdom and to be wise, shall I be wise? Why then do you detain me among the terms of wisdom rather than among its works? Make me braver, make me more secure, make me equal to fortune, make me superior to it. And I can be superior, if I direct to that end everything I learn. Farewell.