Letter 121

You will quarrel with me, I see, when I have set forth to you today's little question, in which we have stuck long enough. For again you will exclaim: "What has this to do with morals?" But exclaim away, while I first set against you others with whom to quarrel, Posidonius and Archidemus; these shall stand trial. Then I will say: not whatever is moral makes good morals.

One thing concerns the nourishing of a man, another his exercise, another his clothing, another his teaching, another his entertainment. Yet all concern man, even if not all make him better. Morals are touched in different ways: some things correct and order them, some examine their nature and their origin.

When I ask why Nature produced man, why she preferred him to the other living creatures, do you judge that I have wandered far from morals? It is false. For how shall you know what morals are to be had, unless you have found what is best for man, unless you have looked into his nature? You will then at last understand what you must do, what you must avoid, when you have learned what you owe to your own nature.

"I," you say, "wish to learn how I may crave less, fear less. Shake superstition out of me. Teach me that this thing which is called felicity is light and empty, and that one syllable is most easily added to it." I will satisfy your desire, and will both exhort to the virtues and lash the vices. Though someone judge me in this part too excessive and immoderate, I will not cease to pursue wickedness and to check the most savage passions and to restrain pleasures that will pass into pain and to cry out against men's prayers. Why not? Since we have prayed for the greatest of evils, and whatever we address has been born of congratulation.

Meanwhile permit me to sift those things which seem a little more remote. We were inquiring whether all living creatures have a sense of their own constitution. That they have is most apparent from this, that they move their limbs aptly and readily, no otherwise than as if trained for this. There is none that has not an agility of its parts. The craftsman handles his instruments with ease, the steersman of a ship skilfully turns the rudder, the painter most swiftly marks the colours, many and various, which he has set before himself to render the likeness, and passes between the wax and the work with easy face and hand; so the living creature is mobile for every use of itself.

We are wont to marvel at skilled dancers, that their hand is ready for every signification of things and passions, and that the gesture keeps pace with the swiftness of words. What art furnishes to these, Nature furnishes to those. No one moves his limbs with difficulty, no one hesitates in the use of himself. This they do as soon as they are born. They come forth with this knowledge; they are born already instructed.

"Living creatures," he says, "move their parts aptly for this reason, that, if they moved them otherwise, they would feel pain. So, as you say, they are compelled, and it is fear that moves them toward the right, not will." Which is false. For things impelled by necessity are slow; the agility belongs to things moved of their own accord. So far is the fear of pain from driving them to this, that they strive toward their natural motion even when pain forbids it.

Thus the infant who is meditating to stand and accustoming himself to bear his own weight, as soon as he has begun to try his strength, falls and rises again so many times with weeping, until through pain he has trained himself to that which Nature demands. Certain creatures of a harder back, when turned over, twist themselves about so long and thrust out and slant their feet, until they are set back in their place. The tortoise on its back feels no torment, yet it is restless from longing for its natural state, and does not cease to shake itself until it stands upon its feet.

Therefore all have a sense of their own constitution, and thence the so ready handling of their limbs; nor have we any greater proof that they come to life with this knowledge than that no living creature is unskilled in the use of itself.

"The constitution," he says, "is, as you say, the governing part of the mind being in a certain condition toward the body. How does an infant understand this thing so perplexed and subtle and scarcely to be expounded even by you? All living creatures would have to be born dialecticians, to understand that definition, obscure to a great part of toga-clad men." What you object would be true, if I said that the definition of the constitution is understood by living creatures, and not the constitution itself.

Nature is more easily understood than expounded; and so that infant does not know what the constitution is, but knows his own constitution. And he does not know what a living creature is, but feels that he is a living creature.

Besides, he understands his own constitution crudely and summarily and obscurely. We too know that we have a mind; what the mind is, where it is, of what kind or whence, we do not know. As is the sense of our own mind that comes to us, though we are ignorant of its nature and seat, such is the sense of their own constitution that comes to all living creatures. For they must necessarily feel that through which they also feel other things; they must necessarily have a sense of that which they obey, by which they are ruled.

There is no one of us who does not understand that there is something which moves his impulses; what that is, he does not know. And he knows that he has effort; what it is or whence it is, he does not know. So to infants too and to living creatures there is a sense of their governing part not sufficiently clear nor distinct.

"You say," he objects, "that every living creature is first reconciled to its own constitution, but that man's constitution is rational, and therefore that man is reconciled to himself not as a living creature, but as a rational one. For man is dear to himself by that part by which he is man. How then can the infant be reconciled to a rational constitution, when he is not yet rational?" To each age belongs its own constitution, one to the infant, one to the boy, one to the old man; all are reconciled to that constitution in which they are.

The infant is toothless: to this constitution of his he is reconciled. The teeth have come forth; to this constitution he is reconciled. For even that blade which is to come into the standing crop and the grain has one constitution when it is tender and scarcely rising from the furrow, another when it has grown strong and stands upon a stalk soft indeed, but such as to bear its own load, another when it grows golden and looks toward the threshing-floor and its ear has hardened; into whatever constitution it comes, that it guards, into that it is composed.

Different is the age of the infant, the boy, the youth, the old man; yet I am the same who was both an infant and a boy and a youth. So, although each has one constitution after another, the reconciliation to one's own constitution is the same. For Nature commends to me not the boy or the youth or the old man, but myself. Therefore the infant is reconciled to that constitution of his which then belongs to the infant, not to that which is to belong to the youth. For even if there remains for him something greater into which to pass, this too, in which he is born, is according to Nature.

A living creature is first reconciled to its own self; for there must be something to which other things may be referred. I seek pleasure; for whom? For myself. Therefore I take care of myself. I flee pain; on whose behalf? On my own. Therefore I take care of myself. If I do all things for the care of myself, before all things is the care of myself. This is present in all living creatures, not inserted but inborn.

Nature brings forth her offspring, she does not cast them away. And because the surest guardianship is from what is nearest, each is committed to himself. And so, as I said in earlier letters, tender creatures too, just poured forth from the mother's womb or the egg, know at once of themselves what is hostile, and avoid what is deadly. They shrink even from the shadow of things flying over, being liable to the attack of birds that live by prey. No living creature comes forth to life without a fear of death.

"How," he says, "can a living creature, when just brought forth, have an understanding of a wholesome or a deadly thing?" First the question is whether it understands, not how it understands. That they have understanding is apparent from this, that they would do nothing more, even if they had understood. What is the reason that the hen does not flee the peacock or the goose, but flees the hawk, so much smaller and not even known to it? Why do chicks fear the cat and not fear the dog? It is plain that there is in them a knowledge of what will harm, not gathered by experience; for before they can have experience, they take precaution.

Then, that you may not think this happens by chance, they neither fear other things than they ought, nor ever forget this watchfulness and diligence; their flight from the pernicious is uniform. Besides, they do not become more timid by living. From which indeed it is apparent that they do not come to this by use, but by a natural love of their own safety. And what use teaches is both slow and varied; whatever Nature hands on is both uniform for all and immediate.

If, however, you demand it, I will tell you how every living creature comes to understand what is pernicious. It feels that it consists of flesh; and so it feels what it is by which flesh can be cut, by which burned, by which crushed, and what creatures are armed to do harm; from these it draws an appearance unfriendly and hostile. These things are joined to one another; for at the same time each is reconciled to its own safety, and seeks what helps, and dreads what will hurt. The impulses toward useful things are natural, and natural the aversions from their contraries; without any reflection to dictate this, without counsel, whatever Nature has prescribed is done.

Do you not see how great is the subtlety of bees in fashioning their dwellings, how great the concord in distributing the labour to be undertaken on all sides? Do you not see how that weaving of the spider is imitable by no mortal, of how great a work it is to dispose the threads, some sent out straight to serve as a stay, others running round in a circle, from the dense to the thin, by which the smaller creatures, for whose destruction those threads are stretched, may be held entangled as if in nets?

That art is born, not learned. And so no living creature is more learned than another. You will see the webs of spiders all equal, the openings of all the angles in the honeycombs equal. Whatever art hands on is uncertain and uneven; what Nature distributes comes equally. She has handed on nothing more than the guardianship of oneself and the skill of it, and therefore they begin both to learn and to live at the same time.

Nor is it strange that they are born with that without which they would be born in vain. This first equipment Nature bestowed on them for enduring: a reconciliation and an affection toward themselves. They could not be safe unless they wished it. Nor would this by itself have been of profit, but without this nothing would have profited. In none will you find a cheapness of self, nor even a carelessness. Even to the dumb and the brute, although they are sluggish in other respects, there is a skill for living. You will see that the things which are useless to others are not lacking to themselves. Farewell.