Letter 123

Worn out by a journey troublesome rather than long, I reached my villa at Alba late at night; I have nothing ready except myself. And so I lay aside my weariness on the little couch, and make the best of this delay of cook and baker. For I talk with myself about this very thing, how nothing is grievous which you take lightly, how there is nothing to be indignant at unless you yourself build it up by being indignant.

My baker has no bread; but the steward has, the doorkeeper has, the tenant has. "Bad bread," you say. Wait: it will become good. Hunger will make even that tender and of fine wheat for you. Therefore one must not eat before she commands; I will wait, then, and not eat until either I begin to have good bread or I cease to be fastidious.

It is necessary to grow accustomed to little: many difficulties of place, many of time will meet even the rich and those well furnished for pleasure to thwart them. No one can have whatever he wishes; this he can: not to wish for what he does not have, and to use cheerfully the things that are offered. A great part of liberty is a well-mannered belly, one that can endure rough treatment.

It cannot be reckoned how great a pleasure I take from this, that my weariness grows accustomed to itself; I seek no anointers, no bath, no other remedy than time. For what toil has gathered, rest removes. This dinner, of whatever sort, will be more pleasant than an inaugural banquet.

For I have taken on a sudden a certain test of my mind; for this is more genuine and truer. For when it has prepared itself and proclaimed endurance to itself, it does not appear so plainly how much true firmness it has; those are the surest proofs which it has given on the spur of the moment, if it has looked upon vexations not only with an even but with a placid countenance; if it has not flared up, has not quarrelled; if it has supplied for itself what ought to have been given, by not desiring it, and has reflected that something is lacking to its custom, nothing to itself.

How superfluous many things were we did not understand, until they began to be lacking; for we used them, not because we ought, but because we had them. But how many things do we procure because others have procured them, because they are in most men's houses! Among the causes of our ills is this, that we live by examples, and are not composed by reason but led astray by custom. What, if few did it, we should be unwilling to imitate, when more have begun to do it we follow, as though it were more honourable because more frequent. And with us error holds the place of the right, once it has become public.

All now travel in such a way that a troop of Numidian horse runs before them, that a band of runners goes ahead; it is a shame to have none to drive those they meet off the road, or to show by a great cloud of dust that an honourable man is coming. All now have mules to carry crystal and murra and vessels chased by the hand of great artists; it is a shame to seem to have only such baggage as can be shaken about in safety. The pages of all are carried with faces smeared, lest the sun or the cold harm their tender skin; it is a shame that there be no one in your retinue of boys whose healthy face needs an ointment.

The talk of all these is to be shunned: these are they who pass on vices and carry them from one to another. The worst kind of these men seemed to be those who carried about gossip; there are some who carry about vices. Their talk does much harm; for even if it does not at once make an impression, it leaves seeds in the mind and follows us even when we have departed from them, an evil to rise up again later.

Just as those who have heard a concert carry away with them in their ears that melody and sweetness of the songs, which hinders the thoughts and does not let them be bent upon serious things, so the talk of flatterers and of those who praise the perverse clings longer than it is heard. Nor is it easy to shake a sweet sound out of the mind; it follows and lasts and returns after an interval. Therefore the ears must be shut against evil voices, and that at the very first; when they have made an entry and been admitted, they grow bolder.

From this we come to these words: "Virtue and philosophy and justice are the rattle of empty words. There is one happiness, to do well by one's life. To eat, to drink, to enjoy one's estate, this is to live, this is to remember that one is mortal. The days flow on, and irrecoverable life runs down; do we hesitate to be wise? What use is it, to an age that will not always receive pleasures, to thrust frugality in meanwhile, while it can, while it demands them? Therefore outrun death, and whatever it will take away, let it perish for you already. You have no mistress, no boy to stir a mistress's jealousy; you go out sober every day; you dine as though you were going to submit your daybook to your father: this is not to live, but to be present at another's life."

How great a madness it is to manage the affairs of one's heir and to deny oneself everything, that a great inheritance may turn the friend into an enemy. For he will rejoice the more at your death, the more he receives. Make no account of those gloomy and supercilious censors of another's life, enemies of their own, public schoolmasters, and do not hesitate to prefer a good life to a good name.

These voices are no otherwise to be shunned than those past which Ulysses was unwilling to be carried save bound. They have the same power; they draw a man away from his country, from his parents, from his friends, from the virtues, and dash him, wretched, upon a base life, unless he is borne up by a base hope. How much better it is to follow the straight path and to bring oneself to this, that those things alone are pleasant to you which are honourable.

Which we shall be able to attain, if we know that there are two kinds of things which either invite us or drive us away. They invite, like riches, pleasures, beauty, ambition, and the rest that are coaxing and smiling upon us; it drives away, toil, death, pain, ignominy, a more restricted way of life. We must, then, be trained, that we may not fear these, that we may not desire those. Let us fight in the contrary direction, and withdraw from the things that invite us, rouse ourselves against the things that assail us.

Do you not see how different is the bearing of those going down and of those going up? Those who go by a downward slope throw their bodies back, those who go up a steep lean forward. For to give your weight forward when you descend, to draw it back when you ascend, is, my dear Lucilius, to be in league with the vice. Into pleasures one goes down, to rough and hard things one must climb; here let us drive our bodies forward, there let us rein them in.

Do you now think that I say this, that only those are pernicious to our ears who praise pleasure, who strike into us the fear of pain, things of themselves to be dreaded? I think that those too harm us who, under the appearance of the Stoic school, urge us to vices. For they boast this: "The wise man and the learned man alone is a lover. The wise man alone is skilled in this art; he is likewise most expert in drinking together and dining together. Let us inquire up to what age young men are to be loved."

Let these things be granted to the Greek custom; let us rather direct our ears to these: No one is good by chance. Virtue must be learned. Pleasure is a lowly thing and petty and to be held of no value, common with the dumb animals, to which the smallest and most contemptible things fly. Glory is something empty and fleeting and more shifting than the breeze. Poverty is an evil to no one save him who resists it. Death is not an evil; what do you ask? It is the one right that is equal for the human race. Superstition is the error of a madman; it fears those whom it ought to love; those whom it worships, it violates. For what difference is there whether you deny the gods or defame them?

These things must be learned, nay, learned by heart; philosophy ought not to supply excuses for vice. The sick man has no hope of safety whom his physician urges to intemperance. Farewell.