Letter 25

As regards our two friends, we must go by different roads; the faults of the one must be corrected, those of the other broken. I will use my full freedom. I do not love him unless I give offence. "What then?" you say. "Do you think to keep a forty-year-old ward under your guardianship? Consider his age, now hard and intractable. He cannot be reshaped; only tender things are moulded."

Whether I shall succeed, I do not know. I would rather lack success than good faith. Nor should you despair that even chronic invalids can be cured, if you stand against their intemperance, if you compel them, even against their will, both to do and to suffer many things. Not even of the other have I confidence enough, except in this, that he still blushes to sin. This sense of shame must be fostered, and as long as it lasts in his mind, there will be some room for good hope. With this veteran I think we must deal more sparingly, lest he fall into despair of himself.

Nor was there ever a better time to attack him than this, while he rests for a while, while he is like one reformed. This intermission of his has imposed upon others; upon me it palms off nothing. I expect his faults to return with great interest, which now, I know, are in abeyance, not absent. I will spend some days on the matter, and try whether anything can be done or cannot.

As for you, show yourself to us brave, as you do, and draw in your baggage. Nothing of what we have is necessary. Let us return to the law of Nature; riches are ready at hand. What we need is either free of cost or cheap; bread and water Nature demands. No one is poor with respect to these; and whoever has shut up his desire within them may contend with Jupiter himself for happiness, as Epicurus says, one of whose sayings I will wrap up in this letter.

"Do everything," he says, "as though Epicurus were watching." It is profitable, without doubt, to have set a guardian over oneself and to have someone to whom you may look, whom you may judge to be present at your thoughts. This indeed is far more magnificent—so to live as if under the eyes of some good man and one always present; but I am content even with this, that whatever you do, you do as if someone were watching; solitude persuades us to every evil.

When you have made so much progress that you have even reverence for yourself, you may dismiss your tutor; in the meantime guard yourself by the authority of certain men—let it be that Cato, or Scipio, or Laelius, or some such, in whose presence even abandoned men would hide their faults; and meanwhile fashion yourself into one whose company you could keep. When you have accomplished this, and have begun to hold yourself in some esteem, I will begin to permit you to do what Epicurus advises: "Then especially withdraw into yourself, when you are forced to be in a crowd."

You ought to make yourself unlike the many. While it is not yet safe for you to retire into yourself, look round upon individuals one by one. There is no one to whom you would not be better off compared than to yourself, if you are a good man, if quiet, if temperate. Otherwise, you must retire from yourself into the crowd; for there you are nearer to a bad man. Farewell.