Letter 34

I grow and exult and, shaking off my old age, kindle anew, as often as I understand from the things you do and write how far you have outstripped yourself—for the crowd you left behind long ago. If the tree he has brought to fruit delights the farmer, if the shepherd takes pleasure in the increase of his flock, if no one regards his foster-child otherwise than as judging the youth's coming of age his own, what do you suppose befalls those who have reared minds and who suddenly see what they shaped tender now full-grown?

I claim you as my own; you are my work. When I had seen your natural gifts, I laid my hand upon you, I exhorted you, I applied the goad, and did not suffer you to go slackly, but kept spurring you on; and now I do the same, but I cheer you on already running, and cheering me on in turn.

"What more?" you say. "I still desire it." In this lies the greatest part—not as the beginnings are said to occupy half of the whole work; this matter rests upon the mind. And so a great part of goodness is to wish to become good. Do you know whom I call good? The perfect man, the finished man, whom no force, no necessity, can make evil.

This I foresee in you, if you persevere and bend to the task and so act that all your deeds and words agree with one another and answer to themselves and are struck from a single mould. The mind of that man is not set straight whose acts are at variance. Farewell.