Letter 35

When I beg you so urgently to apply yourself to study, I am attending to my own business; I wish to have you for a friend, and this cannot fall to me unless you go on to cultivate yourself as you have begun. For now you love me, but you are not my friend. "What then? Are these things different from each other?" Nay, they are unlike. He who is a friend loves; he who loves is not necessarily a friend. Therefore friendship is always profitable, but love sometimes even does harm. If for nothing else, make progress at least for this, that you may learn to love.

Hasten, then, while you are making progress for me, lest you should have learned it for another's benefit. I for my part already reap the fruit, when I imagine to myself that we shall be of one mind, and that whatever vigour has departed from my time of life will return to me from yours—though it is not far off.

But none the less I wish to be glad in the very fact itself. There comes to us, even from those we love when they are absent, a joy, but a light and fleeting one; the sight and the presence and the converse have something of living delight, especially if you see not only the man you would wish, but such a man as you would wish. Bring yourself, then, to me, a vast gift; and that you may press on the more, consider that you are mortal, and I an old man.

Hasten to me, but first to yourself. Make progress, and above all take care of this, that you be consistent with yourself. As often as you wish to test whether anything has been accomplished, observe whether you wish today the same things you wished yesterday. A change of will betokens a mind tossing on the waves, appearing now here, now there, as the wind has carried it. That does not wander which is fixed and grounded. This is the lot of the perfect wise man, and to some degree of the man making progress and advancing. What then is the difference? The latter is indeed moved, yet does not pass over, but wavers in his own place; the former is not even moved. Farewell.