Letter 37

The strongest bond there is to a good mind—you have promised to be a good man, you have been bound by the oath. Anyone will laugh at you who tells you that the soldier's service is soft and easy. I do not wish you to be deceived. The words of this most honourable enlistment and of that most shameful one are the same: "to be burned, to be bound, and to be slain by the sword."

From those who hire out their hands to the arena, and who eat and drink what they must pay back through their blood, security is taken that they will endure such things even against their will; from you, that you will endure them willing and glad. They are allowed to lower their arms and try the mercy of the people; you will neither lower yours nor beg for your life. You must die upright and unconquered. And what does it profit, moreover, to gain a few days or years? We are born without reprieve.

"How then," you say, "shall I free myself?" You cannot escape necessities; you can conquer them. "A way is made by force." And this way philosophy will give you. Betake yourself to her, if you wish to be safe, to be secure, to be happy, in short, if you wish to be—which is the greatest thing—free. This cannot fall to you in any other way.

Folly is a lowly thing, abject, sordid, slavish, subject to many passions, and to the cruellest. These masters, so heavy, ruling sometimes by turns, sometimes together, wisdom dismisses from you, wisdom which is the only freedom. One road leads to her, and that a straight one; you will not stray. Go with sure step; if you wish to make all things subject to you, make yourself subject to reason; you will govern many, if reason governs you. From her you will learn what and in what manner you ought to undertake; you will not blunder upon things.

You will not show me anyone who knows how he came to will what he wills; he was not led to it by counsel, but driven by impulse. Fortune runs against us no less often than we against her. It is shameful not to go, but to be carried, and suddenly, in the midst of the whirlwind of affairs, to ask, dumbfounded: "How did I come here?" Farewell.