Letter 38

You are right to demand that we make this exchange of letters between us a frequent one. Conversation does the most good, because it creeps into the mind little by little. Discourses prepared beforehand and poured out before a listening crowd have more noise, less intimacy. Philosophy is good counsel; and no one gives counsel at the top of his voice. Sometimes one must use even those harangues, so to speak, where the man who hesitates must be driven on; but where the aim is not that he should wish to learn, but that he should learn, one must come down to these quieter words. They enter more easily and take hold; for one needs not many words, but effective ones.

They are to be scattered like seed, which, however small it may be, when it has taken possession of a fitting place, unfolds its strength and spreads from the least into the greatest growth. Reason does the same; it does not extend far, if you look at it: in operation it grows. Few are the things that are spoken, but if the mind has received them well, they gather strength and rise up. The lot of precepts, I say, is the same as that of seeds; they accomplish much, and they are narrow. Only let, as I have said, a fitting mind receive them and draw them into itself. It in turn will itself generate many things and give back more than it received. Farewell.