Letter 48

To the letter you sent me on your journey, as long as the journey itself was, I shall write back later. I must withdraw apart and consider what to advise. For you too, who consult me, took thought a long while whether to consult; how much more must I do this, since longer delay is needed to untie a question than to propose one—especially since one thing is to your advantage, another to mine. Am I again speaking like an Epicurean?

But in truth the same thing is to my advantage that is to yours; or else I am no friend, unless whatever concerns you is my own. Friendship makes a partnership in all things between us. Neither prosperity nor adversity belongs to either of us singly; we live in common. Nor can anyone live happily who regards himself alone, who turns all things to his own advantage; you must live for another, if you wish to live for yourself.

This fellowship, carefully and reverently observed, which mingles us men with men and holds that there is some common right of the human race, contributes most also to the cultivation of that inner fellowship of friendship of which I was speaking. For he will have all things in common with a friend who has much in common with a man.

This, Lucilius, best of men, I would rather have taught me by those subtle reasoners—what I owe to a friend, what to a man—than in how many ways "friend" is used and how many things "man" signifies. See, wisdom and folly part company in opposite directions; to which do I go? To which side do you bid me turn? To the one, a man stands in the place of a friend; to the other, a friend is not in the place of a man. The one wins himself a friend, the other wins himself to a friend. You twist words for me and chop syllables.

Of course, unless I construct the craftiest of questions and, by a false conclusion, fasten upon a truth a lie born of it, I shall not be able to separate what is to be sought from what is to be avoided. I am ashamed; in a matter so serious we old men are playing games.

"Mouse is a syllable. But a mouse gnaws cheese; therefore a syllable gnaws cheese." Suppose now I cannot solve that. What peril hangs over me from such ignorance? What inconvenience? Doubtless I must fear lest someday I catch syllables in a mousetrap, or lest someday, if I am too careless, a book eat my cheese. Unless perhaps that reasoning is sharper: "Mouse is a syllable. But a syllable does not gnaw cheese; therefore a mouse does not gnaw cheese."

O childish trifles! For this have we drawn up our eyebrows? For this have we let our beards grow long? Is this what we teach, grave and pale? Do you wish to know what philosophy promises to the human race? Counsel. One man death summons, another poverty burns, another riches torment, whether another's or his own. This man dreads ill fortune, that one longs to withdraw from his own good fortune. Men treat this one ill, the gods that one.

Why do you make up these toys for me? This is no place for jesting; you are called as advocate to the wretched. You have promised to bring help to the shipwrecked, the captive, the sick, the needy, to those laying their heads beneath the poised axe. Whither do you turn aside? What are you doing? This man with whom you sport is afraid; help him—[the text is here corrupt and the sense uncertain]. From all sides they all stretch out their hands to you, imploring some aid for lives lost and about to perish; in you are their hope and their resource. They beg that you draw them out of so great a whirl, that to them scattered and wandering you show the clear light of truth.

Tell them what Nature has made necessary, what superfluous, how easy are the laws she has set, how pleasant and unencumbered is life for those who follow them, how bitter and entangled for those who have trusted opinion more than Nature. I would believe that those toys of yours availed to relieve their evils, if you first showed which part of them they will relieve. Which of these things removes their desires? Which curbs them? Would that they merely did no good! They do harm. I will make this most plain to you whenever you wish, that a noble nature is broken and weakened when it is flung into such quibbles.

I am ashamed to say what weapons they hold out to men about to do battle against fortune, with what arms they equip them. Is this the road to the highest good? Through that "provided" and "except" of philosophy, and through quibbles base and infamous even to those who sit by the praetor's bench? For what else are you doing, when you knowingly lead the man you question into a trap, than make him seem to have lost his case on a technicality? But just as the praetor restores those men, so philosophy restores these to their former standing.

Why do you fall away from your vast promises and, after great words—that you would bring it about that no more should the gleam of gold than that of the sword dazzle my eyes, that with mighty steadfastness I should trample on both what all desire and what all fear—why do you come down to the grammarians' rudiments? What do you say? "Is this the way to the stars?" For this is what philosophy promises me, to make me the equal of a god. To this I was invited, for this I came; make good your pledge.

As much as you can, then, my Lucilius, draw yourself back from those exceptions and prescriptions of the philosophers. Open and simple things befit goodness. Even if much of life remained, it would have to be dispensed sparingly, that it might suffice for necessary things; as it is, what madness it is to learn superfluous things amid so great a poverty of time! Farewell.