Letter 49

He is indeed a slothful and careless man, my Lucilius, who is brought to remember a friend only when prompted by some region. Yet at times familiar places call forth the longing stored away in our mind, and do not restore an extinguished memory, but rouse one that was at rest, just as the grief of mourners, even if it has been softened by time, is renewed by a slave who was a favourite of the lost one, or by his garment, or by his house. Lo, Campania, and above all Naples and the sight of your beloved Pompeii, have made my longing for you fresh again—it is past belief; you are wholly before my eyes. I am in the very act of parting from you. I see you choking back your tears and not resisting enough the feelings that break out even amid your effort to restrain them. I seem to have lost you but a moment ago.

For what is not "a moment ago," if you recall it? A moment ago I sat, a boy, at the feet of the philosopher Sotion; a moment ago I began to plead causes; a moment ago I ceased to wish to plead them; a moment ago I ceased to be able. The swiftness of time is boundless, which appears more plainly to those who look back. For it deceives those intent upon the present, so gentle is the passage of its headlong flight.

Do you ask the cause of this? Whatever time has passed is in the same place; it is all beheld together, it lies together. All things fall into the same abyss. And besides, there cannot be long intervals in a thing which is wholly brief. A mere point is the span we live, and even less than a point. Yet this least span Nature has mocked with the appearance of a longer stretch: of it she has made one part infancy, another boyhood, another youth, another a certain decline from youth toward old age, another old age itself. Within how narrow a compass she has set so many stages!

A moment ago I was your escort; and yet this "moment ago" is a good portion of our life, whose brevity we should sometimes reflect will one day fail us. Time did not use to seem to me so swift; now its course appears incredible, whether because I feel the finish-lines drawing near, or because I have begun to mark and reckon up my loss.

The more, therefore, am I indignant that some men should spend the greater part of this time, which cannot suffice even for necessary things, however diligently it be guarded, upon superfluous matters. Cicero says that, if his life were doubled, he would not have time to read the lyric poets; in the same place set the dialecticians: they are sillier, and more dismal. The lyric poets are openly playful; these think they are doing something serious.

Nor do I deny that these things should be looked into; but only looked into, and saluted from the threshold, for this one purpose, that words may not be palmed off upon us and we judge that there is in them some great and hidden good. Why do you torment and waste yourself over a question which it is more clever to have despised than to solve? It is the part of one who is secure and migrating at his ease to gather up trifles; when the enemy presses at one's back and the soldier is ordered to move, necessity shakes out whatever idle peace had gathered.

I have no leisure to chase after words of doubtful issue and to try my cunning upon them. "Behold what peoples gather, what walls sharpen the sword behind closed gates." With a great spirit must I hear that din of war thundering round about me.

I should rightly seem to all men mad, if, while old men and women were heaping stones for the defence of the walls, while the armed youth within the gates awaited or demanded the signal for a sortie, while the enemy's weapons quivered in the gates and the very ground trembled with sappings and mines, I should sit idle and pose such little questions as these: "What you have not lost, you have. But you have not lost horns; therefore you have horns"—and other things made up after the pattern of this keen-witted lunacy.

And yet I may seem to you no less mad, if I spend my labour upon those things; for I too am now besieged. In that case, however, an external peril would threaten me besieged, and a wall would part me from the enemy; now deadly things are with me. I have no leisure for those follies; a vast business is in my hands. What am I to do? Death pursues me, life flees; against these teach me something.

Bring it about that I do not flee death, that life does not flee me. Hearten me against hardships, add equanimity against the unavoidable. Loosen the narrow bounds of my time. Teach me that the good of life lies not in its length, but in its use, and that it can come to pass—nay, very often comes to pass—that he who has lived long has lived little. Say to me as I go to sleep: "You may not wake again"; say to me when I have wakened: "You may not sleep again." Say to me as I go out: "You may not return"; say to me when I return: "You may not go out again."

You are mistaken if you think that only in a sea-voyage there is the slightest interval that parts life from death; in every place the interval is just as thin. Death does not show itself so near everywhere; everywhere it is as near. Scatter these shadows; and then you will more easily hand on those teachings for which I am prepared. Nature brought us forth teachable, and gave us a reason imperfect, but such as could be perfected.

Discourse to me of justice, of piety, of frugality, of both kinds of chastity—both that whose care is to abstain from another's body, and this whose care is for one's own. If you are willing not to lead me by byways, I shall come more easily to the goal at which I aim. For, as that tragic poet says, "The speech of truth is simple." Therefore it ought not to be entangled; nor indeed does anything suit less those souls attempting great things than that crafty subtlety. Farewell.