Letter 50

I received your letter many months after you had sent it. So I thought it superfluous to ask the man who brought it how you were faring. For he has a very good memory, if he remembers! And yet I hope that you now live in such a way that, wherever you are, I know what you are doing. For what else are you doing than making yourself daily better, laying aside some of your errors, understanding that those are your own faults which you suppose to be the faults of circumstances? For we ascribe certain things to places and times. But those faults, wherever we go, will follow us.

You know that Harpaste, my wife's foolish attendant, has remained in my house as an inherited burden. For I myself am most averse to such monsters; if I ever wish to take pleasure in a fool, I do not have to seek far—I laugh at myself. This fool suddenly lost her sight. I am telling you a thing past belief, but true: she does not know that she is blind. Again and again she asks her attendant to move; she says the house is dark.

Let it be clear to you that this, which we laugh at in her, befalls us all: no one understands that he is greedy, no one that he is covetous. Yet the blind seek a guide, while we wander without a guide and say: "I am not ambitious, but no one can live otherwise at Rome. I am not extravagant, but the city itself demands great outlays. It is not my fault that I am quick to anger, that I have not yet settled on a fixed plan of life; my youth does this."

Why do we deceive ourselves? Our evil is not from outside; it is within us, it sits in our very vitals, and for that reason we come with difficulty to soundness, because we do not know that we are sick. Even if we should begin to be cured, when shall we shake off the great forces of so many diseases? As it is, we do not even seek a physician, who would have less trouble if he were called in to a recent malady. Tender and untrained minds would follow him who pointed out the straight road.

No one is brought back to Nature with difficulty, except him who has fallen away from her. We blush to learn a good mind; but, by Hercules, if it is shameful to seek a master for this thing, that other hope must be given up—that so great a good could come upon us by mere chance. We must labour; and, to tell the truth, the labour is not even great, if only, as I have said, we begin to shape and to correct our mind before its crookedness hardens. But not even when it has hardened do I despair.

There is nothing that persistent toil and intent and diligent care does not master; you will recall to straightness oaken beams however bent. Heat unbends curved timbers, and beams that grew in one shape are forced into that which our use requires; how much more easily does the mind take a shape, being pliant and more yielding than any moisture. For what else is the mind than spirit holding itself in a certain manner? And you see that spirit is as much more easily handled than any other material as it is finer.

There is no reason, my Lucilius, why this should hinder you from hoping well of us—that wickedness already holds us, that it has long been in possession of us; to no one has a good mind come before an evil one. We are all forestalled. To learn the virtues is to unlearn the faults.

We ought to come to our own correction with all the greater spirit, because the good, once handed over to us, is a lasting possession; virtue is not unlearned. For contraries cling but ill in foreign soil, and so can be driven off and dislodged; faithfully do those things abide which come into their own place. Virtue is according to Nature; faults are her enemies and foes.

But just as virtues, once received, cannot depart, and the keeping of them is easy, so the beginning of going toward them is steep, because it is the property of a feeble and sickly mind to dread the untried. So it must be forced to begin; thereafter the medicine is not bitter. For it gives delight at once, while it heals. With other remedies the pleasure comes after the cure; philosophy is at once both wholesome and sweet. Farewell.