Letter 56

May I perish if silence is as necessary to a man set apart for study as it seems. See, a medley of noise rings round me on every side. I lodge right over a bathhouse. Now picture to yourself every kind of sound that can bring the ears to loathing: when the stronger fellows exercise and throw about their hands weighted with lead, when they either labor or pretend to labor, I hear their groans; whenever they let out the breath they have held, I hear the hissing and the harshest gasps for air. When I light on some lazy one content with the common rub-down, I hear the smack of the hand striking the shoulders, which changes its sound according as it falls flat or hollowed. But if a ball-player comes upon the scene and begins to count his throws, then it is all up with me.

Add now the brawler, and the thief caught in the act, and the man who likes the sound of his own voice in the bath. Add now those who leap into the swimming-tank with a huge splash of the water they drive before them. Besides these, whose voices at least are natural, think of the hair-plucker, ever and again forcing out his thin and shrill cry, the more to be noticed, and never silent except while he plucks the armpits and makes another cry out in his stead. Then there are the drink-seller's various shouts, the sausage-seller, the pastry-seller, and all the hawkers of the cookshops crying their wares each with his own marked intonation.

"O you man of iron," you say, "or deaf, whose mind holds firm amid so many cries, so varied, so discordant, when the constant round of morning calls drove our Chrysippus to his death." But, by Hercules, I care no more for that din than for a wave or the fall of water — though I have heard that for one nation this alone was the reason for moving their city, because they could not bear the roar of the Nile in its cataract.

A voice, it seems to me, distracts more than mere noise. For the one draws the mind, the other only fills the ears and batters them. Among the things that din around me without distracting me I count the carriages rattling past, the carpenter who lodges in the house, the saw-man next door, or that fellow at the Meta Sudans who tries out his pipes and flutes and does not play but bawls.

Even now a sound that breaks off again and again is more troublesome to me than one that runs on continuously. But I have so hardened myself to all this that I could endure even a boatswain marking the time for the rowers in his most grating voice. For I force my mind to be intent upon itself and not drawn off to externals; let everything outside resound, provided there is no tumult within, provided desire and fear are not quarreling with each other, provided greed and luxury are not at variance, nor the one harassing the other. For what does the silence of a whole region profit you, if your passions are in an uproar?

"All things were settled in the placid quiet of night." That is false. There is no placid quiet save that which reason has composed. Night displays trouble, it does not take it away, and merely changes our anxieties. For even the dreams of sleepers are as turbulent as their days. That is the true tranquility into which a good mind unfolds.

Look at the man who seeks his sleep in the silence of a roomy house, whose ears no sound must disturb, for whom the whole crowd of slaves has fallen silent and those who approach set down their tread on tiptoe; he tosses, of course, this way and that, snatching at a fitful sleep amid his troubles.

He complains that he has heard what he did not hear. What do you think is the cause? His own mind clamors at him. This must be quieted, its uprising must be checked; and there is no reason to think it placid because the body lies still. Sometimes the very rest is restless. And therefore we must rouse ourselves to the doing of things and busy ourselves with the practice of the good arts whenever our idleness, impatient of itself, makes us ill at ease.

Great generals, when they see the soldier ill-disposed to obey, restrain him with some toil and keep him busy with expeditions; men hard pressed never have time to be wanton, and nothing is so sure as that the vices of leisure are dispelled by occupation. Often we seem to have withdrawn out of weariness with public affairs and out of regret for an unhappy and thankless post; yet in that very hiding-place into which fear and exhaustion have thrust us, ambition sometimes breaks out afresh. For it did not cease because it was cut out, but because it was wearied, or even angered, by affairs that yielded too little to it.

The same I say of luxury, which sometimes seems to have given way, then troubles those who have professed frugality, and in the midst of their thrift seeks out the pleasures it has not condemned but merely left behind — and indeed all the more violently the more secretly. For all vices are milder in the open; diseases too then incline toward health when they break out from concealment and put forth their force. So you may know that greed and ambition and the other ills of the human mind are then most pernicious when they subside under a pretended health.

We seem to be at leisure, and are not. For if we are so in good faith, if we have sounded the retreat, if we despise outward show, as I was saying a little before, nothing will distract us, no concert of men and birds will interrupt our thoughts, once they are solid and sure.

That mind is shallow and has not yet drawn itself within which is startled by a voice and by chance happenings. It has within it some anxiety and some conceived dread that makes it apprehensive, as our Virgil says: "And I, whom of late no hurled weapons could move, nor the Greeks massed against me from the opposing line, now every breeze alarms, every sound startles me, anxious and fearing alike for my companion and my burden."

The former man is the wise one, whom no quivering weapons, no clash of arms in the dense battle-line, no crash of a city stormed can terrify. This other is the ignorant one, who fears for his belongings, taking fright at every sound, whom any chance voice mistaken for an uproar lays low, whom the slightest movements unman; it is his baggage that makes him timid.

Whichever of those prosperous men you choose, dragging much, carrying much, you will see him "fearing alike for his companion and his burden." Know, then, that you are well-ordered when no shouting will reach you, when no voice will shake you out of yourself — neither if it flatters, nor if it threatens, nor if it dins emptily about you with hollow sound.

"What then? Is it not sometimes more convenient to be free of clamor as well?" I admit it. And so I shall move from this place. I wanted to test and exercise myself. But why need I be tortured any longer, when Ulysses found so easy a remedy for his comrades even against the Sirens? Farewell.