Letter 58

How great is the poverty of words for us — nay, the destitution — I never understood more than today. A thousand things came up, while we happened to be speaking of Plato, which needed names and had none; and some which, when they had once had names, had lost them through our fastidiousness. But who can endure fastidiousness in poverty?

That insect which the Greeks call oestros, that drives the herds and scatters them through all the glades, our people used to call asilus. You may take Virgil's word for it: "There is, near the grove of Silarus and Alburnus green with ilex, a thick swarm of flies whose Roman name is asilus, though the Greeks, translating, called it oestros — harsh, with a bitter buzzing, at which whole herds, terrified, scatter through the woods."

I think it is understood that this word has died out. Not to put you off long, certain simple words were in use, as when they said that men "decided it with the sword" (cernere ferro) between themselves. This same Virgil will prove it to you: "Mighty men born in different quarters of the world came together and decided it with the sword" — what we now say decernere. The use of that simple word has been lost.

The ancients used to say si iusso, that is, "if I shall have ordered." You need not take my word for this, but the same Virgil's: "Let the rest of the band, where I shall order, bear arms with me."

I am not pressing this point now with such care to show how much time I wasted with the grammarian, but that from this you may understand how much disuse has overtaken the words in Ennius and Accius, when even in this author, who is gone over daily, some have been withdrawn from us.

"What," you say, "does this preface mean? What is it driving at?" I will not conceal it from you. I wish, if it can be done, with your ears propitious, to say essentia ("essence"); but if not, I shall say it even with your ears angry. For this word I have Cicero as my authority — a rich one, I think. If you ask for a more recent one, Fabianus, fluent and elegant, of a style polished even to our taste. For what is to be done, my dear Lucilius? How shall we say ousia, that necessary thing, the nature that contains the foundation of all things? I beg you, then, to allow me to use this word. Nonetheless I shall take pains to exercise the right you grant me most sparingly; perhaps I shall be content merely to have the leave.

What will your indulgence profit, when, see, I can in no way express in Latin the very thing on account of which I reproached our tongue? You will condemn the Roman narrowness the more if you know that it is a single syllable that I cannot translate. What is this, you ask? To on ("that which is"). I seem to you dull-witted: the rendering lies ready to hand, so that I may say quod est, "that which is." But I see there is a great difference; I am forced to put a phrase in place of a noun.

But if it must be so, I will put quod est. Our friend, a most learned man, was saying today that this is spoken of by Plato in six ways. I will set them all out for you, if I first explain that there is such a thing as genus, and such a thing as species. Now for the present we are seeking that first genus on which the other species hang, from which all division is born, by which all things are comprehended. It will be found if we begin to read back the single classes one by one; thus we shall be led to the first.

Man is a species, as Aristotle says; horse is a species; dog is a species; therefore some common bond must be sought for all these, which embraces them and holds them under itself. What is this? Animal. Therefore animal begins to be the genus of all those I just named — man, horse, dog.

But certain things have a soul and yet are not animals. For it is agreed that there is a soul in plants and shrubs too. And so we say that they both live and die. Therefore living things will hold a higher place, since both animals and growing things are within this form. But certain things lack soul, like stones. Therefore there will be something more ancient than living things, namely body. This I shall so divide as to say that all bodies are either living or lifeless.

Even now there is something higher than body. For we say that some things are corporeal, some incorporeal. What, then, will that be from which these are derived? That to which we just now gave a name not quite its own — "that which is." For thus it will be cut into species, so that we say: that which is is either corporeal or incorporeal.

This, then, is the first genus, the most ancient, and, so to speak, the general one. The rest are genera indeed, but special ones. As man is a genus. For it has within it the species of nations: Greeks, Romans, Parthians. Of colors: white, black, yellow. It has individuals: Cato, Cicero, Lucretius. So far as it contains many, it falls under genus; so far as it is under another, under species. That genus which is general has nothing above itself; it is the beginning of things; all things are under it.

The Stoics wish to set above this yet another, more primary genus; of which I shall speak presently, if first I have shown that the genus of which I spoke is rightly placed first, since it is capacious of all things.

"That which is" I divide into these species, so that there are corporeal or incorporeal things. There is no third. How do I divide body? So as to say: they are either living or lifeless. Again, how do I divide living things? So as to say: some have a mind, some only a soul. Or thus: some have impulse — they move, they pass from place to place; some, fixed to the soil by roots, are nourished and grow. Again, into what species do I cut animals? They are either mortal or immortal.

The first genus seems to certain Stoics to be "the something." Why it seems so, I will add. "In the nature of things," they say, "some things are, some are not. And even those which are not, the nature of things embraces — things that occur to the mind, like Centaurs, Giants, and whatever else, formed by false thought, has begun to have some image, although it has no substance."

Now I return to what I promised you — how Plato divides whatever exists into six ways. The first "that which is" is grasped neither by sight nor by touch nor by any sense; it is a thing of thought. What exists generally, like generic man, does not come under the eyes; but the particular comes, like Cicero and Cato. Animal is not seen; it is thought. But its species is seen — horse and dog.

As the second of the things that are, Plato sets that which stands out and surpasses all things. This, he says, exists "by way of excellence." "Poet" is said in common, for this name belongs to all who make verses; but among the Greeks it has now passed to the mark of one man; you understand Homer when you hear "the poet." What, then, is this? God, of course, greater and more powerful than all.

The third genus is of those things which exist in the proper sense; these are innumerable, but set beyond our sight. What they are, you ask. They are Plato's own furniture; he calls them Ideas, from which all things that we see come to be, and according to which all things are shaped. These are immortal, unchangeable, inviolable.

What an Idea is — that is, what it seems to Plato to be — hear: "An Idea is the eternal pattern of those things that come to be by nature." I will add an interpretation to the definition, that the matter may become clearer to you. Suppose I wish to make a portrait of you. I have you as the pattern of the picture, from which our mind takes a certain form to impose upon its work. So that face which teaches and instructs me, from which the imitation is sought, is the Idea. Such patterns, then, the nature of things has in infinite number — of men, fish, trees — according to which whatever must be made by her is fashioned.

The fourth place will belong to the eidos ("form"). What this eidos is, you must attend, and charge Plato, not me, with the difficulty of the matter. There is no subtlety without difficulty. A little before I was using the image of the painter. He, when he wished to render Virgil in colors, kept gazing at the man himself. The Idea was the face of Virgil, the pattern of the work to come. What the artist draws from this and imposes upon his work is the eidos.

What is the difference, you ask? The one is the pattern, the other the form taken from the pattern and imposed upon the work. The one the artist imitates, the other he makes. A statue has a certain face; this is the eidos. The pattern itself has a certain face, gazing on which the craftsman shaped the statue; this is the Idea. If you still want another distinction: the eidos is in the work, the Idea outside the work — and not only outside the work, but before the work.

The fifth genus is of those things which exist in the common sense; these begin to concern us; here are all things — men, cattle, objects. The sixth genus is of those things which, as it were, exist: like the void, like time. Whatever we see or touch, Plato does not count among those things which he thinks truly to exist. For they flow and are in constant diminution and addition. None of us is the same in old age that he was in youth; none of us is the same in the morning that he was the day before. Our bodies are swept along like rivers. Whatever you see runs on with time. Nothing of the things we see abides. I myself, while I say that these things change, have changed.

This is what Heraclitus says: "We go down into the same river twice, and we do not go down into it." For the river keeps the same name; the water has passed on. This is more evident in a stream than in a man. But a no less swift current carries us past too, and therefore I marvel at our madness, that we so love a thing most fleeting, the body, and fear lest we someday die, when every moment is the death of our former state. Will you not refuse to fear, lest that happen once, which happens daily?

I have spoken of man — a flowing and perishable matter, exposed to all causes; the universe too, an eternal and unconquered thing, changes and does not remain the same. For although it has within it all that it had, it has it otherwise than it had; it changes the order.

"What," you say, "will this subtlety profit me?" If you ask me, nothing. But just as that engraver rests his eyes, long strained and wearied, and draws them off and, as the saying goes, feeds them, so we too ought sometimes to relax the mind and refresh it with certain delights. But let the delights themselves be works. From these too, if you observe, you will draw something that can prove wholesome.

This, Lucilius, is my habit: from every notion, even one most far removed from philosophy, I try to dig out something and make it useful. What is more remote from the reformation of character than the things we have just been handling? How can the Platonic Ideas make me a better man? What shall I draw from them to curb my desires? This very thing: that all those things which serve the senses, which inflame and provoke us, Plato denies to be among the things that truly exist.

Therefore these things are imaginary and bear some face for a time; nothing of them is stable or solid; and yet we desire them as though they were either always to be, or as though we were always to possess them. Weak and fluid, we have taken our stand among empty things; let us send our mind to those things which are eternal. Let us marvel at the forms of all things flying aloft, and at god dwelling among them and providing for this — how he may defend from death those things which he could not make immortal, because matter forbade, and by reason overcome the defect of the body.

For all things abide, not because they are eternal, but because they are defended by the care of him who governs; immortal things would need no guardian. These the artificer preserves, conquering by his own power the frailty of the matter. Let us despise all things which are so far from being precious that it is doubtful whether they exist at all.

Let us reflect at the same time that, if providence rescues the universe itself — no less mortal than we are — from dangers, our own providence too can to some extent prolong a longer stay for this poor little body, if we can govern and restrain the pleasures by which the greater part of men perish.

Plato himself by his care carried himself on to old age. He had, to be sure, been allotted a strong and sturdy body, and the breadth of his chest had given him his name; but voyages and dangers had taken much from his strength. Yet thrift, and moderation in those things that call forth greed, and a careful guarding of himself, brought him to old age though many causes stood in the way.

For you know, I think, that it fell to Plato, by the benefit of his own care, to die on his birthday, having completed his eighty-first year without any subtraction. For this reason the Magi, who happened to be at Athens, sacrificed to him when he was dead, reckoning that his lot had been more than human, since he had rounded out the most perfect number, which nine multiplied by nine composes. I do not doubt that he would gladly have remitted both a few days from that sum and the sacrifice.

Frugality can prolong old age, which, as I think it not to be longed for, so I think it not to be refused. It is pleasant to be with oneself as long as possible, when one has made oneself worthy of being enjoyed. And so we shall pass judgment on this: whether one ought to loathe the last stage of old age and not wait for the end, but make it with one's own hand. The man who sluggishly awaits his fate is near to the man who fears it, just as that man is given to wine beyond measure who drains the jar and swallows the dregs as well.

Yet we shall ask this: whether the last part of life is the dregs, or something most clear and pure, provided the mind is unharmed and the senses, intact, aid the spirit, and the body is not failing and dead before its time. For it matters very much whether a man prolongs his life or his death.

But if the body is useless for its services, why should it not be fitting to lead forth the laboring soul? And perhaps it must be done a little before one ought, lest, when one ought to do it, one be unable. And since there is greater danger in living badly than in dying quickly, he is a fool who does not buy off the hazard of a great matter for the small price of a little time. Long old age has carried few to death without injury; to many an inactive life has lain useless, with no enjoyment of itself; how much crueler, then, do you judge it to have lost something out of life than to have lost the right of ending it?

Do not hear me unwillingly, as though this judgment already concerned you, but weigh what I say: I will not abandon old age, if it keeps me whole for myself — whole, that is, on that better side; but if it begins to shake my mind, to tear away its parts, if it leaves me not life but mere breath, I will leap forth from the rotten and tottering building.

I will not flee a disease by death, provided it is curable and does not stand in the way of the mind. I will not lay hands on myself because of pain; to die thus is to be conquered. Yet if I know that I must suffer it forever, I will go out — not because of the pain itself, but because it will be a hindrance to me in all that for which one lives. Weak and cowardly is the man who dies because of pain; foolish, the man who lives for the sake of pain.

But I am running on too long. There is besides matter enough to spin out the day. And how shall the man be able to set an end to his life who cannot set an end to a letter? Farewell, then — which you will read more gladly than mere talk of death. Farewell.