Letter 72

What you ask of me was once clear to me, so well had I learned the matter through and through. But I have not retested my memory for a long while, and so it does not easily follow me. What happens to books that have stuck together from disuse, this I feel has happened to me; my mind must be unfolded, and whatever has been laid up in it must be shaken out from time to time, that it may be ready as often as need shall demand. Let us therefore put this off for the present; for it requires much labor, much care. As soon as I hope for a longer stay in the same place, then I shall take it in hand.

For there are certain things that you can write even in a gig. There are others that demand a couch and leisure and seclusion. Nonetheless on these busy days too let something be done, and indeed on every one of them. For new occupations will never fail to come on; we sow them, and so from one come forth many. Then we ourselves give ourselves a postponement: "When I have finished this, I will set to it with my whole mind; when I have composed this troublesome matter, I will give myself to study."

Philosophizing is not to be done when you have free time; all other things must be neglected that we may sit beside this, for which no time is great enough — even if life is prolonged from boyhood to the longest bounds of the human age. It makes little difference whether you give up philosophy or interrupt it; for it does not remain where it was broken off, but, after the manner of things which when stretched spring apart, it runs back to its beginning, because it has departed from continuity. We must resist our occupations; they are not to be unfolded but pushed aside. No time at all is too little suited to wholesome study; and yet many do not study amid the very things on account of which one ought to study.

"Something will fall out to hinder." Not, indeed, the man whose mind in every business is glad and brisk; the gladness of those still imperfect is cut short, but the wise man's joy is woven continuous, it is broken by no cause, by no fortune, he is always and everywhere tranquil. For he does not hang upon another's will, nor await the favor of fortune or of man. His happiness is homebred; it would go out of his mind if it had entered from without; there it is born.

Sometimes something comes from outside to remind him of his mortality, but it is light, and such as grazes the surface of the skin. Some discomfort, I say, may be added to it; but that greatest good is fixed. So I say: there are some discomforts from without, as on a body otherwise robust and sound there are sometimes eruptions of pustules and little sores, but there is no evil in the depths.

This, I say, is the difference between the man of consummate wisdom and another who is advancing, what is between a man who is well and one emerging from a grave and lingering disease, for whom a milder relapse stands in the place of health: the latter, unless he attends, is at once burdened and rolls back into the same state, but the wise man cannot relapse, nor even fall ill any more. For to the body health is good for a time, which the physician, even if he restored it, does not guarantee, and is often summoned again to the very man who called him in. The mind is healed once for all and wholly.

I will tell you how I shall recognize the man who is well: if he is content with himself, if he trusts himself, if he knows that all the prayers of mortals, all the benefits that are given and sought, have no weight in the happy life. For that to which anything can be added is imperfect; that from which anything can be taken away is not lasting; whose joy is going to be lasting, let him rejoice in his own. But all those things at which the crowd gapes flow this way and that. Fortune gives nothing in absolute ownership. But even these chance things delight us then, when reason has tempered and mingled them; it is this that commends even external things, the use of which is thankless to those greedy for them.

Attalus used to use this image: "Have you ever seen a dog catching, with open mouth, bits of bread or meat thrown by his master? Whatever he has caught he straightway swallows whole, and always gapes in the hope of what is to come." The same happens to us: whatever fortune has thrown to us as we wait, we let it down without any pleasure, at once on the stretch and astonished for the snatching of the next. This does not happen to the wise man; he is full. Even if something comes his way, he receives it untroubled and lays it by.

He enjoys the greatest gladness, continuous, his own. Some men have a good will, have made progress, but one who falls far short of the summit; this man is by turns depressed and lifted up, and now is raised to heaven, now borne down to earth. To the inexperienced and rude there is no end of the headlong fall; they fall into that Epicurean chaos, empty, without bound.

There is besides a third kind of those who play near wisdom — wisdom which they have not indeed touched, but which they have in view and, so to speak, within range; these are not shaken, nor do they even slip away. Not yet on dry land, they are already in port.

Therefore, since there are such great distinctions between the highest and the lowest, since even those in the middle are followed by their own tide, are followed by the great danger of returning to the worse, we ought not to indulge our occupations. They must be shut out; if once they enter, they will put others in their own place. Let us withstand their beginnings. They will better not begin than cease. Farewell.