Letter 75

You complain that letters are sent to you by me with too little care. For who speaks with care, unless he wishes to speak affectedly? Such as my talk would be if we were sitting or walking together — unlabored and easy — such I wish my letters to be, which have nothing fetched in or feigned.

If it could be done, I would rather show what I feel than say it. Even if I were arguing, I would neither stamp my foot nor throw about my hand nor raise my voice, but I would leave those things to the orators, content to have brought my thoughts through to you, which I would neither have decked out nor cast down.

This one thing I should plainly wish to prove to you: that I feel all those things which I say, and not only feel them but love them. Men kiss a mistress one way, their children another; yet even in this embrace, so chaste and restrained, the affection is plain enough. I do not, by Hercules, wish the things that are said about matters so great to be meager and dry; for philosophy does not renounce talent. Yet much labor ought not to be spent on words.

Let this be the sum of our purpose: let us say what we feel, let us feel what we say; let speech accord with life. He has fulfilled his promise who is the same both when you see him and when you hear him.

We shall see what he is like, how great he is — let him be one and the same. Let our words not delight, but profit. Yet if eloquence can fall to one without his being anxious for it, if it is either ready at hand or costs little, let it attend and follow after the fairest matters. Let it be such as to display the matter rather than itself. Other arts pertain wholly to talent; here the business of the mind is conducted.

The sick man does not seek an eloquent physician; but if it so happens that the same man who can heal also discourses elegantly on what must be done, he will take it in good part. Yet there will be no reason for him to congratulate himself on having lighted on a physician who is also fluent. For this is just as if a skilled helmsman were also handsome.

Why do you scratch my ears? Why do you give me delight? Another thing is at stake; I must be burned, cut, made to fast. For this you have been called in. You must cure an old disease, a grave one, a common one. You have as much business as a physician in a plague. Are you busy about words? Rejoice this long while if you suffice for the matters. When will you learn the many things you must learn? When will you so fix in yourself what you have learned that it cannot slip away? When will you put it to the test? For it is not enough, as with other things, to have committed it to memory; it must be tried in action. He is not happy who knows those things, but who does them.

"What then? Are there no steps below him? Is it straightway a sheer drop from wisdom?" Not, as I think. For he who makes progress is indeed in the number of the foolish, yet he is separated from them by a great interval. Even among those making progress themselves there are great distinctions. They are divided, as some hold, into three classes.

The first are those who do not yet have wisdom, but have already taken their stand in its neighborhood. Yet even what is near is outside. You ask who these are? Those who have now laid aside all passions and vices, who have learned what was to be embraced, but their confidence is as yet untried. They do not yet have their good in use, yet now they cannot fall back into the things they fled. They are now there whence there is no slipping back, but this is not yet clear to them about themselves; as I remember I wrote in a certain letter, "they do not know that they know." It has now fallen to them to enjoy their good, but not yet to trust it.

Some embrace this kind of those making progress, of whom I have spoken, so as to say that they have now escaped the diseases of the mind, but not yet the passions, and that they still stand on slippery ground, because no one is outside the danger of wickedness save he who has shaken it wholly off. But no one has shaken it off save he who has taken up wisdom in its place.

What is the difference between diseases of the mind and passions, I have often said already. Now too I will remind you: diseases are inveterate and hardened vices, such as greed, such as ambition; these have entangled the mind too closely and have begun to be its perpetual evils. To define briefly, a disease is a judgment persistent in what is wrong, as though things which are to be lightly sought were greatly to be sought. Or, if you prefer, let us define it thus: to lean too much toward things to be lightly sought, or not to be sought at all, or to hold in great value things to be held in some value or in none.

Passions are blameworthy motions of the mind, sudden and excited, which, frequent and neglected, have made a disease, just as a catarrh, single and not yet brought into a habit, makes a cough, but constant and old makes consumption. And so those who have made the most progress are outside the diseases, but still feel the passions, being nearest to the perfect.

The second kind is of those who have laid aside both the greatest evils of the mind and the passions, but so that they do not have a sure possession of their own security. For they can slip back into the same state.

That third kind is outside many and great vices, but not outside all. It has escaped greed, but still feels anger; it is no longer troubled by lust, still by ambition; it no longer covets, but still fears. And in the very fear it is firm enough against some things, to some it gives way. It despises death, it shrinks from pain.

Let us reflect a little on this place. It will be well with us if we are admitted into this number. The second grade is gained by great felicity of nature and by great and constant intentness of study; but not even this third hue is to be despised. Reflect how many evils you see about you, see how there is no crime without precedent, how much wickedness advances daily, how much is sinned both publicly and privately; you will understand that we attain enough if we are not among the worst.

"But I," you say, "hope that I can become of an ampler order too." I should wish this for us rather than promise it; we are forestalled. We strive toward virtue, hampered amid vices. I am ashamed to say it: we cultivate honorable things only so far as we have leisure. But what a grand reward awaits us, if we break off our occupations and the most tenacious evils! Neither desire nor fear shall drive us.

Unmoved by terrors, uncorrupted by pleasures, we shall dread neither death nor the gods; we shall know that death is not an evil, that the gods are not for evil. That which harms is as weak as that which is harmed; the best things lack harmful force.

There await us, if ever we escape from this dregs into that sublime and lofty region, tranquility of mind and, with errors expelled, absolute liberty. You ask what this is? Not to fear men, nor the gods; to will neither base things nor excessive things; to have the greatest power over oneself. It is a good beyond all price to become one's own. Farewell.