Letter 87

I made shipwreck before I went aboard the ship. How it happened I do not add, lest you think this too is to be set among the Stoic paradoxes, none of which, I will prove to you when you wish, nay even when you do not wish, is false or so marvellous as at first sight it appears. Meanwhile this journey taught me how many superfluous things we have, and how easily, by a judgment of our own, we can lay down things which, if at any time necessity has taken them away, we do not feel their loss.

With very few slaves, whom a single carriage could hold, and without any belongings except those carried on our own persons, my friend Maximus and I are now passing two most blessed days. The mattress lies on the ground, I on the mattress. Of two travelling-cloaks, one has been made a coverlet, the other a covering.

From our luncheon nothing could be taken away; it was got ready in no more than an hour, never anywhere without dried figs, never without my writing-tablets. The figs, if I have bread, serve me as a relish; if I have not, in place of bread. They make a new year for me every day, which I render auspicious and happy by good thoughts and greatness of soul, which is never greater than when it has set aside what is another's and has made for itself peace by fearing nothing, made for itself riches by desiring nothing.

The carriage into which I have been put is a country one; the mules show by their walking that they are alive; the muleteer is barefoot, and not on account of the heat. I can scarcely persuade myself to be willing that this carriage should seem to be mine. My perverse shame at the truth still abides; and as often as we meet a more elegant turnout, I blush against my will, a proof that those things which I approve and praise are not yet fixed and settled within me. He who blushes at a shabby carriage will boast of a costly one.

So far I have made little progress. I do not yet dare to carry my frugality openly. Even now I care for the opinions of travellers. But against the opinions of the whole human race a voice should have been sent forth: "You are mad, you go astray, you are amazed at superfluous things, you value no one at his own worth. When it comes to a man's estate, you, most diligent reckoners, so cast up the account of each person to whom you are about to lend either money or benefits, for these too you now enter as expenditures:

'He owns broad acres, but owes much; he has a handsome house, but bought with another's money; no one will quickly produce a more splendid household, but he does not answer his debts; if he pays his creditors, nothing will be left to him.' The same you ought to do in the rest also, to shake out how much of his own each man has.

You think that man rich because his golden plate follows him even on a journey, because he ploughs in all the provinces, because a great ledger is unrolled, because he owns as much suburban land as he would, to general envy, own in the deserts of Apulia. When you have said all, he is poor. Why? Because he owes. How much? you ask. Everything. Unless perhaps you judge that it makes a difference whether a man has borrowed from a man or from fortune.

What does it matter that the mules are fattened and all of one colour? What do those carved carriages avail? 'Their swift-footed steeds caparisoned in purple and painted rugs, golden necklaces hang down upon their breasts, covered with gold they champ the tawny gold beneath their teeth.' These things can make neither the master nor the mule better.

Marcus Cato the Censor, whom it was as much to the public good that he should be born as that Scipio should, for the one waged war with our enemies, the other with our morals, used to ride a gelding, and with saddle-bags loaded on it at that, that he might carry useful things with him. Oh, how I should wish that some one of these dandies might now meet him on the road, leading his outriders and his Numidian horsemen and a great cloud of dust! He, no doubt, would seem more elegant and better attended than Marcus Cato; he, who amid all those preparations is at a loss whether to put himself up for sale or to sell.

Oh, how great was the glory of the age, that a triumphant general, a censor, and what is above all these, a Cato, was content with a single nag, and not even with a whole one! For pack-loads hanging down on either side took up part of it. Would you not, then, prefer to all the fat ponies and Asturian palfreys and amblers that one horse, rubbed down by Cato himself?

I see that there will be no end in this matter, save the end I myself shall make. Here, therefore, I will fall silent, so far as concerns these things, which doubtless the man who first called them 'baggage' divined would be such as they now are. Now I wish to render to you a very few more of our school's questions, bearing on virtue, which we maintain is enough for the happy life.

'What is good makes men good. For in the art of music too, what is good makes a man a musician. But things of chance do not make a man good. Therefore they are not goods.' Against this the Peripatetics answer thus, that what we first put forward is false. 'From that which is good,' they say, 'men are not necessarily made good. In music there is something good, such as a flute, or a string, or some instrument fitted to the uses of singing. Yet none of these makes a man a musician.'

Here we shall answer: 'You do not understand in what way we have laid down what is good in music. For we do not mean that which equips a musician, but that which makes him; you come to the furniture of the art, not to the art itself. But if there is anything good in the art of music itself, that will assuredly make a man a musician.'

I wish to make this still clearer. The good in the art of music is twofold: one, by which the performance is helped, the other, by which the art is helped. The musical instruments belong to the performance, flutes and organs and strings; they do not belong to the art itself. For the man is an artist even without these; he is perhaps unable to put his art to use. The good of the human being is not in like manner twofold; for the good of the human being and the good of life are the same.

'What can fall to the lot of the most despised and most base is not a good. But riches fall to the lot of a pimp and a trainer of gladiators. Therefore they are not goods.' 'It is false,' they say, 'what you put forward. For in grammar too, and in the art of healing or of steering, we see goods fall to the lot of the very lowest.'

But those arts do not profess greatness of soul, they do not rise to the heights nor disdain the gifts of chance. Virtue lifts a man up and sets him above the things dear to mortals; it neither desires too much the things called goods, nor dreads the things called evils. Chelidon, one of Cleopatra's minions, possessed a great estate. Lately Natalis, of a tongue as wicked as it was foul, in whose mouth women were cleansed, was both the heir of many and had many heirs. What then? Did money make him foul, or did he himself befoul the money? Money falls to certain men as a coin falls into a sewer.

Virtue stands above these things. It is valued by its own coin. It judges none of these things, which fall to anyone at random, to be good. Medicine and steering do not forbid themselves and their followers to admire such things. A man who is not good may none the less be a physician, may be a steersman, may be a grammarian, just as much, by Hercules, as a cook. He to whom it falls to have a thing that is not had by everyone, him you would not call a common man; each man is such as the things he has.

A money-box is worth as much as it holds; nay, what it holds comes in as an addition to it. Who sets any price on a full purse except what the number of coins stored in it has made it worth? The same befalls the masters of great estates: they are the appendages and additions to them. Why, then, is the wise man great? Because he has a great soul. It is true, therefore, that what falls to the lot of the most despised is not a good.

And so I will never call freedom from pain a good; the cicada has it, the flea has it. I will not even call rest and freedom from trouble a good; what is more at leisure than a worm? Do you ask what it is that makes a man wise? The same that makes a god. You must grant him something divine, heavenly, magnificent. The good does not fall to all men, nor does it suffer just any owner. See:

'What each region bears and what each refuses: here corn, there grapes come up more happily. Elsewhere the fruits of trees and the grasses grow green unbidden. Do you not see how Tmolus sends saffron odours, India ivory, the soft Sabaeans their frankincense, but the naked Chalybes their iron?'

These things have been distributed among the regions so that there might be a necessary commerce among mortals, if one should seek something from another in turn. That highest good too has its own seat. It is not born where ivory is, nor where iron. Do you ask what is the place of the highest good? The soul. Unless this is pure and holy, it does not contain God.

'Good does not come from evil. But riches come from many instances of avarice; therefore riches are not a good.' 'It is not true,' he says, 'that good is not born from evil. For from sacrilege and theft money is born. And so sacrilege and theft are indeed an evil, but for this reason, that they do more evils than goods. For it yields gain, but with fear, anxiety, torments both of mind and of body.'

Whoever says this must admit that sacrilege, just as it is an evil because it does many evils, so is also in some part a good, because it does some good. What more monstrous can be conceived? Although we have now wholly persuaded the world that sacrilege, theft, and adultery are to be reckoned among goods. How many men do not blush at theft, how many boast of adultery! For petty sacrileges are punished, but great ones are carried in triumphal processions.

Add now that sacrilege, if it is at all in any part good, will even be honourable and will be called a right action: for it is our own deed. But this is past the bearing of any human thought. Therefore goods cannot be born from evil. For if, as you say, sacrilege is an evil for this only, that it brings much evil, if you remit its punishments and promise it security, it will be wholly good. And yet the greatest punishment for crimes is in the crimes themselves.

You are mistaken, I say, if you put off those punishments to the executioner or the prison; they are punished at once, the moment they are done, nay while they are being done. Good, therefore, is not born from evil, no more than a fig from an olive. Things answer to the seed from which they are born; goods cannot degenerate. As the honourable is not born from the base, so neither is good from evil. For the honourable and the good are the same.

Some of our own school answer thus against this: 'Let us suppose that money is a good, taken from whatever source; yet money does not thereby come from sacrilege, even if it is taken from sacrilege. Understand it thus: in the same urn there is both gold and a viper. If you take the gold from the urn, it is not, I say, because there is a viper there too that the urn gives me the gold, but it gives the gold while it has the viper too. In the same way gain comes from sacrilege, not because sacrilege is base and wicked, but because it has gain too. As in that urn the viper is the evil, not the gold which lies with the viper, so in sacrilege the crime is the evil, not the gain.'

From these I dissent; for the condition of each case is wholly unlike. In the one I can take out the gold without the viper, in the other I cannot make the gain without the sacrilege. That gain does not lie beside the crime, it is mingled with the crime.

'That through the pursuit of which we fall into many evils is not a good. But while we wish to attain riches, we fall into many evils; therefore riches are not a good.' 'Your proposition,' he says, 'has two meanings: one, that while we wish to attain riches, we fall into many evils. But we fall into many evils also while we wish to attain virtue. A man, while he sails for the sake of study, has made shipwreck; another has been taken captive.'

The other meaning is this: that through which we fall into evils is not a good. To this proposition it will not follow that we fall into evils through riches or through pleasures; or if through riches we fall into many evils, then riches are not only not a good, but an evil; whereas you say only that they are not a good. Besides, he says, you grant that riches have some use. You count them among the advantageous things; and yet on the same reasoning they will not even be advantageous; for through them many disadvantages befall us.

To these some answer thus: 'You are mistaken, who charge disadvantages to riches. Riches harm no one; it is either each man's own folly or another's wickedness that harms, just as the sword does not slay, but is the weapon of the slayer. The riches do not harm you, though because of riches you are harmed.'

Posidonius, as I think, speaks better, who says that riches are a cause of evils, not because they themselves do anything, but because they incite those who will. For one cause is the efficient, which must of necessity straightway do harm, another the antecedent. This antecedent cause riches have; they puff up minds, beget pride, draw on envy, and so far alienate the mind that the mere reputation of money delights us, though it is going to harm us.

But all goods ought to be free of fault; they are pure, they do not corrupt minds, they do not torment. They lift up, indeed, and enlarge, but without swelling. Things that are goods produce confidence; riches produce boldness. Things that are goods give greatness of soul; riches give insolence. And insolence is nothing else than a false appearance of greatness.

'In that way,' he says, 'riches are even an evil, not merely not a good.' They would be an evil, they would themselves do harm, if, as I said, they had an efficient cause; as it is, they have an antecedent one, and one not merely inciting minds, but attracting them. For they pour over us an appearance of good, like to the true and credible to most men.

Virtue too has an antecedent cause that draws on envy; for many envy wisdom on account of justice. But it neither has this cause from itself nor a probable one. For, on the contrary, that appearance which virtue casts upon the minds of men is more probable, an appearance that calls them to love and admiration.

Posidonius says one must put the question thus: 'Things which give the mind neither greatness nor confidence nor security are not goods. But riches and good health and the like do none of these things; therefore they are not goods.' This question he presses even more strongly now in this way: 'Things which give the mind neither greatness nor confidence nor security, but on the contrary create insolence, swelling, arrogance, are evils. But by the gifts of chance we are driven into these things; therefore they are not goods.'

'By this reasoning,' he says, 'they will not even be advantageous.' The condition of advantageous things is one thing, of goods another; the advantageous is that which has more use than trouble. The good ought to be sincere and in every part harmless. That is not good which is more profitable, but that which is only profitable.

Besides, the advantageous belongs to animals too, and to imperfect men, and to fools. And so there can be a disadvantage mixed with it, but it is called advantageous, valued by its greater part; the good belongs to the wise man alone; it ought to be inviolate.

Be of good cheer; one knot remains for you, but a Herculean one: 'Good does not come from evils. But from many instances of poverty riches come; therefore riches are not a good.' This question our school do not acknowledge; the Peripatetics both invent it and solve it. But Posidonius says that this sophism, bandied about through all the schools of the dialecticians, was thus refuted by Antipater:

'Poverty is named not by possession, but by removal, or, as the ancients said, by deprivation. The Greeks call it kata steresin. It says not what a man has, but what he does not have. And so nothing can be filled up from many empty things. Riches are made up of many things, not of many instances of want. You understand poverty,' he says, 'otherwise than you ought. For poverty is not that which possesses few things, but that which does not possess many; thus it is named not from what it has, but from what is lacking to it.'

I could express what I mean more easily if there were a Latin word by which what the Greeks call anyparxia, non-existence, were signified. This Antipater assigns to poverty; I do not see what poverty is other than the possession of little. We shall look into this, when at some time we are very much at leisure, what is the substance of riches, what of poverty; but then too we shall consider whether it is not better to soothe poverty and to take down the haughtiness of riches than to wrangle about words, as though the matter had already been judged.

Let us suppose that we have been summoned to a public assembly; a law is proposed for abolishing riches. Shall we be going to advise for it or against it by these questions? Shall we by these bring it about that the Roman people seeks out and praises poverty, the foundation and the cause of its empire, and fears its own riches, that it reflects that it has found these among the conquered, that from these have crept in canvassing, bribery, and disorder upon a city once most chaste and temperate, that the spoils of nations are too lavishly displayed, that what one people has snatched from all can easily be snatched back from the one by all? It is better to recommend the law by deeds and to conquer the passions, not to circumvent them. If we can, let us speak more bravely; if not, more frankly. Farewell.