Letter 90

Who can doubt, my Lucilius, that it is the gift of the immortal gods that we live, but of philosophy that we live well? And so it would be held for certain that we owe so much more to her than to the gods, by how much a good life is a greater benefit than life, were it not that the gods themselves bestowed philosophy. The knowledge of it they have given to none, but the faculty of attaining it to all.

For if they had made this too a common good, and we were born wise, wisdom would have lost what is best in it, that it is not among the gifts of chance. As things are, it has this precious and magnificent quality, that it does not come of its own accord, that each man owes it to himself, that it is not sought from another. What would you have in philosophy to look up to, if it were a thing handed out as a favour?

Her one work is to find the truth about things divine and human. From her never depart religion, devotion, justice, and all the rest of the company of virtues that cling close together. She has taught us to worship things divine, to love things human, and that with the gods is dominion, among men fellowship. This remained inviolate for a while, before avarice tore society apart and became, even for those whom it made richest, a cause of poverty. For they ceased to possess all things from the moment they began to wish things for their own.

But the first of mortals, and those born of them, uncorrupted, followed nature, and had the same man as their leader and their law, committed to the judgment of the better man. For it is nature's way to make the worse submit to the better. Among dumb herds, indeed, either the largest bodies are in command, or the most spirited. No degenerate bull goes before the herds, but the one who has surpassed the other males in size and brawn. The tallest elephant leads the herd; among men the greatest is taken for the best. Therefore a leader was chosen for the mind; and so the happiness of that age was greatest, in which the chief power was in the hands of the wisest.

In that age, then, which they call golden, Posidonius judges that the kingship was in the hands of the wise. These men kept hands off, and protected the weaker from the stronger; they counselled and dissuaded, and pointed out the useful and the useless. Their prudence provided that their people should lack nothing, their bravery warded off dangers, their beneficence increased and adorned their subjects. To govern was a service, not a despotism. No one tried his powers against those by whose favour he had begun to have power; nor was anyone of a mind, nor cause, to do wrong, since one who ruled well was well obeyed, and a king could threaten his disobedient subjects with nothing greater than that he would withdraw from the kingship.

But after, as vices crept in, kingdoms turned into tyrannies, there began to be need of laws, which the wise men themselves at first brought in. Solon, who founded Athens on equal law, was among the seven men famous for wisdom. Had the same age borne Lycurgus, a holy name would have been added to that sacred number. The laws of Zaleucus and Charondas men admire; these did not in the forum, nor in the hall of the jurisconsults, but in the silent and holy retreat of Pythagoras learn the law they would give to Sicily, then flourishing, and to Greece throughout Italy.

Thus far I agree with Posidonius; but that the arts which life uses in its daily round were discovered by philosophy I will not grant, nor will I claim for her the glory of a workshop. "She," he says, "taught men, scattered abroad and sheltered either by hollow rock with a cave dug out or by the trunk of a hollow tree, to build themselves dwellings." But I, for my part, judge that philosophy no more devised these contrivances of roofs rising upon roofs and cities crowding upon cities, than she devised the fish-ponds enclosed for this, that the gullet might not face the peril of storms, and that, however fiercely the sea raged, luxury might have its own harbours in which to fatten its separate herds of fish.

What do you say? Did philosophy teach men to have a key and a bolt? What was that but to give a sign to avarice? Did philosophy raise those overhanging roofs at such peril to the dwellers? For it was too little to be sheltered by chance things and to find for oneself, without art and without difficulty, some natural shelter. Believe me, that age was happy before there were architects, before there were plasterers.

These things were born when luxury was being born: to cut beams square and, with the saw running over the marked line, to split the timber with a sure hand. For the first men split the cleavable wood with wedges. For roofs were not then being prepared to receive a banqueting hall, nor was pine or fir brought down for this use in a long line of carriages, the streets trembling, that from it panelled ceilings heavy with gold might hang. Forked stakes set up on either side propped the hut.

With branches packed close and leaves heaped up and laid sloping, there was a run-off for the rains, however heavy. Under such roofs they dwelt, but secure. A thatch covered free men; under marble and gold dwells slavery. In this too I dissent from Posidonius, that he judges the smith's tools to have been devised by wise men.

For in that way one might say that those were wise through whom "it was found out to snare wild beasts with nooses and to deceive them with birdlime, and to surround great glades with dogs." For all these things the cleverness of men, not wisdom, discovered.

In this too I dissent, that wise men discovered the mining of iron and bronze, when the earth, scorched by the burning of forests, melted the veins lying near the surface and made them flow forth. Such things are found out by those who esteem them.

Nor does that question seem to me so subtle as it does to Posidonius, whether the hammer or the tongs first came into use. Both were invented by someone of a lively, sharp wit, not great nor lofty, and so was whatever else must be sought with the body bent and the mind looking at the ground. The wise man was simple in his way of life. Why not? Since even in this age he would wish to be as unencumbered as possible.

How, I pray you, does it agree, that you should admire both Diogenes and Daedalus? Which of these seems to you the wise man? The one who devised the saw, or the one who, when he had seen a boy drinking water with his hollow hand, straightway took out the cup from his wallet and broke it, chiding himself with these words: "How long, a foolish man, have I had superfluous baggage!" and who folded himself up in a jar and slept in it?

Today which do you think the wiser, in the end: the man who has discovered how to force saffron to a vast height through hidden pipes, who fills or empties channels with a sudden rush of waters, and so fits together the revolving panels of dining-rooms that one face after another follows, and the roof changes as often as the courses, or the man who shows both to others and to himself how nothing harsh or difficult has nature laid upon us, that we can dwell without a marble-worker and a smith, that we can be clothed without trade in silks, that we can have the things needful for our use, if we are content with what the earth has set upon its surface? If the human race were willing to hear this man, it would know that the cook is as superfluous as the soldier.

Those were wise, or at least like the wise, for whom the care of the body was easy. The necessaries are got by simple care; it is for luxuries that men toil. You will not miss the craftsmen; follow nature. She did not wish us to be distracted. For whatever she compelled us to, she equipped us. Cold is unbearable to the naked body. What then? Cannot the skins of wild beasts and of other animals defend us from cold fully and abundantly? Do not most nations cover their bodies with the bark of trees? Are not the feathers of birds sewn together for the use of clothing? Even today does not a great part of the Scythians clothe themselves in the hides of foxes and mice, which are soft to the touch and impenetrable to the winds?

Yet there is need to ward off the heat of the summer sun with a thicker shade. What then? Has not antiquity given many recesses which either the wearing of time, or some other chance, has hollowed into a cave? What then? Did not the first men, dug into the earth, defend themselves? They lived in caves heaped over with soil, and passed the harsh time of the rainy winter and rough weather under such cover.

Nature was not so hostile that, while she gave to all other animals an easy passage through life, man alone could not live without so many arts. None of these things was laid upon us by her, nothing was to be sought with difficulty, that life might be carried on. We were born to things ready at hand; it is we who have made all things hard for ourselves by our disdain of the easy. Roofs and coverings and the warming of bodies and foods and the things which have now become a vast business were at hand, and free, and to be got with light labour. For the measure of all things was as need required; it is we who have made these things costly, we who have made them marvellous, we who have made them sought after by many arts. Nature suffices for what it demands.

Luxury has revolted from nature, and daily incites itself, and grows through so many ages, and by its wit aids the vices. First it began to crave the superfluous, then the contrary, lastly it made the mind over to the body and bade it serve its lust. All those arts by which the city is busied or rattles wait upon the body, to which all things were once furnished as to a slave, but now are got ready as for a master. And so on the one side are the workshops of the weavers, on the other those of the carpenters; here the kitchen smells; there the dancing-masters move to soft and effeminate measures. For that natural measure has departed, which bounded desires by necessity; now it is rusticity and squalor to want only what is enough.

It is incredible, my Lucilius, how easily the sweetness of his style draws even great men from the truth. See Posidonius, in my opinion one of those who have contributed most to philosophy, when he wishes to describe how first some threads are twisted, others drawn out of the soft and loose mass, then how the upright threads hold the woof apart with hanging weights, how the inserted woof, which softens the hardness of the threads pressing it on either side, is forced to come together and join, with a comb striking the cloth fitted to a beam: he said the art of weaving too was discovered by wise men, forgetting that this more elaborate kind was found out later. "The threads bound to the beam; the woof is inserted in the middle by sharp shuttles, which the broad comb beats down with notched teeth." What if he had chanced to see the looms of our age, which produce a garment that hides nothing, in which there is nothing that aids modesty, nay nothing that aids the body?

Then he passes to the farmers and no less eloquently describes the soil broken up by the plough and gone over a second time, that the loosened earth may yield the roots a freer passage; then the seed scattered and the weeds plucked out by hand, lest some chance and wild growth spring up and choke the crop. This work too, he says, is of the wise, as though even now the tillers of the soil were not finding out very many new ways of increasing fertility.

Then, not content with these arts, he sends the wise man down into the mill. For he relates how, imitating nature, he began to make bread. "The grains," he says, "received into the mouth, the hardness of the teeth, meeting one another, breaks, and whatever falls out the tongue carries back to the same teeth; then it is mingled, that it may pass more easily through the slippery gullet. When it has come into the stomach, it is cooked by its even heat, and then at last passes into the body."

Someone following this pattern set a rough stone upon a rough one, in the likeness of teeth, of which one part, unmoved, awaits the motion of the other; then by the grinding of the two the grains are broken and turned back again, until, ground often, they are reduced to a fine powder. Then he sprinkled the meal with water and, by constant kneading, subdued it and shaped the bread, which first the hot ashes and the glowing earthen vessel baked through, then, by degrees, ovens were found out, and other kinds, whose heat would obey one's will. It was not far short but that he said the cobbler's trade too was discovered by the wise.

All these things reason indeed devised, but not right reason. For they are the inventions of man, not of the wise man, just as much, by Hercules, as ships, in which we cross rivers and seas, with sails fitted to catch the force of the winds, and rudders added at the stern, which turn the ship's course this way and that. The model was taken from fishes, which are steered by the tail and bend their swiftness to either side by its slight motion.

"All these things," he says, "the wise man indeed discovered; but, as too petty for himself to handle, he gave them to meaner servants." Nay, they were devised by none other than those by whom they are tended even today. Some things we know to have come forth only within our own memory, such as the use of windows admitting clear light through transparent glass, such as the suspended baths and the pipes let into the walls to spread the heat that should keep an even warmth in the lowest and the highest parts alike. Why should I mention the marble with which the temples and houses gleam? The rounded and polished masses of stone, by which we raise colonnades and roofs large enough for crowds? The signs of words, by which a speech, however rapid, is caught, and the hand follows the speed of the tongue? These are the inventions of the meanest slaves.

Wisdom sits higher, nor does she teach the hands, she is the mistress of minds. Do you wish to know what she has dug out, what she has wrought? Not the graceful movements of the body, nor the varied notes of the trumpet and the flute, which receive the breath and turn it, as it passes out or through, into sound. She does not forge weapons, or walls, or things useful for war; she favours peace and calls the human race to concord.

She is not, I say, the artisan of instruments for our necessary uses. Why do you assign her such trifling things? You behold the artist of life. The other arts indeed she holds under her dominion. For she to whom life is subject is mistress also of the things that adorn life; but she makes for happiness, she leads to it, she opens the ways.

She shows which are evils and which seem so; she strips emptiness from minds, she gives a solid greatness, but the puffed-up and the showy-from-nothing she represses, nor does she suffer the difference between the great and the swollen to be unknown; she hands over the knowledge of all nature and of her own. She declares what the gods are and of what sort, what the powers below, the household spirits and the genii, what the souls received into a second rank of divinity, where they abide, what they do, what power they have, what will. These are her initiations, through which is opened, not some local shrine, but the vast temple of all the gods, the universe itself, whose true images and true faces she sets forth for the mind to behold; for the eyes are too dull for so great a spectacle.

Then she returns to the beginnings of things, and to the eternal reason set into the whole, and to the force of all seeds, fashioning each thing in its own kind. Then she began to inquire about the soul, whence it is, where, how long, into how many members divided. Then she passed from bodies to incorporeal things and examined truth and its proofs, and after this how the ambiguities of life or of speech might be distinguished, for in each false things are mingled with true.

The wise man did not, I say, as Posidonius thinks, withdraw himself from those arts, but came to them not at all. For he would have judged nothing worth inventing which he was not going to judge worth perpetual use. He would not take up things that must be laid down.

"Anacharsis," he says, "invented the potter's wheel, by whose turning vessels are shaped." Then, because the potter's wheel is found in Homer, they prefer that the verses should be thought spurious rather than the story. I, for my part, contend that Anacharsis was not the author of this thing; and if he was, a wise man indeed found it out, but not as a wise man, just as the wise do very many things as men, not as wise men.

"Democritus," he says, "is said to have invented the arch, so that the curve of stones, gradually inclined, might be bound together by the keystone in the middle." This I will say is false; for there must have been, before Democritus, both bridges and gateways, of which the tops are generally arched.

It has escaped you, moreover, that the same Democritus discovered how ivory might be softened, how a baked pebble might be turned into emerald, by which method even today stones that are found suitable are baked into colour. Granting that a wise man found these things out, yet he did not find them as a wise man; for he does many things which we see done as skilfully, or even more skilfully, by the most unskilled.

Do you ask what the wise man has investigated, what he has dragged into the light? First, the truth and nature, which he followed, not as the other animals, with eyes slow toward things divine. Then the law of life, which he directed to the whole, and he taught not only to know but to follow the gods, and to receive what befalls no otherwise than as things commanded. He forbade us to obey false opinions, and weighed by a true valuation how much each thing was worth. He condemned pleasures mingled with repentance, and praised goods that would always please, and made it plain that the happiest man is he who has no need of happiness, the most powerful he who has himself in his power.

I speak not of that philosophy which set the citizen outside his country, the gods outside the world, which gave virtue over to pleasure, but of that which counts nothing good but the honourable, which can be bribed neither by men nor by fortune, whose price is that it cannot be bought. This philosophy I do not believe to have existed in that rude age, when as yet there was no art at all, and useful things were learned by practice itself.

There followed the fortunate age, before, the gods being yet propitious, the gifts of nature lay open to be used in common, before avarice and luxury sundered mortals from one another and taught them to break out into plunder instead of fellowship. Those men were not wise, though they did things which the wise do.

No one would more admire any other state of the human race, nor, if a god should permit him to fashion earthly things and give nations their manners, would he approve any other than that which is recorded to have been among those peoples among whom "no tillers subdued the fields, nor was it lawful even to mark off or divide the plain with a boundary; they sought in common, and the earth herself bore all things more freely, none demanding."

What kind of men was happier than that race? They enjoyed nature's bounty in common; she sufficed, as a parent, for the protection of all. This was the secure possession of the public wealth. Why should I not call that the richest race of mortals, in which you could find no poor man? Into things so excellently placed avarice broke in, and while it longed to set something apart and turn it to its own, it made all things another's and reduced itself from the boundless into a narrow compass. Avarice brought in poverty, and, by coveting much, lost all.

And so, though now it tries to make good its loss, though it adds field to field, driving out a neighbour either by money or by wrong, though it extends its country estates to the size of provinces and calls a long journey through its own land a possession, no enlarging of bounds will bring us back to that from which we set out. When we have done all, we shall have much; we once had the whole.

The earth itself was more fertile when untilled, and bountiful for the uses of peoples who did not plunder it. Whatever nature had brought forth, it was no less a pleasure to have found than to show another what was found. Nor could anyone have either too much or too little; among men of one accord it was divided. Not yet had the stronger laid his hand upon the weaker, not yet had the greedy man, by hiding away what lay idle for himself, shut out another even from necessaries; each cared for the other as for himself.

Arms lay idle, and hands unstained with human blood had turned all their hatred against wild beasts. Those men, whom some thick grove had sheltered from the sun, who, against the savagery of winter or of rain, dwelt safe under the leaves in a cheap shelter, passed their nights in peace without a sigh. Anxiety tosses us in our purple and rouses us with the sharpest goads; but how soft a sleep the hard ground gave to them!

No carved ceilings hung over them, but, lying in the open, the stars glided above them, and the universe, that splendid spectacle of the nights, was borne headlong, conducting in silence so vast a work. By day and by night the prospects of this most beautiful dwelling lay open to them. It was a joy to behold the constellations sinking from mid-heaven, and others again rising from their hidden place.

Why should it not delight them to wander amid marvels scattered so far and wide? But you tremble at every sound of your roofs, and amid your paintings, if anything creaks, you flee astonished. They had not houses the size of cities. The breath and the free draught of air among open spaces, and the light shade of rock or tree, and transparent springs and streams not spoiled by any work, nor pipe, nor any forced channel, but running of their own accord, and meadows beautiful without art, among these a rustic dwelling polished by a country hand. This was a house according to nature, in which it was pleasant to live, fearing neither it nor for it; now a great part of our fear is our roofs.

But although their life was excellent and free of fraud, they were not wise men, since this is now a name belonging to the greatest achievement. Yet I would not deny that there were men of lofty spirit and, so to say, fresh from the gods. For there is no doubt that the world, not yet worn out, brought forth better things. But just as the native temper of all was stronger and readier for toils, so the talents of all were not brought to perfection. For nature does not give virtue; it is an art to become good.

They indeed sought out neither gold nor silver nor transparent stones in the deepest dregs of the earth; and they still spared even the dumb animals, so far were they from slaying a man not in anger, not in fear, but only for a spectacle. They had no embroidered garments, no gold woven into the cloth, nor yet was gold dug out.

What then is the upshot? They were innocent through ignorance of things. But it makes a great difference whether a man is unwilling to sin or does not know how. Justice was lacking to them, lacking prudence, lacking temperance and bravery. Their rude life had certain things resembling all these virtues; but virtue does not befall a mind unless it has been trained and taught and brought, by unremitting exercise, to the highest pitch. To this, indeed, but without this, we are born, and even in the best men, before you educate them, there is the material of virtue, not virtue. Farewell.