Moral Letters to Lucilius

​Speak rather of how natural it is to extend one’s mind into the immense. The human soul is a great and noble thing; it allows no limits to be set for itself except those that are common to it and to God. First, it does not accept a humble fatherland—Ephesus or Alexandria, or any territory that is even more crowded with inhabitants or more beautiful with roofs; its fatherland is whatever the highest and universal circuit girds with its boundary, this whole vault within which lie the seas with the lands, within which the air, while separating human things from divine, also joins them, and in which so many lights arranged in order keep watch for their own activities.

​Then, it does not allow a narrow lifetime to be given to itself: ‘All years,’ it says, ‘are mine. No age is closed to great talents, no time is impassable to thought. When that day comes which shall separate this mixture of the divine and the human, I shall leave this body here where I found it, and return myself to the gods. Even now I am not without them, but I am held back by a heavy and earthly weight.’

​Through these delays of mortal life, we practice for that better and longer life. Just as the maternal womb holds us for ten months and prepares us not for itself, but for that place into which we seem to be sent forth, already fit to draw breath and to endure in the open; so through this span, which extends from infancy to old age, we ripen for another birth. Another origin awaits us, another state of things. We cannot yet endure heaven except from a distance; therefore, look forward to that decisive hour without fear: it is not the last hour for the soul, but for the body.

​Look upon whatever things lie around you as the baggage of a guest house: you must pass on.

​Nature shakes out the one returning just as it did the one entering. You are not allowed to carry out more than you brought in; indeed, even of that which you brought to life, a great part must be laid down: this surrounding skin, your outermost veil, will be stripped from you; the flesh and the infused blood running through the whole will be stripped; the bones and sinews, the supports of fluid and failing parts, will be stripped.

​This day, which you dread as the last, is the birthday of eternity. Lay down your burden; why do you hesitate, as if you had not also previously gone out after leaving the body in which you lay hidden? You cling, you struggle; then too you were expelled by a great effort of your mother. You groan, you weep; and this very weeping belongs to one being born, but then it deserved to be forgiven: you had come raw and inexperienced in all things. Sent forth from the warm and soft warmth of your mother’s womb, a freer breeze blew upon you, then the touch of a hard hand startled you, and while still tender and ignorant of everything, you were dazed among unknown things.

​Now it is not new for you to be separated from that of which you were previously a part; with a calm mind, dismiss the members that are now superfluous, and lay down that body which you have inhabited for so long. It will be torn apart, buried, destroyed. Why are you saddened? So it is accustomed to happen: the coverings of the one being born always perish. Why do you love those things so much as if they were yours? You were merely covered by them. The day will come that will tear you away and lead you out from the companionship of a foul and smelly belly.

​Even now, withdraw yourself as much as you can from this body, and from pleasure, except that which will be connected with necessary and serious things; already estranged from here, meditate on something higher and more sublime. Someday the secrets of nature will be revealed to you, this darkness will be dispersed, and a bright light will strike you from all sides. Imagine within yourself how great that brightness must be, with so many stars mixing their light with one another; no shadow will disturb the clear sky. Every side of heaven will shine equally; day and night are alternations of the lowest air. Then you will say that you lived in darkness, when you, whole, look upon the whole light, which you now look at obscurely through the narrowest pathways of the eyes. And yet you admire it even now from afar; what will that divine light seem to you when you see it in its own place?

​This thought allows nothing sordid to settle in the mind, nothing humble, nothing cruel. It says that the gods are witnesses of all things. It bids us to be approved by them, to be prepared for them for the future, and to set eternity before us. He who has conceived this in his mind dreads no armies, is not terrified by the trumpet, and is driven to fear by no threats.

​Why should he fear, who hopes to die? Even he who judges that the soul remains only so long as it is held by the bond of the body, and disperses it immediately when released, strives so that he can be useful even after death. For although he himself has been snatched from our eyes, yet: “Many a virtue of the man, and many an honor of his race, rushes back to the mind.” Consider how much good examples profit us: you will know that the presence of great men is no less useful than their memory. FAREWELL.