Moral Letters to Lucilius

​Cast away all those things, if you are wise, or rather that you may be wise, and strive toward a good mind with great speed and all your strength. If there is anything by which you are held back, either untie it or cut it. “My family property,” you say, “delays me; I wish to arrange it in such a way that it can be sufficient for me doing nothing, so that neither poverty may be a burden to me, nor I to anyone.”

​When you say this, you do not seem to know the force and power of that good of which you are thinking. And indeed, you see the sum of the matter, how much philosophy profits, but you do not yet discern the parts with sufficient subtlety, nor do you yet know how much it helps us everywhere, how both in the greatest matters, to use Cicero’s word, it assists, and descends to the smallest. Believe me, call her into counsel; she will persuade you not to sit down to calculations.

​Surely this is what you seek and this is what you wish to attain by that delay of yours, that you may not have to fear poverty; what if it is to be sought after? Riches have stood in the way of many for practicing philosophy; poverty is unencumbered and secure. When the trumpet has sounded, the poor man knows that he is not being sought; when the cry of fire is raised, he asks how he may get out, not what he may carry out; if he must sail, the harbor does not rattle, nor are the shores restless with the retinue of one man. A crowd of slaves does not stand around him, for whose feeding the fertility of regions across the sea must be hoped for.

​It is easy to feed a few bellies, and those well-trained, desiring nothing else than to be filled. Hunger costs little, fastidiousness much. Poverty is content to satisfy immediate desires. What is there, then, why you should refuse this companion, whose habits a sane rich man imitates? If you wish to have free time for your mind, you must either be poor or like a poor man.

​A salutary study cannot be made without care for frugality; and frugality is voluntary poverty. Take away, therefore, those excuses: “I do not yet have as much as is enough; if I reach that sum, then I will give myself entirely to philosophy.” And yet nothing is to be prepared before this, which you put off and prepare after other things; we must begin from this. “I wish,” you say, “to prepare whence I may live.” Prepare and learn at the same time; if anything forbids you to live well, it does not forbid you to die well.

​There is no reason why poverty should recall us from philosophy, nor even penury. For even hunger must be endured by those hastening to this. Which hunger some have endured in sieges, and what other reward of their endurance was there for them than not to fall into the power of the victor? How much greater is this which is promised here: perpetual liberty, fear of no one, neither man nor god. And indeed, even a hungry man must come to these things.

​Armies have endured the lack of all things, lived on the roots of herbs, and bore hunger with things foul to mention. They suffered all these things for a kingdom, and what is more to be wondered at, another’s. Will anyone hesitate to endure poverty in order to free his mind from madness? Therefore, we must not acquire first; it is permitted to reach philosophy even without travel-money.

​It is so. When you have all things, then will you wish to have wisdom also? Will this be the last instrument of life and, so to speak, an addition? Rather, if you have anything, practice philosophy now—for whence do you know whether you already have too much?—if nothing, seek this before anything.

”But necessary things were lacking.” First, they cannot be lacking, because nature asks for very little, and the wise man accommodates himself to nature. But if extreme necessities have fallen, he will have departed from life long ago and will cease to be troublesome to himself. But if there is a small and narrow thing by which life can be prolonged, he will take it in good part, and not anxious or worried beyond necessities, he will return to his belly and shoulders their due, and secure and joyful he will laugh at the occupations of the rich and the runnings of those going after riches, and will say: “Why do you put yourself off for a long time?

​Will you wait for the gain of interest, or profit from merchandise, or the will of a wealthy old man, when you can become rich immediately? Wisdom pays riches on the spot, which it gave by making them superfluous to anyone.” These things belong to others; you are closer to the wealthy. Change your standard of age, and you have too much. But what is enough is the same in every age.

​I could close the letter at this point, if I had not brought you up badly. No one can salute the kings of the Parthians without a gift; it is not permitted to say farewell to you for free. What of it? I will borrow from Epicurus: “To have acquired riches for many was not the end of miseries, but a change.”

​Nor do I wonder at this. For the fault is not in the things, but in the mind itself. That which had made poverty heavy for us also made riches heavy. Just as it makes no difference whether you place a sick man on a wooden bed or on a golden one—wherever you move him, he will carry his disease with him—so it makes no difference whether a sick mind is placed in riches or in poverty. His own evil follows him. FAREWELL.