Moral Letters to Lucilius

​You ask about our Marcellinus and want to know what he is doing. He rarely comes to us, for no other reason than that he fears to hear the truth, a danger from which he is now free. For one must speak to no one except to him who is willing to listen. Therefore, concerning Diogenes and no less the other Cynics, who used indiscriminate freedom of speech and admonished those they met, it is often doubted whether they ought to have done this.

​For what if someone should scold the deaf, or those who are mute by nature or illness? “Why,” you say, “should I spare my words? They cost nothing. I cannot know whether I will benefit the one whom I admonish; but this I know, that I will benefit someone if I admonish many. The hand must be scattered. It cannot be that success does not sometimes come to one who tries many things.”

​This, my Lucilius, I do not think should be done by a great man; his authority is diluted, and it does not have enough weight among those whom he might have corrected had his authority been less cheapened. An archer ought not to hit the mark sometimes, but to miss sometimes. It is not an art that arrives at its effect by chance. Wisdom is an art; let it aim at a certain target, choose those who will make progress, recede from those of whom it has despaired, yet not abandon them quickly, and even in that very despair, try extreme remedies.

​I do not yet despair of our Marcellinus. Even now he can be saved, but only if a hand is quickly extended to him. There is indeed a danger that he may drag down the one who extends it; there is a great force of intellect in him, but it is already inclining toward what is crooked. Nevertheless, I will face this danger and dare to show him his evils.

​He will do what he is accustomed to do; he will call upon those pleasantries which can evoke laughter even from those who mourn, and will joke first at his own expense, and then at ours. He will forestall everything I am about to say. He will scrutinize our schools and object to philosophers their doles, their mistresses, their gluttony. He will point out to me one philosopher in adultery, another in a tavern, another at court.

​He will point out to me Aristo, the philosopher of Marcus Lepidus, who used to lecture during his carriage rides. For he had taken this time to publish his works. When asked about his sect, Scaurus said: “At any rate, he is not a Peripatetic.” When Julius Graecinus, an excellent man, was consulted about what he thought of the same man, he said: “I cannot tell you; for I do not know what he does regarding his stance,” as if he were being asked about a chariot-fighter.

​He will fling in my face these street-hawkers, who would have neglected philosophy more honorably than they sell it. Yet I have resolved to endure his insults; let him move me to laughter, I will perhaps move him to tears, or if he persists in laughing, I will rejoice, as if in the midst of evils, that a cheerful kind of madness has fallen to his lot. But that cheerfulness is not long-lasting. Observe; you will see the very same people within a short time laughing most bitterly and raving most bitterly.

​My purpose is to approach him and show him how much more valuable he was, when he seemed of much less value to many. Even if I do not eradicate his vices, I will check them; they will not cease, but they will remit. Perhaps, moreover, they will even cease, if they make a habit of remitting. Even this itself is not to be disdained, since indeed to those gravely afflicted, a good remission is in place of health.

​While I prepare myself for him, do you meanwhile, you who are able, who understand from where to where you have escaped, and guessing from that how far you will escape, compose your manners, raise up your mind, stand firm against what is feared. Do not count those who cause you fear. Would he not seem foolish, if anyone should fear a crowd in a place through which the passage is for single files? Equally, there is no approach to your death for many, although many may threaten it. Nature has arranged it so: one person will snatch away your life just as one person gave it.

​If you had any shame, you would have remitted my last payment. But not even I will behave meanly at the end of my debt, and I will force upon you what I owe. “I have never wished to please the people. For what I know, the people do not approve; and what the people approve, I do not know.”

”Who said this?” you ask, as if you did not know whom I am levying upon; Epicurus. But everyone from every house will shout this same thing to you, Peripatetics, Academics, Stoics, Cynics. For who can please the people, to whom virtue is pleasing? Popular favor is sought by evil arts. You must make yourself like them. They will not approve of you unless they recognize you. But it is of much more relevance how you appear to yourself than how you appear to others. The love of base people cannot be won except by base means.

​What then will that philosophy, praised and to be preferred to all arts and things, provide? Plainly, that you prefer to please yourself rather than the people, that you weigh judgments rather than count them, that you live without fear of gods and men, that you either conquer evils or end them. For the rest, if I see you celebrated by the favorable voices of the crowd, if upon your entrance clamor and applause, the trappings of pantomime, resound, if throughout the whole city women and boys praise you, why should I not pity you, when I know what path leads to that favor? FAREWELL.