Moral Letters to Lucilius

​I thank you for writing to me so frequently. For in the only way you can, you reveal yourself to me. I never receive a letter from you without our immediately being together. If the portraits of our absent friends are pleasant to us, which renew memory and lighten longing with a false and empty consolation, how much more pleasant are letters, which bring the true traces and true signs of an absent friend? For that which is sweetest in being face to face, namely, recognition, is provided by the friend’s hand impressed upon the letter.

​You write that you have heard the philosopher Serapion, when he had arrived there: “He is accustomed to hurl his words with great speed, which he does not pour forth together, but crowds and presses. For more words come than one voice can suffice for.” I do not approve of this in a philosopher, whose pronunciation also, just like his life, ought to be composed; moreover, nothing is orderly which is rushed and hurried. Therefore, that speech in Homer, rapid and without intermission, falling like snow, is given to the younger orator, while the gentle one, sweeter than honey, flows from the old man.

​Understand it thus, therefore, that this rapid and abundant force of speaking is more suitable for a mountebank than for one who is treating a great and serious matter and teaching. I am as unwilling for him to drip as to run; let him neither strain the ears nor overwhelm them. For that poverty and thinness also keeps the hearer less attentive because of the tedium of interrupted slowness, yet what is expected sinks in more easily than what flies past. Finally, people are said to “hand down” precepts to disciples; what flees is not handed down.

​Add now to this, that the speech which devotes itself to truth ought to be uncomposed and simple. This popular speech has nothing of the truth; it wants to move the crowd and sweep away unreflecting ears by its rush; it does not offer itself to be handled, but is carried away. But how can that rule which cannot be ruled? What of the fact that this speech, which is applied to healing minds, ought to sink into us? Remedies do not benefit unless they remain.

​Besides, it has much of emptiness and vanity; it sounds more than it is worth. Those things which terrify me must be assuaged, those which irritate must be checked, those which deceive must be dispelled, luxury must be restrained, avarice must be corrected; which of these can be done in a rush? What physician cures his patients in passing? What of the fact that such a noise of words rushing without selection has not even any pleasure?

​But just as it is enough to have known many things which you would not believe could be done, so it is more than enough to have heard once those who have exercised their words. For what would anyone wish to learn, what to imitate from them? What should one judge concerning the mind of those whose speech is disordered and unbridled, and cannot be restrained?

​Just as the step of those running down a slope is not stopped where they intended, but, driven by the momentum of the body’s weight, is carried away and borne further than they wished; so this speed of speaking is neither in its own power nor is it becoming enough for philosophy, which ought to place its words, not fling them, and proceed step by step.