Moral Letters to Lucilius

​That you study persistently and, putting aside all other things, make it your sole aim to make yourself better daily, I both approve and rejoice; and I not only exhort you to persevere, but even beg you. However, I advise you of this: do not, in the manner of those who desire not to make progress but to be noticed, do anything that is remarkable in your attire or way of life.

​Avoid a rough style of living, an unkempt head, a rather neglected beard, a declared hatred of silver, a bed placed on the ground, and whatever else ambition pursues by an indeed perverse path. The very name of philosophy, even if it is treated modestly, is sufficiently invidious; what if we begin to excerpt ourselves from the customs of men? Let all things within be dissimilar, but let our front agree with the people.

​Let the toga not shine, nor indeed let it be filthy. Let us not possess silver into which a carving of solid gold has descended, but let us not think that to have lacked gold and silver is a proof of frugality. Let us aim at this: to follow a better life than the crowd, not a contrary one; otherwise, those whom we wish to be corrected, we drive away from us and alienate. We also bring it about that they wish to imitate nothing of ours while they fear that all things must be imitated.

​This is the first thing that philosophy promises: common feeling, humanity, and community. From which profession, dissimilarity will separate us. Let us see to it lest those things by which we wish to gain admiration be ridiculous and hateful. To be sure, our purpose is to live according to nature; it is contrary to nature to torture one’s own body, to hate easy cleanliness, to seek after squalor, and to use foods that are not only cheap but offensive and harsh.

​Just as to desire luxurious things belongs to luxury, so to flee customary things and those obtainable at no great price belongs to madness. Philosophy demands frugality, not punishment; moreover, there can be a frugality that is not unkempt. This limit pleases me: let life be tempered between good customs and public ones; let everyone look up to our life, but let them recognize it.

”What then? Shall we do the same things as the rest? Will there be no difference between us and them?” Very much. Let him who has looked more closely know that we are dissimilar to the crowd. Let him who has entered our house admire us rather than our furniture. Great is he who uses earthenware just as silver; nor is he less who uses silver just as earthenware. It is the mark of a weak mind not to be able to endure riches.

​But that I may share with you the little profit of this day too, I found in our Hecato that the limit of desires also avails for the remedies of fear. “You will cease,” he says, “to fear, if you cease to hope.” You will say: “How do those things which are so different go together?” So it is, my Lucilius: although they seem to disagree, they are joined. Just as the same chain couples both the prisoner and the soldier, so these things, which are so dissimilar, march together; fear follows hope. Nor do I wonder that they go so; both belong to a suspended mind, both to one anxious with the expectation of the future.

​But the greatest cause of both is that we do not adapt ourselves to present things, but send our thoughts far ahead. And so foresight, the greatest good of the human condition, has been turned into an evil.

​Beasts flee the dangers which they see; when they have escaped, they are secure; we are tormented both by what is to come and by what is past. Many of our goods harm us, for memory brings back the torment of fear, foresight anticipates it. No one is wretched only because of present things. FAREWELL.