Moral Letters to Lucilius

​I saw Claranus, my classmate, after many years. I do not think you expect me to add “an old man,” but, by Hercules, one who is green in mind and vigorous and struggling with his poor body. For nature acted unfairly and housed such a mind poorly; or perhaps she wished to show us this very thing, that the strongest and most blessed disposition can lurk under any skin. He conquers, however, all obstacles, and comes to despising other things from contempt of his own body.

​He seemed to me to be mistaken who said, “Virtue is more pleasing when coming from a beautiful body.” For it needs no external ornament; it is itself its own great glory, and consecrates its body. Certainly I began to look at our friend Claranus differently; he seems beautiful to me, and as straight in body as he is in mind.

​A great man can go out from a cottage; a beautiful and great mind can also emerge from a deformed and low little body. And so nature seems to me to generate certain such men for this purpose, namely, to prove that virtue is born in every place. If she could produce minds bare by themselves, she would have done so; now she does what is more: for she produces some who are hindered by their bodies, but who nonetheless break through the obstacles.

​Claranus seems to me to have been produced as an exemplar, so that we might know that the mind is not defiled by the deformity of the body, but the body is adorned by the beauty of the mind. Although we spent very few days together, yet we had many conversations, which I had then put in order and will send to you.

​On this first day, this question was asked: how goods can be equal, if their condition is threefold. Some, as it seems to our school, are primary goods, such as joy, peace, the safety of the fatherland; some are secondary, expressed in unfortunate matter, such as the endurance of tortures and temperance in severe illness. Those goods we shall wish for ourselves directly, these only if it is necessary. There are still third ones, such as a modest gait, a composed and honest countenance, and a gesture suitable for a wise man.

​How can these be equal to one another, when some are to be desired, and others to be shunned? If we wish to distinguish these, let us return to the primary good and consider what sort of thing it is: a mind that beholds truth, skilled in what is to be avoided and what is to be sought, imposing values on things not according to opinion but according to nature, inserting itself into the whole world and sending its contemplation into all its actions, intent on thoughts and actions, equally great and vehement, unconquered alike by hardships and flatteries, submitting itself to neither fortune, rising above all things that happen and occur, most beautiful, most orderly both in grace and in strength, healthy and sober, undisturbed, intrepid, which no force can break, which fortuitous events neither elevate nor depress; such a mind is virtue.

​This is its face, if it should come under a single view and show itself whole at once. Yet its forms are many. They are unfolded according to the variety of life and according to actions; and virtue itself does not become smaller or greater. For the supreme good cannot decrease, nor is virtue permitted to go backward; but it is transformed into various qualities, shaped to the condition of the things which it is about to perform.

​Whatever it touches, it brings into likeness of itself and dyes; it adorns actions, friendships, sometimes entire houses which it has entered and set in order. Whatever it has handled, it makes lovable, conspicuous, admirable. Therefore its power and magnitude cannot rise further, since there is no increase for the greatest. You will find nothing straighter than straight, no more than truer than true, or more temperate than temperate.