Moral Letters to Lucilius

​I judge that we should respond differently: that neither the art of the pilot is made worse by any storm, nor the actual administration of the art. The pilot did not promise you success, but useful effort and the knowledge of steering a ship. This appears the more, the more some fortuitous force has opposed him. He who could say this, “Neptune, never except upright this ship,” has done enough for his art; the storm does not hinder the pilot’s work, but his success.

”What then?” he says, “does not that thing harm the pilot which forbids him to reach harbor, which makes his attempts fruitless, which either drives him back or detains and disables him?” It harms him not as a pilot, but as a voyager; otherwise, he is no pilot. It is so far from hindering the pilot’s art that it actually reveals it; for in a calm, as they say, anyone is a pilot. Those things obstruct the vessel, not its director, insofar as he is a director.

​A pilot has two roles: one common to all who have embarked on the same ship, as he too is a passenger; the other proper to himself, as he is the pilot. The storm harms him as a passenger, not as a pilot.

​Furthermore, the pilot’s art is another’s good: it belongs to those whom he carries, just as the physician’s art belongs to those whom he cures. The wise man’s good is common: it belongs both to those with whom he lives and is proper to himself. Therefore, the pilot, whose service promised to others is hindered by a storm, might perhaps be harmed; but the wise man is not harmed by poverty, nor by pain, nor by other storms of life.

​For not all of his works are prevented, but only those pertaining to others; he himself is always in action, and greatest in effect when fortune has opposed him. For then he is doing the business of wisdom itself, which we have said is both another’s good and his own.

​Moreover, he is not even prevented from benefiting others when some necessities press upon him. Because of poverty he is prevented from teaching how the commonwealth should be managed, yet he teaches how poverty itself should be managed. His work is extended through his whole life. Thus no fortune, no circumstance excludes the wise man’s action. For he is doing that very thing by which he is prevented from doing other things. He is fit for both outcomes: he is the guide of good things, the conqueror of bad.

​In this way, I say, he has trained himself to show virtue as much in prosperity as in adversity, and to look not at its material but at virtue itself. Therefore, neither poverty, nor pain, nor anything else that turns away the inexperienced and drives them headlong, prevents him. Do you think he is oppressed by evils?

​He uses them. Phidias did not know how to make statues only from ivory; he made them from bronze. If you had offered him marble, or an even cheaper material, he would have made the best thing that could be made from it. So the wise man will display virtue, if it is allowed, in riches, if not, in poverty; if he can, in his country, if not, in exile; if he can, as a general, if not, as a soldier; if he can, healthy, if not, weak. Whatever fortune he receives, he will make something memorable out of it.

​There are skilled tamers of wild beasts, who subdue the fiercest animals, which are terrifying even to meet, to tolerate man, and not content with having shaken off their wildness, they tame them even to the point of sharing their quarters. The master inserts his hand into the lions’ mouths, his keeper kisses the tiger, the smallest Ethiopian orders the elephant to sink to its knees and to walk upon a rope. So the wise man is an artist at taming evils. Pain, poverty, disgrace, prison, exile, everywhere terrifying, become gentle when they come to him. FAREWELL.