Moral Letters to Lucilius

​I think there will be agreement between me and you that external things are acquired for the body, the body is cultivated in honor of the soul, and in the soul there are ministering parts, through which we are moved and nourished, given to us on account of the ruling part itself. In this ruling part, there is something irrational, and there is also the rational. The former serves the latter; the latter is the one thing which is not referred to anything else, but refers all things to itself. For that divine reason too has been set over all things, and is itself under nothing; and this of ours is the same, because it is from that.

​If there is agreement between us on this point, it follows that there is agreement on that point too: that the happy life is placed in this one thing, that perfect reason be in us. For this alone does not submit the mind, it stands against fortune, and keeps us secure in any condition of things. And that is the unique good which is never broken. He is happy, I say, whom nothing makes lesser; he holds the highest, leaning upon no one but himself. For he who is sustained by some help can fall. If it is otherwise, things not our own will begin to have great power in us. But who wants fortune to be constant, or what wise man admires himself because of alien things?

​What is a happy life? Security and perpetual tranquility. This will be given by greatness of mind, and by constancy tenacious of what has been well judged. How is this arrived at? If the whole truth has been thoroughly seen; if in actions order, measure, propriety, and a harmless and benign will are preserved, intent upon reason and never departing from it, at once lovable and admirable. Finally, to write a brief formula for you, such ought to be the mind of the wise man, as would befit a god.

​What can he desire, to whom all honorable things happen? For if non-honorable things can contribute anything to the best state, the happy life will consist in those things without which the honorable exists. And what is more shameful or foolish than to knit the good of the rational mind from irrational things?

​Yet some judge that the supreme good can be increased, because it is insufficiently full when fortuitous things are opposing. Antipater also, among the great founders of this sect, says that he attributes something to external things, but very little indeed. But you see what kind of thing it is not to be content with the day unless some tiny fire shines. What weight can a spark have in this brightness of the sun?

​If you are not content with honor alone, it is necessary that you wish either peace to be added, which the Greeks call aochlesia, or pleasure. The former of these can somehow be admitted. For the mind is free, liberated from trouble, for the inspection of the universe, and nothing calls it away from the contemplation of nature. That other one, pleasure, is the good of cattle. We add the irrational to the rational, the dishonorable to the honorable. To this life, the tickling of the body contributes; why then do you hesitate to say that it is well with a man, if it is well with his palate?

​And do you count this man, I do not say among men, but among human beings, whose supreme good consists of tastes, colors, and sounds? Let him depart from this most beautiful class of animals, second only to the gods; let him be grouped with the mute beasts, an animal happy with its fodder.

​The irrational part of the soul has two parts: one spirited, ambitious, uncontrolled, placed in passions; the other humble, languid, devoted to pleasures. They left aside the former, which is unbridled, yet better, certainly stronger and more worthy of a man, and they thought this latter part, enervated and abject, necessary for the happy life.

​They ordered reason to serve this, and made the supreme good of the most noble animal low and ignoble, and furthermore mixed and monstrous, composed of diverse and poorly matching limbs. For as our Vergil says of Scylla: “First the face of a human, and a maiden with a beautiful breast down to the womb, last a sea-monster of monstrous body, having dolphin tails joined to a belly of wolves.” Yet to this Scylla wild animals were joined, horrific and swift; but from what monsters have those men composed wisdom!