Moral Letters to Lucilius

’No one,’ he says, ‘cures madness with precepts; therefore, not wickedness either.’ It is different. For if you remove madness, health returns, but if we have shut out false opinions, the discernment of things to be done does not immediately follow. Even if it should follow, nevertheless admonition will strengthen the correct opinion about goods and evils. That is also false, that precepts benefit nothing among the mad. For just as they do not benefit alone, so they assist the cure. Both warning and chastisement have restrained the mad. I am speaking now of those madmen whose mind is disturbed, not snatched away.

’Laws,’ he says, ‘do not bring it about that we do what we ought, and what else are they than precepts mixed with threats?’ First of all, they do not persuade for this reason, because they threaten, but the latter do not compel, but win over. Next, laws deter from crime, precepts exhort to duty. To these add that laws also benefit good morals, especially if they do not only command, but teach.

​In this matter I dissent from Posidonius, who says, ‘I disapprove that principles (prefaces) have been added to Plato’s laws. For a law ought to be short, so that it may be more easily grasped by the unlearned. Let it be like a voice sent from heaven; let it command, not dispute. Nothing seems to me colder, nothing more inept than a law with a prologue. Warn, say what you wish me to have done; I do not learn, but obey.’ Yet they do benefit; and so you will see that states which have used bad laws have used bad morals. ‘But they do not benefit among all.’

​Not even philosophy does; yet it is not therefore useless and ineffective in forming minds. What then? Is not philosophy the law of life? But let us suppose that laws do not benefit; it does not therefore follow that not even admonitions benefit. Or else, deny that consolations also benefit, and dissuasions, and exhortations, and rebukes, and praises. All those are kinds of admonitions. Through those, one arrives at the perfect state of the mind.

​No thing clothes minds with honorable things and recalls those who are doubtful and inclinable to evil to the right path more than the conversation of good men. For it gradually descends into the breast, and to be frequently seen, to be frequently heard, obtains the force of precepts. By Hercules, the very meeting with wise men helps, and there is something that you may benefit from a great man even when he is silent.

​Nor could I easily tell you how it benefits, just as I understand that that other thing benefited. ‘Certain minute,’ as Phaedo says, ‘animals when they bite are not felt; so thin and deceptive into danger is their power. A swelling indicates the bite, and in the swelling itself no wound appears. The same will happen to you in the conversation of wise men: you will not perceive how or when it benefits you, but you will perceive that it has benefited.’

’Whither,’ you say, ‘does this point?’ Just as good precepts, if they are often with you, will benefit as much as good examples. Pythagoras says that a different mind is made in those entering a temple and beholding the statues of the gods from nearby and waiting for the voice of some oracle.

​But who will deny that some are struck by certain precepts, effectively even the most unlearned? As by these shortest words, yet having much weight: ‘Nothing in excess.’ ‘A greedy mind is satisfied by no gain.’ ‘Expect from another what you have done to the other.’ We hear these with a certain shock, nor is it permitted to anyone to doubt or ask ‘why?’; so much does truth itself lead even without a reason.

​If reverence curbs minds and restrains vices, why should not admonition also be able to do the same? If chastisement imposes shame, why should admonition not do so, even if it uses bare precepts? But that indeed is more effective and penetrates deeper, which assists with reason what it prescribes, which adds why each thing is to be done and what fruit awaits the one who does it and obeys the precepts. If it is benefited by command, also by admonition; but it is benefited by command; therefore also by admonition.

​Virtue is divided into two parts, into the contemplation of truth and action. Instruction delivers contemplation, admonition action. Right action both exercises and shows virtue. But if he who persuades benefits the one about to act, he who admonishes will also benefit. Therefore, if right action is necessary for virtue, and admonition points out right actions, admonition also is necessary.