Plutarch · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
"Fortune, not good counsel, governs the affairs of mortals." Is it then true that justice too does not govern mortal affairs, nor fairness, nor self-control, nor good order, but that it was by chance and through fortune that Aristides persevered in poverty, though he could have become master of great wealth, and that Scipio, having taken Carthage, took and even looked at none of the spoils, while it was by chance and through fortune that Philocrates, taking gold from Philip, "bought prostitutes and fish," and that Lasthenes and Euthycrates destroyed Olynthus, "measuring their prosperity by the belly and by the most shameful things"? Was it from fortune that Alexander, son of Philip, himself kept away from the captive women and punished those who abused them, while the son of Priam, attended by an evil spirit and by fortune, slept with the wife of his host, and having taken her filled
the two continents with wars and evils? For if these things happen through fortune, what prevents us from saying that weasels too, and goats and monkeys, are ruled by fortune in their gluttonies, their incontinences, and their buffooneries? But if there is self-control and justice and courage, how does it make sense that there should be no practical wisdom — and if practical wisdom, how not also good counsel?
For self-control itself, as they say, is a kind of practical wisdom, and even good counsel; and justice too requires the presence of practical wisdom. Or rather, it is good counsel and practical wisdom itself that, when it produces good men amid pleasures, we call self-restraint and self-control; when amid dangers and hardships, we call endurance and manly courage; and when in partnerships and civic life, we call good order and justice. If, then, we are justified in saying that the works of good counsel belong to fortune,
then let the works of justice and of self-control belong to fortune as well — and, by Zeus, let stealing belong to fortune too, and purse-cutting, and licentiousness, and let us abandon our own reasoning and hand ourselves over to fortune, as though we were dust or rubbish driven and scattered by a great wind. If, then, there is no such thing as good counsel, it is not reasonable that there should be deliberation about affairs either, nor consideration, nor inquiry into what is advantageous, but Sophocles talked nonsense when he said that everything sought after is caught, while what is neglected escapes; and again, when distinguishing among affairs, he said: "the things that can be taught I learn, the things that can be discovered I seek, and the things that are to be wished for I have asked of the gods." For what is discoverable or teachable for men, if all things are accomplished by
fortune? What council of a city is not abolished, what assembly of a king is not dissolved, if all things are under fortune — fortune whom we revile as blind, as though we too were blind in stumbling upon her? What else are we to expect, when we gouge out good counsel, as it were the eyes of our own life, and take blind fortune as our guide? And yet let someone among us say that fortune, not sight, governs the affairs of those who see,
and not "eyes that bear light," as Plato says; and that fortune, not the faculty of perception, governs the affairs of those who hear — not the power of receiving the impact of air borne through the ear and the brain. It seems noble, apparently, to disparage sense-perception! But surely sight and hearing and taste and smell and the rest of the body's parts, together with their powers, nature has provided to us
as servants of good counsel and practical wisdom, and "mind sees and mind hears, while the rest are deaf and blind," as Heraclitus says; and just as, if the sun did not exist, we would count it night because of the other stars, so too, on account of the senses, if a human being had neither mind nor reason, he would differ in no way in his life from the beasts. But as it is, it is not by fortune nor spontaneously that we prevail over
and master them, but Prometheus — that is, reasoning — is the cause, having given us, according to Aeschylus, "the yoking of horses and asses, and the mating of bulls, gifts in return and receivers of toil." For as regards fortune and birth, nature has treated most of the irrational animals better. Some are armed with horns and teeth and stings; "but on hedgehogs," says Empedocles, "sharp-pointed hairs bristle on their backs," while others
are shod and clothed with scales and fleece and claws and hard hooves; only man, according to Plato, has been left by nature "naked and unarmed and unshod and unbedded." But by giving one thing she softens all these hardships: reasoning, and care, and forethought. "Slight indeed is the strength of man; but by the cunning of his mind he subdues the fearsome tribes
of sea and of creatures of earth and of air." The horse is lighter and swifter, yet it runs for man's sake; the dog is warlike and spirited, yet it guards man; the fish is most pleasant to eat and the pig is fleshy, yet both are man's food and delicacy. What is larger than the elephant, or more fearsome to behold? Yet even this has become man's plaything and a spectacle for festivals, learning to dance and to perform choral movements and acts of homage — not
uselessly are such things brought in, but so that we may learn to what heights practical wisdom raises man and over what things it sets him above, and how it masters and prevails over all things. For we are not blameless boxers, nor wrestlers, nor do we run swiftly with our feet, but in all these things we are less fortunate than the beasts; yet by experience and memory and wisdom and skill, according to Anaxagoras, we make use of ourselves
and we take honey and milk them and carry them and lead them, capturing them — so that here at least all things belong to good counsel, not to fortune. But surely the works of carpenters too are among the "affairs of mortals," and those of coppersmiths and builders and sculptors, in which we see nothing accomplished automatically or by chance. For while some slight element of fortune slips in among these, the greatest and most numerous
of works are accomplished by the arts through themselves, as the poet has intimated: "Come into the street, all you craftsmen folk, who turn to Athena Ergane, the grim-eyed daughter of Zeus, with your winnowing-baskets set up" — for the arts have Ergane, not Fortune, as their companion. Yet they say that Nealkes, painting a horse, succeeded well in all its other forms and colors, but
could not manage to render properly the foam gaping around the bit as it champed, together with the accompanying panting breath, though he painted and erased it many times; and finally, in anger, he threw at the panel the sponge, just as it was, full of paints, and its impact wondrously reproduced the effect and achieved just what was needed. This alone is recorded as an artful accident of fortune. Everywhere craftsmen employ rules and plumb-lines and measures and numbers, so that nothing haphazard
and accidental may find its way into their works. And indeed the arts are said to be small forms of practical wisdom, or rather outflows of practical wisdom and fragments scattered among the necessities of life, just as it is hinted that the fire divided by Prometheus was scattered piece by piece in different directions. For portions and small fragments of practical wisdom, broken off and divided into small change, have passed into the various trades. It is astonishing,
then, how the arts do not need fortune for their proper end, while the greatest and most perfect of all arts and the chief thing in human praise and vindication is nothing at all. Yet in the tightening and loosening of strings there is a kind of good counsel which they call music, and in the seasoning of dishes one which we call cookery, and in the washing of garments one which we call fulling;
and we teach our children both to put on their shoes and to dress themselves, and to take their food with the right hand while holding their bread with the left, on the ground that not even these things happen by fortune but require attention and care — yet the greatest and most decisive matters for happiness do not call upon practical wisdom, nor have any share in reason and forethought? But no one, having wetted earth with water,
has left it aside expecting that bricks will come to be by fortune and spontaneously; nor does anyone, having acquired wool and hides, sit praying to fortune that a cloak and shoes may come to him. But when a man has heaped together much gold and silver and a multitude of slaves and surrounded himself with courtyards of many doors and furnished himself with expensive couches and tables, he thinks that these things, even without practical wisdom being present to him, will bring him happiness and a life free of pain and
blessed and unchanging? Someone asked the general Iphicrates, as though testing him, what he was — "for you are neither a heavy-armed soldier, nor an archer, nor a peltast." And he replied, "I am the one who commands and makes use of all of these." Practical wisdom is not gold, nor silver, nor reputation, nor wealth, nor health, nor strength, nor beauty. What, then, is it? That which is able to make good use of all these things,
and on account of which each of them becomes pleasant and honorable and beneficial; without it they are hard to use and unfruitful and harmful, and they burden and disgrace their possessor. Surely Hesiod's Prometheus does well to charge Epimetheus never to accept gifts from Olympian Zeus, but to send back what belongs to fortune, meaning external goods — as if he were charging him not to pipe
when unmusical, nor to read when illiterate, nor to ride when unskilled in horsemanship, so likewise charging him not to rule while lacking sense, nor to be wealthy while illiberal, nor to marry while mastered by a woman. For not only does "faring well beyond one's desert become, for the senseless, an occasion for thinking ill," as Demosthenes said, but faring fortunately beyond one's desert becomes, for those who lack practical wisdom, an occasion for acting ill.