Seneca · a new plain-English translation from the Latin
[1] That you study with such persistence, dropping everything else to work at this one thing — making yourself better every day — I approve and I rejoice; and I don't merely urge you to keep it up, I beg you to. But here is my warning: don't act like those who want not to make progress but to be noticed, doing things that draw attention to your dress or your way of living. [2] The rough coat, the unbarbered head, the beard let go wild, the declared war on silverware, the bed laid on the ground — avoid these, and everything else that chases prestige by the back road. The very name of philosophy stirs enough resentment even when it's worn quietly; what will happen if we start seceding from ordinary human custom? Inside, let everything be different; on the outside, let our face fit the crowd. [3] The toga shouldn't dazzle — but it shouldn't be dirty either. Let's not own silver plate inlaid with reliefs of solid gold, but let's not imagine that going without gold and silver is proof of the simple life. Our aim should be a life better than the crowd's, not opposed to it; otherwise we drive away and turn off the very people we want to reform — and we achieve this too, that they refuse to imitate anything of ours, for fear they'd have to imitate everything. [4] The first thing philosophy promises is fellow-feeling, humanity, sociability; cutting ourselves off from others will divorce us from that promise. Let's make sure the things by which we hope to win admiration aren't ridiculous and repellent. Our stated aim, after all, is to live according to nature — and it is against nature to torture your own body, to hate cleanliness when it comes easily, to court squalor, and to eat food that is not just cheap but foul and disgusting. [5] Just as craving delicacies is decadence, so shunning ordinary things that cost little to get is madness. Philosophy demands plain living, not penance — and plain living doesn't have to be unkempt. This is the measure that satisfies me: let our life be tempered between good morals and common ones; let everyone look up to our way of life, but recognize it. [6] 'What then? Shall we do just what everyone else does? Will there be no difference between us and them?' A very great difference. Anyone who looks closer should know we're unlike the crowd; anyone who enters our house should marvel at us rather than at our furniture. The great man is the one who uses earthenware as if it were silver — and no less great is the one who uses silver as if it were earthenware. Not being able to bear wealth is the sign of a weak spirit.
[7] But to share with you this day's small profit as well: in our own Hecaton I found that putting an end to desires works as a cure for fear too. 'You will stop fearing,' he says, 'if you stop hoping.' 'How,' you'll ask, 'can two such opposite things go together?' That's how it is, my Lucilius: though they look like enemies, they are yoked. Just as one chain links the prisoner and the guard, so these two, so unlike each other, march in step: fear follows close behind hope. [8] And I'm not surprised they travel this way. Both belong to a mind in suspense, a mind anxious with looking ahead. The chief cause of both is that we don't fit ourselves to the present but send our thoughts far out ahead of us; and so foresight, the greatest blessing of the human condition, has been turned into an evil. [9] Wild animals run from the dangers they see, and once they've escaped, they're at peace. We are tormented by what is coming and by what is past. Many of our advantages do us harm: memory drags the torment of fear back, foresight brings it early. No one is made miserable by the present alone. Farewell.