Seneca · a new plain-English translation from the Latin
[1] You want to know whether Epicurus was right when, in one of his letters, he criticized those who hold that the wise man, being sufficient to himself, has no need of a friend. This is the charge Epicurus brings against Stilbo and against those for whom the highest good is a mind that feels nothing. [2] We are bound to run into ambiguity if we try to compress 'apatheia' into a single quick word and call it 'impassivity'; it could be taken to mean the opposite of what we intend. We mean a man who rejects any sensation of evil; it will be heard as a man who cannot endure any evil at all. Consider, then, whether it is better to speak of an invulnerable mind, or of a mind set beyond all suffering. [3] Here is the difference between us and them: our wise man conquers every hardship, but he feels it; theirs does not even feel it. What we share with them is this: the wise man is content with himself. Still, he wants a friend, a neighbor, a companion at his side, however sufficient he is to himself. [4] See just how content with himself he is: on occasion he is content with only part of himself. If disease or an enemy costs him a hand, if some accident puts out an eye or both eyes, what is left of him will be enough for him, and with his body diminished and cut back he will be as cheerful as he was when it was whole. But though he does not miss what he lacks, he would rather not lack it. [5] The wise man is content with himself in this sense: not that he wants to be without a friend, but that he is able to be. And this 'able' means the following: he bears the loss with an even mind. He will never actually be without a friend; how quickly he replaces one lies in his own power. If Phidias loses a statue, he will make another at once; in the same way this craftsman of friendships will put a new friend in the place of the one who is gone. [6] You ask how he will make a friend so quickly? I will tell you, if you and I can agree that I pay off my debt to you right now and settle accounts as far as this letter goes. Hecato says: 'I will show you a love-charm without drugs, without herbs, without any witch's incantation: if you want to be loved, love.' Moreover, it is not only the enjoyment of an old, established friendship that carries great pleasure, but also the beginning and the winning of a new one. [7] The difference between the farmer harvesting and the farmer sowing is the difference between the man who has gained a friend and the man who is gaining one. The philosopher Attalus used to say that making a friend is more delightful than having one, 'just as for the artist it is more delightful to paint than to have painted.' That absorbed concentration on the work in hand carries enormous enjoyment in the very absorption; the pleasure is not the same for the one who has taken his hand from the finished piece. Now he enjoys the fruit of his art; while he was painting, he enjoyed the art itself. Children's adolescence yields more, but their infancy is sweeter.
[8] Now back to the point. The wise man, even though he is content with himself, still wants to have a friend—if for nothing else, then to keep friendship in practice, so that so great a virtue does not lie idle. Not for the reason Epicurus gave in that same letter, 'so that he may have someone to sit by his bed when he is sick, to come to his aid when he is thrown in chains or destitute,' but so that he may have someone whose sickbed he himself can sit beside, someone he himself can free from the grip of an enemy's guard. The man who looks to himself and comes to friendship on that account is thinking badly. As he began, so he will end: he acquired a friend to lend a hand against the chains; the moment the chain rattles, he will be off. [9] These are what people call fair-weather friendships; a man taken up for his usefulness will please only as long as he is useful. That is why a crowd of friends sits packed around the prosperous, while around the ruined there is emptiness—friends flee at exactly the point where they are put to the test. That is why there are all those disgraceful cases of men abandoning out of fear, or betraying out of fear. Beginnings and endings must match: the man who became a friend because it paid will also stop because it pays; if anything in friendship pleases him besides friendship itself, some price will please him against it. [10] 'What do you acquire a friend for?' So that I may have someone I could die for, someone I could follow into exile, someone against whose death I would throw myself and spend myself. What you are describing is a business deal, not friendship—an arrangement that moves toward advantage and looks to what it will get out of it. [11] The passion of lovers undoubtedly has something in common with friendship; you might call it friendship gone mad. Well then, does anyone fall in love for profit? For ambition or reputation? Love all by itself, careless of everything else, sets souls on fire with desire for beauty, not without hope of affection returned. What follows? That a shameful passion springs from a more honorable cause than friendship does? [12] 'The question now,' you say, 'is not whether friendship is to be sought for its own sake.' On the contrary, nothing needs proving more; for if it is to be sought for its own sake, then the man who is content with himself can approach it. 'How, then, does he approach it?' The way one approaches a thing of great beauty—not lured by gain, not scared off by the shifts of fortune. Whoever acquires friendship with good times in mind strips it of its dignity.
[13] 'The wise man is content with himself.' Most people, my dear Lucilius, take this the wrong way: they push the wise man away from everything and drive him back inside his own skin. But we must mark what that saying promises, and how far. The wise man is content with himself for living happily, not for living. For living he needs many things; for living happily he needs only a mind that is sound, upright, and looks down on fortune. [14] I want to point out a distinction of Chrysippus as well. He says the wise man lacks nothing, and yet needs many things: 'the fool, on the other hand, has need of nothing, since he has no idea how to use anything, yet he is in want of everything.' Hands, eyes, and the countless items of daily use are things the wise man needs; he is in want of nothing. For lacking implies necessity, and nothing is a necessity to the wise man. [15] So although he is content with himself, he needs friends; he wants to have as many as possible—not in order to live happily, for he will live happily even without friends. The highest good does not go looking for equipment outside; it is cultivated at home, it is entirely from itself. It begins to be subject to fortune the moment it seeks any part of itself abroad. [16] 'But what will the wise man's life be like if he is left without friends—thrown into prison, or stranded among some foreign people, or held up on a long voyage, or cast onto a deserted shore?' Like the life of Jupiter, who, when the world is dissolved and the gods have melted into one, with nature pausing for a while, rests in himself, given over to his own thoughts. Something of that kind is what the wise man does: he withdraws into himself, he is with himself. [17] As long as he is free to arrange his affairs by his own judgment, he is content with himself—and takes a wife; content with himself—and raises children; content with himself—and yet he would not live if living meant living without another human being. No advantage of his own carries him toward friendship, but a natural prompting; for just as we have an inborn sweetness for other things, so for friendship. Just as there is a loathing of solitude and a hunger for company, just as nature binds human being to human being, so in this too there is a spur that makes us seekers of friendship. [18] Nevertheless, though he loves his friends dearly, though he ranks them with himself and often above himself, he will fence all his good inside himself, and he will say what the famous Stilbo said—the Stilbo that Epicurus's letter goes after. When his city had been captured, his children lost, his wife lost, as he walked out of the general conflagration alone and yet happy, Demetrius—the one whose surname, Poliorcetes, came from the destruction of cities—asked him whether he had lost anything. 'All my goods,' he said, 'are with me.' [19] There is a brave and vigorous man! He defeated the very victory of his enemy. 'I have lost nothing,' he said—and forced Demetrius to wonder whether he had won at all. 'All that is mine is with me': justice, courage, good sense—this above all, counting nothing a good that can be torn away. We marvel at certain animals that pass through the middle of fires without harm to their bodies: how much more marvelous is this man, who came through steel and rubble and flames unhurt and unrobbed! Do you see how much easier it is to conquer a whole nation than one man? That saying of his he shares with the Stoic: he too carries his goods intact through burned-out cities, for he is content with himself; that is the boundary he draws around his happiness. [20] And so you don't think we Stoics are the only ones tossing off noble phrases, Epicurus himself, Stilbo's scolder, delivered a saying much like his—take it in good part, even though I have already paid off today's installment. 'Anyone who does not regard what he has as ample,' he says, 'is wretched, even if he is master of the whole world.' Or if you think it comes out better put this way—for our aim should be to serve the meaning, not the words—'wretched is the man who does not judge himself supremely happy, though he rule the world.' [21] And to show you that these judgments belong to everyone, since nature of course dictates them, you will find in the comic poet:
no one is happy who does not think he is.
For what does it matter what your condition is, if in your own eyes it is bad? [22] 'What then?' you say. 'If that man who got rich disgracefully, and that other man, master of many but slave of more, call themselves happy, will their own opinion make them so?' What matters is not what a man says but what he feels—and not what he feels on one day, but what he feels steadily. And you need not worry that so great a possession will fall to the unworthy: no one but the wise man is pleased with what is his own; all foolishness suffers from disgust with itself. Farewell.