Seneca · a new plain-English translation from the Latin
I know you have a great deal of spirit; for even before you armed yourself with wholesome teachings, teachings that conquer hardship, you were satisfied enough with yourself against fortune, and far more so after you locked hands with her and tested your own strength, which can never give a sure confidence in itself except when many difficulties have shown up on this side and that, and sometimes have even come closer still. That is how a truly genuine spirit, one that will never fall under another's judgment, is proven; that is its trial by fire. An athlete cannot bring great courage to the contest if he has never been bruised: it's the one who has seen his own blood, whose teeth have rattled under a fist, who has been tripped and gone down with his whole body but never thrown away his nerve even when thrown down himself, who rises more defiant each time he falls -- it's that man who goes down to the fight with great hope. So, to carry the comparison further, fortune has often been on top of you already, and yet you didn't surrender yourself, but sprang back up and stood your ground more fiercely; for courage that has been provoked adds a great deal to itself.
Still, if you like, take from me some defenses you can arm yourself with. There are more things, Lucilius, that terrify us than that actually crush us, and we suffer more often in imagination than in reality. I am not speaking to you in Stoic language now, but in this gentler tone; we Stoics say, of course, that all these things that draw out groans and howls are trivial and to be despised. Let's set aside those big words -- true as they are, by heaven -- and instead I'll give you this piece of advice: don't be miserable before your time, since the things you dreaded as if they loomed over you may perhaps never come at all -- certainly they have not come yet.
So some things torment us more than they should, some torment us before they should, and some torment us when they have no business tormenting us at all: we either magnify our pain, or anticipate it, or simply invent it. Let's set the first point aside for now, since it's a matter in dispute and we've already joined issue on it; I would call something trivial that you would insist is the gravest thing there is; I know some people laugh under the lash and others groan under a slap. We'll see later whether these things have force in themselves or only through our own weakness. Just grant me this: whenever people gather around you trying to convince you how wretched you are, think not about what you're hearing but about what you actually feel, and take counsel with your own patient endurance, and ask yourself -- you who know yourself best -- 'why are these people mourning over me? Why are they in such a panic, afraid the contagion of my misfortune might even leap onto them, as if a calamity could jump like that? Is there really something bad in my situation, or is it simply more notorious than it is actually bad?' Ask yourself: 'Am I torturing myself and grieving without cause, treating as an evil something that isn't one at all?' 'But how,' you ask, 'am I to tell whether the things that torment me are real or imagined?' Take this rule for the matter: we are tormented either by present things, or future things, or both. As for the present, judgment is easy: if your body is free and healthy, and no pain comes from any injury, we'll deal with the future when it arrives -- today it's none of its business. 'But it is going to happen,' you say. First, look closely to see whether there is any certain evidence that the harm is really coming; for the most part we suffer from mere suspicion, and we're deceived by that thing that usually finishes off a war -- rumor -- and it destroys individuals far more thoroughly. It's true, my dear Lucilius: we surrender to opinion far too quickly; we don't cross-examine the things that frighten us or shake them out to see what they really are, but panic and turn tail exactly like those who abandon camp because a cloud of dust raised by a stampede of cattle, or some rumor spread by no known source, has terrified them. I don't know how it is, but imagined terrors unsettle us even more than real ones; for real dangers have their own limit, but whatever comes out of uncertainty is handed over to conjecture and to the license of a frightened mind. And so no fears are as ruinous, as impossible to call back, as those born of a deranged imagination; ordinary fears at least lack reason, but these lack sense entirely. So let's look into the matter carefully. It's plausible that something bad is going to happen: that doesn't make it true yet. How many things that were never expected have come to pass! How many that were expected have never shown up at all! Even if it is going to happen, what good does it do to run out and meet your own grief? You'll grieve soon enough once it arrives: in the meantime, promise yourself something better. What do you gain by it? Time. Many things will intervene by which a danger, even one close by or nearly upon you, will either come to a halt, or stop altogether, or pass onto someone else's head instead: a fire has opened a path for escape; some people a collapsing building has set down gently; sometimes a sword has been called back from the very throat; some man has outlived his own executioner. Even bad fortune has its fickleness. Maybe it will happen, maybe it won't: in the meantime it hasn't -- so picture something better. Sometimes, with no signs actually appearing that foretell any harm, the mind invents false images for itself: it twists some word of doubtful meaning toward the worse, or imagines someone's offense against it greater than it is, and thinks not about how angry that person actually is, but about how far an angry person is capable of going. But there is no reason left to live, no limit to our miseries, if we fear things to the full extent they could possibly happen. Here let good sense help you; here, with strength of mind, reject even a clear and obvious fear; if you can't manage that, meet one flaw with another, and temper fear with hope. Nothing among the things we fear is so certain that it isn't more certain still that dreaded things subside and hoped-for things disappoint. So weigh hope and fear both, and whenever everything is uncertain, favor yourself: believe what you would rather believe. If fear has the greater number of arguments on its side, lean toward the other side anyway, and stop tormenting yourself, and keep turning this over in your mind: that the greater part of humanity, though nothing bad actually afflicts them and nothing is certain to come, still boils over and rushes about in a panic. No one resists once he has begun to be pushed along, and no one brings his own fear back to what is real; no one says, 'the source is groundless, groundless: either he made it up, or he simply believed it.' We let ourselves be carried by every passing breeze; we dread uncertainties as if they were certainties; we don't keep a sense of proportion about things -- the moment a scruple arises, it turns instantly into terror.
I'm ashamed to be talking to you like this, coaxing you back to health with such gentle remedies. Let someone else say, 'perhaps it won't happen': you say, 'well, what if it does? We'll see who wins; perhaps it comes on my behalf, and that death will do honor to my life.' Hemlock made Socrates great. Wrench the sword, freedom's champion, out of Cato's hand, and you will have taken away a great part of his glory. I've been urging you on too long now, when what you need is reminding more than urging. We aren't leading you away from your own nature: you were born for the very things we're telling you; all the more reason to increase and adorn what is already good in you.
But now let me bring the letter to a close, once I've stamped it with its own seal -- that is, once I've entrusted some splendid saying to be carried to you. 'Among its other faults, foolishness has this one too: it is always just beginning to live.' Consider what that saying means, Lucilius, best of men, and you will understand how foul is the fickleness of people who lay new foundations for life every day, and start new hopes even at the point of death. Look around you at people one by one: you'll come across old men getting ready, at just this moment, for ambition, for travel, for business ventures. And what is more shameful than an old man just beginning to live? I wouldn't attach a name to this saying, except that it's a more private one, not among the well-known sayings of Epicurus -- one I've allowed myself both to praise and to adopt as my own. Farewell.