Seneca · a new plain-English translation from the Latin
[1] I know this much is clear to you, Lucilius: no one can live happily, or even bearably, without the pursuit of wisdom; a happy life is the work of wisdom brought to completion, but even wisdom just begun makes life bearable. Yet what is clear must still be reinforced, driven deeper by daily rehearsal: it takes more work to keep your resolutions than to make honorable ones. You have to persist, and add strength by constant study, until good will has hardened into good character.
[2] So with me you need no lengthy speeches or drawn-out assurances: I can see you have made real progress. I know where the things you write come from; they are not invented, not touched up. Still, I will say what I think: I already have hopes of you, but not yet confidence. I want you to take the same line yourself: there is no reason to believe in yourself quickly and easily. Shake yourself out, examine yourself from every side, keep watch; and look first of all at this — whether your progress has been in philosophy or in life itself. [3] Philosophy is no trick for the crowd, no piece got up for display; it lies not in words but in deeds. Nor is its use to make the day pass with a little amusement, to take the queasiness out of leisure: it molds and builds the mind, orders a life, steers conduct, points out what to do and what to leave undone; it sits at the helm and holds the course through the pitching of dangerous waters. Without it no one can live unafraid, no one secure; every single hour brings countless situations calling for advice, and that advice must be sought from philosophy. [4] Someone will say: 'What good is philosophy to me if fate exists? What good, if a god is in charge? What good, if chance gives the orders? What is fixed cannot be changed, and against the unfixed nothing can be prepared: either a god has forestalled my planning and decreed what I shall do, or fortune leaves my planning nothing to decide.' [5] Whichever of these is true, Lucilius — or even if all of them are — we must still do philosophy. Whether fate binds us with a law that hears no appeals, or a god as arbiter of the universe has arranged everything, or chance shoves and tosses human affairs without order, philosophy has to be our guard. It will urge us to obey god gladly and fortune defiantly; it will teach you to follow god and to put up with chance. [6] But this is not the moment to slide into the debate over how much lies in our power if providence rules, or if the chain of fate drags us along in its coils, or if the sudden and the unforeseen hold sway. I come back to my point: my warning and my urging is that you not let the surge of your spirit sag and go cold. Hold on to it and set it firm, so that what is now an impulse becomes a settled state of mind.
[7] By now, if I know you, you have been looking round from the start to see what little present this letter has brought. Shake it out and you will find one. No need to marvel at my generosity: for the moment I am open-handed with other people's property. Though why did I say other people's? Whatever anyone has said well belongs to me. This too was said by Epicurus: 'Live by nature and you will never be poor; live by opinion and you will never be rich.' [8] Nature's wants are tiny; opinion's are boundless. Suppose everything many rich men ever owned were heaped upon you; suppose fortune carried you past any private scale of wealth, roofed you with gold, dressed you in purple, brought you to such a pitch of luxury and riches that you paved over the earth with marble — so that you could not merely own wealth but walk on it; add statues and paintings and whatever any art has worked up to serve extravagance: from all this you will learn only to crave more. [9] Natural desires have a limit; those born of false opinion have nowhere to stop, because the false has no endpoint. The traveler on a road has some destination; wandering has none. So pull back from empty things, and when you want to know whether what you are after answers a natural desire or a blind one, ask whether it can come to rest anywhere. If you have gone a long way and something further always remains, you may be sure the desire is not natural. Farewell.