Seneca · a new plain-English translation from the Latin
You ask about our friend Marcellinus and want to know how he's doing. He rarely comes to see us, for no other reason than that he's afraid of hearing the truth — and he's already past that danger, since the truth should only be told to someone willing to hear it. That's why people often wonder whether Diogenes and the other Cynics, who exercised an indiscriminate freedom of speech and lectured whoever crossed their path, ought to have done so. What good is it, after all, to scold the deaf, or people mute by nature or by illness?
"Why," you say, "should I be sparing with words? They cost nothing. I can't know whether I'll do any good for the particular person I warn; but I do know this: if I warn many people, I'll do good for someone. My hand has to be scattered wide — it's impossible, if you try with enough people, that you won't succeed sometimes." This, my dear Lucilius, is not something I think a great man should do. It wears down his authority and carries too little weight with the very people whom, if less worn thin, it might have corrected. An archer shouldn't sometimes hit and sometimes miss — a skill that arrives at its result by chance isn't a skill at all. Wisdom is a skill: it should aim at a fixed target, choose those who are going to make progress, withdraw from those it has given up on — though not too quickly — and even in that final despair still try extreme remedies.
As for our friend Marcellinus, I haven't given up on him yet; even now he can be saved, but only if a hand is held out to him quickly. There is, admittedly, a danger that in reaching out I might get pulled down with him; there's great force of talent in him, but it's already bending toward the wrong direction. All the same, I'll take the risk, and I'll dare to show him his own faults.
He'll do what he usually does: he'll call up those witticisms of his that can draw a laugh even from mourners, and he'll joke first at his own expense, then at ours; he'll anticipate everything I'm about to say. He'll rummage through our schools of philosophy and throw in our faces the free handouts philosophers accept, their mistresses, their gluttony. He'll point out to me one caught in adultery, another in a tavern, another at court; he'll show me the charming philosopher Ariston, who used to lecture while being carried around in a litter — for he'd set aside that time for delivering his performances. When someone asked what school he belonged to, Scaurus said, "He's certainly not a Peripatetic." And when Julius Graecinus, an outstanding man, was asked his opinion of the same fellow, he said, "I can't tell you — I don't even know what he does when he's on his feet," as if he'd been asked about a gladiator who fights from a chariot.
He'll fling these charlatans in my face, men who would have shown more honor to philosophy by neglecting it than they do by peddling it. Still, I've resolved to put up with the insults. Let him make me laugh; perhaps I'll make him cry instead — or if he keeps on laughing, I'll be glad, as one is glad amid misfortunes, that at least his particular brand of madness turned out cheerful. But that cheerfulness doesn't last long: watch, and within a short time you'll see the same people laughing as hard as they can and raging as hard as they can.
My plan is to go after him and show him how much more he was worth when he seemed worth less to the crowd. Even if I don't root out his vices, I'll hold them in check; they won't stop, but perhaps they'll pause — and perhaps they'll even stop, if pausing becomes a habit. This in itself shouldn't be looked down on, since for people badly afflicted, a good remission stands in for health.
While I'm getting myself ready for him, you meanwhile — since you can, since you understand where you've come from and where you've arrived, and from that can guess how much further you're going to go — put your character in order, lift up your spirit, stand firm against the things you dread; don't count the people who frighten you. Wouldn't it seem foolish for someone to fear a crowd at a passage through which only one at a time can go? In just the same way, death has no access to you through many at once, however many threaten it. Nature has arranged it so: a single person will take your breath from you, just as a single person gave it to you.
If you had any shame, you'd have let me off the last installment; but I won't be stingy either, when it comes to paying off my debt to you — I'll throw in what I owe you as a bonus. "I never wanted to please the crowd; for what I know, the crowd doesn't approve, and what the crowd approves, I don't know." "Who said that?" you ask, as if you didn't know whom I quote. Epicurus. But every school will shout this same thing at you from every house — Peripatetics, Academics, Stoics, Cynics. For who can please the crowd, when what pleases him is virtue? Popular favor is won by bad methods. You'd have to make yourself like them; they won't approve of you unless they recognize themselves in you. But it matters far more what you think of yourself than what others think of you; the love of base people cannot be won except by base means. So what will that philosophy give you, the one so praised and to be ranked above all other arts and pursuits? This, of course: that you'd rather please yourself than the crowd, that you weigh judgments instead of counting them, that you live without fear of gods or men, that you either conquer your troubles or put an end to them. But if I should ever see you made famous by the crowd's cheering, if applause and shouting greeted you as you entered, like the trappings of a stage performer, if the whole city, women and children alike, sang your praises — why shouldn't I pity you, knowing as I do what road leads to that kind of favor? Farewell.