Seneca · a new plain-English translation from the Latin
Has that fellow already persuaded you he's a good man? But a good man can't be made, or even recognized, that quickly. Do you know what I mean now by "a good man"? One of the second rank. The genuine article is born, like the phoenix, maybe once every five hundred years. And it's no wonder great things are produced only at long intervals: mediocre things, born in crowds, fortune churns out regularly, but she recommends the exceptional precisely by its rarity. But this man of yours is still a long way from what he claims to be; and if he knew what a good man actually was, he wouldn't yet believe himself one -- he might even despair of ever becoming one. "But he thinks badly of the wicked." So do the wicked themselves; no punishment for viciousness is greater than displeasing yourself and your own kind. "But he hates those who use sudden, great power without restraint." He'll do the same once he has the same power. In many people vice lies hidden only because it's weak, no less ready to dare everything once its strength pleases it than the vice that fortune has already brought into the open. They simply lack the tools to unfold their own wickedness. In the same way you can safely handle even a venomous snake while the cold keeps it stiff: the poison isn't gone, it's just dormant. Many people's cruelty and ambition and extravagance, capable of matching the very worst, are held back only by the absence of fortune's favor. That they want the same things, you'll find out -- just give them the power they want. Do you remember, when you were insisting that a certain man was in your power, I told you he was flighty and unreliable, and that you didn't hold him by the foot but by a feather? I was wrong: it was a downy tuft you held, and he shed it and flew off. You know what a show he's put on for you since, how many schemes he's tried that were bound to come crashing down on his own head. He didn't see that by endangering others he was rushing to his own ruin; he never stopped to think how burdensome the things he was chasing would be, even if they weren't also useless.
So this is what we ought to examine in the things we strive for, the things we struggle so hard to attain: either there's no real advantage in them at all, or there's more harm than advantage. Some things are simply superfluous; others aren't worth what they cost. But we fail to see this clearly, and things that come at the very highest price look free to us. Our stupidity is plain enough from the fact that we consider only the things we pay money for as bought, while we call things free that cost us ourselves. Things we'd refuse to buy if the price were our own house, or some pleasant, productive estate, we're perfectly ready to obtain at the cost of anxiety, of danger, of the sacrifice of our modesty, our freedom, our time -- so true is it that nothing is cheaper to a person than himself. So let's do, in all our plans and undertakings, what we usually do whenever we approach a shopkeeper selling some good: let's see what price is being asked for the thing we crave. Often the highest price is paid for something given for nothing. I could show you many things which, once acquired and accepted, have wrung our freedom out of us; we would belong to ourselves, if those things didn't belong to us. So turn this over in your own mind, not only when there's a question of gain, but also when there's a question of loss. "This is going to be lost." Well, it was an extra to begin with; you'll live without it as easily as you lived before you had it. If you've had it a long time, you lose it once you're already sated with it; if not long, you lose it before you've grown used to it. "You'll have less money." Yes, and less trouble too. "Less influence." Yes, and less envy too. Look around at the things that drive us to distraction, the things we lose with so many tears: you'll find that it isn't the loss itself that's painful, but the idea of the loss. No one feels that those things are gone -- he only thinks about it. The man who still has himself has lost nothing. But to how few does it fall to truly have themselves? Farewell.