Seneca · a new plain-English translation from the Latin
Seneca to his dear Lucilius: greetings. What is this, Lucilius, that drags us one way while we're aiming at another, and pushes us toward the very thing we want to escape? What is it that wrestles with our mind and won't let us want any one thing once and for all? We toss between different resolutions; nothing we want is free, nothing complete, nothing lasting. "It's foolishness," you say, "when nothing is settled, when nothing pleases for long." But how, or when, will we tear ourselves free of it? No one is strong enough alone to climb out; someone has to reach out a hand, someone has to lead the way. Epicurus says that some people have reached the truth with no one's help, cutting their own road; these he praises most, the ones whose drive came from within, who pushed themselves forward. Others, he says, need outside help—they won't set out unless someone goes first, but they'll follow well. He says Metrodorus was of this kind: a fine achievement too, though a second-rate sort of talent. We don't belong to that first class; we're doing well if we're admitted to the second. Don't even look down on the man who can only be saved by someone else's help—wanting to be rescued is itself a great deal. Beyond these you'll find yet another kind of person, not to be despised either: those who can be forced and driven onto the right path, who need not just a guide but a helper, and, so to speak, an enforcer. This is the third shade. If you want an example of this type too, Epicurus says Hermarchus was such a man. And so he congratulates one more, but admires the other more; for although both reached the same goal, greater praise goes to achieving the same thing on harder ground. Suppose two buildings have been put up, both equal, equally tall and magnificent. One was built on clear, level ground, and the work rose straight up from there; the other's foundations wore themselves out, sunk into soft, shifting soil, and a great deal of labor was spent just reaching bedrock—to anyone looking on, whatever the first man built stands plain to see, while the greater and harder part of the other man's work lies hidden. Some natures are easy, quick, unencumbered; others must be, as they say, worked by hand, tied up in their own foundations. So I'd call the first man luckier, since he had no trouble with himself, but I'd say the second has earned more credit—he beat down the meanness of his own nature and did not merely arrive at wisdom, but dragged himself out to it.
You can be sure this rough, laborious nature is the one given to us: we walk through obstacles. So let's fight, and call on the help of others. "Whom," you ask, "shall I call on? This man or that one?" No—turn even to those who came before us, who have time to spare; those who can help us are not only the living but the dead. Of the living, though, let's choose not the ones who rattle off grand words at top speed and turn over commonplaces and hold forth to their own little circle, but those who teach by their life, who, once they've said what should be done, prove it by doing it, who teach what should be avoided and are never caught doing the very thing they said to flee. Choose as your helper the one you admire more when you've seen him than when you've merely heard him. Nor would I forbid you to listen also to those whose habit is to admit a crowd and lecture to it, provided they come forward into the throng with this aim: to become better themselves and to make others better, and provided they do it for no purpose of self-promotion. For what is more shameful than philosophy hunting for applause? Does a sick man praise the surgeon while he's cutting? Be quiet, be attentive, and submit yourselves to the treatment; even if you cry out, I'll listen to it only as I would to a groan wrung from you by the touch on your own diseased spot. Do you want to show that you're paying attention, that you're moved by the greatness of what's said? By all means, let that be allowed—so that you may judge and cast your vote for the better view, why should I not permit that? Among Pythagoras's students there were five years of required silence: do you really suppose that they were allowed to speak and to praise right away?
But how mad is the man whom the shouts of the ignorant send home cheerful from the lecture hall! Why be glad that you've been praised by people you yourself cannot praise? Fabianus used to lecture to the public, but he was heard with restraint; every so often a great roar of applause broke out, but it was one called forth by the greatness of the matter, not the sound of a speech gliding along smoothly and without a hitch. Let there be some difference between the roar of a theater and that of a lecture hall; there's a kind of refinement even in praising. If you watch closely, everything is a sign of something, and you can grasp the evidence of a person's character even from the smallest things: an indecent man is given away by his walk, by a wave of the hand, sometimes by a single reply, by a finger brought up to the head, by the way his eyes shift; a wicked man is shown by his laugh, a madman by his face and bearing. These traits come out into the open through their telltale marks: you'll know what kind of person someone is if you watch how he praises and how he is praised. When an audience reaches out its hands to a philosopher from this side and that, and a crowd of admirers gathers right over his head—that man is not being praised now, if you understand it rightly, he's being shouted down. Let those cries be left to the arts whose whole aim is to please a crowd; let philosophy be revered. It will sometimes have to be allowed to young men to follow the impulse of their spirit, but only when they do it from genuine impulse, when they simply cannot command silence for themselves; praise of that kind brings something exhortative even to the listeners themselves, and spurs on the spirits of the young. But let them be stirred toward the substance, not toward polished phrases; otherwise eloquence does them harm, if it creates in them a hunger not for the subject but for itself.
I'll put this off for now; it calls for its own long treatment—how one ought to lecture to a crowd, what one may permit oneself before a crowd, and what the crowd before oneself. There's no doubt philosophy has taken a loss since she was put on the street corner; but she can still be shown in her inner sanctuary, provided she's found not a peddler but a priestess. Farewell.