Seneca · a new plain-English translation from the Latin
[1] You asked me what the Latin word for sophisms should be. Many people have tried to give them a name, and none of it has stuck; evidently because we never accepted the thing itself, and it wasn't in use among us, so the name met the same resistance. Still, the one that seems most fitting to me is the one Cicero used: he calls them 'quibblings.' [2] Whoever gives himself over to these ties himself in clever little knots, but gains nothing for life: he becomes no braver, no more self-controlled, no more elevated. But the man who has practiced philosophy as his own remedy grows great in spirit, full of confidence, unconquerable, and greater the closer you approach him. [3] It's like what happens with great mountains, whose height seems less to those viewing them from a distance: only when you draw near does it become clear how lofty their peaks are. Such a man is the true philosopher, my dear Lucilius — one shaped by realities, not by tricks. He stands on the heights, admirable, lofty, of true greatness; he doesn't rise up on tiptoe or walk on the balls of his feet, in the manner of those who fake height with deception and want to look taller than they are; he is content with his own greatness. [4] Why shouldn't he be content, having grown to a height that fortune's hand can't reach? So he stands above human affairs, and equal to himself whatever the state of things — whether life proceeds on a favorable course, or is tossed and driven through hardship and difficulty. This constancy is something those quibblings I spoke of a moment ago cannot deliver. The mind toys with them, makes no progress, and drags philosophy down from its height into the flatlands. [5] I won't forbid you to engage in them sometimes — but only when you want to accomplish nothing. Still, they have this worst feature: they create a certain sweetness of their own and, through their appearance of subtlety, seduce and detain the mind, even while so vast a weight of real business calls, even while a whole lifetime barely suffices to learn this one thing — to hold life in contempt. 'What about ruling it?' you ask. That's a secondary task; for no one has ever ruled life well except the one who had first held it in contempt. Farewell.