Seneca · a new plain-English translation from the Latin
[1] I don't want you to be too anxious about words and phrasing, my dear Lucilius; I have bigger things for you to worry about. Look for what to write, not how to write it, and even that not so you can write it but so you can feel it, so that what you have felt becomes more your own, so to speak sealed to you. [2] Whenever you see a man's speech anxious and overpolished, know that his mind too is occupied with trifles. A great man speaks more relaxed and more assured; whatever he says carries more confidence than care. You know the type: dapper young men, glossy in beard and hair, groomed head to toe from a toilet case. Expect nothing brave from them, nothing solid. Speech is the dress of the mind: if it is trimmed close, painted, handmade, it shows that the mind too is not sincere and has something broken in it. Studied elegance is not a manly ornament. [3] If we were allowed to look into the mind of a good man, oh what a beautiful face we would see, how holy, how radiant with something magnificent and calm—justice shining from one side, courage from another, temperance and prudence from still others! Beyond these, frugality and self-control and endurance and generosity and courtesy, and—who would believe it?—that rare good in a human being, humanity, would pour their own splendor over it. Then foresight paired with refinement, and out of these greatness of soul standing out above the rest—good gods, how much beauty, how much weight and gravity they would add to it! What authority it would carry, and with what grace! No one who called it lovable would fail also to call it worthy of reverence. [4] If someone were to see this face, loftier and more radiant than what we are used to seeing among human beings, would he not stop short, dumbstruck, as if he had met a god, and pray silently that it be permitted to have seen it, then, drawn out by the very kindness of its expression, worship and beg it—and after gazing long at something so far above and beyond the measure of what we're used to seeing among ourselves, its eyes gentle yet still burning with a living fire, would he not then, awestruck and afraid, utter that line of our Virgil?
"Oh, what shall I call you, maiden? For your face is not
mortal, nor does your voice sound human . . .
be gracious, and lighten whatever this burden of ours may be."
It will come and lighten it, if we are willing to honor it. And it is honored not by slaughtering bulls with rich bodies, not by gold and silver hung up as offerings, not by coins poured into treasuries, but by a devoted and upright will. [6] No one, I say, would fail to burn with love for it if it were granted us to see it; but as things stand, many things get in the way and either dazzle our sight with too much brightness or hold it back in obscurity. But if, just as the sight of the eyes can be sharpened and cleared by certain remedies, we are willing likewise to free the sight of the mind from its obstructions, we will be able to make out virtue even when it is buried under a body, even when poverty stands in its way, even when lowliness and disgrace lie across its path; we will see, I say, that beauty however covered over with squalor. [7] And conversely we will just as clearly make out wickedness and the sluggishness of a wretched soul, however much the great glitter of gleaming riches gets in the way, however much the false light of honors on one side and of great power on the other batters the onlooker's gaze. [8] Then we will be able to understand how contemptible are the things we marvel at—very like children, to whom every toy is a treasure; children, after all, prefer trinkets bought for small change to their parents, and no less to their brothers and sisters. What difference is there, then, between us and them, as Ariston says, except that we go mad over paintings and statues, being fools at greater expense? Smooth pebbles found on the shore and having some pattern to them delight children; we are delighted by the streaked marble of huge columns, whether brought from the sands of Egypt or the wastes of Africa, that hold up some colonnade or a banquet hall big enough for a crowd. [9] We marvel at walls faced with a thin layer of marble, though we know well enough what lies hidden behind it. We deceive our own eyes, and when we have drenched a ceiling in gold, what are we enjoying except a lie? For we know that under that gold ugly timber lurks. Nor is it only walls or paneled ceilings that get this thin veneer of ornament: the prosperity of all those you see walking tall is gilt foil. Look closer, and you will see how much rot lies beneath that thin skin of dignity. [10] This very thing that keeps so many magistrates and so many judges busy, that makes both magistrates and judges—money—ever since it began to be honored, the true honor of things has fallen, and, turned merchants and things for sale in turn, we ask not what a thing is but what it costs; for a price we are dutiful, for a price undutiful, and we pursue honest things only as long as some hope remains in them, ready to cross over to the opposite if crimes promise more. [11] Our parents instilled in us admiration for gold and silver, and the greed poured into us as children settled deeper and grew along with us. Then the whole populace, divided on everything else, agrees on this: this is what they look up to, this is what they wish for their own, this is what they consecrate to the gods as the greatest of human things, when they want to seem grateful. In the end our morals have been reduced to the point where poverty is a curse and a reproach, despised by the rich, hated by the poor. [12] Then come the poets' songs, which put a torch to our passions, in which riches are praised as the one and only glory and ornament of life. The immortal gods, it seems, can neither give anything better nor possess anything better.
"The palace of the Sun stood high on towering columns,
its axle was gold, gold its pole, golden the curve
of the topmost wheel-rim, and silver the row of spokes."
In the end, whatever age they want to seem best, they call the Golden Age. [14] Nor are the Greek tragedians short of examples of men who would trade innocence, safety, and good repute for profit.
"Let me be called the worst of men, so long as I am called rich.
Everyone asks whether a man is rich, no one whether he is good.
People ask only what you have, never how or from where.
Everywhere a man is worth exactly as much as he has.
You ask what it would be shameful for us to own? Nothing.
Either let me live rich, or die poor.
Whoever dies while making a profit dies well.
Money, that vast good of the human race,
no pleasure of a mother, no pleasure of an endearing child
can equal it, nor a father sacred for his merits;
if there is anything so sweet flashing in the face of Venus,
it rightly stirs the loves of gods and men alike."
[15] When these last lines were delivered in a tragedy of Euripides, the whole audience rose as one to drive out both the actor and the poem, until Euripides himself leapt into their midst begging them to wait and see what end this admirer of gold would come to. In that play Bellerophon was paying the penalty that every man like him pays. [16] For there is no greed without its penalty, even though the greed itself is punishment enough. Oh, how many tears, how much toil it demands! How wretched it is to want what one lacks, how wretched to have gotten it! Add to this the daily anxieties that torment each man in proportion to what he owns. Money is possessed with greater torment than it is sought. How people groan over their losses, losses that are both real and made to seem larger than they are! In the end, even if fortune takes nothing away from them, whatever is not gained counts as a loss. [17] 'But people call that man happy and rich, and they want to match what he has.' I admit it. Well then? Do you think there is any condition worse than that of people who have both misery and envy? If only those who are about to wish for riches would first talk it over with the rich; if only those about to seek office would talk with the ambitious and with those who have reached the highest rank of honor! Surely they would have changed their prayers, whereas as things stand these men take up new wishes even as they have already condemned their earlier ones. For there is no one whose happiness satisfies him, even if it came to him quickly; people complain about their own plans and their own progress, and they always prefer whatever they have left behind. [18] And so this is what philosophy will give you—and I think nothing greater exists: you will never regret being yourself. Neatly woven words and smoothly flowing speech will not lead you to this happiness, so solid that no storm can shake it; let words go where they will, so long as the mind's own composure holds firm, so long as it is great and untroubled by opinion, pleased with itself for the very things that displease others, a mind that measures its progress by its life and judges that it knows just as much as it does not desire and does not fear. Farewell.