Seneca · a new plain-English translation from the Latin
(1) You demand that I write more often. Let's compare accounts: you won't be able to pay off the balance. It was agreed, in fact, that yours would come first: you would write, and I would write back. But I won't be difficult about it: I know I can trust you. So I'll give you an advance, though I won't go so far as Cicero, that most eloquent of men, tells Atticus to do — namely, to write whatever comes into his mouth even if he has nothing to say. (2) I can never lack something to write about, even leaving aside all the things that fill Cicero's letters: which candidate is struggling; who is fighting with someone else's resources and who with his own; who is standing for the consulship on Caesar's backing, who on Pompey's, who on the strength of his money-chest; how harsh a moneylender Caecilius is, from whom even his relatives can't pry a single coin at less than twelve percent. It's better to handle one's own troubles than other people's — to shake oneself out and see how many things one is a candidate for, without ever casting a vote for oneself. (3) This, my dear Lucilius, is the outstanding thing, the safe and free thing: to seek nothing, and to pass by the whole electoral assembly of fortune. How pleasant do you think it is, when the tribes have been called and the candidates hang about their little shrines, one man announcing coins for votes, another working through a go-between, another wearing out with kisses the hands of men who, once elected, will refuse to let their hand be touched — while everyone waits breathless for the herald's voice — how pleasant to stand there at leisure and simply watch that market, buying nothing and selling nothing? (4) How much greater is the joy of the man who looks on undisturbed not at the elections for a praetorship or a consulship, but at those great elections in which some seek offices renewed yearly, others permanent powers, others successful outcomes of wars and triumphs, others riches, others marriages and children, others their own safety and that of their families! What greatness of spirit it takes to seek nothing at all, to beg no one, and to say, 'I want nothing from you, Fortune; I won't put myself at your disposal. I know that with you the Catos are turned away and the Vatiniuses are made consul. I ask for nothing.' This is how you make fortune your own private property. (5) So we may write such things to each other in turn, and this subject will never be exhausted, since there are so many thousands of restless people to look around at, who, in order to get hold of something pestilential, struggle through evil toward evil and pursue things they will soon have to flee, or even come to despise. (6) For who, once he has attained it, has ever found enough in what, while he was still wanting it, seemed like too much? Prosperity is not, as people suppose, greedy — it is petty; and so it satisfies no one. You believe those heights to be lofty because you are lying far below them; but to the man who has actually reached them, they are lowly. I'm lying if he isn't still trying to climb further: what you think is the summit is only a rung on the ladder. (7) Everyone, though, is plagued by ignorance of the truth. Deceived by rumor, people are carried toward what seem like goods; then, once they've attained them, they see that these are bad, or empty, or smaller than they had hoped, and they have suffered a great deal in the process. And most people marvel, from a distance, at things that deceive them — and in the popular view, goods are measured by their size.
(8) So that this doesn't happen to us as well, let's ask what the good actually is. Its definition has varied; different people have expressed it differently. Some define it this way: 'The good is what invites the mind, what calls it to itself.' To this the objection immediately arises: what if it invites, yes, but toward ruin? You know how many bad things are alluring. But the true and the plausible are different from each other. So what is good is bound up with the true; nothing is good unless it is true. But what invites and entices toward itself is merely plausible: it creeps in, stirs, and draws one along. (9) Others have defined it this way: 'The good is what arouses the desire for itself, or what arouses the impulse of a mind reaching toward it.' And the same objection applies to this too, for many things arouse the mind's impulse which are sought to the detriment of those seeking them. Better are those who defined it this way: 'The good is what arouses the mind's impulse toward itself in accordance with nature, and is only then to be sought once it has begun to be worth seeking.' Now it is also honorable — for this is what is perfectly worth seeking. (10) The subject itself prompts me to say what the difference is between the good and the honorable. They have something mixed together and inseparable: nothing can be good unless it has some honor in it, and whatever is honorable is certainly good. What, then, is the difference between the two? The honorable is the perfect good, by which a happy life is completed, and by contact with which other things too become good. (11) What I mean is this: there are certain things that are neither good nor bad — such as military service, an embassy, a judgeship. When these are administered honorably, they begin to be good, and pass from being uncertain into being good. The good comes into being through association with the honorable; the honorable is good in itself. The good flows from the honorable; the honorable stems from itself. What is good could have been bad; what is honorable could not have failed to be good.
(12) Some have offered this definition: 'The good is what is in accordance with nature.' Pay attention to what I'm about to say: what is good is in accordance with nature; but it doesn't follow that whatever is in accordance with nature is also good. Many things are indeed in agreement with nature, but they are so trivial that the name of 'good' doesn't suit them; they are slight, contemptible. But no good, however small, is contemptible; for as long as it is trifling, it isn't good — once it has begun to be good, it is no longer trifling. How, then, is the good recognized? If it is perfectly in accordance with nature. (13) 'You admit,' you say, 'that the good is in accordance with nature — that this is its defining property. You also admit that other things are indeed in accordance with nature but are not good. How, then, is the one good while the other is not, when the trait each shares in common, being in accordance with nature, is the very same?'
(14) Simply by its magnitude, of course. And there's nothing new in this — that certain things change by growing. A child was once an infant; he becomes a youth: his defining trait changes, for the one is irrational, the other rational. Some things, through growth, don't merely become greater but become something else. (15) 'What becomes greater,' you say, 'doesn't become something else. It makes no difference whether you fill a flask or a cask with wine: in either case the property is wine. And a small weight of honey and a large one don't differ in taste.' You're giving mismatched examples: in those cases the quality stays the same; however much it increases, it remains what it was. (16) But some things, when magnified, persist within their own kind and their own defining property; others, after many increments, are finally transformed by the last addition, which stamps upon them a new and different condition from the one they were in. A single stone makes an arch — the one that wedges the leaning sides and, by its interposition, binds them together. Why does the final addition accomplish so much, even though it's a small one? Because it doesn't merely enlarge — it completes. (17) Some things, in the course of a process, shed their earlier form and pass into a new one. When the mind has extended something for a long time and, wearied from tracking its magnitude, has begun to call it infinite — that has become something quite different from what it was when it merely seemed large but finite. In the same way, we once thought some things were hard to cut; as this difficulty kept increasing, we finally found something that couldn't be cut at all. So we proceeded from what moved only with difficulty and effort to what is immovable. By the same reasoning, something was once merely in accordance with nature: its own magnitude transferred it into a different property and made it good. Farewell.