Seneca · a new plain-English translation from the Latin
Worn out by a journey more uncomfortable than long, I reached my place at Alba late in the night: I find nothing prepared — except myself. So I lay my weariness down on my little bed and take this delay of cook and baker in good part. For I am talking with myself about exactly this: how nothing is heavy if you take it up lightly, how nothing deserves anger so long as you don't pile anger of your own on top of it. My baker has no bread; but the farm manager has some, the steward has some, the tenant has some. 'Bad bread,' you say. Wait: it will turn good; hunger will make even that loaf soft and fine-wheaten for you. That is why one should not eat before hunger gives the order. So I will wait, and not eat until I either start having good bread or stop being fussy about bad. It is essential to get used to little: many obstacles of place and circumstance will crop up even for the rich and well-equipped and block what they want. No one can have whatever he wants; what anyone can do is this — not want what he doesn't have, and use cheerfully whatever is put before him. A well-mannered stomach, one that can take a snub, is a great part of freedom. There is no reckoning the pleasure I take in the fact that my weariness is settling down by itself: no masseurs, no bath, no other remedy do I ask for except time. What toil has brought on, rest removes. This dinner, whatever it turns out to be, will be pleasanter than an inaugural banquet. For I have taken a sudden test of my mind, and this kind is more candid and more true. When a mind has prepared itself and ordered itself in advance to be patient, it is not so clear how much genuine firmness it has; the most certain evidence is what it produces unrehearsed, on the instant — if it has looked at annoyances not merely with equanimity but with serenity; if it has not flared up or picked a quarrel; if it has made up for what ought to have been provided by not missing it, and has reflected that something may be lacking to its habits, but nothing to itself.
How many things are superfluous we never understood until they began to run out; we had been using them not from any need, but simply because they were there. And how much we acquire simply because others have acquired it, because most people have it! Among the causes of our troubles is this: we live by other people's examples; we are not arranged by reason but carried off by custom. If only a few did a thing, we would refuse to copy it; once many take it up, we follow — as if a practice were more honorable for being more frequent — and error, once it has become public, holds the place of right among us. Everyone now travels with Numidian cavalry galloping in advance and a file of runners leading the way: it is a disgrace to have no one to shove oncomers off the road, no great cloud of dust to announce that a gentleman is on his way. Everyone now has mules to carry his crystal and his murrine ware and the pieces chased by the hands of great craftsmen: it is a disgrace to look as though your baggage were the kind that could be jolted without risk. Everyone's train of pages rides with faces smeared with cream, lest sun or cold injure their tender skin: it is a disgrace if there is a single boy in your entourage whose healthy face needs no cosmetic.
The conversation of all such people is to be avoided: these are the men who hand vices around, who carry them from one place to another. We used to think the worst class of men were the carriers of gossip; but there are men who carry vices. Their talk does great harm; even when it doesn't take effect at once, it leaves seeds in the mind, and it follows us even after we have left their company — an evil that will spring up again later. Just as people who have heard a concert carry off in their ears the melody and the sweetness of the singing, which gets in the way of their thinking and won't let them concentrate on serious things, so the talk of flatterers and praisers of vice sticks long after it is heard. It is not easy to shake a sweet sound out of the mind: it follows along, it persists, it comes back at intervals. Therefore the ears must be shut to harmful voices, and to the very first of them; once such talk has made a beginning and been let in, it grows bolder. From there it comes to speeches like this: 'Virtue and philosophy and justice are the rattle of empty words. The one happiness is to do well by your life. To eat, to drink, to enjoy the estate — that is living; that is remembering you are mortal. The days flow past, and life runs down its course beyond recall. Do we hesitate? What good is it to be wise — to force frugality on a time of life that won't always be able to take its pleasures, in the meantime, while it can, while it demands them? Outrun death, and whatever death is going to carry off, spend on yourself here and now. You keep no mistress, no boy to stir the mistress's jealousy; you appear in public sober, day after day; you dine as though you had to show your day-book to your father for approval: that isn't living — that's attending someone else's life. What lunacy, to manage your heir's affairs and deny yourself everything, so that a big inheritance turns your friend into your enemy — for the more he stands to receive, the more he will rejoice at your death. As for those grim, beetle-browed censors of other men's lives and enemies of their own, those self-appointed tutors of the public — don't rate them at a penny, and never hesitate to prefer a good life to a good reputation.' Voices like these must be fled no less than the ones Ulysses would not sail past until he was bound fast to his ship. Their power is the same: such voices lead a man away from country, from parents, from friends, from the virtues, and mock him with a life that is wretched unless it is shameful. How much better to follow the straight path and bring yourself to the point where only what is honorable is pleasant to you! And we will be able to reach that point if we know there are two classes of things that either draw us on or drive us back. What draws us on: wealth, pleasures, beauty, ambition, and everything else that flatters and smiles. What drives us back: toil, death, pain, disgrace, plainer living. We ought therefore to train ourselves not to fear the second class and not to crave the first. Let us fight the opposite way: retreat from what beckons, and charge at what attacks.
Don't you see how different the posture of men going downhill is from that of men climbing? Those moving down a slope lean their bodies back; those moving up a steep grade lean into it. To throw your weight forward when descending, Lucilius, and to pull it backward when climbing, is to take the side of the fault. The way to pleasures is downhill; the rough and the hard must be climbed: here let us drive our bodies forward, there rein them in. Do you suppose I am saying now that only those men are ruinous to our ears who praise pleasure and instill the fear of pain — a thing frightening enough in itself? I hold that those men also harm us who urge us to vice under cover of the Stoic school. This is their boast: that only the wise and educated man is a lover. 'He alone is suited to this art; the wise man is likewise the greatest expert at drinking together and dining together. Let us inquire up to what age young men are lovable.' Let all that be handed over to Greek custom; let us turn our ears instead to this: 'No one is good by accident: virtue has to be learned. Pleasure is a low, paltry thing, to be held at no value, shared with the dumb animals — the tiniest, most despicable creatures fly to it. Glory is empty, fluttering, more restless than a breeze. Poverty is an evil to no one except the man who fights against it. Death is not an evil: you ask what it is? The one law of the human race that plays fair. Superstition is a lunatic error: it fears those it should love; those it worships, it wrongs. For what difference is there between denying the gods and defaming them?' These things must be learned — no, learned by heart. Philosophy has no business supplying vice with excuses. A sick man has no hope of recovery when his doctor prescribes him excess. Farewell.