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Radical phenomenology essays in honor of Martin
Heidegger 1st Edition John Sallis Digital Instant
Download
Author(s): John Sallis
ISBN(s): 9780391009288, 0391009281
Edition: 1
File Details: PDF, 16.88 MB
Year: 1978
Language: english
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 RADICAL PHENOMENOLOGY

Essays in Honor of Martin Heidegger

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 Radical Phenomenology

ESSAYS IN HONOR OF MARTIN HEIDEGGER

edited by
John Sallis

HUMANITIES PRESS
ATLANTIC HIGHLANDS, N.J.
 193.3
HYOR

©Copyright 1978 by Humanities Press, Inc.

ISBN 0-391-00928-1

Reprinted from RESEARCH IN PHENOMENOLOGY 1977 Volume 7. Published

in book form in the United States of America by Humanities Press, Inc. with
permission of the editors.

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Main entry under title:

Radical phenomenology.

Reprinted from v. 7 of Research in phenomenology.

1. Heidegger, Martin, 1889-1976--Addresses,
essays, lectures. 2. Phenomenology--Addresses,
essays, lectures. I. Heidegger, Martin, 1889-
1976. lis. Saiiie, Jong. 1950— TII. Research
in phenomenology.
B3279.H49IR29 194 78-12763
ISBN 0-391-00925-1

71823d '
 CONTENTS

_ Martin Heidegger. Neuzeitliche Naturwissenschaft und Moderne Technik. 1

J.L. Mehta. Finding Heidegger. 5
Werner Marx. Thought and Issue in Heidegger. 12
Otto Poggeler. Zum Tode Martin Heideggers. 31
John Sallis. The Origins of Heidegger’s Thought. 43
Jacques Taminiaux. Heidegger and Husserl’s Logical Investigations. 58
John D. Caputo. The Question of Being and Transcendental Phenomenology:
Reflections on Heidegger's Relationship to Husserl. 84
Joseph J. Kockelmans. Destructive Retrieve and Hermeneutic
Phenomenology in Being and Time. 106
Karsten Harries. Death and Utopia: Towards a Critique of the Ethics of
Satisfaction. 138
Joan Stambaugh. An Inquiry into Authenticity and Inauthenticity in Beng
and Time. 153
Theodore Kzszel. Heidegger and the New Images of Science. 162
Manfred Frings. Nothingness and Being: A Schelerian Comment. 182
Parvis Emad. Heidegger’s Value-Criticism and Its Bearing on the
Phenomenology of Values. 190
Hugh J. Silverman. Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty: Interpreting Hegel. 209
André Schuwer. Nature and the Holy: On Heidegger's Interpretation of
Hélderlin’s Hymn “Wie wenn am Feiertage.” 225
David Krell. Schlag der Liebe, Schlag des Todes: On a Theme in Heidegger
and Trakl. 238
Michael E. Zimmerman. Some Important Themes in Current Heidegger
Research. | 259
Kenneth Maly. To Reawaken the Matter of Being: The New Edition of Sein
und Zett. 282
Thomas Sheehan. Getting to the Topic: The New Edition of Wegmarken. 299
Notes on Contributors. 317
In Memoriam: Martin Heidegger (1889-1976)

On May 26, 1976, Martin Heidegger died in Freiburg.

H6lderlin’s words at the end of his elegy “Heimkunft” are fitting:

“Wenn wir seegnen das Mahl, wen darf ich nennen und wenn wir
Ruhn vom Leben des Tags, saget, wie bring’ ich den Dank?
Nenn’ ich den Hohen dabei? Unschikliches liebet ein Gott nicht,
Ihn zu fassen, ist fast unsere Freude zu klein.
Schweigen miissen wir oft; es fehlen heilige Namen,
Herzen schlagen und doch bleibet die Rede zuriik?
Aber ein Saitenspiel leiht jeder Stunde die Tone,
Und erfreuet vieleicht Himmlische, welche sich nahn.
Das bereitet und so ist auch beinahe die Sorge
Schon befriediget, die unter das Freudige kam.
Sorgen, wie diese, mu8, gern oder nicht, in der Seele
Tragen ein Sanger und oft, aber die anderen nicht.”
NEUZEITLICHE NATURWISSENSCHAFT
UND MODERNE TECHNIK

MARTIN HEIDEGGER

Editorial Note

This text was addressed to the participants in the tenth annual

meeting of the Heidegger Conference, which was held at DePaul
University in Chicago. The meeting took place only two weeks before
Heidegger’s death, and this text is reported to have been the last
composed by him.

GruBwort

an die Teilnehmer des zehnten Colloquiums

vom 14. - 16. Mai 1976 in Chicago
Denkende griiBen einander, indem sie sich gegenseitig Fragen stellen.
Die Frage, mit der ich Sie grtiBe, ist die einzige, die ich bis zu dieser
Stunde immer fragender zu fragen versuche. Man kennt sie unter dem
Titel “die Seinsfrage.”
Sie kann fur uns zunachst nur auf dem Wege einer Erorterung der
abendlandisch-europaischen Metaphysik gefragt werden und zwar im
Hinblick auf die in dieser vom Anfang her waltende Seinsvergessenheit.
Im metaphysischen Fragen nach dem Sein des Seienden verbirgt sich
das Sein selbst hinsichtlich seiner Eigentumlichkeit und Ortschaft.
Dieses Sichverbergen des Seins ist in den einzelnen Epochen
verschieden (vgl. Holzwege, Der Spruch des Anaximander, S. 296 ff.).
Die Seinsvergessenheit ist im Zeitalter der technologisch gepragten
Weltzivilisation fiir das Fragen der Seinsfrage in einer besonderen
Weise bedrangend. Aus der Vielfalt der hier notigen Fragen sei die
folgende genannt:
Z Martin Heidegger

Ist die neuzeitliche Naturwissenschaft -- wie man meint -- die

Grundlage der modernen Technologie oder ist sie ihrerseits
schon die Grundform des technologischen Denkens, der
bestimmende Vorgriff und der standige Eingriff des
technologischen Vorstellens in die ausfihrende und
einrichtende Machenschaft der modernen Technik?

Deren beschleunigt sich steigerende “Efficienz”’ treibt die

Seinsvergessenheit ins AuBerste und lat so die Seinsfrage als
belanglos und uberflissig erscheinen.
Sie werden diese Frage nach dem Verhaltnis der neuzeitlichen
Naturwissenschaft zur modernen Technik in den wenigen Tagen des
Colloquiums nicht beantworten, vermutlich nicht einmal zureichend
stellen konnen.
Aber es ware schon genug und forderlich, wenn jeder der Teilnehmer
dieser Frage auf seine Weise eine Beachtung schenkte und sie als
Anregung fur seinen Arbeitsbereich aufnahme.
So konnte die Seinsfrage bedrangender und erfahrbar werden als das,
was sie in Wahrheit ist:

Das Vermachtnis aus dem Anfang der Geschichte des Seins,

das in ihm und fur ihn notwendig noch ungedacht geblieben
ist-- die “AA7Oeva als solche-- in ihrer Eigentiimlichkeit zu
denken und dadurch die Moglichkeit eines gewandelten
Weltaufenthalts des Menschen vorzubereiten.

Martin Heidegger

Freiburg i. Br.
am 11. April 1976
Martin Heidegger , 3

MODERN NATURAL SCIENCE

AND TECHNOLOGY

Greetings
to the participants in the tenth colloquium
May 14 - 16, 1976, in Chicago
Thoughtful men exchange greetings by posing questions to one
another. The question with which I send my greetings to you is that
single question which I have persistently tried to ask in a more
questioning manner. It is known as “the question of Being.”
We can first ask this question only by way of a discussion of
Occidental-European metaphysics, specifically, in reference to the
forgottenness of Being that has prevailed therein from the beginning. In
metaphysical questioning about the Being of beings, Being conceals
itself as regards what is proper to it and as regards its place.
This self-concealing of Being is different in the various particular
epochs (cf. Holzwege, “Der Spruch des Anaximander,” p. 296 ff.).
In the age of a world civilization stamped by technology,
forgottenness of Being is oppressive in a special way for the asking of the
question of Being. From the many questions that are necessary in this
regard, the following may be mentioned:

Is modern natural science the foundation of modern

technology -- as is supposed -- or is it, for its part, already the
basic form of technological thinking, the determining fore-
conception and incessant incursion of technological
representation into the realized and organized machinations
of modern technology?

The rapidly increasing efficiency of these drives the forgottenness of

Being to the extreme and thus makes the question of Being appear
irrelevant and superfluous.
During the few days of the colloquium you will not be able to answer,
nor probably even to pose adequately, this question of the relation of
modern natural science to modern technology.
 Martin Heidegger

But it would be sufficient and beneficial if each participant would

devote his attention to this question in his own way and take it up as an
intimation for his own field.
In this way the question of Being could become more compelling and
could be experienced as what it in truth is:

To think properly the legacy which derives from the

beginning of the history of Being and which remained
necessarily unthought in and for that beginning --
"AdnOeva as such -- and thereby to prepare the possibility
of a transformed abode of man in the world.

Martin Heidegger
Freiburg i. Br.
April 11, 1976
Finding Heidegger

J.L. MEHTA
Harvard University

“Nachdem Du mich entdeckt hast,

war es kein Kunststuck, mich zu
finden: die Schwierigkeit is jetzt die,
mich zu verlieren.....”
-- Nietzsche

Nobody told me about Heidegger. Not when I was a student at

Banaras, back in the early thirties, nor during the following decade,
when I was trying to find my way as a teacher. Nobody knew, it seems,
about Heidegger. While I was a student, the British Idealists, Bergson,
James and above all Freud and Jung, filled my intellectual horizon; as a
teacher, it was the main stream of OxfordCambridge Positivism and
Analytical philosophy that compelled attention. Husserl’s deen J had
appeared in English translation and there was rumor of something
called Phenomenology. But nobody told me of Heidegger, until Iread,
around 1950, Werner Brock’s Existence and Being, simultaneously with
my discovery of Karl Jaspers as a philosopher after my own heart. Soon
afterwards, I had the good fortune of being able to read with an,
Austrian colleague at Banaras the complete 1949 text of Was Ist
Metaphysik?, which was something of a eureka experience for me. Now
that Heidegger was discovered, it was no trick to find him. Only, it took
a little over ten years to do so, and a year’s stay in Germany and, above
all, one year’s concentrated effort to sum up my understanding of his
work in English. By 1967, when this was published in book form, I had
found “my” Heidegger, the Heidegger of a lone Indian, all by myself.
“Finding” Heidegger, I was to learn too well in subsequent years,

5
6 ‘ J. L. Mehta

could never be a once-for-all affair. Nevertheless, the need for “losing”

him, after that preliminary finding, was apparent to me. I proceeded to
do so by immersing myself in the writings of Hans-Georg Gadamer.
But, as Heidegger said in connection with Nietzsche, “And this, to lose,
is harder than to find; because ‘to lose’ in such a case does not just mean
to drop something, leave it behind, abandon it. ‘To lose’ here means to
make ourselves truly free of that which Nietzsche’s thinking has
thought. And that can be done only in this way, that we, on our own
accord and in our memory, set Nietzsche’s thought free into the freedom
of its own essential substance — and so leave it at that place where it by
its nature belongs. Nietzsche knew of these relations of discovery,
finding, and losing.”! Heidegger’s own life-work was a long-drawn-out
exercise in finding and then losing what has been thought by Nietzsche
and by the other great western thinkers. He has sought thus to arrive at
the source of all that still remains to be found in past thought, and to
have a glimpse of what is unlosable in it, the un-thought in these
thinkers, after finding and losing that which has been thought by them.
How, then, to lose Heidegger, how “dieses Gedachte in das Freie seines
eigenen Wesensgehaltes freigeben und es dadurch an dem Ort lassen, an
den es von sich aus gehort’”) What is this “place” where it by its nature
belongs? Is it perhaps the place where the Land of Evening, the West, is
preparing a thinking which may one day transform it into the land of a
new morning?? I have been trying hard all these years, but I have not yet
found my way to losing Heidegger, for that can happen only when the
unthought in all that he has thought emerges into view, someday. What
he has thought will, meanwhile, remain for a long time to be “found”,
even after his entire Nachlass has seen the light of day.
It is one thing for a European to find a Nietzsche and for western
philosophers to find Heidegger. But how does an Asiatic “find”
Heidegger, and how does he set about “losing” him? It is not without .
significance that the Festvortrag at Heidegger’s eighteeth birthday
celebration in Messkirch was given by Koichi Tsujimura, a Japanese
philosopher, or that The Eastern Buddhist published in 1966 two of
Heidegger’s less known addresses, with a long foreward by Tsujimura’s
teacher, Keiji Nishitani. As one can see from Heidegger’s “A Dialogue
on Language,” other Japanese professors, approaching Heidegger from
their Zen Buddhist tradition, had also begun to “find” him long before

'What is Called Thinking?,p. 52.

See Erlauterungen zu Hélderlins Dichtung (4th ed.), p. 177.
 Finding Heidegger , iH

that and one can perhaps understand why they all found it easier than
most western scholars to find Heidegger and to begin to lose him. There
- are Chinese scholars who have found their way to Heidegger via
Taoism, and I know at least one Iranian philosopher who is very much
taken by Heidegger. In each case, this finding-and-losing seems to have
been prompted by the urge to be carried to the “place” of Heidegger’s
thinking and, “leaving it at that place where it properly belongs,” to
come back to one’s own tradition, seeking for its proper “place,” and to
respond creatively to the call that emanates from it. Heidegger’s
thinking is seen in the East, in Tsujimura’s words, as “ein Sich-
Erblicken des ‘eigenen’ des abendlandischen Menschentums und seiner
‘Welt,”3 and therefore also a disclosure of this “ownmost” essence of the
West to non-western man, calling upon him to go back and retrieve the
forgotten foundations of his own spiritual tradition. In the Japanese
case, the Europeanization has been more deliberate, thorough and
rapid than elsewhere in Asia and in consequence the Wesensnot,‘ as
Tsujimura calls it, is more acute and is explicitly experienced as such.
The finding and the losing of Heidegger have therefore taken on there
an urgency and intensity not found elsewhere in the East. The Far East
is the polar opposite of the Greek and the European, and different from
the Asia of the Greeks, that Asia against which and in overcoming
which they defined their own identity. Hence the mutual reaching out to
each other by Heidegger and Far Eastern thinkers.
India opened itself to the West around 1800, but hesitantly and with
reservations, mainly to the English speaking West and without
breaking, or wanting to break, with its past. Modernization without
-westernization, festina lente, has been the Indian way since Rammohun -
Roy. The main reason for this is its “large and daunting literate past,”5a
massive heritage, still waiting to be freely appropriated, and the
Sanskrit language, which continues to nourish its present. From this
“house of Being,” India cannot, would not want to, be banished.
Further, its very closeness to the West, linguistically (the IndoEuropean
family of languages) and in its rich and variegated tradition of
discursive thought (the Indian philosophical systems), compel it to
resist westernization. And its refusal to reject its religious and spiritual
heritage (that same heritage which has continued to fascinate western

3Ansprachen zum 80. Geburtstag, p. 14.

4Ibid., p. 12.
5J.D.M. Derrett in The Journal of Asian Studies, 35, 4 (1976), p. 597.
8 J. L. Mehta
‘

scholars and poets for the last two hundred years and does so, more
than ever, today), enables it to withstand, in considerable measure, the
secularization and “disenchantment of the world,” which have become
synonymous with modernity in the West. The “Wesensnot,” in the
Indian case, has therefore less of urgency in it, and is of a more diffuse
character than in Japan or in the West itself. From the purely
philosophical point of view, and admitting that “philosophy” is
essentially a Greek-western phenomenon, Indian thought too begins
with a concern with being and Non-Being and with a demythologization
of sorts. But the “inner logic” that has determined its course has been
uniquely Indian, and such that in the very process of being overtaken by
and caught up in a history that, philosophically and religiously,
originates in the West, it began to recover its own historical past. India
cannot identify its perception of itself with the way the Weltgeschick is
seen from Heidegger’s window, for that, would be to accept the
ineluctability of “the Europeanization of the earth,”¢ and to ignore the
possibility that while taking over western technology, the non-western
world may not be related to its “essence” in the same manner in which
that essence touches western man in his very core, that it may come
more naturally to non-western man to say ‘yes’ and ‘no‘ at the same time
to technology.’
Nietzsche says somewhere that it was time the West tied the Gordian
knot again, regained its Greek integrity and dispelled the magic of the
East. Heidegger seems to have taken this to heart in his attempt to think
the Greek “more Greekly,”’ transcend the Greek through the Greek,
and so to find a new way out of the destiny of Nihilism that emerged out
of the Greek beginning. This is reflected in his remark in the Spiegel
interview:

It is my conviction that a reversal can be prepared only in

the same place in the world where the modern technological
world originated and that it cannot happen through the
acceptance of Zen-Buddhism or any other Eastern
experiences of the world. There is need for a rethinking
which is to be carried out with the help of the European
tradition and of a new appropriation of that tradition.

6See On the Way to Language, pp. 15-16.

7Discourse on Thinking, p. 54.
8On the Way to Language, p. 39.
Finding Heidegger : 9

Thinking itself can be transformed only by a thinking which

has the same origin and calling. (It is exactly at the same
place where the technological world originated, that it must)
be transcended (aufgehoben) in the Hegelian sense, not
pushed aside, but transcended....9

As recommending an action of penitential un-doing and as pointing

the way to a new birth to philosophia, this is indeed a splendid
prescription. But what is the relevance of Heidegger’s “preparatory
thinking” to thinking men rooted in other traditions, beyond warning
them (as Heidegger explicitly does in the “Dialogueon Language”)
against - hasty, thoughtless adoption of western philosophical
“concepts”?! Heidegger can certainly help us to glimpse the “unthought
essence” of technology and so to free ourselves from the magic web of
that “philosophy” which, in its ending, has entered into the social
sciences. But what is its relevance in the Indian case specially, where the
credentials of conceptual thought have been subjected to a thousand
years of incessant questioning? Must non-western man go through the
travail of deconstructing the history of “metaphysical” thinking before
he can find himself in a free relationship to the technical world? That
such mediation is not a desideratum seems to be admitted by Heidegger
when he asks in the same interview, “And who of us can assert that
someday in Russia and China the ancient traditions of a ‘thought’ will
not awaken which will help make possible for man a free relationship to
the technical world?”!! Other traditions of the East, too, have these
resources available to them in varying degrees; they are traditions,
largely, of religious thinking, a thinking in which “the matter of
thinking” does not receive its determination through its separation from
the concern of faith (Glaube), or from the mythical roots of religion, as
still with Heidegger. Nevertheless, for an Asiatic, the fascinating thing
afoot in Heidegger’s work is the appropriation of the religious into the
enterprise of “pure” thinking, the preparing for the dawning of the Holy
and the return of God and the gods. It is not only that the end of
philosophy marks the emergence of a new “thinking,” but that this
thinking itself takes on the character of devotion (Andacht), of

9 Philosophy Today (Winter, 1976), p. 281. Here and in note 11, the translation has been
slightly modified.
10See On the Way to Language, pp. 2-3.
'' Philosophy Today (Winter, 1976), p. 281.
10 J. L. Mehta
‘

thanking and of response to a call that comes to man from beyond

himself.
The greatness of the beginning of western philosophy, Heidegger has
said, “derives from the fact that it successfully faced the challenge of
overcoming, that is, bringing within the framework of a truth of Being,
what is its diametrical opposite, “the mythical in general and the Asiatic
in particular,”!2 though in doing so it generated the metaphysical
tradition of which Nihilism has constituted the “inner logic.”!3 The new
beginning of a no-longer-metaphysical thinking adumbrated by
Heidegger does not see the mythic and the Asiatic as adversaries to be
“overcome,” though still as “other” to it. This makes it possible for the
East, too, to accept the West in its otherness, without being swallowed
up by the history that has emanated from it, and to appropriate western
technology without being caught up in its “essence.” The
“transformation of history”!4 and the emergence of a “planetary
thinking,” !5 have been persuasively exhibited to be possible and needful
by Heidegger. Meanwhile, since the Romantic movement in Europe,
and with greater acceleration since the second world war, the Asia
repressed within the western mind, “overcome” as image but never fully
encountered and assimilated by the Greeks, has been emerging to the
surface and is being recognized and appropriated as a reality
complementary to it. The “Europeanization of the earth” is only one
aspect of what is going on today, only one aspect of “the hidden
necessity of history.”!6 In his very attempt to prepare for the emergence
of an Abendland that might for once become the land of a new morning,
Heidegger shows to the East that, given an equally passionate concern
there for the free recovery of its own traditions, the sun may yet
continue to rise in the East.
That “man’s ecstatic sojourn in the openness of presencing is turned
only toward what is present and the existent presenting of what is
present,” !7 that “A liberation of man from what I called ‘fallenness
amidst beings (die Verfallenheit an das Seiende) ”'® is possible, and that
there is a truth, “above and beyond the Greek,”!?more primordial than

'28chelling, p. 175.
'3Nietzsche IT, p. 278.
'4See Schelling, p. 175.
'5The Question of Being, p. 107.
16Schelling, p. 175.
'70n Time and Being, p. 71.
'8Philosophy Today (Winter, 1976), p. 278.
Other documents randomly have
different content
without contemplation. “It makes,” you say, “all the difference in the
world, whether a thing is one’s main object in life, or whether it be
merely an appendage to some other object.” I admit that the
difference is considerable, nevertheless the one does not exist apart
from the other: the one man cannot live in contemplation without
action, nor can the other act without contemplation: and even the
third, of whom we all agree in having a bad opinion, does not
approve of passive pleasure, but of that which he establishes for
himself by means of reason: even this pleasure-seeking sect itself,
therefore, practises action also. Of course it does, since Epicurus
himself says that at times he would abandon pleasure and actually
seek for pain, if he became likely to be surfeited with pleasure, or if
he thought that by enduring a slight pain he might avoid a greater
one. With what purpose do I state this? To prove that all men are
fond of contemplation. Some make it the object of their lives: to us
it is an anchorage, but not a harbour.

VIII. Add to this that, according to the doctrine of Chrysippus, a man

may live at leisure: I do not say that he ought to endure leisure, but
that he ought to choose it. Our Stoics say that the wise man would
not take part in the government of any state. What difference does it
make by what path the wise man arrives at leisure, whether it be
because the state is wanting to him, or he is wanting to the state? If
the state is to be wanting to all wise men (and it always will be
found wanting by refined thinkers), I ask you, to what state should
the wise man betake himself; to that of the Athenians, in which
Socrates is condemned to death, and from which Aristotle goes into
exile lest he should be condemned to death? where virtues are
borne down by jealousy? You will tell me that no wise man would
join such a state. Shall then the wise man go to the commonwealth
of the Carthaginians, where faction never ceases to rage, and liberty
is the foe of all the best men, where justice and goodness are held
of no account, where enemies are treated with inhuman cruelty and
natives are treated like enemies: he will flee from this state also. If I
were to discuss each one separately, I should not be able to find one
which the wise man could endure, or which could endure the wise
man. Now if such a state as we have dreamed of cannot be found
on earth, it follows that leisure is necessary for every one, because
the one thing which might be preferred to leisure is nowhere to be
found. If any one says that to sail is the best of things, and then
says that we ought not to sail in a sea in which shipwrecks were
common occurrences, and where sudden storms often arise which
drive the pilot back from his course, I should imagine that this man,
while speaking in praise of sailing, was really forbidding me to
unmoor my ship . . . .

[1] Virg. “Aen.” ix. 612. Compare Sir Walter Scott, “Lay of the Last Minstrel,” canto
iv.:—

“And still, in age, he spurned at rest,

And still his brows the helmet pressed.
Albeit the blanched locks below
Were white as Dinlay’s spotless snow,” &c.
 THE NINTH BOOK OF THE DIALOGUES
OF L. ANNAEUS SENECA,
ADDRESSED TO SERENUS.
OF PEACE OF MIND.

I. [Serenus.]

When I examine myself, Seneca, some vices appear on the surface,

and so that I can lay my hands upon them, while others are less
distinct and harder to reach, and some are not always present, but
recur at intervals: and these I should call the most troublesome,
being like a roving enemy that assails one when he sees his
opportunity, and who will neither let one stand on one’s guard as in
war, nor yet take one’s rest without fear as in peace. The position in
which I find myself more especially (for why should I not tell you the
truth as I would to a physician), is that of neither being thoroughly
set free from the vices which I fear and hate, nor yet quite in
bondage to them: my state of mind, though not the worst possible,
is a particularly discontented and sulky one: I am neither ill nor well,
It is of no use for you to tell me that all virtues are weakly at the
outset, and that they acquire strength and solidity by time, for I am
well aware that even those which do but help our outward show,
such as grandeur, a reputation for eloquence, and everything that
appeals to others, gain power by time. Both those which afford us
real strength and those which do but trick us out in a more attractive
form, require long years before they gradually are adapted to us by
time. But I fear that custom, which confirms most things, implants
this vice more and more deeply in me. Long acquaintance with both
good and bad people leads one to esteem them all alike. What this
state of weakness really is, when the mind halts between two
opinions without any strong inclination towards either good or evil, I
shall be better able to show you piecemeal than all at once. I will tell
you what befalls me, you must find out the name of the disease. I
have to confess the greatest possible love of thrift: I do not care for
a bed with gorgeous hangings, nor for clothes brought out of a
chest, or pressed under weights and made glossy by frequent
manglings, but for common and cheap ones, that require no care
either to keep them or to put them on. For food I do not want what
needs whole troops of servants to prepare it and admire it, nor what
is ordered many days before and served up by many hands, but
something handy and easily come at, with nothing far-fetched or
costly about it, to be had in every part of the world, burdensome
neither to one’s fortune nor one’s body, not likely to go out of the
body by the same path by which it came in. I like[1] a rough and
unpolished homebred servant, I like my servant born in my house: I
like my country-bred father’s heavy silver plate stamped with no
maker’s name: I do not want a table that is beauteous with dappled
spots, or known to all the town by the number of fashionable people
to whom it has successively belonged, but one which stands merely
for use, and which causes no guest’s eye to dwell upon it with
pleasure or to kindle at it with envy. While I am well satisfied with
this, I am reminded of the clothes of a certain schoolboy, dressed
with no ordinary care and splendour, of slaves bedecked with gold
and a whole regiment of glittering attendants. I think of houses too,
where one treads on precious stones, and where valuables lie about
in every corner, where the very roof is brilliantly painted, and a
whole nation attends and accompanies an inheritance on the road to
ruin. What shall I say of waters, transparent to the very bottom,
which flow round the guests, and banquets worthy of the theatre in
which they take place? Coming as I do from a long course of dull
thrift, I find myself surrounded by the most brilliant luxury, which
echoes around me on every side: my sight becomes a little dazzled
by it: I can lift up my heart against it more easily than my eyes.
When I return from seeing it I am a sadder, though not a worse
man, I cannot walk amid my own paltry possessions with so lofty a
step as before, and silently there steals over me a feeling of
vexation, and a doubt whether that way of life may not be better
than mine. None of these things alter my principles, yet all of them
disturb me. At one time I would obey the maxims of our school and
plunge into public life, I would obtain office and become consul, not
because the purple robe and lictor’s axes attract me, but in order
that I may be able to be of use to my friends, my relatives, to all my
countrymen, and indeed to all mankind. Ready and determined, I
follow the advice of Zeno, Cleanthes, and Chrysippus, all of whom
bid one take part in public affairs, though none of them ever did so
himself: and then, as soon as something disturbs my mind, which is
not used to receiving shocks, as soon as something occurs which is
either disgraceful, such as often occurs in all men’s lives, or which
does not proceed quite easily, or when subjects of very little
importance require me to devote a great deal of time to them, I go
back to my life of leisure, and, just as even tired cattle go faster
when they are going home, I wish to retire and pass my life within
the walls of my house. “No one,” I say, “that will give me no
compensation worth such a loss shall ever rob me of a day. Let my
mind be contained within itself and improve itself: let it take no part
with other men’s affairs, and do nothing which depends on the
approval of others: let me enjoy a tranquillity undisturbed by either
public or private troubles.” But whenever my spirit is roused by
reading some brave words, or some noble example spurs me into
action, I want to rush into the law courts, to place my voice at one
man’s disposal, my services at another’s, and to try to help him even
though I may not succeed, or to quell the pride of some lawyer who
is puffed up by ill-deserved success: but I think, by Hercules, that in
philosophical speculation it is better to view things as they are, and
to speak of them on their own account, and as for words, to trust to
things for them, and to let one’s speech simply follow whither they
lead. “Why do you want to construct a fabric that will endure for
ages? Do you not wish to do this in order that posterity may talk of
you: yet you were born to die, and a silent death is the least
wretched. Write something therefore in a simple style, merely to
pass the time, for your own use, and not for publication. Less labour
is needed when one does not look beyond the present.” Then again,
when the mind is elevated by the greatness of its thoughts, it
becomes ostentatious in its use of words, the loftier its aspirations,
the more loftily it desires to express them, and its speech rises to
the dignity of its subject. At such times I forget my mild and
moderate determination and soar higher than is my wont, using a
language that is not my own. Not to multiply examples, I am in all
things attended by this weakness of a well-meaning mind, to whose
level I fear that I shall be gradually brought down, or, what is even
more worrying, that I may always hang as though about to fall, and
that there may be more the matter with me than I myself perceive:
for we take a friendly view of our own private affairs, and partiality
always obscures our judgment. I fancy that many men would have
arrived at wisdom had they not believed themselves to have arrived
there already, had they not purposely deceived themselves as to
some parts of their character, and passed by others with their eyes
shut: for you have no grounds for supposing that other people’s
flattery is more ruinous to us than our own. Who dares to tell
himself the truth? Who is there, by however large a troop of
caressing courtiers he may be surrounded, who in spite of them is
not his own greatest flatterer? I beg you, therefore, if you have any
remedy by which you could stop this vacillation of mine, to deem me
worthy to owe my peace of mind to you. I am well aware that these
oscillations of mind are not perilous and that they threaten me with
no serious disorder: to express what I complain of by an exact
simile, I am not suffering from a storm, but from sea-sickness. Take
from me, then, this evil, whatever it may be, and help one who is in
distress within sight of land.

II. [Seneca.] I have long been silently asking myself, my friend

Serenus, to what I should liken such a condition of mind, and I find
that nothing more closely resembles it than the conduct of those
who, after having recovered from a long and serious illness,
occasionally experience slight touches and twinges, and, although
they have passed through the final stages of the disease, yet have
suspicions that it has not left them, and though in perfect health yet
hold out their pulse to be felt by the physician, and whenever they
feel warm suspect that the fever is returning. Such men, Serenus,
are not unhealthy, but they are not accustomed to being healthy;
just as even a quiet sea or lake nevertheless displays a certain
amount of ripple when its waters are subsiding after a storm. What
you need, therefore, is, not any of those harsher remedies to which
allusion has been made, not that you should in some cases check
yourself, in others be angry with yourself, in others sternly reproach
yourself, but that you should adopt that which comes last in the list,
have confidence in yourself, and believe that you are proceeding on
the right path, without being led aside by the numerous divergent
tracks of wanderers which cross it in every direction, some of them
circling about the right path itself. What you desire, to be
undisturbed, is a great thing, nay, the greatest thing of all, and one
which raises a man almost to the level of a god. The Greeks call this
calm steadiness of mind euthymia, and Democritus’s treatise upon it
is excellently written: I call it peace of mind: for there is no necessity
for translating so exactly as to copy the words of the Greek idiom:
the essential point is to mark the matter under discussion by a name
which ought to have the same meaning as its Greek name, though
perhaps not the same form. What we are seeking, then, is how the
mind may always pursue a steady, unruffled course, may be pleased
with itself, and look with pleasure upon its surroundings, and
experience no interruption of this joy, but abide in a peaceful
condition without being ever either elated or depressed: this will be
“peace of mind.” Let us now consider in a general way how it may
be attained: then you may apply as much as you choose of the
universal remedy to your own case. Meanwhile we must drag to light
the entire disease, and then each one will recognize his own part of
it: at the same time you will understand how much less you suffer
by your self-depreciation than those who are bound by some showy
declaration which they have made, and are oppressed by some
grand title of honour, so that shame rather than their own free will
forces them to keep up the pretence. The same thing applies both to
those who suffer from fickleness and continual changes of purpose,
who always are fondest of what they have given up, and those who
merely yawn and dawdle: add to these those who, like bad sleepers,
turn from side to side, and settle themselves first in one manner and
then in another, until at last they find rest through sheer weariness:
in forming the habits of their lives they often end by adopting some
to which they are not kept by any dislike of change, but in the
practice of which old age, which is slow to alter, has caught them
living: add also those who are by no means fickle, yet who must
thank their dulness, not their consistency for being so, and who go
on living not in the way they wish, but in the way they have begun
to live. There are other special forms of this disease without number,
but it has but one effect, that of making people dissatisfied with
themselves. This arises from a distemperature of mind and from
desires which one is afraid to express or unable to fulfil, when men
either dare not attempt as much as they wish to do, or fail in their
efforts and depend entirely upon hope: such people are always fickle
and changeable, which is a necessary consequence of living in a
state of suspense: they take any way to arrive at their ends, and
teach and force themselves to use both dishonourable and difficult
means to do so, so that when their toil has been in vain they are
made wretched by the disgrace of failure, and do not regret having
longed for what was wrong, but having longed for it in vain. They
then begin to feel sorry for what they have done, and afraid to begin
again, and their mind falls by degrees into a state of endless
vacillation, because they can neither command nor obey their
passions, of hesitation, because their life cannot properly develope
itself, and of decay, as the mind becomes stupefied by
disappointments. All these symptoms become aggravated when their
dislike of a laborious misery has driven them to idleness and to
secret studies, which are unendurable to a mind eager to take part
in public affairs, desirous of action and naturally restless, because, of
course, it finds too few resources within itself: when therefore it
loses the amusement which business itself affords to busy men, it
cannot endure home, loneliness, or the walls of a room, and regards
itself with dislike when left to itself. Hence arises that weariness and
dissatisfaction with oneself, that tossing to and fro of a mind which
can nowhere find rest, that unhappy and unwilling endurance of
enforced leisure. In all cases where one feels ashamed to confess
the real cause of one’s suffering, and where modesty leads one to
drive one’s sufferings inward, the desires pent up in a little space
without any vent choke one another. Hence comes melancholy and
drooping of spirit, and a thousand waverings of the unsteadfast
mind, which is held in suspense by unfulfilled hopes, and saddened
by disappointed ones: hence comes the state of mind of those who
loathe their idleness, complain that they have nothing to do, and
view the progress of others with the bitterest jealousy: for an
unhappy sloth favours the growth of envy, and men who cannot
succeed themselves wish every one else to be ruined. This dislike of
other men’s progress and despair of one’s own produces a mind
angered against fortune, addicted to complaining of the age in which
it lives, to retiring into corners and brooding over its misery, until it
becomes sick and weary of itself: for the human mind is naturally
nimble and apt at movement: it delights in every opportunity of
excitement and forgetfulness of itself, and the worse a man’s
disposition the more he delights in this, because he likes to wear
himself out with busy action, just as some sores long for the hands
that injure them and delight in being touched, and the foul itch
enjoys anything that scratches it. Similarly I assure you that these
minds, over which desires have spread like evil ulcers, take pleasure
in toils and troubles, for there are some things which please our
body while at the same time they give it a certain amount of pain,
such as turning oneself over and changing one’s side before it is
wearied, or cooling oneself in one position after another. It is like
Homer’s Achilles, lying first upon its face, then upon its back, placing
itself in various attitudes, and, as sick people are wont, enduring
none of them for long, and using changes as though they were
remedies. Hence men undertake aimless wanderings, travel along
distant shores, and at one time at sea, at another by land, try to
soothe that fickleness of disposition which always is dissatisfied with
the present. “Now let us make for Campania: now I am sick of rich
cultivation: let us see wild regions, let us thread the passes of Bruttii
and Lucania: yet amid this wilderness one wants something of
beauty to relieve our pampered eyes after so long dwelling on
savage wastes: let us seek Tarentum with its famous harbour, its
mild winter climate, and its district, rich enough to support even the
great hordes of ancient times. Let us now return to town: our ears
have too long missed its shouts and noise: it would be pleasant also
to enjoy the sight of human bloodshed.” Thus one journey succeeds
another, and one sight is changed for another. As Lucretius says:—

“Thus every mortal from himself doth flee;”

but what does he gain by so doing if he does not escape from

himself? he follows himself and weighs himself down by his own
most burdensome companionship. We must understand, therefore,
that what we suffer from is not the fault of the places but of
ourselves: we are weak when there is anything to be endured, and
cannot support either labour or pleasure, either one’s own business
or any one else’s for long. This has driven some men to death,
because by frequently altering their purpose they were always
brought back to the same point, and had left themselves no room
for anything new. They had become sick of life and of the world
itself, and as all indulgences palled upon them they began to ask
themselves the question, “How long are we to go on doing the same
thing?”

III. You ask me what I think we had better make use of to help us to
support this ennui. “The best thing,” as Athenodorus says, “is to
occupy oneself with business with the management of affairs of
state and the duties of a citizen: for as some pass the day in
exercising themselves in the sun and in taking care of their bodily
health, and athletes find it most useful to spend the greater part of
their time in feeding up the muscles and strength to whose
cultivation they have devoted their lives; so too for you who are
training your mind to take part in the struggles of political life, it is
far more honourable to be thus at work than to be idle. He whose
object is to be of service to his countrymen and to all mortals,
exercises himself and does good at the same time when he is
engrossed in business and is working to the best of his ability both in
the interests of the public and of private men. But,” continues he,
“because innocence is hardly safe among such furious ambitions and
so many men who turn one aside from the right path, and it is
always sure to meet with more hindrance than help, we ought to
withdraw ourselves from the forum and from public life, and a great
mind even in a private station can find room wherein to expand
freely. Confinement in dens restrains the springs of lions and wild
creatures, but this does not apply to human beings, who often effect
the most important works in retirement. Let a man, however,
withdraw himself only in such a fashion that wherever he spends his
leisure his wish may still be to benefit individual men and mankind
alike, both with his intellect, his voice, and his advice. The man that
does good service to the state is not only he who brings forward
candidates for public office, defends accused persons, and gives his
vote on questions of peace and war, but he who encourages young
men in well-doing, who supplies the present dearth of good teachers
by instilling into their minds the principles of virtue, who seizes and
holds back those who are rushing wildly in pursuit of riches and
luxury, and, if he does nothing else, at least checks their course—
such a man does service to the public though in a private station.
Which does the most good, he who decides between foreigners and
citizens (as praetor peregrinus), or, as praetor urbanus, pronounces
sentence to the suitors in his court at his assistant’s dictation, or he
who shows them what is meant by justice, filial feeling, endurance,
courage, contempt of death and knowledge of the gods, and how
much a man is helped by a good conscience? If then you transfer to
philosophy the time which you take away from the public service,
you will not be a deserter or have refused to perform your proper
task. A soldier is not merely one who stands in the ranks and
defends the right or the left wing of the army, but he also who
guards the gates—a service which, though less dangerous, is no
sinecure—who keeps watch, and takes charge of the arsenal: though
all these are bloodless duties, yet they count as military service. As
soon as you have devoted yourself to philosophy, you will have
overcome all disgust at life: you will not wish for darkness because
you are weary of the light, nor will you be a trouble to yourself and
useless to others: you will acquire many friends, and all the best
men will be attracted towards you: for virtue, in however obscure a
position, cannot be hidden, but gives signs of its presence: any one
who is worthy will trace it out by its footsteps: but if we give up all
society, turn our backs upon the whole human race, and live
communing with ourselves alone, this solitude without any
interesting occupation will lead to a want of something to do: we
shall begin to build up and to pull down, to dam out the sea, to
cause waters to flow through natural obstacles, and generally to
make a bad disposal of the time which Nature has given us to
spend: some of us use it grudgingly, others wastefully; some of us
spend it so that we can show a profit and loss account, others so
that they have no assets remaining: than which nothing can be more
shameful. Often a man who is very old in years has nothing beyond
his age by which he can prove that he has lived a long time.”

IV. To me, my dearest Serenus, Athenodorus seems to have yielded

too completely to the times, to have fled too soon: I will not deny
that sometimes one must retire, but one ought to retire slowly, at a
foot’s pace, without losing one’s ensigns or one’s honour as a
soldier: those who make terms with arms in their hands are more
respected by their enemies and more safe in their hands. This is
what I think ought to be done by virtue and by one who practises
virtue: if Fortune get the upper hand and deprive him of the power
of action, let him not straightway turn his back to the enemy, throw
away his arms, and run away seeking for a hiding-place, as if there
were any place whither Fortune could not pursue him, but let him be
more sparing in his acceptance of public office, and after due
deliberation discover some means by which he can be of use to the
state. He is not able to serve in the army: then let him become a
candidate for civic honours: must he live in a private station? then
let him be an advocate: is he condemned to keep silence? then let
him help his countrymen with silent counsel. Is it dangerous for him
even to enter the forum? then let him prove himself a good
comrade, a faithful friend, a sober guest in people’s houses, at public
shows, and at wine-parties. Suppose that he has lost the status of a
citizen; then let him exercise that of a man: our reason for
magnanimously refusing to confine ourselves within the walls of one
city, for having gone forth to enjoy intercourse with all lands and for
professing ourselves to be citizens of the world is that we may thus
obtain a wider theatre on which to display our virtue. Is the bench of
judges closed to you, are you forbidden to address the people from
the hustings, or to be a candidate at elections? then turn your eyes
away from Rome, and see what a wide extent of territory, what a
number of nations present themselves before you. Thus, it is never
possible for so many outlets to be closed against your ambition that
more will not remain open to it: but see whether the whole
prohibition does not arise from your own fault. You do not choose to
direct the affairs of the state except as consul or prytanis[2] or
meddix[3] or sufes:[4] what should we say if you refused to serve in
the army save as general or military tribune? Even though others
may form the first line, and your lot may have placed you among the
veterans of the third, do your duty there with your voice,
encouragement, example, and spirit: even though a man’s hands be
cut off, he may find means to help his side in a battle, if he stands
his ground and cheers on his comrades. Do something of that sort
yourself: if Fortune removes you from the front rank, stand your
ground nevertheless and cheer on your comrades, and if somebody
stops your mouth, stand nevertheless and help your side in silence.
The services of a good citizen are never thrown away: he does good
by being heard and seen, by his expression, his gestures, his silent
determination, and his very walk. As some remedies benefit us by
their smell as well as by their their taste and touch, so virtue even
when concealed and at a distance sheds usefulness around. Whether
she moves at her ease and enjoys her just rights, or can only appear
abroad on sufferance and is forced to shorten sail to the tempest,
whether it be unemployed, silent, and pent up in a narrow lodging,
or openly displayed, in whatever guise she may appear, she always
does good. What? do you think that the example of one who can
rest nobly has no value? It is by far the best plan, therefore, to
mingle leisure with business, whenever chance impediments or the
state of public affairs forbid one’s leading an active life: for one is
never so cut off from all pursuits as to find no room left for
honourable action.

V. Could you anywhere find a [more] miserable city than that of

Athens when it was being torn to pieces by the thirty tyrants? they
slew thirteen hundred citizens, all the best men, and did not leave
off because they had done so, but their cruelty became stimulated
by exercise. In the city which possessed that most reverend tribunal,
the Court of the Areopagus, which possessed a Senate, and a
popular assembly which was like a Senate, there met daily a
wretched crew of butchers, and the unhappy Senate House was
crowded with tyrants. A state, in which there were so many tyrants
that they would have been enough to form a bodyguard for one,
might surely have rested from the struggle; it seemed impossible for
men’s minds even to conceive hopes of recovering their liberty, nor
could they see any room for a remedy for such a mass of evil: for
whence could the unhappy state obtain all the Harmodiuses it would
need to slay so many tyrants? Yet Socrates was in the midst of the
city, and consoled its mourning Fathers, encouraged those who
despaired of the republic, by his reproaches brought rich men, who
feared that their wealth would be their ruin, to a tardy repentance of
their avarice, and moved about as a great example to those who
wished to imitate him, because he walked a free man in the midst of
thirty masters. However, Athens herself put him to death in prison,
and Freedom herself could not endure the freedom of one who had
treated a whole band of tyrants with scorn: you may know,
therefore, that even in an oppressed state a wise man can find an
opportunity for bringing himself to the front, and that in a
prosperous and flourishing one wanton insolence, jealousy, and a
thousand other cowardly vices bear sway. We ought, therefore, to
expand or contract ourselves according as the state presents itself to
us, or as Fortune offers us opportunities: but in any case we ought
to move and not to become frozen still by fear: nay, he is the best
man who, though peril menaces him on every side and arms and
chains beset his path, nevertheless neither impairs nor conceals his
virtue: for to keep oneself safe does not mean to bury oneself. I
think that Curius Dentatus spoke truly when he said that he would
rather be dead than alive: the worst evil of all is to leave the ranks
of the living before one dies: yet it is your duty, if you happen to live
in an age when it is not easy to serve the state, to devote more time
to leisure and to literature. Thus, just as though you were making a
perilous voyage, you may from time to time put into harbour, and set
yourself free from public business without waiting for it to do so.

VI. We ought, however, first to examine our own selves, next the
business which we propose to transact, next those for whose sake or
in whose company we transact it.

It is above all things necessary to form a true estimate of oneself,

because as a rule we think that we can do more than we are able:
one man is led too far through confidence in his eloquence, another
demands more from his estate than it can produce, another burdens
a weakly body with some toilsome duty. Some men are too
shamefaced for the conduct of public affairs, which require an
unblushing front: some men’s obstinate pride renders them unfit for
courts: some cannot control their anger, and break into unguarded
language on the slightest provocation: some cannot rein in their wit
or resist making risky jokes: for all these men leisure is better than
employment: a bold, haughty and impatient nature ought to avoid
anything that may lead it to use a freedom of speech which will
bring it to ruin. Next we must form an estimate of the matter which
we mean to deal with, and compare our strength with the deed we
are about to attempt: for the bearer ought always to be more
powerful than his load: indeed, loads which are too heavy for their
bearer must of necessity crush him: some affairs also are not so
important in themselves as they are prolific and lead to much more
business, which employments, as they involve us in new and various
forms of work, ought to be refused. Neither should you engage in
anything from which you are not free to retreat: apply yourself to
something which you can finish, or at any rate can hope to finish:
you had better not meddle with those operations which grow in
importance, while they are being transacted, and which will not stop
where you intended them to stop.

VII. In all cases one should be careful in one’s choice of men, and
see whether they be worthy of our bestowing a part of our life upon
them, or whether we shall waste our own time and theirs also: for
some even consider us to be in their debt because of our services to
them. Athenodorus said that “he would not so much as dine with a
man who would not be grateful to him for doing so”: meaning, I
imagine, that much less would he go to dinner with those who
recompense the services of their friends by their table, and regard
courses of dishes as donatives, as if they overate themselves to do
honour to others. Take away from these men their witnesses and
spectators: they will take no pleasure in solitary gluttony. You must
decide whether your disposition is better suited for vigorous action
or for tranquil speculation and contemplation, and you must adopt
whichever the bent of your genius inclines you for. Isocrates laid
hands upon Ephorus and led him away from the forum, thinking that
he would be more usefully employed in compiling chronicles; for no
good is done by forcing one’s mind to engage in uncongenial work:
it is vain to struggle against Nature. Yet nothing delights the mind so
much as faithful and pleasant friendship: what a blessing it is when
there is one whose breast is ready to receive all your secrets with
safety, whose knowledge of your actions you fear less than your own
conscience, whose conversation removes your anxieties, whose
advice assists your plans, whose cheerfulness dispels your gloom,
whose very sight delights you! We should choose for our friends men
who are, as far as possible, free from strong desires: for vices are
contagious, and pass from a man to his neighbour, and injure those
who touch them. As, therefore, in times of pestilence we have to be
careful not to sit near people who are infected and in whom the
disease is raging, because by so doing, we shall run into danger and
catch the plague from their very breath; so, too, in choosing our
friends’ dispositions, we must take care to select those who are as
far as may be unspotted by the world; for the way to breed disease
is to mix what is sound with what is rotten. Yet I do not advise you
to follow after or draw to yourself no one except a wise man: for
where will you find him whom for so many centuries we have sought
in vain? in the place of the best possible man take him who is least
bad. You would hardly find any time that would have enabled you to
make a happier choice than if you could have sought for a good man
from among the Platos and Xenophons and the rest of the produce
of the brood of Socrates, or if you had been permitted to choose one
from the age of Cato: an age which bore many men worthy to be
born in Cato’s time (just as it also bore many men worse than were
ever known before, planners of the blackest crimes: for it needed
both classes in order to make Cato understood: it wanted both good
men, that he might win their approbation, and bad men, against
whom he could prove his strength): but at the present day, when
there is such a dearth of good men, you must be less squeamish in
your choice. Above all, however, avoid dismal men who grumble at
whatever happens, and find something to complain of in everything.
Though he may continue loyal and friendly towards you, still one’s
peace of mind is destroyed by a comrade whose mind is soured and
who meets every incident with a groan.

VIII. Let us now pass on to the consideration of property, that most

fertile source of human sorrows: for if you compare all the other ills
from which we suffer—deaths, sicknesses, fears, regrets, endurance
of pains and labours— with those miseries which our money inflicts
upon us, the latter will far outweigh all the others. Reflect, then,
how much less a grief it is never to have had any money than to
have lost it: we shall thus understand that the less poverty has to
lose, the less torment it has with which to afflict us: for you are
mistaken if you suppose that the rich bear their losses with greater
spirit than the poor: a wound causes the same amount of pain to
the greatest and the smallest body. It was a neat saying of Bion’s,
“that it hurts bald men as much as hairy men to have their hairs
pulled out”: you may be assured that the same thing is true of rich
and poor people, that their suffering is equal: for their money clings
to both classes, and cannot be torn away without their feeling it: yet
it is more endurable, as I have said, and easier not to gain property
than to lose it, and therefore you will find that those upon whom
Fortune has never smiled are more cheerful than those whom she
has deserted. Diogenes, a man of infinite spirit, perceived this, and
made it impossible that anything should be taken from him. Call this
security from loss poverty, want, necessity, or any contemptuous
name you please: I shall consider such a man to be happy, unless
you find me another who can lose nothing. If I am not mistaken, it is
a royal attribute among so many misers, sharpers, and robbers, to
be the one man who cannot be injured. If any one doubts the
happiness of Diogenes, he would doubt whether the position of the
immortal gods was one of sufficient happiness. because they have
no farms or gardens, no valuable estates let to strange tenants, and
no large loans in the money market. Are you not ashamed of
yourself, you who gaze upon riches with astonished admiration?
Look upon the universe: you will see the gods quite bare of property,
and possessing nothing though they give everything. Do you think
that this man who has stripped himself of all fortuitous accessories is
a pauper, or one like to the immortal gods? Do you call Demetrius,
Pompeius’s freedman, a happier man, he who was not ashamed to
be richer than Pompeius, who was daily furnished with a list of the
number of his slaves, as a general is with that of his army, though
he had long deserved that all his riches should consist of a pair of
underlings, and a roomier cell than the other slaves? But Diogenes’s
only slave ran away from him, and when he was pointed out to
Diogenes, he did not think him worth fetching back. “It is a shame,”
he said, “that Manes should be able to live without Diogenes, and
that Diogenes should not be able to live without Manes.” He seems
to me to have said, “Fortune, mind your own business: Diogenes has
nothing left that belongs to you. Did my slave run away? nay, he
went away from me as a free man.” A household of slaves requires
food and clothing: the bellies of so many hungry creatures have to
be filled: we must buy raiment for them, we must watch their most
thievish hands, and we must make use of the services of people who
weep and execrate us. How far happier is he who is indebted to no
man for anything except for what he can deprive himself of with the
greatest ease! Since we, however, have not such strength of mind as
this, we ought at any rate to diminish the extent of our property, in
order to be less exposed to the assaults of fortune: those men
whose bodies can be within the shelter of their armour, are more
fitted for war than those whose huge size everywhere extends
beyond it, and exposes them to wounds: the best amount of
property to have is that which is enough to keep us from poverty,
and which yet is not far removed from it.

IX. We shall be pleased with this measure of wealth if we have

previously taken pleasure in thrift, without which no riches are
sufficient, and with which none are insufficient, especially as the
remedy is always at hand, and poverty itself by calling in the aid of
thrift can convert itself into riches. Let us accustom ourselves to set
aside mere outward show, and to measure things by their uses, not
by their ornamental trappings: let our hunger be tamed by food, our
thirst quenched by drinking, our lust confined within needful bounds;
let us learn to use our limbs, and to arrange our dress and way of
life according to what was approved of by our ancestors, not in
imitation of new-fangled models: let us learn to increase our
continence, to repress luxury, to set bounds to our pride, to assuage
our anger, to look upon poverty without prejudice, to practise thrift,
albeit many are ashamed to do so, to apply cheap remedies to the
wants of nature, to keep all undisciplined hopes and aspirations as it
were under lock and key, and to make it our business to get our
riches from ourselves and not from Fortune. We never can so
thoroughly defeat the vast diversity and malignity of misfortune with
which we are threatened as not to feel the weight of many gusts if
we offer a large spread of canvas to the wind: we must draw our
affairs into a small compass, to make the darts of Fortune of no
avail. For this reason, sometimes slight mishaps have turned into
remedies, and more serious disorders have been healed by slighter
ones. When the mind pays no attention to good advice, and cannot
be brought to its senses by milder measures, why should we not
think that its interests are being served by poverty, disgrace, or
financial ruin being applied to it? one evil is balanced by another. Let
us then teach ourselves to be able to dine without all Rome to look
on, to be the slaves of fewer slaves, to get clothes which fulfil their
original purpose, and to live in a smaller house. The inner curve is
the one to take, not only in running races and in the contests of the
circus, but also in the race of life; even literary pursuits, the most
becoming thing for a gentleman to spend money upon, are only
justifiable as long as they are kept within bounds. What is the use of
possessing numberless books and libraries, whose titles their owner
can hardly read through in a lifetime? A student is overwhelmed by
such a mass, not instructed, and it is much better to devote yourself
to a few writers than to skim through many. Forty thousand books
were burned at Alexandria: some would have praised this library as
a most noble memorial of royal wealth, like Titus Livius, who says
that it was “a splendid result of the taste and attentive care of the
kings.”[5] It had nothing to do with taste or care, but was a piece of
learned luxury, nay, not even learned, since they amassed it, not for
the sake of learning, but to make a show, like many men who know
less about letters than a slave is expected to know, and who uses his
books not to help him in his studies but to ornament his dining-
room. Let a man, then, obtain as many books as he wants, but none
for show. “It is more respectable,” say you, “to spend one’s money
on such books than on vases of Corinthian brass and paintings.” Not
so: everything that is carried to excess is wrong. What excuses can
you find for a man who is eager to buy bookcases of ivory and citrus
wood, to collect the works of unknown or discredited authors, and
who sits yawning amid so many thousands of books, whose backs
and titles please him more than any other part of them? Thus in the
houses of the laziest of men you will see the works of all the orators
and historians stacked upon book-shelves reaching right up to the
ceiling. At the present day a library has become as necessary an
appendage to a house as a hot and cold bath. I would excuse them
straightway if they really were carried away by an excessive zeal for
literature; but as it is, these costly works of sacred genius, with all
the illustrations that adorn them, are merely bought for display and
to serve as wall-furniture.
X. Suppose, however, that your life has become full of trouble, and
that without knowing what you were doing you have fallen into
some snare which either public or private Fortune has set for you,
and that you can neither untie it nor break it: then remember that
fettered men suffer much at first from the burdens and clogs upon
their legs: afterwards, when they have made up their minds not to
fret themselves about them, but to endure them, necessity teaches
them to bear them bravely, and habit to bear them easily. In every
station of life you will find amusements, relaxations, and
enjoyments; that is, provided you be willing to make light of evils
rather than to hate them. Knowing to what sorrows we were born,
there is nothing for which Nature more deserves our thanks than for
having invented habit as an alleviation of misfortune, which soon
accustoms us to the severest evils. No one could hold out against
misfortune if it permanently exercised the same force as at its first
onset. We are all chained to Fortune: some men’s chain is loose and
made of gold, that of others is tight and of meaner metal: but what
difference does this make? we are all included in the same captivity,
and even those who have bound us are bound themselves, unless
you think that a chain on the left side is lighter to bear: one man
may be bound by public office, another by wealth: some have to
bear the weight of illustrious, some of humble birth: some are
subject to the commands of others, some only to their own: some
are kept in one place by being banished thither, others by being
elected to the priesthood. All life is slavery: let each man therefore
reconcile himself to his lot, complain of it as little as possible, and lay
hold of whatever good lies within his reach. No condition can be so
wretched that an impartial mind can find no compensations in it.
Small sites, if ingeniously divided, may be made use of for many
different purposes, and arrangement will render ever so narrow a
room habitable. Call good sense to your aid against difficulties: it is
possible to soften what is harsh, to widen what is too narrow, and to
make heavy burdens press less severely upon one who bears them
skilfully. Moreover, we ought not to allow our desires to wander far
afield, but we must make them confine themselves to our immediate
neighbourhood, since they will not endure to be altogether locked
up. We must leave alone things which either cannot come to pass or
can only be effected with difficulty, and follow after such things as
are near at hand and within reach of our hopes, always
remembering that all things are equally unimportant, and that
though they have a different outward appearance, they are all alike
empty within. Neither let us envy those who are in high places: the
heights which look lofty to us are steep and rugged. Again, those
whom unkind fate has placed in critical situations will be safer if they
show as little pride in their proud position as may be, and do all they
are able to bring down their fortunes to the level of other men’s.
There are many who must needs cling to their high pinnacle of
power, because they cannot descend from it save by falling
headlong: yet they assure us that their greatest burden is being
obliged to be burdensome to others, and that they are nailed to their
lofty post rather than raised to it: let them then, by dispensing
justice, clemency, and kindness with an open and liberal hand,
provide themselves with assistance to break their fall, and looking
forward to this maintain their position more hopefully. Yet nothing
sets us free from these alternations of hope and fear so well as
always fixing some limit to our successes, and not allowing Fortune
to choose when to stop our career, but to halt of our own accord
long before we apparently need do so. By acting thus certain desires
will rouse up our spirits, and yet being confined within bounds, will
not lead us to embark on vast and vague enterprises.

XI. These remarks of mine apply only to imperfect, commonplace,

and unsound natures, not to the wise man, who needs not to walk
with timid and cautious gait: for he has such confidence in himself
that he does not hesitate to go directly in the teeth of Fortune, and
never will give way to her. Nor indeed has he any reason for fearing
her, for he counts not only chattels, property, and high office, but
even his body, his eyes, his hands, and everything whose use makes
life dearer to us, nay, even his very self, to be things whose
possession is uncertain; he lives as though he had borrowed them,
and is ready to return them cheerfully whenever they are claimed.
Yet he does not hold himself cheap, because he knows that he is not
his own, but performs all his duties as carefully and prudently as a
pious and scrupulous man would take care of property left in his
charge as trustee. When he is bidden to give them up, he will not
complain of Fortune, but will say, “I thank you for what I have had
possession of: I have managed your property so as largely to
increase it, but since you order me, I give it back to you and return
it willingly and thankfully. If you still wish me to own anything of
yours, I will keep it for you: if you have other views, I restore into
your hands and make restitution of all my wrought and coined silver,
my house and my household. Should Nature recall what she
previously entrusted us with, let us say to her also: ‘Take back my
spirit, which is better than when you gave it me: I do not shuffle or
hang back. Of my own free will I am ready to return what you gave
me before I could think: take me away,’ ” What hardship can there
be in returning to the place from whence one came? a man cannot
live well if he knows not how to die well. We must, therefore, take
away from this commodity its original value, and count the breath of
life as a cheap matter. “We dislike gladiators,” says Cicero, “if they
are eager to save their lives by any means whatever: but we look
favourably upon them if they are openly reckless of them,” You may
be sure that the same thing occurs with us: we often die because we
are afraid of death. Fortune, which regards our lives as a show in the
arena for her own enjoyment, says, “Why should I spare you, base
and cowardly creature that you are? you will be pierced and hacked
with all the more wounds because you know not how to offer your
throat to the knife: whereas you, who receive the stroke without
drawing away your neck or putting up your hands to stop it, shall
both live longer and die more quickly,” He who fears death will never
act as becomes a living man: but he who knows that this fate was
laid upon him as soon as he was conceived will live according to it,
and by this strength of mind will gain this further advantage, that
nothing can befal him unexpectedly: for by looking forward to
everything which can happen as though it would happen to him, he
takes the sting out of all evils, which can make no difference to
those who expect it and are prepared to meet it: evil only comes
hard upon those who have lived without giving it a thought and
whose attention has been exclusively directed to happiness. Disease,
captivity, disaster, conflagration, are none of them unexpected: I
always knew with what disorderly company Nature had associated
me. The dead have often been wailed for in my neighbourhood: the
torch and taper have often been borne past my door before the bier
of one who has died before his time: the crash of falling buildings
has often resounded by my side: night has snatched away many of
those with whom I have become intimate in the forum, the Senate-
house, and in society, and has sundered the hands which were
joined in friendship: ought I to be surprised if the dangers which
have always been circling around me at last assail me? How large a
part of mankind never think of storms when about to set sail? I shall
never be ashamed to quote a good saying because it comes from a
bad author. Publilius, who was a more powerful writer than any of
our other playwrights, whether comic or tragic, whenever he chose
to rise above farcical absurdities and speeches addressed to the
gallery, among many other verses too noble even for tragedy, let
alone for comedy, has this one:—

“What one hath suffered may befall us all.”

If a man takes this into his inmost heart and looks upon all the
misfortunes of other men, of which there is always a great plenty, in
this spirit, remembering that there is nothing to prevent their coming
upon him also, he will arm himself against them long before they
attack him. It is too late to school the mind to endurance of peril
after peril has come. “I did not think this would happen,” and “Would
you ever have believed that this would have happened?” say you.
But why should it not? Where are the riches after which want,
hunger, and beggary do not follow? what office is there whose
purple robe, augur’s staff, and patrician reins have not as their
accompaniment rags and banishment, the brand of infamy, a
thousand disgraces, and utter reprobation? what kingdom is there
for which ruin, trampling under foot, a tyrant and a butcher are not
ready at hand? nor are these matters divided by long periods of
time, but there is but the space of an hour between sitting on the
throne ourselves and clasping the knees of some one else as
suppliants. Know then that every station of life is transitory, and that
what has ever happened to anybody may happen to you also. You
are wealthy: are you wealthier than Pompeius?[6] Yet when Gaius,[7]
his old relative and new host, opened Caesar’s house to him in order
that he might close his own, he lacked both bread and water:
though he owned so many rivers which both rose and discharged
themselves within his dominions, yet he had to beg for drops of
water: he perished of hunger and thirst in the palace of his relative,
while his heir was contracting for a public funeral for one who was in
want of food. You have filled public offices: were they either as
important, as unlooked for, or as all-embracing as those of Sejanus?
Yet on the day on which the Senate disgraced him, the people tore
him to pieces: the executioner[8] could find no part left large enough
to drag to the Tiber, of one upon whom gods and men had
showered all that could be given to man. You are a king: I will not
bid you go to Croesus for an example, he who while yet alive saw
his funeral pile both lighted and extinguished, being made to outlive
not only his kingdom but even his own death, nor to Jugurtha,
whom the people of Rome beheld as a captive within the year in
which they had feared him. We have seen Ptolemaeus King of Africa,
and Mithridates King of Armenia, under the charge of Gaius’s[9]
guards: the former was sent into exile, the latter chose it in order to
make his exile more honourable. Among such continual topsy-turvy
changes, unless you expect that whatever can happen will happen to
you, you give adversity power against you, a power which can be
destroyed by any one who looks at it beforehand.

XII. The next point to these will be to take care that we do not
labour for what is vain, or labour in vain: that is to say, neither to
desire what we are not able to obtain, nor yet, having obtained our
desire too late, and after much toil to discover the folly of our
wishes: in other words, that our labour may not be without result,
and that the result may not be unworthy of our labour: for as a rule
sadness arises from one of these two things, either from want of
success or from being ashamed of having succeeded. We must limit
the running to and fro which most men practise, rambling about
houses, theatres, and market-places. They mind other men’s
business, and always seem as though they themselves had
something to do. If you ask one of them as he comes out of his own
door, “Whither are you going?” he will answer, “By Hercules, I do not
know: but I shall see some people and do something.” They wander
purposelessly seeking for something to do, and do, not what they
have made up their minds to do, but what has casually fallen in their
way. They move uselessly and without any plan, just like ants
crawling over bushes, which creep up to the top and then down to
the bottom again without gaining anything. Many men spend their
lives in exactly the same fashion, which one may call a state of
restless indolence. You would pity some of them when you see them
running as if their house was on fire: they actually jostle all whom
they meet, and hurry along themselves and others with them,
though all the while they are going to salute some one who will not
return their greeting, or to attend the funeral of some one whom
they did not know: they are going to hear the verdict on one who
often goes to law, or to see the wedding of one who often gets
married: they will follow a man’s litter, and in some places will even
carry it: afterwards returning home weary with idleness, they swear
that they themselves do not know why they went out, or where they
have been, and on the following day they will wander through the
same round again. Let all your work, therefore, have some purpose,
and keep some object in view: these restless people are not made
restless by labour, but are driven out of their minds by mistaken
ideas: for even they do not put themselves in motion without any
hope: they are excited by the outward appearance of something,
and their crazy mind cannot see its futility. In the same way every
one of those who walk out to swell the crowd in the streets, is led
round the city by worthless and empty reasons; the dawn drives him
forth, although he has nothing to do, and after he has pushed his
way into many men’s doors, and saluted their nomenclators one
after the other, and been turned away from many others, he finds
that the most difficult person of all to find at home is himself. From
this evil habit comes that worst of all vices, talebearing and prying
into public and private secrets, and the knowledge of many things
which it is neither safe to tell nor safe to listen to.

XIII. It was, I imagine, following out this principle that Democritis

taught that “he who would live at peace must not do much business
either public or private,” referring of course to unnecessary business:
for if there be any necessity for it we ought to transact not only
much but endless business, both public and private; in cases,
however, where no solemn duty invites us to act, we had better keep
ourselves quiet: for he who does many things often puts himself in
Fortune’s power, and it is safest not to tempt her often, but always
to remember her existence, and never to promise oneself anything
on her security. I will set sail unless anything happens to prevent
me, I shall be praetor, if nothing hinders me, my financial operations
will succeed, unless anything goes wrong with them. This is why we
say that nothing befals the wise man which he did not expect—we
do not make him exempt from the chances of human life, but from
its mistakes, nor does everything happen to him as he wished it
would, but as he thought it would: now his first thought was that his
purpose might meet with some resistance, and the pain of
disappointed wishes must affect a man’s mind less severely if he has
not been at all events confident of success.

XIV. Moreover, we ought to cultivate an easy temper, and not

become over fond of the lot which fate has assigned to us, but
transfer ourselves to whatever other condition chance may lead us
to, and fear no alteration, either in our purposes or our position in
life, provided that we do not become subject to caprice, which of all
vices is the most hostile to repose: for obstinacy, from which Fortune
often wrings some concession, must needs be anxious and unhappy,
but caprice, which can never restrain itself, must be more so. Both of
these qualities, both that of altering nothing, and that of being
dissatisfied with everything, are energies to repose. The mind ought
in all cases to be called away from the contemplation of external
things to that of itself: let it confide in itself, rejoice in itself, admire
its own works; avoid as far as may be those of others, and devote
itself to itself; let it not feel losses, and put a good construction even
upon misfortunes. Zeno, the chief of our school, when he heard the
news of a shipwreck, in which all his property had been lost,
remarked, “Fortune bids me follow philosophy in lighter marching
order.” A tyrant threatened Theodorus with death, and even with
want of burial. “You are able to please yourself,” he answered, “my
half pint of blood is in your power: for, as for burial, what a fool you
must be if you suppose that I care whether I rot above ground or
under it.” Julius Kanus, a man of peculiar greatness, whom even the
fact of his having been born in this century does not prevent our
admiring, had a long dispute with Gaius, and when as he was going
away that Phalaris of a man said to him, “That you may not delude
yourself with any foolish hopes, I have ordered you to be executed,”
he answered, “I thank you, most excellent prince.” I am not sure
what he meant: for many ways of explaining his conduct occur to
me. Did he wish to be reproachful, and to show him how great his
cruelty must be if death became a kindness? or did he upbraid him
with his accustomed insanity? for even those whose children were
put to death, and whose goods were confiscated, used to thank him:
or was it that he willingly received death, regarding it as freedom?
Whatever he meant, it was a magnanimous answer. Some one may
say, “After this Gaius might have let him live.” Kanus had no fear of
this: the good faith with which Gaius carried out such orders as
these was well known. Will you believe that he passed the ten
intervening days before his execution without the slightest
despondency? it is marvellous how that man spoke and acted, and
how peaceful he was. He was playing at draughts when the
centurion in charge of a number of those who where going to be
executed bade him join them: on the summons he counted his men
and said to his companion, “Mind you do not tell a lie after my
death, and say that you won;” then, turning to the centurion, he
said “You will bear me witness that I am one man ahead of him.” Do
you think that Kanus played upon that draught-board? nay, he
played with it. His friends were sad at being about to lose so great a
man: “Why,” asked he, “are you sorrowful? you are enquiring
whether our souls are immortal, but I shall presently know.” Nor did
he up to the very end cease his search after truth, and raised
arguments upon the subject of his own death. His own teacher of
philosophy accompanied him, and they were not far from the hill on
which the daily sacrifice to Caesar our god was offered, when he
said, “What are you thinking of now, Kanus? or what are your
ideas?” “I have decided,” answered Kanus, “at that most swiftly-
passing moment of all to watch whether the spirit will be conscious
of the act of leaving the body.” He promised, too, that if he made
any discoveries, he would come round to his friends and tell them
what the condition of the souls of the departed might be. Here was
peace in the very midst of the storm: here was a soul worthy of
eternal life, which used its own fate as a proof of truth, which when
at the last step of life experimented upon his fleeting breath, and did
not merely continue to learn until he died, but learned something
even from death itself. No man has carried the life of a philosopher
further. I will not hastily leave the subject of a great man, and one
who deserves to be spoken of with respect: I will hand thee down to
all posterity, thou most noble heart, chief among the many victims of
Gaius.

XV. Yet we gain nothing by getting rid of all personal causes of

sadness, for sometimes we are possessed by hatred of the human
race. When you reflect how rare simplicity is, how unknown
innocence, how seldom faith is kept, unless it be to our advantage,
when you remember such numbers of successful crimes, so many
equally hateful losses and gains of lust, and ambition so impatient
even of its own natural limits that it is willing to purchase distinction
by baseness, the mind seems as it were cast into darkness, and
shadows rise before it as though the virtues were all overthrown and
we were no longer allowed to hope to possess them or benefited by
their possession. We ought therefore to bring ourselves into such a
state of mind that all the vices of the vulgar may not appear hateful
to us, but merely ridiculous, and we should imitate Democritus
rather than Heraclitus. The latter of these, whenever be appeared in
public, used to weep, the former to laugh: the one thought all
human doings to be follies, the other thought them to be miseries.
We must take a higher view of all things, and bear with them more
easily: it better becomes a man to scoff at life than to lament over it.
Add to this that he who laughs at the human race deserves better of
it than he who mourns for it, for the former leaves it some good
hopes of improvement, while the latter stupidly weeps over what he
has given up all hopes of mending. He who after surveying the
universe cannot control his laughter shows, too, a greater mind than
he who cannot restrain his tears, because his mind is only affected
in the slightest possible degree, and he does not think that any part
of all this apparatus is either important, or serious, or unhappy. As
for the several causes which render us happy or sorrowful, let every
one describe them for himself, and learn the truth of Bion’s saying,
“That all the doings of men were very like what he began with, and
that there is nothing in their lives which is more holy or decent than
their conception.” Yet it is better to accept public morals and human
vices calmly without bursting into either laughter or tears; for to be
hurt by the sufferings of others is to be for ever miserable, while to
enjoy the sufferings of others is an inhuman pleasure, just as it is a
useless piece of humanity to weep and pull a long face because
some one is burying his son. In one’s own misfortunes, also, one
ought so to conduct oneself as to bestow upon them just as much
sorrow as reason, not as much as custom requires: for many shed
tears in order to show them, and whenever no one is looking at
them their eyes are dry, but they think it disgraceful not to weep
when every one does so. So deeply has this evil of being guided by
the opinion of others taken root in us, that even grief, the simplest
of all emotions, begins to be counterfeited.

XVI. There comes now a part of our subject which is wont with good
cause to make one sad and anxious: I mean when good men come
to bad ends; when Socrates is forced to die in prison, Rutilius to live
in exile, Pompeius and Cicero to offer their necks to the swords of
their own followers, when the great Cato, that living image of virtue,
falls upon his sword and rips up both himself and the republic, one
cannot help being grieved that Fortune should bestow her gifts so
unjustly: what, too, can a good man hope to obtain when he sees
the best of men meeting with the worst fates. Well, but see how
each of them endured his fate, and if they endured it bravely, long in
your heart for courage as great as theirs; if they died in a womanish
and cowardly manner, nothing was lost: either they deserved that
you should admire their courage, or else they did not deserve that
you should wish to imitate their cowardice: for what can be more
shameful than that the greatest men should die so bravely as to
make people cowards. Let us praise one who deserves such constant
praises, and say, “The braver you are the happier you are! You have
escaped from all accidents, jealousies, diseases: you have escaped
from prison: the gods have not thought you worthy of ill-fortune, but
have thought that fortune no longer deserved to have any power
over you”: but when any one shrinks back in the hour of death and
looks longingly at life, we must lay hands upon him. I will never
weep for a man who dies cheerfully, nor for one who dies weeping:
the former wipes away my tears, the latter by his tears makes
himself unworthy that any should be shed for him. Shall I weep for
Hercules because he was burned alive, or for Regulus because he
was pierced by so many nails, or for Cato because he tore open his
wounds a second time? All these men discovered how at the cost of
a small portion of time they might obtain immortality, and by their
deaths gained eternal life.

XVII. It also proves a fertile source of troubles if you take pains to

conceal your feelings and never show yourself to any one
undisguised, but, as many men do, live an artificial life, in order to
impose upon others: for the constant watching of himself becomes a
torment to a man, and he dreads being caught doing something at
variance with his usual habits, and, indeed, we never can be at our
ease if we imagine that every one who looks at us is weighing our
real value: for many things occur which strip people of their disguise,
however reluctantly they may part with it, and even if all this trouble
about oneself is successful, still life is neither happy nor safe when
one always has to wear a mask. But what pleasure there is in that
honest straight-forwardness which is its own ornament, and which
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