V

Seneca to his Lucilius, greeting. Because you study with persistence and, setting everything else aside, do this one thing, to make yourself better every day, I both approve and rejoice; I not only urge you to persevere, I also beg you. But I warn you of this: do not, after the fashion of those who want not to make progress but to be noticed, do any things that are conspicuous in your dress or manner of life;

Avoid rough dress, an uncut head, a rather neglected beard, a declared hatred of silver, a bed placed on the ground, and whatever else follows ambition by a perverse road. The very name of philosophy is unpopular enough, even if it is practiced modestly; what if we begin to separate ourselves from ordinary human custom? Within, let everything be different; outwardly, let our face agree with the people.

Let the toga not gleam, but let it not be filthy either; let us not own silver onto which the embossing of solid gold has descended, but let us not think it a sign of frugality to have gone without gold and silver. Let us aim to follow a better life than the crowd, not a contrary one; otherwise we drive away and turn aside from ourselves those whom we want to improve, and we also bring this about: that they wish to imitate nothing of ours, because they fear that everything must be imitated.

This is the first thing philosophy promises: common sense, humanity, and fellowship; from that profession, dissimilarity will separate us. Let us take care that the things through which we want to win admiration are not ridiculous and hateful. Surely our purpose is to live according to nature; this is contrary to nature: to torture one's body, to hate easy cleanliness, to seek filth, and to use foods not merely cheap but foul and horrible.

Just as craving delicate things belongs to luxury, so avoiding ordinary things that can be obtained at no great cost belongs to madness. Philosophy demands frugality, not punishment; frugality, however, can be not unkempt. This measure pleases me: let life be tempered between good morals and public customs; let everyone admire our life, but also recognize it.

“What then? Shall we do the same things as everyone else? Will there be no difference between us and them?” A very great one: whoever looks more closely should know that we are unlike the crowd; whoever enters our house should admire us rather than our furnishings. Great is the man who uses earthenware as if it were silver, and no less great is the man who uses silver as if it were earthenware; it is the mark of a weak mind not to be able to endure riches.

But, so that I may share with you also the little profit of this day, I found in our Hecato that the end of desires also serves as a remedy for fear. “You will cease,” he says, “to fear, if you have ceased to hope.” You will say, “How can things so different exist together?” So it is, my Lucilius: although they seem to be opposed, they are joined. Just as the same chain fastens both the prisoner and the soldier, so these things, though so unlike, advance together: fear follows hope.

Nor do I wonder that these things go this way: each belongs to a wavering mind, each to a mind made anxious by expectation of the future. The greatest cause of both is that we do not adapt ourselves to present things, but send our thoughts far ahead; and so foresight, the greatest good of the human condition, has been turned into an evil.

Wild beasts flee the dangers they see, and when they have escaped them, they are at ease; we are tormented both by what is to come and by what is past. Many of our own blessings harm us: memory brings back the torture of fear, foresight anticipates it; no one is miserable only because of present things. Farewell.