The East: Confucianism Taoism Buddhism
The West: Stoicism Epicureanism Christianity
The East: Confucianism Taoism
Buddhism
The West: Stoicism
Epicureanism Christianity
The majority of mortals, Paulinus, complain bitterly of
the spitefulness of Nature, because we are born for a brief span of life,
because even this space that has been granted to us rushes by so speedily and so
swiftly that all save a very few find life at an end just when they are getting
ready to live. Nor is it merely the common herd and the unthinking crowd that
bemoan what is, as men deem it, an universal ill; the same feeling has called
forth complaint also from men who were famous. It was this that made the
greatest of physicians exclaim that "life is short, art is long;" it was this
that led Aristotle, while expostulating with Nature, to enter an indictment most
unbecoming to a wise man - that, in point of age, she has shown such favour to
animals that they drag out five or ten lifetimes,\a but that a much shorter
limit is fixed for man, though he is born for so many and such great
achievements. It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we
waste much of it. Life is long enough, and it has been given in sufficiently
generous measure to allow the accomplishment of the very greatest things if the
whole of it is well invested. But when it is squandered in luxury and
carelessness, when it is devoted to no good end, forced at last by the ultimate
necessity we perceive that it has passed away before we were aware that it was
passing. So it is -the life we receive is not short, but we make it so, nor do
we have any lack of it, but are wasteful of it. Just as great and princely
wealth is scattered in a moment when it comes into the hands of a bad owner,
while wealth however limited, if it is entrusted to a good guardian, increases
by use, so our life is amply long for him who orders it properly.
Why do we complain of
Nature? She has shown herself kindly; life, if you know how to use it, is
long. But one man is possessed by an avarice that is insatiable, another
by a toilsome devotion to tasks that are useless; one man is besotted with wine,
another is paralyzed by sloth; one man is exhausted by an ambition that always
hangs upon the decision of others, another, driven on by the greed of the
trader, is led over all lands and all seas by the hope of gain; some are
tormented by a passion for war and are always either bent upon inflicting danger
upon others or concerned about their own; some there are who are worn out by
voluntary servitude in a thankless attendance upon the great; many are kept busy
either in the pursuit of other men's fortune or in complaining of their own;
many, following no fixed aim, shifting and inconstant and dissatisfied, are
plunged by their fickleness into plans that are ever new; some have no fixed
principle by which to direct their course, but Fate takes them unawares while
they loll and yawn - so surely does it happen that I cannot doubt the truth of
that utterance which the greatest of poets delivered with all the seeming of an
oracle: "The part of life we really live is small."\a For all the rest of
existence is not life, but merely time. Vices beset us and surround us on
every side, and they do not permit us to rise anew and lift up our eyes for the
discernment of truth, but they keep us down when once they have overwhelmed us
and we are chained to lust. Their victims are never allowed to return to
their true selves; if ever they chance to find some release, like the waters of
the deep sea which continue to heave even after the storm is past, they are
tossed about, and no rest from their lusts abides. Think you that I am
speaking of the wretches whose evils are admitted? Look at those whose
prosperity men flock to behold; they are smothered by their blessings. To how
many are riches a burden! From how many do eloquence and the daily
straining to display their powers draw forth blood! How many are pale from
constant pleasures! To how many does the throng of clients that
crowd about them leave no freedom! In short, run through the list of all
these men from the lowest to the highest - this man desires an advocate,\b this
one answers the call, that one is on trial, that one defends him, that one gives
sentence; no one asserts his claim to himself, everyone is wasted for the sake
of another. Ask about the men whose names are known by heart, and you will
see that these are the marks that distinguish them: A cultivates B and B
cultivates C; no one is his own master. And then certain men show the most
senseless indignation - they complain of the insolence of their superiors,
because they were too busy to see them when they wished an audience! But
can anyone have the hardihood to complain of the pride of another when he
himself has no time to attend to himself? After all, no matter who you
are, the great man does sometimes look toward you even if his face is insolent,
he does sometimes condescend to listen to your words, he permits you to appear
at his side; but you never deign to look upon yourself, to give ear to yourself.
There is no reason, therefore, to count anyone in debt for such services, seeing
that, when you performed them, you had no wish for another's company, but could
not endure your own.
Though all the brilliant
intellects of the ages were to concentrate upon this one theme, never could they
adequately express their wonder at this dense darkness of the human mind.
Men do not suffer anyone to seize their estates, and they rush to stones and
arms if there is even the slightest dispute about the limit of their lands, yet
they allow others to trespass upon their life -nay, they themselves even lead in
those who will eventually possess it. No one is to be found who is willing
to distribute his money, yet among how many does each one of us distribute his
life! In guarding their fortune men are often closefisted, yet, when it
comes to the matter of wasting time, in the case of the one thing in which it is
right to be miserly, they show themselves most prodigal. And so I should like to
lay hold upon someone from the company of older men and say: "I see that you
have reached the farthest limit of human life, you are pressing hard upon your
hundredth year, or are even beyond it; come now, recall your life and make a
reckoning. Consider how much of your time was taken up with a moneylender,
how much with a mistress, how much with a patron, how much with a client, how
much in wrangling with your wife, how much in punishing your slaves, how much in
rushing about the city on social duties. Add the diseases which we have
caused by our own acts, add, too, the time that has lain idle and unused; you
will see that you have fewer years to your credit than you count. Look
back in memory and consider when you ever had a fixed plan, how few days have
passed as you had intended, when you were ever at your own disposal, when your
face ever wore its natural expression, when your mind was ever unperturbed, what
work you have achieved in so long a life, how many have robbed you of life when
you were not aware of what you were losing, how much was taken up in useless
sorrow, in foolish joy, in greedy desire, in the allurements of society, how
little of yourself was left to you; you will perceive that you are dying before
your season!"\a What, then, is the reason of this? You live as if you were
destined to live forever, no thought of your frailty ever enters your head, of
how much time has already gone by you take no heed. You squander time as
if you drew from a full and abundant supply, though all the while that day which
you bestow on some person or thing is perhaps your last. You have all the
fears of mortals and all the desires of immortals. You will hear many men
saying: "After my fiftieth year I shall retire into leisure, my sixtieth year
shall release me from public duties." And what guarantee, pray, have you that
your life will last longer? Who will suffer your course to be just as you
plan it? Are you not ashamed to reserve for yourself only the remnant of
life, and to set apart for wisdom only that time which cannot be devoted to any
business? How late it is to begin to live just when we must cease to live!
What foolish forgetfulness of mortality to postpone wholesome plans to the
fiftieth and sixtieth year, and to intend to begin life at a point to which few
have attained!
You will see that the most
powerful and highly placed men let drop remarks in which they long for leisure,
acclaim it, and prefer it to all their blessings. They desire at times, if
it could be with safety, to descend from their high pinnacle; for, though
nothing from without should assail or shatter, Fortune of its very self comes
crashing down.\a
The deified Augustus, to
whom the gods vouchsafed more than to any other man, did not cease to pray for
rest and to seek release from public affairs; all his conversation ever reverted
to this subject - his hope of leisure. This was the sweet, even if vain,
consolation with which he would gladden his labours - that he would one day live
for himself. In a letter addressed to the senate, in which he had promised
that his rest would not be devoid of dignity nor inconsistent with his former
glory, I find these words: "But these matters can be shown better by deeds than
by promises. Nevertheless, since the joyful reality is still far distant,
my desire for that time most earnestly prayed for has led me to forestall some
of its delight by the pleasure of words." So desirable a thing did leisure seem
that he anticipated it in thought because he could not attain it in reality.
He who saw everything depending upon himself alone, who determined the fortune
of individuals and of nations, thought most happily of that future day on which
he should lay aside his greatness. He had discovered how much sweat those
blessings that shone throughout all lands drew forth, how many secret worries
they concealed. Forced to pit arms first against his countrymen, then
against his colleagues, and lastly against his relatives, he shed blood on land
and sea.
Through Macedonia, Sicily,
Egypt, Syria, and Asia, and almost all countries he followed the path of battle,
and when his troops were weary of shedding Roman blood, he turned them to
foreign wars. While he was pacifying the Alpine regions, and subduing the
enemies planted in the midst of a peaceful empire, while he was extending its
bounds even beyond the Rhine and the Euphrates and the Danube, in Rome itself
the swords of Murena, Caepio, Lepidus, Egnatius, and others were being whetted
to slay him. Not yet had he escaped their plots, when his daughter\a and
all the noble youths who were bound to her by adultery as by a sacred oath, oft
alarmed his failing years -and there was Paulus, and a second time the need to
fear a woman in league with an Antony.\b When be had cut away these ulcers\c
together with the limbs themselves, others would grow in their place; just as in
a body that was overburdened with blood, there was always a rupture somewhere.
And so he longed for leisure, in the hope and thought of which he found relief
for his labours. This was the prayer of one who was able to answer
the prayers of mankind. Marcus Cicero, long flung among men like Catiline and
Clodius and Pompey and Crassus, some open enemies, others doubtful friends, as
he is tossed to and fro along with the state and seeks to keep it from
destruction, to be at last swept away, unable as he was to be restful in
prosperity or patient in adversity - how many times does he curse that very
consulship of his, which he had lauded without end, though not without reason!
How tearful the words he uses in a letter\a written to Atticus, when Pompey the
elder had been conquered, and the son was still trying to restore his shattered
arms in Spain! "Do you ask," he said, "what I am doing here? I am lingering in
my Tusculan villa half a prisoner." He then proceeds to other statements, in
which he bewails his former life and complains of the present and despairs of
the future. Cicero said that he was "half a prisoner." But, in very truth,
never will the wise man resort to so lowly a term, never will he be half a
prisoner - he who always possesses an undiminished and stable liberty, being
free and his own master and towering over all others. For what can
possibly be above him who is above Fortune? When Livius Drusus,\b a bold
and energetic man, had with the support of a huge crowd drawn from all Italy
proposed new laws and the evil measures of the Gracchi, seeing no way out for
his policy, which he could neither carry through nor abandon when once started
on, he is said to have complained bitterly against the life of unrest he had had
from the cradle, and to have exclaimed that he was the only person who had never
had a holiday even as a boy. For, while he was still a ward and wearing the
dress of a boy, he had had the courage to commend to the favour of a jury those
who were accused, and to make his influence felt in the law-courts, so
powerfully, indeed, that it is very well known that in certain trials he foreed
a favourable verdict. To what lengths was not such premature ambition destined
to go? One might have known that such precocious hardihood would result in
great personal and public misfortune. And so it was too late for him to
complain that he had never had a holiday when from boyhood he had been a
trouble-maker and a nuisance in the forum. It is a question whether he
died by his own hand; for he fell from a sudden wound received in his groin,
some doubting whether his death was voluntary, no one, whether it was timely.
It would be superfluous to
mention more who, though others deemed them the happiest of men, have expressed
their loathing for every act of their years, and with their own lips have given
true testimony against themselves; but by these complaints they changed neither
themselves nor others. For when they have vented their feelings in words,
they fall back into their usual round. Heaven knows! such lives as
yours, though they should pass the limit of a thousand years, will shrink into
the merest span; your vices will swallow up any amount of time. The space
you have, which reason can prolong, although it naturally hurries away, of
necessity escapes from you quickly; for you do not seize it, you neither hold it
back, nor impose delay upon the swiftest thing in the world, but you allow it to
slip away as if it were something superfluous and that could be replaced.
But among the worst I count also those who have time for
nothing but wine and lust; for none have more shameful engrossments.\a The
others, even if they are possessed by the empty dream of glory, nevertheless go
astray in a seemly manner; though you should cite to me the men who are
avaricious, the men who are wrathful, whether busied with unjust hatreds the men
are wrathful, whether busied with unjust hatred or with unjust wars, these all
sin in more manly fashion. But those who are plunged into the pleasures of
the belly and into lust bear a stain that is dishonourable. Search into the
hours of all these people, see how much time they give to accounts, how much to
laying snares, how much to fearing them, how much to paying court, how much to
being courted, how much is taken up in giving or receiving bail, how much by
banquets - for even these have now become a matter of business -, and you will
see how their interests, whether you call them evil or good, do not allow them
time to breathe.
Finally, everybody agrees
that no one pursuit can be successfully followed by a man who is busied with
many things - eloquence cannot, nor the liberal studies - since the mind, when
its interests are divided, takes in nothing very deeply, but rejects everything
that is, as it were, crammed into it. There is nothing the busy man is
less busied with than living: there is nothing that is harder to learn. Of
the other arts there are many teachers everywhere; some of them we have seen
that mere boys have mastered so thoroughly that they could even play the master.
It takes the whole of life to learn how to live, and - what will perhaps make
you wonder more - it takes the whole of life to learn how to die. Many
very great men, having laid aside all their encumbrances, having renounced
riches, business, and pleasures, have made it their one aim up to the very end
of life to know how to live; yet the greater number of them have departed from
life confesssing that they did not yet know -still less do those others know.
Believe me, it takes a great man and one who has risen far above human
weaknesses not to allow any of his time to be filched from him, and it follows
that the life of such a man is very long because he has devoted wholly to
himself whatever time he has had. None of it lay neglected and idle; none
of it was under the control of another, for, guarding it most grudgingly, he
found nothing that was worthy to be taken in exchange for his time.
And so that man had time enough, but those who have been robbed of much of their
life by the public, have necessarily had too little of it. And there is no
reason for you to suppose that these people are not sometimes aware of their
loss. Indeed, you will hear many of those who are burdened by great
prosperity cry out at times in the midst of their throngs of clients, or their
pleadings in court, or their other glorious miseries: "I have no chance to
live." Of course you have no chance! All those who summon you to
themselves, turn you away from your own self. Of how many days has that
defendant robbed you? Of how many that candidate? Of how many that
old woman wearied with burying her heirs?\a Of how many that man who is shamming
sickness for the purpose of exciting the greed of the legacy-hunters? Of how
many that very powerful friend who has you and your like on the list, not of his
friends, but of his retinue? Check off, I say, and review the days of your
life; you will see that very few, and those the refuse. have been left for
you. That man who had prayed for the fasces,\a when he attains them,
desires to lay them aside and says over and over: "When will this year be over!"
That man gives games,\b and, after setting great value on gaining the chance to
give them, now says: "When shall I be rid of them?" That advocate is lionized
throughout the whole forum, and fills all the place with a great crowd that
stretches farther than he can be heard, yet he says: "When will vacation time
come?" Everyone hurries his life on and suffers from a yearning for the future
and a weariness of the present. But he who bestows all of his time on his
own needs, who plans out every day as if it were his last, neither longs for nor
fears the morrow. For what new pleasure is there that any hour can now
bring? They are all known, all have been enjoyed to the full.
Mistress Fortune may deal out the rest as she likes; his life has already found
safety. Something may be added to it, but nothing taken from it, and he
will take any addition as the man who is satisfied and filled takes the food
which he does not desire and yet can hold. And so there is no reason for
you to think that any man has lived long because he has grey hairs or wrinkles;
he has not lived long - he has existed long. For what if you should think
that that man had had a long voyage who had been caught by a fierce storm as
soon as he left harbour, and, swept hither and thither by a succession of winds
that raged from different quarters, had been driven in a circle around the same
course? Not much voyaging did he have, but much tossing about. I am
often filled with wonder when I see some men demanding the time of others and
those from whom they ask it most indulgent. Both of them fix their eyes on
the object of the request for time, neither of them on the time itself; just as
if what is asked were nothing, what is given, nothing. Men trifle with the
most precious thing in the world; but they are blind to it because it is an
incorporeal thing, because it does not come beneath the sight of the eyes, and
for this reason it is counted a very cheap thing - nay, of almost no value at
all. Men set very great store by pensions and doles, and for these they
hire out their labour or service or effort. But no one sets a value
on time; all use it lavishly as if it cost nothing. But see how these same
people clasp the knees of physicians if they fall ill and the danger of death
draws nearer, see how ready they are, if threatened with capital punishment, to
spend all their possessions in order to live! So great is the
inconsistency of their feelings. But if each one could have the
number of his future years set before him as is possible in the case of the
years that have passed, how alarmed those would be who saw only a few remaining,
how sparing of them would they be! And yet it is easy to dispense an
amount that is assured, no matter how small it may be; but that must be guarded
more carefully which will fail you know not when.
Yet there is no reason for
you to suppose that these people do not know how precious a thing time is; for
to those whom they love most devotedly they have a habit of saying that they are
ready to give them a part of their own years. And they do give it, without
realizing it; but the result of their giving is that they themselves suffer loss
without adding to the years of their dear ones. But the very thing they do
not know is whether they are suffering loss; therefore, the removal of something
that is lost without being noticed they find is bearable. Yet no one will bring
back the years, no one will bestow you once more on yourself. Life will
follow the path it started upon, and will neither reverse nor check its course;
it will make no noise, it will not remind you of its swiftness. Silent it
will glide on; it will not prolong itself at the command of a king, or at the
applause of the populace. Just as it was started on its first day,
so it will run; nowhere will it turn aside, nowhere will it delay. And
what will be the result? You have been engrossed, life hastens by;
meanwhile death will be at hand, for which, willy nilly, you must find leisure.
Can anything be sillier than
the point of view of certain people - I mean those who boast of their foresight?
They keep themselves very busily engaged in order that they may be able to live
better; they spend life in making ready to live! They form their purposes
with a view to the distant future; yet postponement is the greatest waste of
life; it deprives them of each day as it comes, it snatches from them the
present by promising something hereafter. The greatest hindrance to living
is expectancy, which depends upon the morrow and wastes to-day. You dispose of
that which lies in the hands of Fortune, you let go that which lies in your own.
Whither do you look? At what goal do you aim? All things that are
still to come lie in uncertainty; live straightway! See how the greatest
of bards cries out, and, as if inspired with divine utterance, sings the saving
strain:
The fairest day in hapless mortals' life
Is ever first to flee.-
"Why do you delay," says he,
"Why are you idle? Unless you seize the day, it flees." Even though you
seize it, it still will flee; therefore you must vie with time's swiftness in
the speed of using it, and, as from a torrent that rushes by and will not always
flow, you must drink quickly. And, too, the utterance of the bard is most
admirably worded to cast censure upon infinite delay, in that he says, not "the
fairest age," but "the fairest day." Why, to whatever length your greed
inclines, do you stretch before yourself months and years in long array,
unconcerned and slow though time flies so fast? The poet speaks to
you about the day, and about this very day that is flying. Is there, then,
any doubt that for hapless mortals, that is, for men who are engrossed, the
fairest day is ever the first to flee? Old age surprises them while their minds
are still childish, and they come to it unprepared and unarmed, for they have
made no provision for it; they have stumbled upon it suddenly and unexpectedly,
they did not notice that it was drawing nearer day by day. Even as
conversation or reading or deep meditation on some subject beguiles the
traveller, and he finds that he has reached the end of his journey before he was
aware that he was approaching it, just so with this unceasing and most swift
journey of life, which we make at the same pace whether waking or sleeping;
those who are engrossed become aware of it only at the end. Should I
choose to divide my subject into heads with their separate proofs, many
arguments will occur to me by which I could prove that busy men find life very
short. But Fabianus, who was none of your lecture-room philosophers
of to-day, but one of the genuine and old-fashioned kind, used to say that we
must fight against the passions with main force, not with artifice, and that the
battle-line must be turned by, a bold attack, not by inflicting pinpricks; that
sophistry is not serviceable, for the passions must be, not nipped, but crushed.
Yet, in order that the victims of them nay be censured, each for his own
particular fault, I say that they must be instructed, not merely wept over.
Life is divided into three
periods - that which has been, that which is, that which will be. Of these
the present time is short, the future is doubtful, the past is certain.
For the last is the one over which Fortune has lost control, is the one which
cannot be brought back under any man's power. But men who are engrossed
lose this; for they have no time to look back upon the past, and even if they
should have, it is not pleasant to recall something they must view with regret.
They are, therefore, unwilling to direct their thoughts backward to ill-spent
hours, and those whose vices become obvious if they review the past, even the
vices which were disguised under some allurement of momentary pleasure, do not
have the courage to revert to those hours. No one willingly turns his
thought back to the past, unless all his acts have been submitted to the
censorship of his conscience, which is never deceived; he who has ambitiously
coveted, proudly scorned, recklessly conquered, treacherously betrayed, greedily
seized, or lavishly squandered, must needs fear his own memory. And yet this is
the part of our time that is sacred and set apart, put beyond the reach of all
human mishaps, and removed from the dominion of Fortune, the part which is
disquieted by no want, by no fear, by no attacks of disease; this can neither be
troubled nor be snatched away - it is an everlasting and unanxious possession.
The present offers only one day at a time, and each by minutes; but all the days
of past time will appear when you bid them, they will suffer you to behold them
and keep them at your will - a thing which those who are engrossed have no time
to do. The mind that is untroubled and tranquil has the power to roam into
all the parts of its life; but the minds of the engrossed, just as if weighted
by a yoke, cannot turn and look behind. And so their life vanishes
into an abyss; and as it does no good, no matter how much water you pour into a
vessel, if there is no bottom\a to receive and hold it, so with time - it makes
no difference how much is given; if there is nothing for it to settle upon, it
passes out through the chinks and holes of the mind. Present time is very
brief, so brief, indeed, that to some there seems to be none; for it is always
in motion, it ever flows and hurries on; it ceases to be before it has come, and
can no more brook delay than the firmament or the stars, whose ever unresting
movement never lets them abide in the same track. The engrossed,
therefore, are concerned with present time alone, and it is so brief that it
cannot be grasped, and even this is filched away from them, distracted as they
are among many things.
In a word, do you want to
know how they do not "live long"? See how eager they are to live long!
Decrepit old men beg in their prayers for the addition of a few more years; they
pretend that they are younger than they are; they comfort themselves with a
falsehood, and are as pleased to deceive themselves as if they deceived Fate at
the same time. But when at last some infirmity has reminded them of their
mortality, in what terror do they die, feeling that they are being dragged out
of life, and not merely leaving it. They cry out that they have been
fools, because they have not really lived, and that they will live henceforth in
leisure if only they escape from this illness; then at last they reflect how
uselessly they have striven for things which they did not enjoy, and how all
their toil has gone for nothing. But for those whose life is passed remote
from all business, why should it not be ample? None of it is assigned to
another, none of it is scattered in this direction and that, none of it is
committed to Fortune, none of it perishes from neglect, none is subtracted by
wasteful giving, none of it is unused; the whole of it, so to speak, yields
income. And so, however small the amount of it, it is abundantly sufficient, and
therefore, whenever his last day shall come, the wise man will not hesitate to
go to meet death with steady step.
Perhaps you ask whom I would call
"the engrossed "? There is no reason for you to suppose that I mean only
those whom the dogs\a that have at length been let in drive out from the law-
court, those whom you see either gloriously crushed in their own crowd of
followers, or scornfully in someone else's, those whom social duties call forth
from their own homes to bump them against someone else's doors, or whom the
praetor's hammer\b keeps busy in seeking gain that is disreputable and that will
one day fester. Even the leisure of some men is engrossed; in their villa
or on their couch, in the midst of solitude, although they have withdrawn from
all others, they are themselves the source of their own worry; we should say
that these are living, not in leisure, but in busy idleness. Would you say that
that man is at leisure\b who arranges with finical care his Corinthian bronzes,
that the mania of a few makes costly, and spends the greater part of each day
upon rusty bits of copper? Who sits in a public wrestling-place (for, to our
shame I we labour with vices that are not even Roman) watching the wrangling of
lads? Who sorts out the herds of his pack-mules into pairs of the same age
and colour? Who feeds all the newest athletes? Tell me, would you say that
those men are at leisure who pass many hours at the barber's while they are
being stripped of whatever grew out the night before? while a solemn
debate is held over each separate hair? while either disarranged locks are
restored to their place or thinning ones drawn from this side and that toward
the forehead? How angry they get if the barber has been a bit too
careless, just as if he were shearing a real man! How they flare up if any
of their mane is lopped off, if any of it lies out of order, if it does not all
fall into its proper ringlets! Who of these would not rather have the
state disordered than his hair? Who is not more concerned to have his head
trim rather than safe? Who would not rather be well barbered than upright?
Would you say that these are at leisure who are occupied with the comb and the
mirror? And what of those who are engaged in composing, hearing, and
learning songs, while they twist the voice, whose best and simplest movement
Nature designed to be straightforward, into the meanderings of some
indolent tune, who are always snapping their fingers as they beat time to some
song they have in their head, who are overheard humming a tune when they have
been summoned to serious, often even melancholy, matters? These have not
leisure, but idle occupation. And their banquets, Heaven knows! I
cannot reckon among their unoccupied hours, since I see how anxiously they set
out their silver plate, how diligently they tie up the tunics of their pretty
slave-boys, how breathlessly they watch to see in what style the wild boar
issues from the hands of the cook, with what speed at a given signal smooth
faced boys hurry to perform their duties, with what skill the birds are carved
into portions all according to rule, how carefully unhappy little lads wipe up
the spittle of drunkards. By such means they seek the reputation of
being fastidious and elegant, and to such an extent do their evils follow them
into all the privacies of life that they can neither eat nor drink without
ostentation. And I would not count these among the leisured class either -
the men who have themselves borne hither and thither in a sedan-chair and a
litter, and are punctual at the hours for their rides as if it were unlawful to
omit them, who are reminded by someone else when they must bathe, when they must
swim, when they must dine; so enfeebled are they by the excessive lassitude of a
pampered mind that they cannot find out by themselves whether they are hungry!
I hear that one of these pampered people - provided that you can call it
pampering to unlearn the habits of human life - when he had been lifted by hands
from the bath and placed in his sedan- chair, said questioningly: "Am I now
seated?" Do you think that this man, who does not know whether he is sitting,
knows whether he is alive, whether he sees, whether he is at leisure? I
find it hard to say whether I pity him more if he really did not know, or if he
pretended not to know this. They really are subject to forgetfulness of many
things, but they also pretend forgetfulness of many. Some vices delight
them as being proofs of their prosperity; it seems the part of a man who is very
lowly and despicable to know what he is doing. After this imagine that the
mimes\a fabricate many things to make a mock of luxury! In very truth,
they pass over more than they invent, and such a multitude of unbelievable vices
has come forth in this age, so clever in this one direction, that by now we can
charge the mimes with neglect. To think that there is anyone who is so
lost in luxury that he takes another's word as to whether he is sitting down!
This man, then, is not at leisure, you must apply to him a different term - he
is sick, nay, he is dead; that man is at leisure, who has also a perception of
his leisure. But this other who is half alive, who, in order that he may
know the postures of his own body, needs someone to tell him - how can he be the
master of any of his time?
It would be tedious to
mention all the different men who have spent the whole of their life over chess
or ball or the practice of baking their bodies in the sun. They are not
unoccupied whose pleasures are made a busy occupation. For instance, no
one will have any doubt that those are laborious triflers who spend their time
on useless literary problems, of whom even among the Romans there is now a great
number. It was once a foible confined to the Greeks to inquire into what number
of rowers Ulysses had, whether the Iliad or the Odyssey was written first,
whether moreover they belong to the same author, and various other matters of
this stamp, which, if you keep them to yourself, in no way pleasure your secret
soul, and, if you publish them, make you seem more of a bore than a scholar.
But now this vain passion for learning useless things has assailed the Romans
also. In the last few days I heard someone telling who was the first
Roman general to do this or that; Duilius was the first who won a naval battle,
Curius Dentatus was the first who had elephants led in his triumph. Still,
these matters, even if they add nothing to real glory, are nevertheless
concerned with signal services to the state; there will be no profit in such
knowledge, nevertheless it wins our attention by reason of the attractiveness of
an empty subject. We may excuse also those who inquire into this - who
first induced the Romans to go on board ship. It was Claudius, and this
was the very reason he was surnamed Caudex, because among the ancients a
structure formed by joining together several boards was called a caudex, whence
also the Tables of the Law are called codices," and, in the ancient fashion,
boats that carry provisions up the Tiber are even to-day called codicariae.
Doubtless this too may have some point - the fact that Valerius Corvinus was the
first to conquer Messana, and was the first of the family of the Valerii to bear
the surname Messana because be had transferred the name of the conquered city to
himself, and was later called Messala after the gradual corruption of the name
in the popular speech. Perhaps you will permit someone to be interested
also in this - the fact that Lucius Sulla was the first to exhibit loosed lions
in the Circus, though at other times they were exhibited in chains, and that
javelin-throwers were sent by King Bocchus to despatch them? And,
doubtless, this too may find some excuse - but does it serve any useful purpose
to know that Pompey was the first to exhibit the slaughter of eighteen elephants
in the Circus, pitting criminals against them in a mimic battle? He, a
leader of the state and one who, according to report, was conspicuous among the
leaders\a of old for the kindness of his heart, thought it a notable kind of
spectacle to kill human beings after a new fashion. Do they fight to the
death? That is not enough! Are they torn to pieces? That is
not enough! Let them be crushed by aninials of monstrous bulk!
Better would it be that these things pass into oblivion lest hereafter some
all-powerful man should learn them and be jealous of an act that was nowise
human. O, what blindness does great prosperity cast upon our minds! When
he was casting so many troops of wretched human beings to wild beasts born under
a different sky, when he was proclaiming war between creatures so ill matched,
when he was shedding so much blood before the eyes of the Roman people, who
itself was soon to be forced to shed more. he then believed that he was
beyond the power of Nature. But later this same man, betrayed by
Alexandrine treachery, offered himself to the dagger of the vilest slave, and
then at last discovered what an empty boast his surname\c was.
But to return to the point
from which I have digressed, and to show that some people bestow useless pains
upon these same matters - the man I mentioned related that Metellus, when he
triumphed after his victory over the Carthaginians in Sicily, was the only one
of all the Romans who had caused a hundred and twenty captured elephants to be
led before his car; that Sulla was the last of the Roman's who extended the
pomerium, which in old times it was customary to extend after the acquisition of
Italian but never of provincial, territory. Is it more profitable to know
this than that Mount Aventine, according to him, is outside the pomerium for one
of two reasons, either because that was the place to which the plebeians had
seceded, or because the birds had not been favourable when Remus took his
auspices on that spot - and, in turn, countless other reports that are either
crammed with falsehood or are of the same sort? For though you grant that they
tell these things in good faith, though they pledge themselves for the truth of
what they write, still whose mistakes will be made fewer by such stories?
Whose passions will they restrain? Whom will they make more brave, whom more
just, whom more noble-minded? My friend Fabianus used to say that at times he
was doubtful whether it was not better not to apply oneself to any studies than
to become entangled in these.
Of all men they alone are at
leisure who take time for philosophy, they alone really live; for they are not
content to be good guardians of their own lifetime only. They annex ever
age to their own; all the years that have gone ore them are an addition to their
store. Unlesss we are most ungrateful, all those nen, glorious fashioners
of holy thoughts, were born for us; for us they have prepared a way of life.
By other men's labours we are led to the sight of things most beautiful that
have been wrested from darkness and brought into light; from no age are we shut
out, we have access to all ages, and if it is our wish, by greatness of mind, to
pass beyond the narrow limits of human weakness, there is a great stretch of
time through which we may roam. We may argue with Socrates, we may doubt\a
with Carneades, find peace with Epicurus, overcome human nature with the Stoics,
exceed it with the Cynics. Since Nature allows us to enter into fellowship
with every age, why should we not turn from this paltry and fleeting span of
time and surrender ourselves with all our soul to the past, which is boundless,
which is eternal, which we share with our betters?
Those who rush about in the
performance of social duties, who give themselves and others no rest, when they
have fully indulged their madness, when they have every day crossed everybody's
threshold, and have left no open door unvisited, when they have carried around
their venal greeting to houses that are very far apart - out of a city so huge
and torn by such varied desires, how few will they be able to see? How
many will there be who either from sleep or self-indulgence or rudeness will
keep them out! How many who, when they have tortured them with long
waiting, will rush by, pretending to be in a hurry! How many will avoid
passing out through a hall that is crowded with clients, and will make their
escape through some concealed door as if it were not more discourteous to
deceive than to exclude. How many, still half asleep and sluggish from
last night's debauch, scarcely lifting their lips in the midst of a most
insolent yawn, manage to bestow on yonder poor wretches, who break their own
slumber\b in order to wait on that of another, the right name only after it has
been whispered to them a thousand times!
But we may fairly say that
they alone are engaged in the true duties of life who shall wish to have Zeno,
Pythagoras, Democritus, and all the other high priests of liberal studies, and
Aristotle and Theophrastus, as their most intimate friends every day. No
one of these will be "not at home," no one of these will fail to have his
visitor leave more happy and more devoted to himself than when he came, no one
of these will allow anyone to leave him with empty hands; all mortals can meet
with them by night or by day.
No one of these will force
you to die, but all will teach you how to die; no one of these will wear out
your years, but each will add his own years to yours; conversations with no one
of these will bring you peril, the friendship of none will endanger your life,
the courting of none will tax your purse. From them you will take whatever
you wish; it will be no fault of theirs if you do not draw the utmost that you
can desire. What happiness, what a fair old age awaits him who has offered
himself as a client to these! He will have friends from whom he may seek
counsel on matters great and small, whom he may consult every day about himself,
from whom he may hear truth without insult, praise without flattery, and after
whose likeness he may fashion himself. We are wont to say that it was not
in our power to choose the parents who fell to our lot, that they have been
given to men by chance; yet we may be the sons of whomsoever we will.
Households there are of noblest intellects; choose the one into which you wish
to be adopted; you will inherit not merely their name, but even their property,
which there will be no need to guard in a mean or niggardly spirit; the more
persons you share it with, the greater it will become.
These will open to you the path to immortality, and will
raise you to a height from which no one is cast down. This is the only way
of prolonging mortality -nay, of turning it into immortality. Honours,
monuments, all that ambition has commanded by decrees or reared in works of
stone, quickly sink to ruin; there is nothing that the lapse of time does not
tear down and remove. But the works which philosophy has consecrated
cannot be harmed; no age will destroy them, no age reduce them; the following
and each succeeding age will but increase the reverence for them, since envy
works upon what is close at hand, and things that are far off we are more free
to admire. The life of the philosopher, therefore, has wide range, and he is not
confined by the same bounds that shut others in. He alone is freed from
the limitations of the human race; all ages serve him as if a god. Has
some time passed by? This he embraces by recollection. Is time
present? This he uses. Is it still to come? This he
anticipates. He makes his life long by combining all times into one.
But those who forget the
past, neglect the present, and fear for the future have a life that is very
brief and troubled; when they have reached the end of it, the poor wretches
perceive too late that for such a long while they have been busied in doing
nothing. Nor because they sometimes invoke death, have you any reason to think
it any proof that they find life long. In their folly they are harassed by
shifting emotions which rush them into the very things they dread; they often
pray for death because they fear it. And, too, you have no reason to think
that this is any proof that they are living a long time - the fact that the day
often seems to them long, the fact that they complain that the hours pass slowly
until the time set for dinner arrives; for, whenever their engrossments fail
them, they are restless because they are left with nothing to do, and they do
not know how to dispose of their leisure or to drag out the time. And so
they strive for something else to occupy them, and all the intervening time is
irksome; exactly as they do when a gladiatorial exhibition\b is been announced,
or when they are waiting for the appointed time of some other show or amusement,
they want to skip over the days that lie between. All postponement of
something they hope for seems long to them. Yet the time which they enjoy
is short and swift, and it is made much shorter by their own fault; for they
flee from one pleasure to another and cannot remain fixed in one desire.
Their days are not long to them, but hateful; yet, on the other hand, how scanty
seem the nights which they spend in the arms of a harlot or in wine! It is
this also that accounts for the madness of poets in fostering human frailties by
the tales in which they represent that Jupiter under the enticenient of the
pleasures of a lover doubled the length of the night. For what is it but
to inflame our vices to inscribe the name of the gods as their sponsors, and to
present the excused indulgence of divinity as an example to our own weakness?
Can the nights which they pay for so dearly fail to seem all too short to these
men? They lose the day in expectation of the night, and the night in fear
of the dawn.
The very pleasures of such
men are uneasy and disquieted by alarms of various sorts, and at the very moment
of rejoicing the anxious thought comes over them: How long will these
things last?" This feeling has led kings to weep over the power they possessed,
and they have not so much delighted in the greatness of their fortune, as they
have viewed with terror the end to which it must some time come. When the
King of Persia,\a in all the insolence of his pride, spread his army over the
vast plains and could not grasp its number but simply its measure,\b he shed
copious tears because inside of a hundred years not a man of such a mighty army
would be alive.\c But he who wept was to bring upon them their fate, was to give
some to their doom on the sea, some on the land, some in battle, some in flight,
and within a short time was to destroy all those for whose hundredth year he had
such fear. And why is it that even their joys are uneasy from fear?
Because they do not rest on stable causes, but are perturbed as groundiessly as
they are born. But of what sort do you think those times are which
even by their own confession are wretched, since even the joys by which they are
exalted and lifted above mankind are by no means pure? All the greatest
blessings are a source of anxiety, and at no time is fortune less wisely trusted
than when it is best; to maintain prosperity there is need of other prosperity,
and in behalf of the prayers that have turned out well we must make still other
prayers. For everything that comes to us from chance is unstable, and the
higher it rises, the more liable it is to fall. Moreover, what is doomed
to perish brings pleasure to no one; very wretched, therefore, and not merely
short, must the life of those be who work hard to gain what they must work
harder to keep. By great toil they attain what they wish, and with anxiety
hold what they have attained; meanwhile they take no account of time that will
never more return. New engrossments take the place of the old, hope leads
to new hope, ambition to new ambition. They do not seek an end of their
wretchedness, but change the cause. Have we been tormented by our own
public honours? Those of others take more of our time. Have we ceased to
labour as candidates? We begin to canvass for others. Have we got rid of
the troubles of a prosecutor? We find those of a judge. Has a man ceased
to be a judge? He becomes president of a court. Has he become infirm
in managing the property of others at a salary? He is perplexed by caring
for his own wealth. Have the barracks\a set Marius free? The
consulship keeps him busy. Does Quintius hasten to get to the end of his
dictatorship? He will be called back to it from the plough. Scipio
will go against the Carthaginians before he is ripe for so great an undertaking;
victorious over Hannibal, victorious over Antiochus, the glory of his own
consulship, the surety for his brother's, did he not stand in his own way, he
would be set beside Jove\c; but the discord of civilians will vex their
preserver, and, when as a young man he had scorned honours that rivalled those
of the gods, at length, when he is old, his ambition will lake delight in
stubborn exile.\d Reasons for anxiety will never be lacking, whether born of
prosperity or of wretchedness; life pushes on in a succession of engrossments.
We shall always pray for leisure, but never enjoy it.
And so, my dearest Paulinus,
tear yourself away from the crowd, and, too much storm-tossed for the time you
have lived, at length withdraw into a peaceful harbour. Think of how many
waves you have encountered, how many storms, on the one hand, you have sustained
in private life, how many, on the other, you have brought upon yourself in
public life; long enough has your virtue been displayed in laborious and
unceasing proofs - try how it will behave in leisure. The greater part of
your life, certainly the better part of it, has been given to the state; take
now some part of your time for yourself as well. And I do not summon you
to slothful or idle inaction, or to drown all your native energy in slumbers and
the pleasures that are dear to the crowd. That is not to rest; you will
find far greater works than all those you have hitherto performed so
energetically, to occupy you in the midst of your release and retiremeat. You, I
know, manage the accounts of the whole world as honestly as you would a
stranger's, as carefully as you would your own, as conscientiously as you would
the state's. You win love in an office in which it is difficult to avoid
hatred; but nevertheless believe me, it is better to have knowledge of the
ledger of one's own life than of the corn-market. Recall that keen mind of
yours, which is most competent to cope with the greatest subjects, from a
service that is indeed honourable but hardly adapted to the happy life, and
reflect that in all your training in the liberal studies, extending from your
earliest years, you were not aiming at this -that it might be safe to entrust
many thousand pecks of corn to your charge; you gave hope of something greater
and more lofty. There will be no lack of men of tested worth and
painstaking industry. But plodding oxen are much more suited to carrying
heavy loads than thoroughbred horses, and who ever hampers the fleetness of such
high-born creatures with a heavy pack? Reflect, besides, how much worry
you have in subjecting yourself to such a great burden; your dealings are with
the belly of man. A hungry people neither listens to reason, nor is
appeased by justice, nor is bent by any entreaty. Very recently within
those few day's after Gaius Caesar died - still grieving most deeply (if the
dead have any feeling) because he knew that the Roman people were alive\a and
had enough food left for at any rate seven or eight days while he was building
his bridges of boats\b and playing with the resources of the empire, we were
threatened with the worst evil that can befall men even during a siege - the
lack of provisions; his imitation of a mad and foreign and misproud king\c was
very nearly at the cost of the city's destruction and famine and the general
revolution that follows famine. What then must have been the feeling of
those who had charge of the corn-market, and had to face stones, the sword, fire
-and a Caligula? By the greatest subterfuge they concealed the great
evil that lurked in the vitals of the state - with good reason, you may be sure.
For certain maladies must be treated while the patient is kept in ignorance;
knowledge of their disease has caused the death of many.
Do you retire to these
quieter, safer, greater things! Think you that it is just the same whether
you are concerned in having corn from oversea poured into the granaries, unhurt
either by the dishonesty or the neglect of those who transport it, in seeing
that it does not become heated and spoiled by collecting moisture and tallies in
weight and measure, or whether you enter upon these sacred and lofty studies
with the purpose of discovering what substance, what pleasure, what mode of
life, what shape God has; what fate awaits your soul; where Nature lays us to
rest When we are freed from the body; what the principle is that upholds all the
heaviest matter in the centre of this world, suspends the light on high, carries
fire to the topmost part, summons the stars to their proper changes - and ether
matters, in turn, full of mighty wonders? You really must leave the ground
and turn your mind's eye upon these things! Now while the blood is hot, we
must enter with brisk step upon the better course. In this kind of life
there awaits much that is good to know -the love and practice of the virtues,
forgetfulness of the passions, knowledge of living and dying, and a life of deep
repose.
The condition of all who are
engrossed is wretched, but most wretched is the condition of those who labour at
engrossments that are not even their own, who regulate their sleep by that of
another, their walk by the pace of another, who are under orders in case of the
freest things in the world - loving and hating. If these wish to know how
short their life is, let them reflect how small a part of it is their own.
And so when you see a man
often wearing the robe of office, when you see one whose name is famous in the
Forum, do not envy him; those things are bought at the price of life. They
will waste all their years, in order that they may have one year reckoned by
their name. Life has left some in the midst of their first struggles, before
they could climb up to the height of their ambition; some, when they have
crawled up through a thousand indignities to the crown indignity, have been
possessed by the unhappy thought that they have but toiled for an inscription on
a tomb; some who have come to extreme old age, while they adjusted it to new
hopes as if it were youth, have had it fail from sheer weakness in the midst of
their great and shameless endeavours. Shameful is he whose breath leaves
him in the midst of a trial when, advanced in years and still courting the
applause of an ignorant circle, he is pleading for some litigant who is the
veriest stranger; disgraceful is he who, exhausted more quickly by his mode of
living than by his labour, collapses in the very midst of his duties;
disgraceful is he who dies in the act of receiving payments on account, and
draws a smile from his long delayed\a heir. I cannot pass over an instance
which occurs to me. Sextus Turannius was an old man of long tested
diligence, who, after his ninetieth year, having received release from the
duties of his office by Gaius Caesar's own act, ordered himself to be laid out
on his bed and to be mourned by the assembled household as if he were dead.
The whole house bemoaned the leisure of its old master, and did not end its
sorrow until his accustomed work was restored to him. Is it really such pleasure
for a man to die in harness? Yet very many have the same feeling; their
desire for their labour lasts longer than their ability; they fight against the
weakness of the body, they judge old age to be a hardship on no other score than
because it puts them aside. The law does not draft a soldier after his
fiftieth year, it does not call a senator after his sixtieth; it is more
difficult for men to obtain leisure from themselves than from the law.
Meantime, while they rob and are being robbed, while they break up each other's
repose, while they make each other wretched, their life is without profit,
without pleasure, without any improvement of the mind. No one keeps death
in view, no one refrains from far-reaching hopes; some men, indeed, even arrange
for things that lie beyond life - huge masses of tombs and dedications of public
works and gifts for their funeral-pyres and ostentatious funerals. But, in
very truth, the funerals of such men ought to be conducted by the light of
torches and wax tapers,\a as though they had lived but the tiniest span.
a project of John Trapp
