1When I ask you so earnestly to study, I am attending to my own business; 1I want to have you as a friend, and this cannot fall to my lot unless you go on cultivating yourself as you have begun. 1For at present you love me, but you are not my friend. 1'What then? 1Are these things different from one another?' 1Indeed, they are unlike. 1He who is a friend loves; 1he who loves is not necessarily a friend. 1And so friendship always does good, while love sometimes even does harm. 1If for nothing else, make progress for this reason, that you may learn how to love. 2Hurry, then, while you are making progress for my sake, lest it be for someone else that you have learned this.
2I indeed already reap the fruit, when I picture to myself that we shall be of one mind, and that whatever vigour has departed from my age will return to me from yours, although yours is not so very far behind. 3But all the same I want to be glad in the reality itself as well. 3Joy comes to us from those we love even when they are absent, but it is light and fading; 3the sight of them, their presence and their company hold something of living pleasure, especially if you see not only the man you wish, but the kind of man you wish. 3Bring yourself to me, then, a mighty gift, and, to press on the harder, reflect that you are mortal, and I am old.
4Hurry to me, but to yourself first. 4Make progress, and above all take care of this, that you are consistent with yourself. 4Whenever you wish to test whether anything has been achieved, observe whether you wish the same things today as yesterday. 4A change of will shows that the mind is drifting, appearing now here and now there, as the wind has carried it. 4What is fixed and founded does not wander. 4This is the lot of the perfect wise man, and to some extent also of the one who is making progress and is well advanced. 4What, then, is the difference? 4The one is moved, indeed, yet he does not shift his position, but sways in his own place; 4the other is not even moved.
4Farewell.