1To the letter which you sent me from your journey, as long as the journey itself was, I shall reply later. 1I ought to withdraw and consider what to advise. 1For you too, who ask for advice, considered for a long time whether to ask for it; 1how much more must I do this, since there is need of longer delay to solve a question than to pose one? 1Especially since one thing is to your advantage, another to mine. 1Am I talking like an Epicurean again? 2No, the same thing is to my advantage as to yours; 2or else I am no friend, unless whatever is done that concerns you is my own concern.
2Friendship makes a partnership in all things between us. 2Neither good fortune nor bad belongs to either of us singly; 2we live in common. 2Nor can anyone live happily who regards only himself, who turns everything to his own advantage; 2you must live for another if you wish to live for yourself. 3This fellowship, carefully and scrupulously observed, which joins us as men with men and holds that there is a law common to the human race, helps greatly also in cultivating that more intimate fellowship of friendship of which I was speaking. 3For he will have everything in common with a friend who has much in common with a human being.
4This, Lucilius, best of men, is what I would rather those subtle thinkers taught me: what I owe to a friend, what to a human being, rather than in how many senses 'friend' is used and how many things 'man' means. 4Look, wisdom and folly part in opposite directions; 4which shall I join? 4Which way do you bid me go? 4For the one, every man stands for a friend; for the other, a friend does not stand for a man. 4The one procures a friend for himself, the other procures himself for a friend. 4You twist words about for me and pull syllables apart. 5No doubt unless I construct the craftiest questions and, by a false conclusion, bind fast a lie sprung from the truth, I shall not be able to separate what is to be sought from what is to be shunned.
5I am ashamed; 5in a matter so serious, we old men play games. 6'"Mouse" is a syllable. 6But a mouse nibbles cheese; 6therefore a syllable nibbles cheese.' 6Suppose now that I cannot solve that. 6What danger threatens me from such ignorance? 6What inconvenience? 6No doubt I must fear that some day I may catch syllables in a mousetrap, or that some day, if I am rather careless, a book may eat my cheese. 6Unless perhaps the following syllogism is sharper: '"Mouse" is a syllable. 6But a syllable does not nibble cheese; 6therefore a mouse does not nibble cheese.' 7What childish nonsense! 7Is it for this that we have knitted our brows?
7For this that we have let our beards grow? 7Is this what we teach, gloomy and pale? 7Do you want to know what philosophy promises the human race? 7Counsel. 7One man death summons, another poverty chafes, another is tormented by riches, whether other men's or his own. 7This man shudders at ill fortune, that one longs to escape from his own prosperity. 7This one is ill treated by men, that one by the gods. 8Why do you devise these games for me? 8This is no place for jesting; 8you have been called in to help the wretched. 8You promised to bring aid to the shipwrecked, the captive, the sick, the needy, and those who are placing their heads beneath the poised axe.
8Where are you turning aside? 8What are you doing? 8This man with whom you are playing is afraid; 8help him; what good are snares to those whose punishments hang over them? 8From all sides all men stretch out their hands to you; they implore some help for lives ruined or about to be ruined; in you are their hope and their resources. 8They ask you to drag them out of such great turmoil, to show the clear light of truth to them in their scattered wandering. 9Tell them what nature has made necessary and what superfluous, how easy are the laws she has laid down, how pleasant and unencumbered life is for those who follow them, how bitter and entangled for those who have trusted opinion more than nature.
9I would believe that those games of yours had some power to lighten these men's ills, if you first taught me what part of them they would lighten. 9Which of them removes desires? 9Which moderates them? 9Would that they were merely of no use! 9They do harm. 9I shall make this perfectly clear to you whenever you wish: that a noble nature, once thrown into such subtleties, is weakened and enfeebled. 10I am ashamed to say what weapons they hand to those who are about to do battle with fortune, how they equip them. 10Is this the way to the highest good? 10Is it through that 'if or if not' of philosophy, and through pleas that are base and disreputable even for those who sit studying the praetor's edict?
10For what else are you doing, when you knowingly lead the man you are questioning into a trap, than making it seem that he has lost his case on a point of form? 10But just as the praetor restores those men to their former state, so philosophy restores these. 11Why do you depart from your enormous promises and, after speaking grandly about how you will bring it about that the glitter of gold dazzles my eyes no more than the glitter of a sword, that with great steadfastness I trample on both what all men desire and what all men fear, why do you descend to the schoolmasters' ABC? 11What do you say?
11'Is this the way to the stars?' 11For this is what philosophy promises me: to make me equal to a god. 11To this I have been invited, for this I have come; 11keep your word. 12As far as you can, then, my Lucilius, draw yourself back from these objections and pleas of the philosophers. 12Plain and simple things befit goodness. 12Even if a great deal of life remained, it would have to be spent sparingly, so that there might be enough for necessary things; 12as it is, what madness is it to learn superfluous things in so great a scarcity of time? 12Farewell.