1What is this, Lucilius, which drags us in one direction when we are heading in another, and pushes us towards the very place from which we long to withdraw? 1What is it that wrestles with our mind and does not allow us to will anything once and for all? 1We waver between different plans. 1We will nothing freely, nothing absolutely, nothing always. 2'It is folly,' you say, 'for which nothing is settled, nothing pleases for long.' 2But how or when shall we tear ourselves away from it? 2No one by himself is strong enough to emerge; 2someone must stretch out a hand, someone must lead him out. 3Epicurus says that some men have made their way out to the truth without anyone's help, that they made a path for themselves.
3These he praises most, who had their impulse from within, who brought themselves forward. 3Some, he says, need another's help, and will not go if no one has gone ahead, but will follow well. 3Of these, he says, Metrodorus is one; 3this too is an excellent mind, but of the second class. 3We are not of that first rank; 3it goes well with us if we are admitted to the second. 3Do not despise even this man, who can be saved by another's kindness; 3this too is much, to wish to be saved. 4Besides these you will find yet another class of men, not to be scorned either, those who can be forced and driven to what is right, who need not only a guide but a helper and, so to speak, someone to compel them.
4This is the third type. 4If you ask for an example of this too, Epicurus says that Hermarchus was such a man. 4And so he congratulates the one more, but admires the other more; 4for although both have reached the same goal, still the credit is greater for having achieved the same result with more difficult material. 5For suppose that two buildings have been raised, unlike from the bottom up, equally tall and magnificent. 5One received a clean site; 5there the work rose at once. 5In the other, the foundations, sunk into soft and shifting soil, wore out the builders, and much labour was spent before solid ground was reached.
5To one who looks at both, whatever one builder did is in plain view; the greater and more difficult part of the other's work lies hidden. 6Some minds are easy and ready; some must be worked by hand, as they say, and are busy with their own foundations. 6And so I would call the one more fortunate who has had no trouble with himself, but the other, I would say, has deserved better of himself, who has overcome the meanness of his own nature and has not led himself to wisdom but dragged himself there. 7You may be sure that this hard and laborious kind of mind has been given to us.
7We are going through obstacles. 7So let us fight, let us call on the help of others. 7'Whom,' you say, 'shall I call on? 7This man or that?' 7Go back also to those of earlier times, who are at leisure; 7not only those who are living can help us, but those who have lived. 8But from among those who are living, let us choose not those who pour out words at great speed and roll out commonplaces and give private shows like street performers, but those who teach by their life, who, when they have said what should be done, prove it by doing it, who teach what should be avoided and are never caught doing what they have said should be shunned.
8Choose as your helper one whom you admire more when you see him than when you hear him. 9Not that I would forbid you to listen also to those whose custom it is to admit the public and lecture, provided they come before the crowd with this purpose, to become better and to make others better, and do not practise this for the sake of ambition. 9For what is more shameful than philosophy angling for applause? 9Does a sick man praise the surgeon who is cutting him? 10Be silent, keep a reverent hush, and submit yourselves to treatment. 10Even if you cry out, I shall hear it as nothing else than your groaning at the touching of your vices.
10Do you wish to bear witness that you are paying attention and are moved by the greatness of the subject? 10Very well, let it be allowed; 10why indeed should I not permit you to judge and to cast your vote for the better course? 10In Pythagoras' school the pupils had to keep silent for five years; 10do you suppose, then, that they were allowed at once both to speak and to applaud? 11But how great is the madness of the man whom the shouts of the ignorant send away from the lecture hall in high spirits! 11Why do you rejoice that you have been praised by men whom you yourself cannot praise?
11Fabianus used to lecture to the public, but he was listened to with restraint. 11Now and then a great shout of praise would burst out, but one called forth by the greatness of the subject, not by the sound of a speech gliding smoothly and softly. 12Let there be some difference between the shouting of the theatre and that of the school; 12there is a certain decorum in praising too. 12All things, if they are observed, are signs of all things, and evidence of character can be taken even from the smallest details: the lewd man is revealed by his gait, by a movement of his hand, sometimes by a single answer, by his finger raised to his head, by the turn of his eyes.
12Laughter shows the wicked man, face and bearing the madman. 12For those qualities come out into the open through signs; 12you will know what each man is like if you observe how he praises and how he is praised. 13From this side and that the audience stretch out their hands towards the philosopher, and the admiring crowd stands right over his head; 13he is not being praised now, if you understand, but merely hailed with shouts. 13Let those cries be left to the arts whose aim is to please the people; 13let philosophy be worshipped. 14Young men must sometimes be allowed to follow the impulse of their spirits, but only when they do this from impulse, when they cannot command silence on themselves.
14Praise of that kind brings some encouragement to the listeners themselves and spurs on the minds of the young. 14Let them be stirred by the subject, not by well-arranged words; 14otherwise eloquence harms them, if it creates a desire not for the subject but for itself. 15I shall put this off for the present; 15for it requires a long treatment of its own: how one should lecture to the public, what liberties the speaker should allow himself before the public, and what the public should be allowed before him. 15There will certainly be no doubt that philosophy has suffered harm since it has been put up for sale. 15But it can be displayed in its own sanctuary, provided it has found not a huckster but a priest.
15Farewell.