1I understand, Lucilius, that I am not only being corrected but transformed. 1Nor do I yet promise or hope that nothing remains in me which needs to be changed. 1Why should I not have many things that ought to be brought together, others thinned out, others raised up? 1And this very thing is proof of a mind changed for the better, that it sees its own faults, of which it was hitherto unaware. 1Some sick people are congratulated when they themselves have perceived that they are sick. 2I should like, therefore, to share with you so sudden a change in myself; 2then I should have begun to have a surer confidence in our friendship, that true friendship which neither hope nor fear nor concern for one's own advantage tears apart, that friendship with which men die, and for which they die.
3I will give you many who have lacked not a friend, but friendship. 3This cannot happen when an equal will to desire what is honourable draws minds into fellowship. 3Why can it not? 3Because they know that they have all things in common, and adversity above all. 3You cannot conceive in your mind how much progress I see each single day bring me. 4'Send to me too,' you say, 'those things which you have found so effective.' 4I do indeed long to pour everything into you, and I rejoice to learn something precisely so that I may teach it. 4Nor will anything delight me, however excellent and beneficial it may be, which I am to know only for myself.
4If wisdom were given me with this condition, that I should keep it shut up and not speak it out, I would refuse it. 4The possession of no good thing is pleasant without a companion. 5I will send you, then, the books themselves, and so that you do not spend much effort hunting here and there for what will be useful, I will add marks, so that you may come straight to the very passages I approve and admire. 5Yet the living voice and shared life will profit you more than a written discourse. 5You must come to the scene itself, first, because men trust their eyes more than their ears; 5second, because the road through precepts is long, through examples short and effective.
6Cleanthes would not have reproduced Zeno if he had only heard him; 6he shared his life, saw into his secrets, watched him to see whether he lived by his own rule. 6Plato and Aristotle and the whole crowd of wise men who were to go their different ways drew more from the character than from the words of Socrates; 6it was not the school of Epicurus but living under the same roof with him that made Metrodorus, Hermarchus and Polyaenus great men. 6And I do not summon you only that you may make progress, but that you may do good; 6for we shall contribute a very great deal to each other.
7Meanwhile, since I owe you your little daily wage, I will tell you what delighted me today in Hecato. 7'Do you ask,' he says, 'what progress I have made? 7I have begun to be a friend to myself.' 7He has made great progress; 7he will never be alone. 7Know that such a man is a friend to all. 7Farewell.