The Good Book (116 page)

  4. Let misanthropes declaim as much as they please against the vices, the simulation and dissimulation of the world;

  5. Those invectives are always the result of ignorance, ill-humour or envy.

  6. Let them show me a cottage where there are not the same vices of which they accuse courts;

  7. With this difference only, that in a cottage they appear in their native deformity, and that in courts, manners and good breeding make them less shocking.

  8. No, be convinced that manners are a solid good; they prevent a great deal of real mischief;

  9. They create, adorn and strengthen friendships; they keep hatred within bounds;

10. They promote good humour and goodwill in families, where the want of good breeding and gentleness of manners is commonly the original cause of discord.

11. Get then, before it is too late, a habit of the little virtues as well as the great ones;

12. Practise them, that they may be easy and familiar to you always; and pass through life with success that makes it possible for you to do more good in the world at large.

Epistle 23

  1. It is clear that no man can live a happy life, or even a supportable life, without the study of wisdom.

  2. You know also that a happy life is reached when our wisdom is brought to completion,

  3. But that life is at least endurable even when our search for wisdom is only begun.  

  4. This idea, however, clear though it is, must be strengthened and implanted more deeply by daily reflection;

  5. It is more important for you to keep the resolutions you have already made than to continue making others.  

  6. You must persevere, must develop new strength by continuous reflection, until that which is at first only an inclination becomes a settled purpose.  

  7. I have, my son, great hopes for you, and confidence that you will achieve much; but I do not wish you to slacken your efforts always to improve.

  8. Examine yourself; scrutinise and observe yourself in divers ways; but mark, before all else, whether it is in philosophy as well as in life that you have made progress.  

  9. Philosophy is no trick to catch the public; it is not devised for show.   It is a matter, not of words, but of reasonings.  

10. It is not pursued in order that the day may yield amusement, or that our leisure may be relieved of tedium. It is far more important:  

11. It moulds and constructs the mind; it orders our life, guides our conduct, shows us what we should do and what we should not do;

12. It sits at the helm and directs our course as we waver amid uncertainties.

13. Without it, no one can live fearlessly or in peace of mind.  

14. Countless things that happen every hour call for advice; and such advice is to be sought in philosophy.  

15. Do not allow your heart to weaken and grow indifferent. Hold fast to your resolve and establish it firmly, in order that what is now resolve may become a habit of the mind.        

16. If I know you well, my son, you have already been trying to find out, from the very beginning of these letters, the essence of what they bring to you.  

17. Sift the letters again, and you will find it. Much of it comes from the wisdom of others, for whatever is well said by anyone is our own to take and keep.

Epistle 24

  1. You remember that Epicurus wrote: ‘If you live according to nature, you will never be poor; if you live according to opinion, you will never be rich.’

  2. Nature’s wants are slight; the demands of opinion are boundless.

  3. Suppose that the property of many millionaires is heaped up in your possession. Suppose that fortune carries you far beyond the limits of a private income,

  4. And you accumulate many treasures; you will only learn from such things to crave still more.

  5. Natural desires are limited; but those which spring from false opinion typically have no stopping-point.  

  6. The false has no limits. When you are travelling on a road, there must be an end; but when astray, your wanderings are limitless.  

  7. Redirect your steps, therefore, from idle things, and when you wish to know whether what you seek is based on a principled or a misleading desire, consider whether it can stop at any definite point.  

  8. If you find, after you have travelled far, that there is a more distant goal always in view, you may be right to think that you are on the wrong road.

Epistle 25

  1. Make it your business, my son, to know joy. The mind that is happy and confident, able to lift itself above adverse circumstances,

  2. Which is as steadfast in itself as it is considerate, just and temperate towards others,        

  3. Is a cheerful mind; but it is not a superficial cheer, lightly got. Rather, it comes from properly understanding yourself and the world of people.

  4. The yield of poor mines is on the surface; the ores of rich mines lie underground, and make more bountiful returns for those who dig deeply.  

  5. I recommend to you, my son, to do the one thing that will most surely render you happy:

  6. Be sceptical about things that glitter outwardly, are cheap and easy to get, and distract you from a clear understanding of what it is right to be and do;

  7. Look towards the true good, and rely on what comes from your study and reflection, from your observation of life, and from the best part of yourself.  

  8. A sense of the good comes from a sound conscience, honourable purposes, right actions, contempt of the gifts of chance, and a rational approach to life’s choices.

  9. For people who leap from one purpose to another, or do not even leap but are carried over by chance, how can they hope to achieve a fixed and lasting good?  

10. Very few control themselves and their affairs by a guiding purpose they have chosen for themselves;

11. The rest do not proceed, they are merely swept along, like flotsam on a river.  

12. Of these, some are held back by sluggish waters and drift slowly along;

13. Others are torn along by a more violent current, unable to stop themselves;

14. Some, which are nearest the bank, are left there motionless as the current slackens;

15. And others are carried out to sea by the onrush of the stream, and lost.  

16. None of these lives are as good to live as the life considered, chosen, enriched by understanding and shaped by purpose.

17. You remember, my son, another saying by Epicurus: ‘They live ill who are always beginning to live.’

18. Some men, indeed, only begin to live when it is time for them to leave off living; some men cease living before they have begun.  

19. To live at all is to live well: that is the burden of all that I have written to you,

20. For we must live not just in the world but in the world of humankind; that is where we flourish or fail,

21. That is where we can make our contribution to the good not just of ourselves but of our fellows, and well justify our place among them.

22. Gentle in manner, strong in mind, a good proponent of the smaller graces and accomplishments as well as of the greater accomplishments they support:

23. Such I would have you, my son, and I commend these lessons to you for your greater benefit and happiness.

The Good

Chapter 1

  1. There is a time when nothing is said or thought, but only felt or tasted: the time when the object of happiness is happiness itself.

  2. Then one rises with the sun and is happy, one goes walking and is happy, one sees the faces of one’s family and is happy.

  3. One wanders in the woods and fields and along the hillsides, and is happy; one reads or idles in the sun, and is happy;

  4. One picks the fruit or takes water to the flower beds, and is happy; and happiness follows one everywhere.

  5. When is this? In the safety of childhood in a country of wealth and peace;

  6. With health and leisure, and parents to love one, and quiet nights for sleep;

  7. When we have driven away all that troubles or frightens us, there is tranquillity and freedom.

  8. Then comes a boundless joy that endures, then comes harmony of mind with nobility and kindliness, for it is only from weakness that evil is born.

  9. And yet, the troubled man will see these words and say: ‘You speak here only of the idyll of a thoughtless child. Childhood is brief, and few places wholly safe;

10. ‘Life is otherwise than such idealism paints it. Its truths are hard, and inevitable:

11. ‘And these truths are that we suffer, that our lot is to lose and to grieve, and finally to undergo the pain of dying before the release of death.

12. ‘What we must learn is how to endure, how to accept, how to keep our dignity despite the assaults of frailty, of misfortune, and the malice of man.’

13. Alas: there is indeed suffering, frailty and malice; and there are the ill chances that bring or worsen all three. And yet still, the good is possible.

14. The first step of the good life is to seek wisdom and give up fear.

15. Wisdom teaches what is worthwhile and what is illusory.

16. It brings proportion and measure, it dispenses with the false glare cast by human vanity and cupidity, by fashion, falsehood, ignorance and folly.

17. The fear that hampers life is the fear of loss, especially the ultimate loss that is death.

18. Death has two faces: one’s own death, and the death of those we love. Wisdom looks into the eyes of each face and sees there what it must.

19. What is it to die? It is to return to the elements, to continue as part of the whole but in a different way.

20. Now we are a living unity, then we will be changed into something diffuse and organic, part of nature no less than we are now, and no less than we always were before our present form.

21. Thus the components of our substance exist for ever, coeval with the universe, made in the stars and in an endless dance with other elements, constituted and reconstituted throughout time by nature’s laws.

22. Though we cease as we now are, what we are never ceases. We are part of the whole, and always so.

23. History cannot shed us from its annals any more than nature can annihilate the particles of our being from its scheme.

24. We are for ever part of what is, indelible, written in the record of nature and the human story, whatever our part or place.

25. For the time we have this shape and this consciousness of its possession, let us be worthy of it.

Chapter 2

  1. It is in the death of others that our deepest grief and greatest loss comes.

  2. From the viewpoint of our brief and local lives we do not see the loss as change only, or as a returning: rather, it strikes us with the iron of grief.

  3. To live is to have a contract with loss. The past eludes us, and carries away what we valued;

  4. Some of those we love will surely die before we do, and we will mourn them.

  5. For this we must have courage; necessity is hard, so we must accept what is inevitable and unavoidable, and endure.

  6. Thus far the troubled man is right, and the truths he insists on are truths indeed.

  7. But even grief abates, and those we grieve, if they could speak, would tell us that they do not wish us to grieve for ever,

  8. But would wish us to remember the best of them, and to return our thoughts to life and the good. And life is the endeavour of the good.

  9. We honour them most, and cherish the memory of them best, by obeying the injunction to live, and to seek the good that endures.

Chapter   3

  1. It is this that gives value to remembering the best of our times, so that we know the face of the good always.

  2. In youth, before ever we lost sight of it, we were fully alive, and inhabited our hours with inexpressible satisfaction,

  3. So that its weariness was as lovely to us as its refreshment.

  4. The earth was a glorious orchestra, and we were its audience, thrilling to the birdsong and the symphony of the breezes;

  5. How we remember being astonished by the ecstasies unfolded to us in its music!

  6. Sometimes we recapture the joy of savouring our being, not the material pleasure merely of eating and drinking,

  7. Of seeing beautiful things or hearing pleasant sounds, of talking or resting;

  8. But the different, delicate, larger happiness of being part of the great whole,

  9. Of being oneself with one’s own life, one’s own impressions and thoughts.

10. It is a wonderful and grand thing to be oneself and part of all, and to have the dignity of the capacity for thought.