ARKCODEX
The Consolation of Philosophy
1She was quiet for a short while. When her patient silence had gathered my full attention, she began to speak. "I have looked deeply into the causes and nature of your suffering. You are wasting away with longing for your former happiness. Fortune has changed, you tell yourself. That change alone has turned your world upside down. I know well the many disguises of that treacherous power. I know how she draws close with the warmest affection to those she means to destroy. She waits until her sudden departure leaves them shattered by unbearable grief. If you would only think clearly about her nature, her habits, and what she truly deserves, you would see that you never possessed anything beautiful in her. You would see that you have lost nothing real. I suspect I will not need to work very hard to bring this to your memory. Even when she was present and flattering you, you used to challenge her with plain and forceful words. You pursued her with judgments drawn from our own sanctuary. But every sudden change of fortune brings with it a kind of turbulence in the soul. So it happened that you too drifted for a time from your usual calm. Now is the moment to drink in something gentle and sweet. Once received, it will clear the way for stronger draughts to follow. Let the persuasion of rhetoric offer its soft delight. It walks the right road only when it does not stray from our principles. And let music, born in our own household, accompany it with melodies now light, now deep. So tell me, what has thrown you into this grief and misery? Something new, I suppose. Something you have never seen before. You think Fortune has changed toward you. You are wrong. This is always her way. This is her nature. Even in her changes she has kept toward you a kind of constancy entirely her own. She was exactly this when she flattered you. She was exactly this when she dangled before you the false pleasures of a hollow happiness. You have caught a glimpse of the true face of that blind and shifting power. She still hides herself from others. To you she has revealed herself completely. If you accept her terms, then use her as she is and stop complaining. If her treachery disgusts you, then despise her. Cast aside the one who plays such ruinous games. The very thing that now fills you with such grief should have taught you to be tranquil. She has left you. No one can ever be certain she will not leave them too. Do you really treasure a happiness that was always going to walk away? Do you hold dear a fortune that could never promise to stay and that was certain to bring sorrow when it departed? If Fortune cannot be held by any will of your own, and if by fleeing she makes men wretched, then what is she but a sign of the ruin that is coming? It is not enough to see only what stands before your eyes. Wisdom measures things by how they end. That same instability in fortune makes her threats not worth fearing and her favors not worth craving. In the end, once you have bowed your neck beneath her yoke, you must bear with an even mind whatever happens within fortune's domain. If you wish to write laws governing the coming and going of the mistress you freely chose for yourself, you are being unjust. You are making your condition worse through impatience when you have no power to change it. If you entrusted your sails to the wind, you would move not where you wished to go but where the wind drove you. If you sowed seed in the fields, you would weigh the fertile years against the barren ones. You have given yourself over to Fortune's governance. You must submit to the ways of your mistress. You are trying to stop the momentum of a turning wheel. Most foolish of all mortals — the moment she stops turning, she ceases to be Fortune."
2When her proud right hand reverses the wheel She moves like the churning waters of Euripus. She grinds mighty kings beneath her heel. She lifts the broken face of the defeated with a liar's hand. She does not hear the cries of the wretched. She does not care. She laughs at the very grief she has made. This is her game. This is how she proves her power. And this is the great wonder she shows the world: that a single hour can see one man cast down and another triumphant.
3I would like to speak with you briefly in Fortune's own words. Consider carefully whether what she demands is just. "Why do you drag me into court every day with your complaints? What wrong have I done you? What possessions of yours have I taken away? Choose any judge you like. Come and dispute with me over the ownership of wealth and honor. If you can prove that any of these things truly belonged to any mortal man, I will freely admit that what you are asking back was once yours. When nature brought you forth from your mother's womb, I received you naked and stripped of everything. I nourished you with my own resources. I raised you with generous and willing indulgence — which is exactly what now makes you so impatient with me. I surrounded you with all the abundance and splendor that is mine to give. Now it pleases me to withdraw my hand. You have reason to be grateful for the use of what belonged to another. You have no right to complain as though you had lost what was truly your own. So why do you groan? I have done you no violence. Wealth, honor, and everything like them belong to me. Servants recognize their mistress. They come with me and they leave when I leave. I will say it boldly — if the things you mourn had truly been yours, you could never have lost them. Am I the only one to be forbidden from exercising my own rights? The sky is free to bring bright days and to bury them again in dark nights. The year is free to crown the earth's face with flowers and fruit and then to tear it apart with storms and frost. The sea is free to smile with a calm and level surface and then to bristle with gales and crashing waves. Are we to be bound to a constancy that is utterly foreign to our nature, simply because human desire can never be satisfied? This is our power. This is the game we never stop playing. We turn the wheel as it spins. We delight in bringing the lowest to the top and the highest back down. Rise if you wish — but on this condition: do not think it an injustice when the rules of my game require you to descend. Did you not know my ways? Did you not know that Croesus, king of Lydia, who had so recently terrified Cyrus, was then handed over to the flames of the pyre in a state of wretched misery — and was saved only by a rain sent from heaven? Did it escape you that Paulus wept devoted tears over the catastrophe of King Perseus, whom he himself had taken captive? What else do the cries of tragedies mourn but Fortune's blind blow overturning kingdoms in their happiness? Did you not learn as a young man that two jars sit at the threshold of Jupiter — one filled with evil, the other with good? What if you drew more generously from the good jar than your share deserved? What if I have not left you entirely? What if this very instability of mine gives you just reason to hope for better things? Even so, do not waste away in grief. Do not sit enthroned in a kingdom that belongs to all men equally and then demand to live there by your own private law."
4Suppose Abundance poured out wealth as vast as every grain of sand the sea stirs up with its rushing winds. Suppose it matched the count of every star blazing in the night sky. Suppose it never drew back its hand from the full horn of plenty. Even so, the human race would not stop weeping its miserable complaints. God might gladly receive every prayer. He might lavish gold without limit. He might crown the ambitious with glittering honors. None of it would seem like enough. Savage greed devours whatever has been gained. Then it opens its jaws wide for more. What bridle can rein in headlong desire with any fixed limit? The thirst for possession only burns hotter when gifts flow in abundance. No one who trembles and groans and believes himself poor will ever truly be rich.
5If Fortune herself could speak on your behalf, you would have nothing to say against her. But if you believe your complaint is justified, then make your case. We will give you the floor. Then I said: "These words are beautiful. They are sweetened with the honey of rhetoric and music. They delight the ear in the moment of hearing. But those who suffer feel their pain at a deeper level. When these fine words fade from the ear, the grief that lives inside the soul presses down again." And she replied: "That is true. What I have offered so far is not yet medicine for your illness. It is only a warm compress laid against a wound that still resists treatment. When the time is right, I will go deeper. But first, consider this. Do you truly want to call yourself wretched? Have you forgotten how much happiness you have known, and how great it was? I will not even mention that after your father's death, powerful men took you under their care. You were chosen to join the family of the leading men of the city. That is the closest bond of kinship. You became dear to them before you became related. Who did not call you among the most fortunate of men? You had in-laws of magnificent standing. You had a wife of irreproachable character. You had sons to carry your name forward. I will pass over the honours that came to you in youth, honours that older men are never granted. I want to come to the crowning peak of your good fortune. If anything in this mortal life carries real weight of happiness, can any accumulation of suffering erase the memory of that day? You watched your two sons ride out from your home as consuls together. The senators were there. The people were jubilant. In the senate house, your sons sat in the curule chairs of office, and you stood as the orator of royal praise, winning glory for your mind and your eloquence. In the circus, you stood between your two consul sons and satisfied the expectation of the surrounding crowd with a triumph of generosity. You played Fortune for a fool while she smiled on you and cherished you as her favourite. You took a distinction she had never granted to any private citizen before. Now ask yourself honestly: do you want to settle accounts with Fortune? It is only now that she has turned a cold eye on you for the first time. If you weigh the joys against the sorrows, you still cannot call yourself unhappy. And if you refuse to count yourself fortunate simply because what once seemed good has now passed away, then you have no reason to call yourself wretched either, because what now seems dark will also pass. Or have you only just arrived on the stage of human life, a stranger who did not know the rules? Does anything in human affairs hold firm? A swift hour can undo a man entirely. Even when Fortune stays, the final day of life is a kind of death for her as well. What difference does it make, then, whether you leave her by dying, or she leaves you by fleeing?
6When Phoebus begins to scatter light across the sky with his rose-red chariot, the stars grow pale. Their brightness fades under the pressure of his overwhelming flames. When the forest blushes red with spring roses in the warm breath of the west wind, the cloudy south wind breathes its fury. The beauty of the blossoms vanishes into thorns. The sea often shines calm and still, its waves unmoving. The north wind often stirs a raging storm, churning the waters into chaos. If the world rarely holds its own shape. If it turns through so many changes. Then trust nothing to the fortunes of men. They fall. Trust nothing to good things. They flee. One law stands eternal and fixed. Nothing that is born endures.
7Then I said: "You speak truly, O nurse of all virtues. I cannot deny that my prosperity ran its course at tremendous speed. But this is what burns most fiercely when I dwell on it. In all the adversity that fortune brings, the most wretched form of misfortune is to have once been happy." "But you cannot justly blame your circumstances for the punishment you suffer," she said. "That punishment comes from holding a false belief. If the empty name of chance-given happiness still moves you, let us count together how much of it you still have in abundance. If the most precious thing you possessed in all your fortune's inventory has been kept for you by divine grace, still unharmed and untouched, can you rightly call yourself unfortunate while the best things remain yours? Your father-in-law Symmachus is alive. He is the most precious ornament of the human race. He is a man made entirely of wisdom and virtue. He is safe. He grieves over the wrongs done to you rather than over any danger to himself. Your wife is alive. Her spirit is modest by nature. She surpasses all others in chastity and honor. To put all her gifts briefly into one word: she is her father's daughter. She is alive. I tell you she is alive. Though she has grown weary of this life, she preserves her breath for your sake alone. I will grant you this one point where your happiness is diminished: she is wasting away in tears and grief from longing for you. What shall I say of your sons? They hold the rank of consul. Even in boys of their age, the brilliance of their father's and grandfather's mind already shines through. Since the care of staying alive is the highest concern of mortals, you are a fortunate man if you would only recognize your blessings. What is beyond all doubt more precious than life itself is still yours. Dry your tears. Fortune has not yet turned against everything you have. The storm that has struck you is not powerful enough to destroy you. Your anchors hold firm. They will not allow you to lack comfort in the present or hope for the future." "Let them hold," I said. "I pray they do. As long as they hold, I will swim through whatever comes. But you see how much has been stripped from what was once ours." "We have made some progress," she replied, "if you are not yet disgusted with everything your life has given you. But I have no patience for this self-indulgence of yours. You grieve and fret as though some portion of your happiness has gone missing. Who in this world has a happiness so perfectly assembled that he does not quarrel with some part of his situation? The condition of human blessings is an anxious thing. It either never arrives in full or never stays for long. One man overflows with wealth but suffers shame from a base bloodline. Another is made known by his noble birth but would rather live unknown, hemmed in as he is by narrow means. Another has both and mourns that he lives without a wife. Another is happily married but mourns that he has no children and feeds a stranger's heir with his estate. Another rejoices in children and then weeps over a son's or daughter's failures. No one easily makes peace with the terms of his own fortune. Every life holds something that the untested man cannot imagine and the tested man cannot bear. Add to this: the more fortunate a man is, the more delicate his sensibilities become. If everything does not fall out exactly as he wishes, he is brought low by the smallest misfortune, having no experience of hardship. This is how little it takes to ruin the sense of perfect happiness in the most fortunate of men. How many people do you imagine would think themselves neighbors of heaven if even the smallest remnant of your former fortune came their way? This very place you call exile is home to the people who live here. Nothing is miserable unless you believe it to be so. Every lot in life is blessed when borne with an even mind. What man is so happy that once he surrenders to impatience he does not wish to trade his condition for another? How much bitterness is scattered through the sweetness of human happiness! Even when it seems delightful to the one enjoying it, it cannot be held back from leaving whenever it chooses. It is therefore plain how wretched is the happiness of mortal things. It does not last for those who are at peace with it. It does not fully satisfy those who are not. Why then, O mortals, do you seek outside yourselves the happiness that lies within you? Confusion and ignorance are your undoing. I will show you briefly the very axis on which the highest happiness turns. Is there anything more precious to you than yourself? Nothing, you will say. Then if you possess yourself, you will hold something you could never wish to lose and fortune could never take away. Now consider this one point, so that you may understand why happiness cannot rest in things that chance controls. If happiness is the highest good of a nature that lives by reason, and if what can be taken away by any means is not the highest good, since what cannot be taken away stands above it, then it is clear that the instability of fortune cannot so much as reach toward true happiness. Beyond this: when chance happiness comes to a man, he either knows it can change or he does not. If he does not know, what kind of blessed life can rest on the blindness of ignorance? If he does know, he must live in fear of losing what he has no doubt can be lost. Unceasing fear does not allow a man to be happy. Or does he think it does not matter if he loses it? That too is a very small good. It is one that can be surrendered without grief. And since you yourself are one whom I know has been thoroughly persuaded by many arguments that the minds of men are in no way mortal, and since it is clear that chance happiness ends with the death of the body, there can be no doubt: if this kind of happiness can bring true blessedness, then the whole human race slides into misery at the moment of death. But we know that many men have sought the fruit of happiness not only through death but through pain and torment as well. How then can something in the present make men blessed when its passing does not leave them miserable?"
8Whoever wishes to lay a lasting foundation had better choose with care. Do not build where the roaring East Wind can flatten what you have raised. Do not build where the sea looms and threatens with its waves. Avoid the high summit of the mountain. Avoid the shifting sands that drink down whatever rests on them. The reckless South Wind hammers the peak with all its force. The loose sands refuse to bear the weight that presses down on them. Flee the dangerous fate of the pleasant place. Remember to plant your house on low and solid rock. Let that be your fixed resolve. Though the storm thunders and throws sea into sky and sky into sea, you will lie sheltered and still. Fortified by strong walls, you will live out your days in peace. You will smile at the rage of the heavens above.
9My arguments are beginning to take hold in you. So now I think it is time to use ones that are stronger. Let us set aside the fact that fortune's gifts are fleeting and temporary. Even so, what is there in them that could ever truly belong to you? And would anything hold its appeal once you examined it closely? Take wealth. Is it precious by its own nature, or by yours? What part of it, exactly — the gold, or the great heaps of accumulated money? Wealth shines brighter when it is given away than when it is hoarded. Greed makes a man despised. Generosity makes him celebrated. And if something cannot stay with one person because it must be passed to another, then money only has value in the moment of giving it away. The moment you stop transferring it, you stop possessing anything worth having. And if every coin from every corner of the world were gathered into a single pair of hands, everyone else would be left with nothing. A voice fills many ears at once, and loses nothing in doing so. But wealth cannot reach many people without first being broken apart and distributed. And when that happens, the people left behind are inevitably made poor. What a cramped and miserable thing wealth is. No one can hold all of it. And it cannot reach anyone without taking something from someone else. Does the brilliance of precious stones draw your eye? Whatever splendor they have belongs to the gems themselves. It does not belong to you. I am genuinely astonished that people admire them so intensely. What is it that has no soul, no movement, no inner life — and yet somehow seems beautiful to a creature that has reason and life? Even if those stones possess some trace of beauty through the craft of their maker and the distinctiveness of their nature, they are still far beneath you. They never deserved your admiration. Does the beauty of the countryside give you pleasure? Of course it does. It is a beautiful part of a beautiful creation. We take joy in the face of a calm sea. We marvel at the sky, the stars, the moon, the sun. But does any of that touch you directly? Do you dare to take pride in its splendor as though it were yours? Are you the one dressed in spring flowers? Does your own richness swell into summer fruit? Why are you swept away by empty joys? Why do you embrace external things as though they were your own? Fortune will never make yours what nature has made foreign to you. The fruits of the earth are without question owed to living creatures as food. But if you want no more than what nature requires to satisfy genuine need, you have no reason to reach for fortune's abundance. Nature is satisfied with very little. And if you try to force more than enough upon her, what you pour in becomes either unpleasant or harmful. You think it is fine to shine in beautiful and varied clothing. But if the appearance pleases the eye, the credit belongs to the material or to the craftsman's skill. It does not belong to you. Does a long train of servants make you happy? If they are corrupt in character, they are a destructive burden on the household and a serious danger to the master himself. And if they are good, how does someone else's virtue count as part of your wealth? All of this makes one thing perfectly clear. None of what you count among your goods is actually your own good. And if these things have no beauty worth desiring, why should you grieve when they are lost or rejoice when they are kept? If they are beautiful by nature, that has nothing to do with you. They would have been just as pleasing on their own, entirely separate from your wealth. They are not precious because they came into your possession. You chose to count them among your riches because they already seemed precious. So what exactly are you looking for in all of fortune's noise and commotion? I think you are trying to drive away need with abundance. But it works against you. The more costly and varied your possessions, the more you need to maintain them. It is simply true that those who possess a great deal are in need of a great deal. And those who measure their sufficiency by what nature actually requires — not by the excess of ambition — need the least of all. Is there truly no good that is your own and natural to you? Must you search for your good in things that are external and set apart from you? Has the order of things really been turned so upside down that a creature made noble by reason can only seem to shine through the ownership of lifeless objects? Other creatures are content with what belongs to them. But you — who share in the mind of God — seek the adornment of your noble nature from the lowest of things. And you do not see what an injury you are doing to your Creator. He willed that the human race should surpass all earthly things. You drag your own dignity below the lowest things of all. If the good of any being is more precious than the being itself, then when you judge your goods to be the most worthless of things, you are placing yourselves beneath those things by your own reckoning. And that outcome is entirely deserved. This is the human condition. When humanity knows itself, it excels all other things. When it ceases to know itself, it sinks below the beasts. For other animals, ignorance of self is simply nature. For human beings, it is a fault. And how wide is the error of those who think something can be adorned by ornaments that belong to something else. It cannot be done. If something shines because of what has been added to it, the added things receive the praise. The thing itself remains hidden beneath them. Its own ugliness continues unchanged. I will state it plainly. No good is a true good if it harms the one who has it. Surely I am not wrong in that? "Certainly not," you say. And yet wealth has very often harmed those who possessed it. Every ruthless man, every man hungry for what belongs to others, believes himself the one most worthy to hold all the gold and jewels in the world. So you who now live in anxious fear of the club and the sword — if you had walked this road of life as an empty-handed traveler, you could have sung right in the face of the robber. What a magnificent thing the happiness that mortal wealth provides. The moment you finally obtain it, you lose all peace.
10How fortunate was that earlier age. It was content with faithful fields. It was not lost to restless luxury. Men were used to breaking their long fasts at dusk with easy acorns. They did not know how to mix the gifts of Bacchus with clear honey. They did not know how to blend bright fleeces with Tyrian dye. The grass gave them wholesome sleep. A gliding river gave them drink. The tallest pine gave them shade. No one yet had cut through the deep sea. No traveling merchant had seen new shores with his gathered wares. In those days the savage war trumpets were silent. Blood poured out in bitter hatred had not stained the grim fields. For why would enemy rage have wanted to take up arms at all. When men could see nothing but cruel wounds. When there were no prizes worth blood. If only our own times could return to those ancient ways. But the burning desire for possession blazes fiercer than the fires of Etna. Ah, who was the first man. Who dug up buried gold and its hidden twin dangers. Precious things that longed to stay hidden in the earth.
11What shall I say about rank and power? You have no idea what true rank and true power are. Yet you lift these things up as high as heaven. If they fall to the worst kind of person, what eruption from Etna's fires, what flood, has ever caused such destruction? Your ancestors wanted to abolish the authority of the consuls, which had been the foundation of freedom, because of the consuls' arrogance. Those same ancestors had earlier driven the very name of king out of the city, for that same reason. But when rank is given to good men, which is rare, what is it about that rank that actually pleases us? Nothing but the goodness of the man holding it. And so it becomes clear that honor does not flow from rank into virtue. It flows from virtue into rank. What is this power of yours that you find so desirable and so impressive? Do you not see, you creatures of the earth, over what kind of beings you appear to rule? Imagine you saw a mouse among other mice claiming authority and jurisdiction over the rest. How hard would you laugh? And if you look at the body, what is weaker than a human being? Men are killed by the bite of a flea. Men are killed by a snake creeping into some dark corner where they sleep. Where can anyone exercise power over another, except over the body alone, and over what lies beneath the body, which is to say fortune? You will never give orders to a free mind. You will never move a mind that holds itself together by reason from its own settled peace. A tyrant once thought he could use torture to force a free man to name his fellow conspirators. The man bit off his own tongue and spat it into the tyrant's raging face. The wise man turned what the tyrant intended as the instrument of cruelty into an act of courage. What can anyone do to another that he could not endure done to himself? We are told that Busiris, who made a habit of killing his guests, was killed by his guest Hercules. Regulus had thrown many Carthaginian prisoners into chains during the war. Soon afterward he held out his own hands for the chains of the victors. Can you call that man powerful, who cannot prevent others from doing to him what he does to them? Beyond all this, if rank and power contained anything genuinely and naturally good, they would never fall to the worst men. Opposites do not keep company with each other. Nature refuses to bind together what is contrary. Since it is beyond doubt that the worst men very often hold positions of rank, it becomes equally clear that rank is not by its nature a good thing. If it were, it would never allow itself to cling to the worst. The same conclusion can be reached about every gift of fortune, since the richest portions go most often to the most corrupt. There is something else worth considering. No one doubts that a man is brave when they see bravery in him. No one doubts that a man is fast when speed is plainly his. Music makes musicians. Medicine makes doctors. Rhetoric makes orators. The nature of each thing does what belongs to it. It does not blend with the effects of its opposites. It actively drives away what is alien to it. And yet wealth cannot put out the fire of greed that never fills. Power cannot make a man master of himself when vicious desires hold him bound in chains he cannot break. Rank given to the corrupt does not make them worthy. It exposes them. It puts their unworthiness on display. Why does this happen? Because you take pleasure in calling things by false names that do not match what they are, and the things themselves give you the lie by what they actually do. That is why none of it deserves the name it carries. Not the wealth. Not the power. Not the rank. The same conclusion extends to fortune as a whole. It contains nothing worth seeking. It contains nothing of natural goodness. It does not always attach itself to good men. And when it does attach itself to them, it does not make them good.
12We know what ruin he unleashed upon the world. He burned the city to the ground. He butchered the senators. He had already murdered his own brother in cold blood. He drenched himself in his mother's spilled blood. He walked around her body, frozen and still in death. He studied her face without a single tear. He could only find fault with how her corpse looked. And yet this man held the scepter over nations. He ruled all the peoples whom Phoebus watches over as he sinks beneath the waves at the edge of the west. He ruled those crushed beneath the seven freezing stars of the north. He ruled those scorched by the violent southern wind as it bakes the burning sands bone dry. Did such towering power finally manage to turn aside the madness of wicked Nero? It did not. How bitter a fate it is when the sword is handed to a man already armed with poison.
13I said: "You know yourself that ambition for worldly things has had very little power over me. But I sought a stage for action so that my virtue would not grow old in silence." She replied: "And yet there is one thing that can tempt minds which are noble by nature but not yet brought to the full perfection of virtue. That thing is the desire for glory. It is the desire for a great reputation earned through service to the state. Consider carefully how empty that desire is. How utterly without weight. You have learned from astronomers that the entire circle of the earth holds the same relation to the heavens as a single point. That is to say, compared to the vastness of the celestial sphere, the earth must be judged to have no measurable size at all. Of this already tiny portion of the universe, you have learned from Ptolemy that only about one quarter is inhabited by living creatures known to us. Take that quarter. Subtract in your mind the space covered by seas and marshes. Subtract the vast stretches of desert. What remains for human habitation is barely a narrow strip of land. Within this smallest of points. Within this cramped and walled enclosure. This is where you dream of spreading your fame and extending your name. What greatness or splendor can glory possibly possess when it is squeezed into boundaries so tight and so small? Consider further that even this tiny inhabited enclosure is home to many nations. They are separated by language. By customs. By their entire way of life. The difficulty of travel alone prevents a man's fame from reaching them. The barrier of foreign tongues stops it. The absence of any commerce keeps it out. Not only the fame of individual men fails to cross these distances. Even the fame of great cities cannot reach them. Indeed in the time of Cicero, as he himself notes in one passage, the reputation of the Roman republic had not yet crossed the Caucasus mountains. And Rome at that time was in her prime. She was feared even by the Parthians and the other peoples of that region. Do you see then how narrow it is. How confined is this glory that you labor so hard to extend and spread. Where the very name of Rome cannot travel, can the glory of a Roman citizen travel further? And consider that the customs and institutions of different peoples are in conflict with one another. What one people judges worthy of praise, another judges worthy of punishment. It follows that if a man takes delight in the proclamation of his fame, spreading his name among many peoples will do him no good at all. Each man's glory will be content to circulate among his own people. That celebrated immortality of fame will be compressed within the borders of a single nation. But how many men who shone brilliantly in their own time have been destroyed by a forgetfulness that left no written record behind. And what good are the written records themselves when the long dark passage of time buries them together with their authors. You imagine you are securing immortality for yourselves when you think about the fame that future ages will bring. But if you stretch your mind across the infinite reaches of eternity, what reason do you have to rejoice in the long life of your name. Take a single moment in time. Compare it to ten thousand years. Both spans are finite. The moment is smaller. Yet it still holds some proportionate share of that finite span. But that same number of years. Multiplied as many times as you like. Cannot even be compared to endless eternity. Between finite things there can always be some proportionate relationship. But between the infinite and the finite there can never be any comparison at all. It follows that however long a fame may endure in time, when set against inexhaustible eternity it appears not merely small. It appears as nothing at all. And yet you cannot bring yourselves to do good unless it is carried on the winds of popular approval and empty rumor. You abandon the inner excellence of conscience and virtue. Then you go looking for your reward in the gossip of others. Hear how neatly someone once mocked this kind of foolish vanity. A certain man attacked with insults someone who had taken on the false name of philosopher. Not to practice true virtue. But to win proud glory. He told this pretender that he would soon find out whether he was truly a philosopher. He would know it if the man bore the insults with gentleness and patience. The pretender composed himself and endured the abuse. Then he said, with an air of triumph: "Now at last do you recognize that I am a philosopher?" The other man replied with cutting precision: "I would have recognized it. If you had said nothing." But what does any of this matter to those eminent men who seek glory through genuine virtue. What, I ask, does fame after death have to offer them once the body has been dissolved. If men die entirely as our reasoning forbids us to believe, then there is no glory at all. The person to whom the glory is said to belong no longer exists in any way. But if the mind, conscious of its own good deeds, shakes free of its earthly prison and rises unbound toward heaven, will it not look down with contempt on every earthly concern. It rejoices in heaven. It rejoices to be free of the earth. That is glory enough."
14Whoever chases glory with a reckless mind. Whoever believes it is the highest good. Let him look up at the vast stretches of the sky. Then let him look down at how narrow the earth is below. He will be ashamed that his swelling reputation cannot even fill that small space. Why do the proud strain so desperately to lift their necks from death's yoke. It cannot be done. Fame may travel across distant nations. It may spread and multiply across many tongues. A great house may shine with its brilliant titles. But death scorns high glory. It wraps the lowly and the lofty in the same shroud. It levels the lowest with the greatest. Where now do the bones of faithful Fabricius rest. What remains of Brutus. What remains of stern Cato. A faint surviving fame marks them with a few letters on a page. An empty name. But we recognize these noble names only as words. Are we really able to know the men who are gone. You lie there utterly unknown. Fame does not make you known at all. And if you think the breath of a mortal name stretches life out longer. When the last day finally takes even that from you. A second death is waiting.
15But don't think I wage an unrelenting war against fortune. There are times when fortune does right by people — false and empty as she is. That happens when she reveals herself openly. When she drops her mask and shows her true character. You may not yet follow what I'm saying. What I am about to say is remarkable. I can barely find words to express it. I believe that bad fortune does more good for people than good fortune does. Good fortune always lies. When she appears kind, she does so under the disguise of happiness. Bad fortune is always honest. She proves her honesty by showing how unstable and changeable she is. Good fortune deceives. Bad fortune instructs. Good fortune chains the minds of those who enjoy her with the illusion of good things. Bad fortune frees people by teaching them how fragile happiness really is. Look at good fortune — she is restless and shifting. She never truly knows herself. Bad fortune is steady and composed. She is made wise by the very discipline of hardship. In the end, good fortune lures those who have strayed from the true good even further away with her flattery. But bad fortune, more often than not, reaches out like a hook and drags them back to what is real. And do you think it a small thing — what this harsh and terrible fortune has revealed to you? She has uncovered which of your friends are truly loyal. She has sorted the faithful faces from the uncertain ones. When she left, she took her own with her. She left you yours. What would you have paid for that knowledge — back when you thought yourself fortunate and were still unbroken? Now you grieve over the wealth you have lost. But you have found something. You have found friends — and that is the most precious form of riches there is.
16The world shifts through its changes with a steady faithfulness. Opposing forces hold each other in a permanent bond. The sun drives the rose-colored day forward in his golden chariot. The moon rules the nights that the evening star has gathered in. The hungry sea holds its waves within a fixed boundary. The wandering earth is not permitted to stretch its borders wide. Love binds this whole unfolding order together. Love governs the seas and the land. Love commands the heavens. If love were to loosen its reins, everything that now draws close to everything else would break into open war. What the stars now drive forward together in their beautiful movements with a shared faithfulness, they would struggle to tear apart. Love holds peoples together in a sacred covenant. Love ties the bond of marriage fast with a pure devotion. Love lays down its own laws among faithful companions. O how fortunate the human race would be, if the love that governs heaven governed your hearts as well.