Letter 84

The journeys to which you refer - journeys that shake the laziness out of my system - I hold to be profitable both for my health and for my studies.  You see why they benefit my health: since my passion for literature makes me lazy and careless about my body, I can take exercise by deputy; as for my studies, I shall show you why my journeys help them, for I have not stopped my reading in the slightest degree.  And reading, I hold, is indispensable - primarily, to keep me from being satisfied with myself alone, and besides, after I have learned what others have found out by their studies, to enable me to pass judgment on their discoveries and reflect upon discoveries that remain to be made. Reading nourishes the mind and refreshes it when it is wearied with study; nevertheless, this refreshment is not obtained without study.  We ought not to confine ourselves either to writing or to reading; the one, continuous writing, will cast a gloom over our strength, and exhaust it; the other will make our strength flabby and watery.  It is better to have recourse to them alternately, and to blend one with the other, so that the fruits of one's reading may be reduced to concrete form by the pen. We should follow, men say, the example of the bees, who flit about and cull the flowers that are suitable for producing honey, and then arrange and assort in their cells all that they have brought in; these bees, as our Vergil says, <Ep2-277> pack close the flowing honey, And swell their cells with nectar sweet. It is not certain whether the juice which they obtain from the flowers forms at once into honey, or whether they change that which they have gathered into this delicious object by blending something therewith and by a certain property of their breath.  For some authorities believe that bees do not possess the art of making honey, but only of gathering it; and they say that in India honey has been found on the leaves of certain reeds, produced by a dew peculiar to that climate, or by the juice of the reed itself, which has an unusual sweetness, and richness. And in our own grasses too, they say, the same quality exists, although less clear and less evident; and a creature born to fulfil such a function could hunt it out and collect it.  Certain others maintain that the materials which the bees have culled from the most delicate of blooming and flowering plants is transformed into this peculiar substance by a process of preserving and careful storing away, aided by what might be called fermentation, - whereby separate elements are united into one substance. But I must not be led astray into another subject than that which we are discussing.  We also, I say, ought to copy these bees, and sift whatever we have gathered from a varied course of reading, for such things are better preserved if they are kept separate; then, by applying the supervising care with which our nature has endowed us, - in other words, our natural gifts, - we should so blend those several flavours into one delicious compound that, even though it betrays its origin, yet it nevertheless is clearly a different thing from that whence it came. This is what we see nature doing in our own bodies without any labour <Ep2-279> on our part; the food we have eaten, as long as it retains its original quality and floats, in our stomachs as an undiluted mass, is a burden; but it passes into tissue and blood only when it has been changed from its original form.  So it is with the food which nourishes our higher nature, - we should see to it that whatever we have absorbed should not be allowed to remain unchanged, or it will be no part of us.  We must digest it; otherwise it will merely enter the memory and not the reasoning power.  Let us loyally welcome such foods and make them our own, so that something that is one may be formed out of many elements, just as one number is formed of several elements whenever, by our reckoning, lesser sums, each different from the others, are brought together.  This is what our mind should do: it should hide away all the materials by which it has been aided, and bring to light only what it has made of them. Even if there shall appear in you a likeness to him who, by reason of your admiration, has left a deep impress upon you, I would have you resemble him as a child resembles his father, and not as a picture resembles its original; for a picture is a lifeless thing. "    "What," you say, "will it not be seen whose style you are imitating, whose method of reasoning, whose pungent sayings?" I think that sometimes it is impossible for it to be seen who is being imitated, if the copy is a true one; for a true copy stamps its own form upon all the features which it has drawn from what we may call the original, in such a way that they are combined into a unity.  Do you not see how many voices there are in a chorus?  Yet out of the many only one voice results. In that chorus one voice takes the tenor another the bass, <Ep2-281> another the baritone.  There are women, too, as well as men, and the flute is mingled with them.  In that chorus the voices of the individual singers are hidden; what we hear is the voices of all together. To be sure, I am referring to the chorus which the old-time philosophers knew; in our present-day exhibitions a we have a larger number of singers than there used to be spectators in the theatres of old.  All the aisles are filled with rows of singers; brass instruments surround the auditorium; the stage resounds with flutes and instruments of every description; and yet from the discordant sounds a harmony is produced. I would have my mind of such a quality as this; it should be equipped with many arts, many precepts, and patterns of conduct taken from many epochs of history; but all should blend harmoniously into one.  "How," you ask, "can this be accomplished?" By constant effort, and by doing nothing without the approval of reason.  And if you are willing to hear her voice, she will say to you:  "Abandon those pursuits which heretofore have caused you to run hither and thither. Abandon riches, which are either a danger or a burden to the possessor. Abandon the pleasures of the body and of the mind; they only soften and weaken you.  Abandon your quest for office; it is a swollen, idle, and empty thing, a thing that has no goal, as anxious to see no one outstrip it as to see no one at its heels.  It is afflicted with envy, and in truth with a twofold envy; and you see how wretched a man's plight is if he who is the object of envy feels envy also." Do you behold yonder homes of the great, yonder thresholds uproarious with the brawling of those who would pay their respects?  They have many <Ep2-283>

[1] Itinera ista quae segnitiam mihi excutiunt et valetudini meae prodesse iudico et studiis. Quare valetudinem adiuvent vides: cum pigrum me et neglegentem corporis litterarum amor faciat, aliena opera exerceor. Studio quare prosint indicabo: a lectionibus <non> recessi. Sunt autem, ut existimo, necessariae, primum ne sim me uno contentus, deinde ut, cum ab aliis quaesita cognovero, tum et de inventis iudicem et cogitem de inveniendis. Alit lectio ingenium et studio fatigatum, non sine studio tamen, reficit. [2] Nec scribere tantum nec tantum legere debemus: altera res contristabit vires et exhauriet (de stilo dico), altera solvet ac diluet. Invicem hoc et illo commeandum est et alterum altero temperandum, ut quidquid lectione collectum est stilus redigat in corpus. [3] Apes, ut aiunt, debemus imitari, quae vagantur et flores ad mel faciendum idoneos carpunt, deinde quidquid attulere disponunt ac per favos digerunt et, ut Vergilius noster ait, [4] De illis non satis constat utrum sucum ex floribus ducant qui protinus mel sit, an quae collegerunt in hunc saporem mixtura quadam et proprietate spiritus sui mutent. Quibusdam enim placet non faciendi mellis scientiam esse illis sed colligendi. Aiunt inveniri apud Indos mel in arundinum foliis, quod aut ros illius caeli aut ipsius arundinis umor dulcis et pinguior gignat; in nostris quoque herbis vim eandem sed minus manifestam et notabilem poni, quam persequatur et contrahat animal huic rei genitum. Quidam existimant conditura et dispositione in hanc qualitatem verti quae ex tenerrimis virentium florentiumque decerpserint, non sine quodam, ut ita dicam, fermento, quo in unum diversa coalescunt. [5] Sed ne ad aliud quam de quo agitur abducar, nos quoquehas apes debemus imitari et quaecumque ex diversa lectione congessimus separare (melius enim distincta servantur), deinde adhibita ingenii nostri cura et facultate in unum saporem varia illa libamenta confundere, ut etiam si apparuerit unde sumptum sit, aliud tamen esse quam unde sumptum est appareat. Quod in corpore nostro videmus sine ulla opera nostra facere naturam [6] (alimenta quae accepimus, quamdiu in sua qualitate perdurant et solida innatant stomacho, onera sunt; at cum ex eo quod erant mutata sunt, tunc demum in vires et in sanguinem transeunt), idem in his quibus aluntur ingenia praestemus, ut quaecumque hausimus non patiamur integra esse, ne aliena sint. [7] Concoquamus illa; alioqui in memoriam ibunt, non in ingenium. Adsentiamur illis fideliter et nostra faciamus, ut unum quiddam fiat ex multis, sicut unus numerus fit ex singulis cum minores summas et dissidentes conputatio una conprendit. Hoc faciat animus noster: omnia quibus est adiutus abscondat, ipsum tantum ostendat quod effecit. [8] Etiam si cuius in te comparebit similitudo quem admiratio tibi altius fixerit, similem esse te volo quomodo filium, non quomodo imaginem: imago res mortua est. 'Quid ergo? non intellegetur cuius imiteris orationem? cuius argumentationem? cuius sententias?' Puto aliquando ne intellegi quidem posse, si magni vir ingenii omnibus quae ex quo voluit exemplari traxit formam suam inpressit, ut in unitatem illa conpetant. [9] Non vides quam multorum vocibus chorus constet? unus tamen ex omnibus redditur. Aliqua illic acuta est, aliqua gravis, aliqua media; accedunt viris feminae, interponuntur tibiae: singulorum illic latent voces, omnium apparent. [10] De choro dico quem veteres philosophi noverant: in commissionibus nostris plus cantorum est quam in theatris olim spectatorum fuit. Cum omnes vias ordo canentium implevit et cavea aeneatoribus cincta est et ex pulpito omne tibiarum genus organorumque consonuit, fit concentus ex dissonis. Talem animum esse nostrum volo: multae in illo artes, multa praecepta sint, multarum aetatum exempla, sed in unum conspirata. [11] 'Quomodo' inquis 'hoc effici poterit?' Adsidua intentione:si nihil egerimus nisi ratione suadente, nihil vitaverimus nisi ratione suadente. Hanc si audire volueris, dicet tibi: relinque ista iamdudum ad quae discurritur; relinque divitias, aut periculum possidentium aut onus; relinque corporis atque animi voluptates, molliunt et enervant; relinque ambitum, tumida res est, vana, ventosa, nullum habet terminum, tam sollicita est ne quem ante se videat quam ne secum, laborat invidia et quidem duplici. Vides autem quam miser sit si is cui invidetur et invidet. [12] Intueris illas potentium domos, illa tumultuosa rixa salutantium limina? multum habent contumeliarum ut intres, plus cum intraveris. Praeteri istos gradus divitum et magno adgestu suspensa vestibula: non in praerupto tantum istic stabis sed in lubrico. Huc potius te ad sapientiam derige, tranquillissimasque res eius et simul amplissimas pete. [13] Quaecumque videntur eminere in rebus humanis, quamvis pusilla sint et comparatione humillimorum exstent, per difficiles tamen et arduos tramites adeuntur. Confragosa in fastigium dignitatis via est; at si conscendere hunc verticem libet, cui se fortuna summisit, omnia quidem sub te quae pro excelsissimis habentur aspicies, sed tamen venies ad summa per planum. Vale.