After this she fell silent for a while, and when by her modest reticence she had gathered my attention, she thus began: 'If I have fully understood the causes and condition of your sickness, you are wasting away with longing and desire for your former fortune. It is the change of her — such as you yourself imagine — that has overthrown your mind. I understand the many-shaped disguises of that monster, and how she practices the most beguiling intimacy with those whom she strives to deceive, until she confounds with unbearable grief those whom she has unexpectedly forsaken. If you recall her nature, her ways, and her worth, you will recognize that you neither possessed in her anything beautiful nor lost anything; but, as I think, I shall hardly need to labor to recall these things to your memory. For you used to assail her even when present and fawning with manly words, and to pursue her with sentiments drawn from our own sanctuary.
But every sudden change of circumstances comes about not without a kind of tossing, as it were, of the spirit; thus it happened that you too fell away for a while from your tranquillity. But it is time for you to drink and taste something soft and pleasant, which, passed to your inner parts, may make a way for stronger draughts. Let there be present, then, the persuasion of Rhetoric's sweetness, which proceeds aright on its track only so long as it does not desert our precepts, and along with which let Music, the home-bred maid of our household, sing now lighter, now graver measures. What is it then, O man, that has cast you down into sorrow and lamentation? Something new, I suppose, something unusual, you have seen. You think Fortune has changed toward you; you err. These are ever her ways, this her nature. She has kept toward you rather her own constancy in her very mutability. Such was she when she fawned, when she played upon you with the enticements of false felicity.
You have caught sight of the ambiguous countenance of the blind divinity. She who still veils herself to others has wholly disclosed herself to you. If you approve, use her ways; do not complain. If you shudder at her treachery, scorn and cast off her who plays so destructively. For that which is now to you so great a cause of grief, this same thing ought to have been your peace. For she has forsaken you, of whom no one can ever be secure that she will not forsake him. Or do you indeed reckon precious a felicity that is bound to depart? And is present fortune dear to you, who is neither faithful in remaining and, when she has departed, will bring grief? But if she cannot even be retained at will, and in fleeing makes men wretched, what else is a fleeting thing but a kind of token of calamity to come? For it will not suffice to gaze on what is set before the eyes; prudence measures the outcomes of things, and that same mutability in either direction makes the threats of Fortune neither to be feared nor her flatteries to be desired.
Lastly, you ought to endure with an even mind whatever is enacted within Fortune's arena, once you have once submitted your neck to her yoke. But if you should wish to prescribe a law of staying and departing to her whom you have of your own accord chosen as your mistress, would you not be unjust, and by impatience embitter a lot which you cannot alter? If you committed your sails to the winds, you would advance not where your will sought but where the gusts drove; if you entrusted seeds to the fields, you would balance fruitful years against barren. You have given yourself to be ruled by Fortune; you must obey your mistress's ways. Do you then try to stay the onrush of the whirling wheel? But, most foolish of all mortals, if she begins to stay, she ceases to be Chance. With proud right hand she has reversed the turns and is borne along like the surging Euripus; cruelly she tramples down kings once dreaded, and deceitfully lifts up the humble face of the vanquished.
She heeds not the wretched, nor cares for their weeping, and unfeelingly laughs at the groans she herself has caused. Thus she plays, thus she proves her powers, and shows her followers a great prodigy, if one is seen in a single hour both laid low and fortunate. But I should like to discuss a few things with you in the very words of Fortune herself. Mark, therefore, whether she demands what is just. 'Why, O man, do you press me with daily complaints, making me the accused? What injury have we done you? What goods of yours have we taken from you? Before any judge you please, contend with me over the possession of riches and dignities. And if you can show that any of these is the property of any mortal, I will at once freely grant that those things you reclaim were yours. When nature brought you forth from your mother's womb, I received you naked and destitute of all things, nourished you with my resources, and — what now makes you impatient of me — reared you with favor, partial in my indulgence, and surrounded you with the affluence and splendor of all that is within my right. Now it pleases me to draw back my hand.
You owe me gratitude, as one who has used another's goods; you have no right of complaint, as if you had utterly lost what was your own. Why then do you groan? No violence has been done you by us. Wealth, honors, and the rest of such things are within my right. They acknowledge me as their mistress, the maidservants; with me they come, when I depart they go. Boldly I would affirm: if those things were yours, whose loss you bewail, you could in no way have lost them. Or shall I alone be forbidden to exercise my right? It is lawful for the sky to bring forth bright days and to hide those same in dark nights. It is lawful for the year now to crown the face of the earth with flowers and fruits, now to confound it with storms and frosts. It is the sea's right now to flatter with a smooth surface, now to bristle with squalls and waves. Shall men's insatiable greed bind me to a constancy alien to my ways?
This is our power, this is the continuous game we play: we turn the wheel in its rolling orbit, we delight to change the lowest to the highest, the highest to the lowest. Climb up, if you please, but on this condition: that you do not think it an injury to descend whenever the principle of my plan demands it. Or were you ignorant of my ways? Did you not know that Croesus, king of the Lydians, but lately formidable to Cyrus, was soon thereafter pitiable, handed over to the flames of the pyre, yet defended by a rain sent from heaven? Does it escape you that Aemilius Paulus shed pious tears over the calamities of Perseus, king of the Persians, captured by him? What else does the outcry of tragedies bewail but Fortune overturning happy kingdoms with an undiscriminating blow? Did you not learn as a young lad that 'two jars, the one of evils, the other of blessings' lie at the threshold of Jove (Homer)? What if you have taken more freely of the share of good things? What if I have not wholly departed from you?
What if this very mutability of mine is for you a just cause for hoping better things? Yet do not waste away in spirit, and, placed within the realm common to all, do not desire to live by your own private right.' If Plenty, with full horn, should pour out as many riches and not draw back her hand as the sea, stirred by rushing blasts, rolls grains of sand, or as many stars as shine forth in the star-bearing nights of the sky — not for that would the human race cease to weep its wretched complaints. Though God should freely grant their prayers, lavish of much gold, and deck the greedy with bright honors, what is gained seems as nothing, but savage rapacity, devouring what it has sought, opens wide its gaping maws. What reins shall hold back headlong desire within a fixed bound, when, the more it flows with lavish gifts, the more the thirst for having burns? Never is he rich who, trembling and groaning, believes himself to be in want.
If, then, Fortune should plead her case with you in these terms, you would have nothing whatever to murmur in reply; or if you have anything by which you may justly defend your complaint, you ought to bring it forth. We shall give you opportunity to speak.' Then I: 'Specious indeed are these things,' I said, 'smeared over with the honey of Rhetoric's and Music's sweetness; they delight only so long as they are heard. But for the wretched there is a deeper sense of their evils. Therefore, when these things have ceased to sound in the ears, the grief implanted weighs down the mind.' And she: 'It is so,' she said. 'For these are not yet remedies for your sickness, but as yet a kind of fomentation for a grief still stubborn against its cure. For those things which penetrate into the depths I shall apply when it is opportune. Nevertheless, that you may not wish to be reckoned wretched — have you forgotten the number and measure of your felicity?
I pass over the fact that, bereft of your father, you were taken up by the care of men of the highest rank, and, chosen into the kinship of the city's princes — which is the most precious kind of relationship — you began to be dear before you were close. Who did not proclaim you most fortunate, with so great a splendor of fathers-in-law, with the chastity of your wife, and with the timely blessing of male offspring as well? I omit — for it pleases me to omit what is common — the dignities granted you in youth that are denied to old men; it delights me to come to the singular crown of your felicity.
If any fruit of mortal things has any weight of blessedness, can the memory of that light be blotted out by however great a mass of crowding evils — when you saw your two sons, both consuls together, borne forth from your home amid a throng of senators and the eager joy of the people; when, as those same sons sat in their curule chairs in the senate-house, you, the orator of royal praise, earned the glory of genius and eloquence; when in the circus, seated between the two consuls, you satisfied the expectation of the surrounding multitude with a triumphal largesse? You gave Fortune fair words, I think, while she caressed you, while she cherished you as her darling. You carried off a gift she had never before bestowed on any private man. Do you wish, then, to cast up the reckoning with Fortune? Now for the first time she has grazed you with an envious eye. If you consider the number and measure of your joys and sorrows, you cannot yet deny that you are fortunate.
But if you do not on that account reckon yourself fortunate, because the things that then seemed glad have departed, there is no reason for you to think yourself wretched, since the things that now are believed sad are passing away. Or have you now for the first time come, a sudden stranger and guest, upon this stage of life? Do you suppose there is any constancy in human affairs, when a swift hour often dissolves man himself? For although there is little faith in chance things' remaining, yet the last day of life is a kind of death even of an enduring fortune. What difference, then, do you think it makes — whether you forsake her by dying, or she forsakes you by fleeing? When Phoebus with rosy four-horse chariot begins to scatter light across the pole, the star, dulled by the pressing flames, grows pale, its whitening face. When the grove, under the breath of the warm Zephyr, blushes red with spring roses, let the cloudy south wind blow madly — and now the splendor will pass from the thorns. Often the sea radiates in calm serenity with motionless waves, often the North Wind with its storm
stirs up the churning waters with overturned surface. If the world's own form rarely stands fast, if it varies with such great changes, then trust in the fleeting fortunes of men, trust in goods that flee away. It is settled, and laid down by eternal law, that nothing begotten shall stand fast. Then I: 'True,' I said, 'are the things you recall, O nurse of all the virtues, nor can I deny the most swift course of my prosperity. But this is what, in the recalling, scorches me more vehemently. For in every adversity of fortune, the most unhappy kind of misfortune is to have been happy.' 'But that you,' she said, 'should pay the penalty of false opinion — this you cannot justly charge to circumstances. For if this empty name of fortuitous felicity moves you, you may reckon with me how many and how great are the things in which you abound. Therefore, if that which in all the reckoning of your fortune you possessed as most precious is, by divine gift, still preserved to you unharmed and inviolate, can you, retaining the better things, justly plead misfortune?
And yet there flourishes unharmed that most precious glory of the human race, Symmachus your father-in-law — and what you would not be slow to purchase at the price of life — a man wholly fashioned out of wisdom and virtues, who, secure for himself, groans over your injuries. Your wife lives, modest in disposition, surpassing in chastity and modesty, and — to include all her gifts briefly — like her father. She lives, I say, and, hating the breath of this life for your sake alone, she preserves it; and in this one thing, that her felicity is diminished, I would myself concede that yours too is lessened — she wastes away in tears and grief with longing for you. What shall I say of your sons of consular rank, in whom already, as in boys of that age, a likeness of either their father's or their grandfather's genius shines forth? Since, then, the chief care of mortals is to retain life, O you, if you would but recognize your goods, are fortunate, you to whom there are still left even now things which no one doubts are dearer than life! Wherefore now dry your tears.
Fortune has not yet hated all together to the last man, nor has too violent a tempest fallen upon you, since tenacious anchors hold fast, which suffer neither the solace of the present nor the hope of the future time to be wanting.' 'And let them hold fast, I pray,' I said; 'for while these remain, however matters may stand, we shall swim free. But you see how much has gone from our adornments.' And she: 'We have made,' she said, 'some little progress, if you are not yet wholly weary of your lot. But I cannot bear your daintiness, who so mournfully and anxiously complain that something is lacking to your blessedness. For who is there of so well-composed a felicity that he does not in some part quarrel with the quality of his own condition? For anxious is the condition of human goods, which either never comes wholly, or never remains perpetual.
For one man wealth overflows, but degenerate blood is a shame to him; another nobility makes known, but, hemmed in by the narrowness of his household estate, he would rather be unknown. Another, abounding in both, bewails his celibate life; another, happy in marriage but childless, nurtures his estate for an alien heir. Another, gladdened with offspring, weeps in sorrow over the misdeeds of son or daughter. Therefore no one easily agrees with the condition of his own fortune; for there is in each something that the inexperienced does not know, but the experienced shudders at. Add that the sense of every most fortunate man is most delicate, and unless all things come at his nod, unaccustomed to any adversity, he is laid low by the very least things — so very trifling are the things that subtract the sum of blessedness from the most fortunate. How many do you suppose there are who would deem themselves next to heaven, if even the least part of the remnants of your fortune should fall to them?
This very place which you call exile is, to those who dwell in it, their homeland; so true is it that nothing is wretched unless you think it so, and that, conversely, every lot is blessed by the equanimity of him who bears it. Who is there so happy that, when he has surrendered to impatience, he does not wish to change his estate? With how many bitternesses is the sweetness of human felicity besprinkled! And even if it should seem pleasant to one enjoying it, yet it cannot be retained from departing whenever it will. Plain it is, then, how wretched is the blessedness of mortal things, which neither endures perpetually with the even-minded, nor wholly delights the anxious. Why then, O mortals, do you seek outside yourselves the felicity placed within you? Error and ignorance confound you. I will show you briefly the hinge of the highest felicity. Is there anything more precious to you than your own self? Nothing, you will say. Therefore, if you are master of yourself, you will possess what you would never wish to lose, nor could Fortune take away.
And that you may recognize that blessedness cannot consist in these fortuitous things, gather it thus. If blessedness is the highest good of a nature living by reason, and that is not the highest good which can in any way be snatched away — since that which cannot be taken away excels it — it is manifest that the instability of Fortune cannot aspire to attaining blessedness. Besides, the man to whom this transitory felicity comes either knows or knows not that it is mutable. If he knows not, what blessed lot can there be in the blindness of ignorance? If he knows, he must of necessity fear lest he lose what he does not doubt can be lost; wherefore a continual fear does not let him be happy. Or, even if he should lose it, does he think it a thing to be disregarded? Thus too it is a most paltry good which is borne with an even mind when lost.
And since you are the same man to whom I know it is persuaded and implanted by very many demonstrations that the minds of men are in no way mortal, and since it is clear that fortuitous felicity is ended by the death of the body, it cannot be doubted that, if this can confer blessedness, the whole race of mortals slips into the wretchedness of death's end. But if we know that many have sought the fruit of blessedness not only by death but even by griefs and torments, in what way can that make men blessed in its presence which does not make them wretched when it is past? Whoever wishes to set, cautiously, a lasting seat, and, steadfast, neither to be laid low by the blasts of the resounding East Wind, and who cares to scorn the sea threatening with its waves — let him avoid the high mountain peak and the thirsty sands. The wanton South Wind presses the one with all its force; the others, loosened, refuse to bear the hanging weight. Fleeing the perilous lot of a pleasant site, remember, sure, to fix your house on a low rock.
Although the wind should thunder with ruins, mingling the waters, you, hidden in quiet, happy in the strength of your rampart, shall lead a serene life, laughing at the wraths of the upper air. But since the fomentations of my reasonings are now sinking into you, I think we must use somewhat stronger ones. Come then: even if the gifts of Fortune were not transitory and momentary, what is there in them that could ever become yours, or that, examined and considered, would not grow cheap? Are riches precious either by your nature or by their own? What of them rather — gold, or the heaped force of money? And yet these shine better by being poured out than by being hoarded, since indeed avarice ever makes men hated, but generosity makes them illustrious. But if that cannot remain with each man which is transferred to another, then money is precious only when, transferred to others by the practice of giving, it ceases to be possessed. But the same, if it be heaped up with one man, however much there is anywhere in the world, will have made all the rest destitute of it.
And a single voice indeed fills equally the hearing of many; but your riches cannot pass to several unless broken up into parts. And when that has been done, they must of necessity make poor those whom they leave. O therefore narrow and beggarly riches, which neither can several possess whole, nor come to any one man without the poverty of the rest! Or does the gleam of gems draw the eyes? But if there is anything outstanding in this splendor, that brightness is of the gems, not of men; and I greatly marvel that men admire these things. For what is there, lacking the motion and structure of a soul, that could justly seem beautiful to a soul-endowed and rational nature? These, although by the work of their Creator and their own distinction they draw some last bit of beauty, yet, placed below your excellence, in no way deserved your admiration. Or does the beauty of fields delight you? Why should it not?
For it is a beautiful portion of a most beautiful work. So at times we rejoice in the face of a calm sea; so we marvel at the sky, the stars, the moon, and the sun. Does any of these touch you? Do you dare to boast in the splendor of any such thing? Are you yourself distinguished by spring flowers, or does your fertility swell into summer fruits? Why are you carried away by empty joys? Why do you embrace external goods as your own? Never will Fortune make to be yours the things which the nature of things has made foreign to you. The fruits of the earth, without doubt, are owed to the nourishment of living creatures. But if you would fill up your need with what suffices for nature, there is no reason for you to seek Fortune's affluence. For with few and least things is nature content, whose satiety if you should press with superfluities, what you have poured in will become either unpleasant or harmful.
Now indeed do you think it beautiful to glitter in varied garments? If the appearance of these is pleasing to the gaze, I shall admire either the nature of the material or the genius of the craftsman. Or does a long train of servants make you happy? Who, if they are vicious in their ways, are a destructive burden to the household and vehemently hostile to the master himself; but if they are honest, in what way shall the probity of others be reckoned among your goods? From all of which it is plainly shown that none of these things which you count among your goods is your own good. And if there is in them no beauty to be sought, what is there that you should either grieve over when they are lost or rejoice over when they are retained? But if they are beautiful by nature, what is that to you? For these would have pleased of themselves, set apart even from your riches. For they are not precious because they have come into your wealth, but, because they seemed precious, you preferred to count them among your riches. But what do you desire with so great an uproar of Fortune?
You seek, I believe, to drive away need by abundance. And yet this turns out for you to the contrary. For more props are needed to guard the variety of precious furnishings, and that saying is true, that they who possess much have need of much, and, on the contrary, they have need of least who measure their abundance by the necessity of nature and not by the superfluity of ambition. Is it then so, that you have no proper and implanted good of your own, that you seek your goods in external and detached things? Is the condition of things so reversed that a divine creature, by the merit of reason, seems to itself to shine in no other way than by the possession of inanimate furniture? And other things indeed are content with their own; but you, like to God in your minds, snatch at ornaments for your excelling nature from the lowest things, nor do you understand how great an injury you do to your Creator.
He willed the human race to excel all earthly things; you thrust down your dignity beneath the very lowest. For if every good of each thing is agreed to be more precious than that to which it belongs, when you judge the basest of things to be your goods, you submit your very selves, in your own estimation, beneath them — which indeed falls out not undeservedly. For such is the condition of human nature, that only then does it excel other things when it knows itself, yet the same is reduced below the beasts if it has ceased to know itself. For to other living creatures to be ignorant of themselves is natural; to men it comes as a fault. How widely, indeed, does this error of yours extend, who think that anything can be adorned with adornments not its own! But this cannot be. For if anything shines out from things added to it, the things that are added are indeed praised; but that which is covered and veiled by these endures none the less in its own foulness.
But I, for my part, deny that anything is a good which harms its possessor. Do I lie in this? 'By no means,' you say. And yet riches have very often harmed their possessors, since each most wicked man, and therefore the more greedy for what belongs to another, thinks himself alone most worthy to have whatever gold and gems there are anywhere. You, therefore, who now anxiously dread the pike and the sword, if you had entered the path of this life as an empty-handed traveler, would sing in the presence of the robber. O the splendid blessedness of mortal wealth, which, when you have attained it, you cease to be secure! Too happy was the former age, content with the faithful fields, not ruined by sluggish luxury, which was wont to break its long-deferred fasting with the easily-gotten acorn. They knew not to confound the gifts of Bacchus with liquid honey, nor to dye the shining fleeces of the Seres with Tyrian poison. The grass gave wholesome sleep, the gliding stream too gave drink, and the tallest pine gave shade.
Not yet did the stranger cleave the deeps of the sea, nor, with wares gathered from everywhere, had he seen new shores. Then the savage war-trumpets were silent, nor had blood, poured out in bitter hatreds, stained the dreadful fields. For why would hostile fury wish to be the first to set arms in motion, when it saw cruel wounds and no rewards of blood? Would that our times might now return to the ancient ways! But, fiercer than the fires of Etna, the burning love of having blazes hot. Alas, who was that first man who dug up the masses of buried gold and the gems that would lie hidden — precious perils? But what shall I say of dignities and power, which you, ignorant of true dignity and power, set level with heaven? Which, if they have fallen upon the most wicked of men — what flames of erupting Etna, what deluge would have wrought such great destruction?
Surely, as I think you remember, your forebears of old desired to abolish the consular power, which had been the beginning of liberty, on account of the pride of the consuls — they who, on account of the same pride, had earlier taken away the name of king from the city. But if at any time — which is very rare — these dignities are conferred on good men, what else pleases in them than the probity of those who use them? Thus it comes about that honor accrues not to virtues from dignity, but to dignities from virtue. But what is that desirable and illustrious power of yours? Do you not consider, O earthly creatures, over whom you seem to preside? Now if among mice you should see some one claiming for himself right and power over the rest, with how great a laugh would you be moved! What, however, if you regard the body — could you find anything weaker than man, whom often even the bites of tiny flies, or the entrance of creatures creeping into his hidden parts, kills?
Over what, indeed, can anyone exert any right against another except over the body alone, and over what is below the body — I mean Fortune? Will you command anything to a free mind? Will you move from the state of its own quiet a mind cohering to itself by firm reason? When a tyrant thought he would by tortures drive a certain free man to betray his accomplices in a conspiracy formed against him, the man bit off his tongue, cut it off, and threw it into the face of the raging tyrant; thus the tortures, which the tyrant supposed to be material for cruelty, the wise man made to be material for virtue. But what is there that anyone can do to another which he cannot himself endure from another? We are told that Busiris, accustomed to slay his guests, was himself slain by his guest Hercules. Regulus had cast into bonds many of the Carthaginians captured in war, but soon thereafter he himself offered his hands to the chains of the victors.
Do you then reckon any power to belong to that man who cannot bring it about that another should not be able to do to him what he himself can do to another? Besides, if there were in dignities and powers themselves anything of natural and proper good, they would never fall to the worst men. For adverse things are not wont to be allied together; nature spurns that contraries should be joined. Since, then, there is no doubt that the worst men for the most part hold dignities, this too is plain: that those things are not good by their own nature which suffer themselves to cleave to the worst men. And this indeed may more worthily be judged concerning all the gifts of Fortune, which come more abundantly to the most wicked. Concerning these, this too I think must be considered: that no one doubts him to be brave in whom he has beheld bravery to be present, and to whomever swiftness belongs it is manifest that he is swift. So music makes musicians, medicine physicians, rhetoric rhetoricians.