Let us leave aside this long comparison of solitary life to the active one; and as for this fine word with which ambition and avarice are covered: That we are not concerned with our own particular interests, but with the public interest, let us boldly refer to those who are in the know; and let them fight it out in their conscience, if, on the contrary, the estates, the offices, and this hassle of the world are sought rather to derive one’s particular profit from the public. The underhanded means by which people push their way in our century show that the end is hardly worth it. Let us respond to ambition that it is ambition itself that gives us a taste for solitude: for what is it fleeing from if not society? what is it seeking if not freedom of action? There is good and bad to be done in everything: however, if Bias’s word is true, that the worst part is the greatest, or what the Ecclesiastes says, that out of a thousand there is not one good one,
Indeed, the good are rare: in number they are scarcely as many as the gates of Thebes, or the rich doors of the Nile. (Juvenal)
Contagion is very dangerous in the press. One must either imitate the vicious or hate them. Both are dangerous, and to resemble them, because they are many; and to hate many, because they are unlike. And merchants who go to sea are right to make sure that those who board the same ship are not dissolute, blasphemous or wicked, considering such company unfortunate.
Therefore Bias, jokingly, to those who passed with him the danger of a great storm, and called for the help of the gods: Be silent, he said, lest they feel that you are here with me. And, in a more pressing example, Albuquerque, Viceroy of India for King Emanuel of Portugal, in an extreme peril of fortune at sea, took a young boy upon his shoulders, for the sole purpose of putting him in safety, in the company of their fortune, his innocence serving as a guarantee and recommendation to divine favor.
It is not that the wise man cannot live happily anywhere, even and only in the crowd of a palace; but, if he has to choose, he will flee from it, he says, even from sight. He will wear it, if he must, but, if he can help it, he will choose this. It does not seem to him that he has sufficiently rid himself of vices if he must still contend with those of others. Charondas chastised as bad those who were convinced of keeping bad company. Nothing is so dissociable and sociable as man: one by his vice, the other by his nature.
And Antisthenes does not seem to me to have satisfied the one who criticized him for conversing with the wicked, saying that doctors live well among the sick, because, if they serve the health of the sick, they deteriorate their own through contagion, the continual and practical sight of diseases. In the end, I believe, the aim is to live more at one’s leisure and at ease. But one does not always find the way. Often one thinks one has left business, but one has only changed it. There is little less torment in the government of a family than of a whole estate: wherever the soul is hindered, it is there entirely; and, although the domestic occupations are less important, they are no less troublesome. Moreover, in getting rid of the Court and the marketplace, we are not rid of the principal torments of our life,
Reason and prudence take away your cares, No place for the arbiter of the wide sea. (Horace)
Ambition, avarice, irresolution, fear and concupiscence do not abandon us when we change country,
And behind the rider sits a black care. (Horace)
They often follow us even into cloisters and schools of philosophy. Neither deserts, nor rocks dug out of the ground, nor the sea, nor young people can distract us from it:
A deadly reed clings to his side. (Virgil)
Socrates was told that someone had not improved at all on his journey: “I believe so,” he said, “he carried his troubles with him.
Why do we change lands that are warmed by the sun? Who, exiled from his homeland, flees himself? (Horace)
If one does not first unburden oneself and one’s soul of the thing that presses it, the movement will make it tread further: as in a ship the loads hinder less when they are settled. You do more harm than good to the patient by making him change position. You aggravate the problem by stirring it up, just as the stakes are driven in deeper and become more firmly fixed by being shaken and stirred. Therefore it is not enough to have distanced oneself from the people; it is not enough to change places, one must distance oneself from the popular conditions that are in us: one must sequester oneself and regain one’s self.
You should say, “Break the chains now;” For the dog, struggling, seizes the knot; nevertheless, When he flees, a long part of the chain is pulled from his neck. (Persius)
We take our shackles with us when we leave: it is not complete freedom, we still turn our gaze towards what we have left behind, we are filled with fantasies of it.
Unless the heart is cleansed, what battles and dangers then must we insinuate ourselves with without thanks? How many keen passions And anxious cares tear a man to pieces, and how many fears? Or what pride, filthiness, and petulance, how many disasters Do they cause? What luxury and idleness? (Lucretius)
Our evil is in our soul: but it cannot escape from itself,
The mind is in guilt and never escapes itself. (Horace)
So we must bring it back and withdraw it into ourselves: this is true solitude, and it can be enjoyed in the midst of cities and the courts of kings; but it is more easily enjoyed apart. Now, since we undertake to live alone and do without company, let us make our contentment depend on ourselves; let us break off all the connections that bind us to others, let us gain the power to live alone and live there at our ease. Stilpon, having escaped from the conflagration of his city, where he had lost his wife, children and fortune, Demetrius Poliorcetes, seeing him in such great ruin of his homeland with an unfrightened face, asked him if he had not suffered any damage. He replied that he had not, and that, thank God, he had lost nothing of his own.
This is what the philosopher Antisthenes jokingly said: that man should provide himself with ammunition that would float on the water and enable him to swim away from the shipwreck with it. Certainly, a man of understanding has lost nothing, if he has saved himself. When the city of Nole was ruined by the Barbarians, Paulinus, who was its bishop, having lost everything there and being their prisoner, prayed to God thus: Lord, keep me from feeling this loss, for you know that they have not yet touched anything that is mine. The riches that made him rich, and the goods that made him good, were still in their entirety. That is what it is to choose well the treasures that can be freed from injury, and to hide them in a place where no one goes, and which can only be betrayed by ourselves.
One must have women, children, possessions, and above all health, if one can; but not become so attached to them that our happiness depends on them. We must reserve a back room all to ourselves, completely free, in which we establish our true freedom and main retreat and solitude. In this place we must hold our ordinary conversation with ourselves, and so privately that no acquaintance or extraneous communication may intrude; conversing and laughing as if we had no wife, no children, no wealth, no retinue, no servants, so that, when the time comes to lose them, we may not find it new to do without them. We have a soul that can be circumvented by itself; it can keep us company; it has what it takes to attack and defend, to receive and to give: in this solitude, let us not fear to wallow in boring idleness,
You may be alone in crowded places. (Tibullus)
Virtue, said Antisthenes, is content with itself: without disciplines, without words, without effects. In our accustomed actions, not one in a thousand concerns us. The one you see climbing up the ruins of this wall, furious and beside himself, in defiance of so much gunfire; and the other, all scarred, frozen and starving, determined to die rather than open the door to him, do you think they are there for themselves? For such a person, by chance, whom they never saw, and who takes no trouble about them, yet lives in idleness and pleasure.
This one, allpituitous, bleary and filthy, that you see leaving a study after midnight, do you think he is searching through the books for how he will become a better man, happier and wiser? No news. He will die there, or he will teach posterity the measure of Plautus’ verses and the true spelling of a Latin word. Who is not willing to exchange health, rest and life for reputation and glory, the most useless, vain and base currency that we have? Our death did not frighten us enough, let us take charge of that of our wives, our children and our people. Our business did not give us enough trouble, let us take it upon ourselves to torment and break the heads of our neighbors and friends.
Is it possible to instill in any man a desire, or to prepare him to be dearer than he is to himself? (Terence)
Solitude seems to me to have more appearance and reason to those who have given to the world their most active and flourishing age, following the example of Thales. We have lived enough for others, let us live for ourselves at least for this part of our lives. Let us turn our thoughts and intentions to ourselves and our comfort. It is no small task to make our retirement secure; it is enough to prevent us from meddling in other undertakings.
Since God gives us the leisure to dispose of our accommodation, let us prepare for it; let us pack our bags; let us take our leave of company early; let us despair of those violent grips that engage us elsewhere and distance us from ourselves. We must unravel these strong bonds, and in the meantime love this and that, but espouse nothing but ourselves. That is to say: the rest is ours, but not so bound and stuck together that we cannot undo it without injuring ourselves and tearing away a piece of ourselves.
The greatest thing in the world is to know how to be oneself. It is time to disentangle ourselves from society, since we cannot contribute anything to it. And he who cannot lend should refrain from borrowing. Our forces fail us; let us withdraw them and draw them closer to us. He who can reverse and combine within himself the offices of friendship and companionship, let him do so. In this fall, which makes him useless, tiresome and importunate to others, let him beware of being importunate to himself, and tiresome and useless. Let him flatter and caress himself, and above all, govern himself; respecting and fearing his reason and his conscience, so that he cannot blunder in their presence without shame.
For it is rare for anyone to fear himself sufficiently. (Quintilian)
Socrates said that the young should be educated, men should train themselves to do well, the old should retire from all civil and military occupation, living at their discretion, without obligation to any particular office. There are dispositions more suited to these precepts of retirement than others. Those who have a soft and loose apprehension, and a delicate affection and will, and who do not enslave themselves or work easily, of which I am and by natural condition and by discourse, they will be more amenable to this advice than active and busy souls who embrace everything and commit themselves to everything, who are passionate about all things, who offer themselves, who present themselves and who give themselves on all occasions.
We must make use of these accidental conveniences that are not of our making, insofar as they are agreeable to us, but without making them our principal foundation: it is not so; neither reason nor nature wills it. Why should we subject our contentment to the power of others against our own laws? To anticipate the accidents of fortune, to deprive ourselves of the conveniences that are within our reach, as many have done out of devotion and some philosophers out of discourse, to serve ourselves, to sleep on the hard ground, to poke our eyes out, to throw our wealth into the river, to seek pain (those for by the torment of this life, to acquire the bliss of another; these for, having lodged themselves in the lowest step, to put themselves in security from a new fall), it is the action of an excessive virtue. The more rigid and stronger natures make their own seal glorious and exemplary:
I praise the safe and small, When things fail, strong enough among the mean: But where something better and more generous happens, the same I say that these are wise, and only those live well, whose money is seen to be well-founded in their villages. (Horace)
For me, there is enough business without going so far. It is enough for me, with the favor of fortune, to prepare for its disfavor, and to represent to myself, being at ease, the evil to come, as far as the imagination can reach it: just as we accustom ourselves to jousts and tournaments, and counterfeit war in the midst of peace. I do not consider the philosopher Arcesilaus any less reformed, knowing that he used gold and silver utensils, according to the condition of his fortune; and I consider him better than if he had been half of it, because he used it moderately and liberally.
I see how far natural necessity goes; and, considering the poor beggar at my door often more cheerful and healthier than I am, I put myself in his place, I try to put my soul in his place. And, thus running through the other examples, although I think of death, poverty, contempt and disease at my heels, I easily resolve not to be afraid of what someone less than me takes with such patience. And I cannot believe that baseness of understanding can overcome vigor; or that the effects of speech cannot reach the effects of habituation.
And, knowing how little these incidental conveniences matter, I do not cease, in full enjoyment, to beg God, for my supreme request, that he make me content with myself and with the goods that come from me. I see strapping young men who never fail to carry a mass of pills in their trunks to use when the flu presses them, which they fear all the less as they think they have the remedy at hand. So it is necessary to do: and again, if one feels subject to some stronger illness, to stock up on these medicines that numb and lull the part. The occupation to be chosen for such a life must be neither painful nor boring; otherwise we would have come to no purpose in seeking a stay here. It depends on the particular taste of each individual: mine does not suit the household at all. Those who like it should indulge in it with moderation,
Let things strive for themselves, not submit themselves to things. (Horace)
It is otherwise a servile office than the household, as Salust calls it. It has more excusable aspects, such as the care of gardening, which Xenophon attributes to Cyrus; and a middle way can be found between this low and vile care, so tedious and full of solicitude, which we see in men who devote themselves entirely to it, and this profound and extreme nonchalance, leaving everything to go to ruin, which we see in others,
Democritus’ cattle eat the fields And culture, while the mind is abroad, swift without a body. (Horace)
But let us hear the advice that the young Pliny gives to Cornelius Rufus, his friend, on the subject of solitude: I advise you, in this full and fat retreat, where you are, to free yourself from this low and abject care of housekeeping, and to devote yourself to the study of letters, to draw from it something that is all your own. He hears the reputation: of a similar disposition to that of Cicero, who declared that he wanted to use his solitude and absence from public affairs to acquire an immortal life through his writings:
So much so that your knowing is nothing, unless another knows that you know this? (Persius)
It seems that this is the reason, since we talk about withdrawing from the world, that we look outside it: these people only do so halfway. They prepare well for when they are no longer there: but they claim to still be able to reap the rewards of their plan while still in the world, absent, by a ridiculous contradiction. The imagination of those who, out of devotion, seek solitude, filling their courage with the certainty of divine promises in the afterlife, is much more healthily matched. They propose God to themselves, an infinite object in goodness and power: the soul has everything it needs to satisfy its desires in complete freedom.
Afflictions and pains are beneficial to them, used to acquire eternal health and joy: death, if desired, is a passage to such a perfect state. The harshness of their rules is quickly alleviated by habituation; and carnal appetites are repelled and numbed by their denial, for nothing sustains them but use and exercise. This single end of another life, happily immortal, deserves that we loyally abandon the comforts and pleasures of this life of ours. And he who can truly and constantly set his soul on fire with the ardour of this living faith and hope, will build for himself in solitude a life of delight and refinement beyond any other form of life. Neither the end nor the means of this advice satisfies me: we always fall from fever to hot pain.
This occupation of books is as tedious as any other, and as much an enemy of health, which must be the main consideration. And one must not let oneself be lulled into the pleasure one takes in it: it is this very pleasure that ruins the householder, the avaricious, the voluptuous and the ambitious. The wise teach us enough to guard against the betrayal of our appetites, and to discern the true pleasures, and whole, of pleasures mixed and mixed with more pain. For most pleasures, they say, tickle and embrace us to strangle us, as did the thieves that the Egyptians called Philistas. And, if the pain in the head came before the drunkenness, we would beware of drinking too much. But voluptuousness, to deceive us, goes ahead and hides its consequences from us.
Books are pleasant; but, if by frequenting them we end up losing our cheerfulness and health, let us leave our best pieces. I am one of those who think that their fruit cannot counterbalance this loss. Like men who feel long weakened by some indisposition, in the end resign themselves to the mercy of medicine, and have certain rules of life artfully designed for them so that they will not transgress them: so he who retires, bored and disgusted with community life, must form this one according to the rules of reason, organize it and order it by premeditation and discourse. He must have taken leave of all kinds of work, whatever form it takes; and generally flee from the passions that impede the tranquility of body and soul, and choose the path that is more in keeping with his mood,
Each one knows how to go his own way. (Propertius)
In housekeeping, study, hunting and any other exercise, one must give to the very limits of pleasure, and beware of engaging further, where the pain begins to mingle in. We must reserve as much leisure and occupation as is necessary to keep us on our toes, and to protect us from the inconveniences that follow in the wake of the other extreme of lazy idleness and apathy. There are sterile and thorny sciences, most of them forged for the press: they must be left to those who serve the world. For myself, I love only books that are pleasant and easy, that tickle me, or those that console me and advise me on how to arrange my life and my death:
Silently creeping among the healthy forests, Caring for whatever is worthy of wisdom and goodness. (Horace)
Wiser people can forge a very spiritual rest for themselves, having a strong and vigorous soul. Since I have this in common, I must help to support myself with bodily comforts; and, age having sometimes robbed me of those that were more to my fancy, I train and sharpen my appetite for those that remain more suitable for this other season. We must hold on with all our teeth and claws to the pleasures of life, which our years wrest from us one after another:
We pick the sweets; it is ours. That you live: you will become ashes and ghosts and a legend. (Persius)
Now, as for the end that Pliny and Cicero propose to us, of glory, it is far from my mind. The most contrary mood to retirement is ambition. Glory and rest are things that cannot coexist. As far as I can see, these people only have their arms and legs out of the press; their soul, their intention remains committed to it more than ever:
So, old woman, do you gather food with someone else’s ears? (Persius)
They have only stepped back in order to jump better, and in order, with a stronger movement, to make a more lively cut in the troop. Do you see how short they make their shot? of a grain? Let us counterbalance the advice of two philosophers, and of two very different sects, writing, one to Idomeneus, the other to Lucilius, their friends, to withdraw them from the handling of affairs and greatness to solitude. You have (they say) lived swimming and floating until now, come and die in port. You have given the rest of your life to the light, give this to the shade.
It is impossible to leave the occupations, if you do not leave the fruit: for this reason, get rid of all concern for name and glory. There is a danger that the light of your past actions will only too clearly illuminate you and follow you into your lair. Along with other vices, avoid that which comes from the approval of others; and as for your knowledge and self-importance, do not worry, it will not lose its effect if you are better than yourself. Remember the man who, when asked what he was doing, pondered so deeply on an art that very few people could understand: “I have enough of little,” he replied, “I have enough of one, I have enough of none.”
He spoke the truth: you and a companion are enough to be a theater for each other, or for yourselves. May the people be one, and may one be all the people. It is a cowardly ambition to want to take glory from one’s idleness and hiding place. You must do as animals do, who erase their traces at the entrance to their den.
“It is no longer what you must seek, that the world speak of you, but how you must speak to yourselves. Withdraw into yourself, but first prepare yourself to receive yourself: it would be madness to trust yourself, if you do not know how to govern yourself. There is a way to fail in solitude as in company. Until you have become such a person, before whom you did not dare to show off, and until you have shame and respect for yourself,
Let the appearance of honor be observed in the mind. (Cicero)
always present yourself in the imagination of Cato, Phocion and Aristides, in whose presence even fools would hide their faults, and establish checkers for all your intentions: if they go astray, their reverence will put them back on track. They will keep you on this path of being content with yourself, of borrowing nothing but yourself, of confining and closing your soul in certain and limited cogitations in which it can find pleasure; and having heard the true goods, which are enjoyed in proportion to how much is heard, to be content with them, without any desire for the prolongation of life or of name.”
This is the advice of true and natural philosophy, not of an ostentatious and talkative philosophy, as is that of Pliny and Cicero.