Seneca · Letters to Lucilius
Letter 48: On quibbling as unworthy of the philosopher
Letter 48 answers that a friend’s interest is one’s own: there is no private good or ill fortune, we live in common.
The rest of the letter dismisses the dialecticians’ syllogisms about mice and cheese, since philosophy promised to make us equal to God and must not waste a short life on quibbles.
From the letter
There is no such thing as good or bad fortune for the individual; we live in common.
And no one can live happily who has regard to himself alone and transforms everything into a question of his own utility; you must live for your neighbour, if you would live for yourself.
For he that has much in common with a fellow-man will have all things in common with a friend.
I can make it perfectly clear to you whenever you wish, that a noble spirit when involved in such subtleties is impaired and weakened.
Even if there were many years left to you, you would have had to spend them frugally in order to have enough for the necessary things; but as it is, when your time is so scant, what madness it is to learn superfluous things!
Coverage
Our editions hold 30 letters of 124 in Richard Mott Gummere’s translation (1917–1925); 29 of them have a page here, those that Joseph Baillard’s French translation (1861) also contains.
Seneca and Epictetus are in Stoic+ — 1 passage of this letter, with its reference; Marcus Aurelius is free in the app.