Seneca · Letters to Lucilius
Letter 5: The philosopher’s mean
Letter 5 approves Lucilius’s studies but warns him against the ostentatious poverty of the show philosopher: ragged dress and a bed on the ground repel the very people one hopes to improve.
The mean Seneca approves is plain living without penance, and the letter ends on Hecato’s observation that fear follows hope.
From the letter
Inwardly, we ought to be different in all respects, but our exterior should conform to society.
Philosophy calls for plain living, but not for penance; and we may perfectly well be plain and neat at the same time.
This is the mean of which I approve; our life should observe a happy medium between the ways of a sage and the ways of the world at large; all men should admire it, but they should understand it also.
He is a great man who uses earthenware dishes as if they were silver; but he is equally great who uses silver as if it were earthenware.
Just as the same chain fastens the prisoner and the soldier who guards him, so hope and fear, dissimilar as they are, keep step together; fear follows hope.
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+ — 2 passages of this letter, each with its reference; Marcus Aurelius is free in the app.