This comes from a badly tuned mind and desires that are timid or unrealized, when they either don’t dare as much as they desire, or don’t achieve it and are utterly straining with hope; […] despair of achieving one’s own [success] produces a mind enraged with fortune, lamenting the modern age and withdrawing into corners to brood over one’s punishment, until a person is weary and ashamed of himself [...]

Yet a great mind has a way to unfold itself even in private; […] their [humans’] greatest deeds are conducted in retirement. So let him go into retreat on condition that wherever he has secluded his leisure, he will want to benefit individuals and the whole community by his intellect, his speech, and his advice.

If fortune overcomes him and forestalls his ability to act, he should not instantly turn and flee unarmed seeking a hiding place, as if there were anywhere that fortune could not catch up with him, but he should approach his duties more sparingly and selectively find some activity in which he can be useful to the state.

He is not allowed to serve as a soldier; then let him seek office. He must live as a private citizen; let him be an advocate. Has he lost the duties of a citizen? Then let him perform those of a human being.

In this way and with exalted mind we have not confined ourselves within the walls of a single city, but released ourselves to do business with the whole world and declared the universe our native land, so as to give a wider battleground to our virtue.

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Pub: 11 Jul 2022 15:23 UTC
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