12. The soul acquires the strength to brave misfortune by patient endurance; what it can effect in us thou mayst know, if thou dost but consider what hardship does for those peoples that go about without clothing and are strong by their very indigence. Consider all the nations over whom the sway of Rome does not extend, I mean the Germans and every nomad tribe along the Danube. Perpetual winter, a severe climate, bear hard upon them, a sterile soil grudgingly supports them, a hut or branches of trees protect them against the rain, they roam over marshes hardened by frost, for food they capture wild beasts.
13. Dost thou think them wretched? No one is wretched when he performs what habit has made second nature to him; for by degrees we find pleasure in doing what we began to do from necessity. These peoples have no houses and no resting place except as weariness finds them from day to day; their food is cheap and obtained only as wanted; their naked bodies are exposed to the terrible extremes of a horrid climate; what thou regardest as a frightful calamity is the whole life of many peoples.
14. Why dost thou wonder that good men are called upon to undergo violent shocks to the end that they may stand the more firmly? A tree does not take deep root, or grow strong, unless it is frequently shaken by the wind; for as a result of violent agitation its fiber is toughened and its roots more firmly set. Those are fragile that grow up in sheltered valleys. It is therefore a boon to good men, as it makes them fearless amid danger, to become familiar with hardships and to bear with equanimity those things that are not ills, except when they are borne with an ill grace.
V.
Add, now, that it is best for all that every good man should, so to speak, be always under arms and in action. It is the purpose of God, just as if He were a wise man, to demonstrate that those things which the average man longs for, which he fears, are neither good nor evil; but it will be evident that those things are good that are sent upon good men, and those evil, that fall upon the bad. Blindness would be dreadful, if nobody had lost his sight except those who deserved to have their eyes put out. Accordingly, let Appius and Metellus be deprived of eyesight. Riches are not a good.
2. And so even the procurer Elius is rich in order that money to which men have given a sacred character in temples may also be found in a brothel. In no way is God better able to expose to contempt those things that men covet than by bestowing them upon the vilest and taking them from the worthiest. “But,” sayst thou, “it is unjust that a good man should suffer mutilation, or be crucified, or be bound in fetters, while the bad strut proudly at large and live in luxury.”
3. What then? is it not also unjust when brave men are required to take up arms, to pass the night in camps and to defend the outposts, though the bandages are still on their wounds, while in the city, eunuchs and debauchees by profession go about in security. What further? is it not unjust that the noblest virgins should be aroused at night to perform their sacred duties while impure women are enjoying sound sleep? Toil claims the best men. The senate is often in session during the entire day, when at the same time all the vilest men are either taking their ease in the Campus Martius, or loitering in eating-houses, or wasting their time in idle gossip. It is just so in the world at large—good men toil, sacrifice themselves or are sacrificed, and willingly at that. They are not dragged along by destiny, they follow it and keep pace with it; had they known whither it would lead them, they would have preceded it.
4. I remember also to have heard these encouraging words from that noblest of men, Demetrius. “This one complaint,” said he, “I have to make against you, ye immortal gods: it is that ye did not sooner make known to me your will; for of my own accord I would have come to those things to which I am now summoned. Do you wish to take away my children? For you I have brought them up. Do you wish any portion of my body? Take it. No great thing it is that I am offering you; soon I shall resign it entirely to you. Do you wish my life? Why not? I shall not be slow to give back to you what ye have entrusted to my keeping; ye shall find me willing to give up anything ye ask. Still I should rather have proferred it to you than given it up. What need was there to take what you could have had as a gift. Yet not even now do ye need to constrain me, since that is not taken from a man which he does not try to retain. I am in no sense the victim of constraint or violence, nor am I God’s slave, but I am in accord with Him, and this all the more cheerfully because I know that everything takes its course in accordance with an immutable law established from all eternity.”
5. The fates lead us, and our lot is assigned to us from the very hour of our birth. Cause depends upon cause; an unbroken chain of events links together public and private affairs. We ought therefore to bear with fortitude whatever befalls us because everything takes place, not as we think, by chance, but in its due order. A long time in advance, all our pleasures and our pains have been determined, and although in the great diversity of individual lives, one life may seem to stand apart, it all comes to this: transitory beings ourselves we have entered into a transitory inheritance.
6. Why then does this disquiet us? Why indulge in complaints? it is the law of our existence. Let nature use our bodies, which are its own, as it wishes; let us cheerfully and bravely meet whatever comes, bearing in mind that what we lose is not our property. What is the duty of a good man? To resign himself to his destiny. It is a great consolation to share the fate of the universe. Whatever it be that decrees how we are to live, how to die, it binds even the gods by the same inexorable law; an irresistible current bears along terrestrial and celestial things.