The Confession First
You want to know what you should regard as most dangerous.1 Crowds. You are not yet strong enough to walk into one and come out unharmed.
And before you take that as advice from a height, let me admit my own weakness. I never bring home the character I took out with me. Something I had worked to settle is unsettled. Enemies I thought I had driven off are back inside the house. A man who has been ill a long time reaches a state where he cannot be carried out of doors without relapsing, and that is roughly where we are — souls in convalescence from a long disease.
Nobody in a crowd is neutral toward you. There is no person alive who does not make some vice attractive to you, or stamp it onto you, or infect you with it while neither of you is paying attention. And the larger the mob, the worse the exposure.
What I Saw at Noon
Let me tell you what happened. I went in at midday expecting the light programme — some clowning, some wit, an interval in which the eyes get a rest from watching men killed. It was the opposite of that. Everything merciful about the morning's fighting had been taken out. This was plain murder.
No armour. No shields. They are exposed at every point, and no blow is wasted. Many people prefer this to the matched pairs and the bouts by request, and of course they do — there is no helmet, no guard, nothing to turn a weapon aside. What use is defensive equipment? What use is skill? All that does is delay the death.
In the morning they throw men to the lions. At noon they throw them to the spectators. The winner is held back to be butchered by the next man, and every bout ends in a death, and the instruments are fire and steel. And this is the portion of the day when the arena is supposed to be empty.
Caution
You will tell me the man was a highwayman, that he killed somebody. Very well. Grant that as a murderer he has earned this. What have you done, my poor fellow, that you should deserve to sit and watch it?
Because they were shouting. Kill him. Whip him. Burn him. Why does he take the sword so cowardly? Why does he strike so feebly? Why won't he die properly? Lash them together, chests bare, no guard, blow for blow. And when the fighting paused, the announcement came: a little throat-cutting in the meantime, so that nothing should be happening.
Do you not see even this — that a bad example rebounds on the man who watches it? Thank the immortal gods that you are teaching cruelty to somebody who cannot learn it.
I came home greedier, more ambitious, more self-indulgent, and crueller. Because I had been among human beings.
Important
A young character that cannot yet hold on to what is right has to be got away from the mob, because it is very easy to go along with the majority. Socrates could have been shaken by a crowd unlike himself. So could Cato. So could Laelius. None of us, however much we have worked on ourselves, can stand up under the shock of faults arriving in that kind of company.
But Do Not Turn It Into Contempt
Now, I am not telling you to hate them.
Copying the bad because they are numerous, and hating the many because they are unlike you, are the same mistake in different clothes. Both are to be avoided.
Withdraw into yourself as far as you can. Keep the company of people who will make you better, and the company of people you can make better. It runs both ways — a man learns while he teaches.
And do not let pride in your own abilities lure you into performing. There is no reason to want to recite in public. You will ask what all the study was for, if hardly anyone can follow it. Here is your answer, from three men.
Democritus said: one man is worth as much to me as a multitude, and a multitude as much as one man. Somebody else — nobody is sure who — was asked what was the point of labouring at an art that would reach almost nobody, and said: I am content with few. Content with one. Content with none at all. And Epicurus wrote to a fellow student: I write this not for the many but for you; each of us is audience enough for the other.
Scorn the pleasure that comes from the applause of the majority. Many men praise you. Have you any reason to be pleased with yourself, if you are the kind of man the many can understand?
Turn your good qualities inward.
The Noise Is Not the Problem
Now I have to complicate what I have just told you, because you may have concluded that the answer is quiet, and it is not.
I am currently living directly above a bath house. Picture the sounds.
The strenuous gentleman working out with lead weights — I hear him grunt, and when he lets his held breath go I hear the wheezing. The lazy one having a cheap rubdown, and the crack of the hand on his shoulder, which changes pitch depending on whether the hand lands flat or hollowed. The ball-game scorer shouting out the count; that is the finishing touch. Somebody being arrested for picking pockets. The man who loves the sound of his own voice in the bath. The enthusiast who hits the water with as much noise and splashing as he can manage. And the armpit-plucker with his high advertising shriek, who only goes quiet when he is actually plucking — at which point his customer screams instead. Then the cake seller, the sausage man, the pastry man, every food hawker with his own distinctive howl.
And you will say: what iron nerves you must have, when our friend Chrysippus is driven to distraction by people saying good morning to him.
But I tell you this racket is no more to me than the sound of waves or falling water. Words distract me more than noises do, because words demand attention; noise just fills the ears and beats on them. What upsets me is an intermittent sound, not a steady one — and by now I have hardened myself even against that.
Because I force my mind to attend to itself and not go wandering out of doors. Let it be bedlam outside, provided there is no disturbance within. Provided fear is not wrangling with desire inside my chest, and stinginess and extravagance are not at each other's throats.
What good is a quiet neighbourhood if your emotions are in an uproar?
It was night, and all the world was lulled to rest — that is not true. There is no rest where reason has not done the lulling. Night does not banish our troubles; it brings them into the light and changes their shape. Think of the wretched man who hushes his whole household to get to sleep, orders every slave silent, requires everyone who approaches to walk on tiptoe — and tosses from side to side all night, and complains in the morning about noises he never heard. His soul is in an uproar. That is all.
Sometimes quiet is disquiet. You need not suppose a soul is at peace just because a body is still.
And I will tell you the awkward part. People think I have retired. I have not, entirely. In this retreat, which fear and weariness drove me into, my ambition sometimes puts out new shoots. It has not been rooted out; it was tired, or perhaps just sulking because its plans failed. And luxury is the same — it seems to have gone, and then once you have made a public profession of frugality it starts fretting at you and looking, in the middle of your economies, for the pleasures you gave up but never actually condemned.
Note
The more quietly a fault arrives, the stronger it is. Every vice that is out in the open is less serious. A disease is closer to being cured once it has broken out where you can see it.
You may then ask whether it would not simply be easier to move somewhere quieter. It would. I admit it, and I am going to move. I only wanted to test myself and get some practice. There is no need to be tormented indefinitely when Ulysses found so simple a remedy for his crew against the Sirens.
Where the Danger Actually Comes From
One last thing, and it is the hardest.
You spend your time looking around for troubles that may come and may equally not — fires, buildings falling, that sort of thing. Those are events, not plots. They are rare, and they announce themselves. A storm gathers before it breaks. A house cracks before it falls. Smoke comes before flame.
The everyday danger comes from your fellow man, and it is instantaneous, and the closer it gets, the more carefully it is hidden. Equip yourself against that. You are wrong to trust the faces you meet. Beasts only damage you at the first encounter; once they have passed you by, they do not come back for you, because nothing drives them except hunger or fear. Man takes pleasure in ruining man.
But turn it round, because that is the whole point of my telling you. Reflect on what you risk at the hands of men in order to work out what a man owes. Deal with others so as not to harm, in order that you may not be harmed. Rejoice with people in their joys and feel with them in their troubles.
That will not necessarily protect you from injury. It will protect you from deceiving anyone.
And so far as you can, take refuge in philosophy. But never wave it about — philosophy carried with arrogance has been dangerous to a great many people. Let it strip off your own faults rather than equip you to catalogue other men's. Let it not hold itself aloof from ordinary human custom, or make it its business to condemn everything it does not personally do.
A man can be wise without a parade, and without making enemies of everyone in the room.
Farewell.