Letter 159
To an unknown correspondent
Your wise letter has come to us, so tasteful and withal so brief,
yet so eloquent, the offspring of your marvellous brain. I am greatly delighted with it,
for it pleases me doubly, first, as coming from the best of friends, and from one entirely
worthy of praise, and second, on account of the rare grace with which it has been
composed. Nay, it has incited me to something else more formidable and audacious. Did not
our old affection, with its power to unite things far separated, and often to bring into
accord forces antagonistic to each other-- did not this old affection, I say, make a plea
for forgiveness in this matter, perchance we should thus be very little removed from the
position of those who have good cause to be angry. To what, perhaps you ask, has it
incited me? Why, to make response, as you see, with my own tongue to such a great man,
assuredly initiated by the muses, if any man ever was; to one of whom Demosthenes would
have said, had he seen him amongst us, that he had come among men as a copy of Hermes the
eloquent. This tongue of mine never in old days had the least share in the best, and now
it is so rough that it can scarce call a spade a spade. For I tell you in all confidence
that the suffering which I endure in silence now rather threatens to gain the mastery over
me, so fate has willed it.
This indeed makes us pity rather than congratulate ourselves, inasmuch
as it is not even accorded us to meet here any one of the highest destiny, such as
yourself, by contact with whom something of our barbarous side might perhaps be filed
away, and thus our real qualities gradually emerge from their stale odour of the goat-pen.
Now is the moment to pity myself more than ever before, for your
request was inopportune: the oil which you ask me for, and which I wish to give you, or,
to speak truly, which I was keeping to give to such a man as you, this oil has remained in
the country. As the nature of the case would have it, it was bestowed for use.
Moreover this not an olive tree without eyes on it-- if you will put up
with just a little use of the ordinary phraseology-- on which my dear friend might be
grafted, for each one has been filled already, and is beginning to bring forth fruit with
all its might. This is how the matter stands. The rest will be made clear by him who is
now with you and perhaps he will state plainly to you how that which you asked for missed
the right moment.
Be well and happy in devoting yourself to the whole of philosophy.