My most excellent Lucilius, I judge there to be as great a gulf within philosophy as between philosophy and other arts, that is, between the part of philosophy which looks towards the human and that which looks towards the divine. The latter is more lofty and spirited: it has grasped at much, not content to stop at what the eye can see. It suspected the existence of something greater and more beautiful which nature had placed out of sight.

The two are as different as God and mankind. The one teaches what should be done on earth; the other, what is done in the skies. The one cuts through our erring ways and hands us a light to elucidate the uncertainties of life; the other rises far above this smog in which we spin our wheels and leads those snatched out of the shadows back to the light.

I, for my part, give thanks to Nature when I do not see just that piece of it which it shows to all, but have entered into its more intimate recesses, when I learn what the substance of the Universe is, who its author or guardian is; what sort of thing God is; whether God is totally self-involved or looks towards us from time to time; whether God makes something daily, or one time made everything once and for all; whether God is part of the world or the very world itself; if God may still issue judgements today, thus changing the very laws of fate, or if this would rather detract from his power, it being a confession of his error that he made things changeable? But he must necessarily persist in what he likes, since he can only like the very best things. This doesn’t make him less free or diminish his power, though—for necessity is his to determine.

If I hadn’t been allowed to enter into such investigations, being born wouldn’t have been worth the trouble. For what reason would I then have to be glad that I had been placed among the living? To cultivate my palate, given over to food and drink? To patch this, my frail, dissolving body, always on the verge of dying unless it be further stuffed—that is, to live ever attending the sick? To fear death, into which we are all born? Take away this priceless good and there’s not so much to life that I should sweat and burn up for it.

Ach, what a lowly thing a human is, unless it has risen above human things! How long are we to wrestle with our moods, what are we doing, who are made for greatness? Suppose even that we’ve managed to rise higher—aren’t we just felling monsters then? Why should we think highly of ourselves simply because we are unlike the worst scum of the earth? I don’t see what reason one should have to congratulate oneself just for being fitter than someone lying in hospital. There is a great difference between true strength and good health.

[…]

A person has at last attained the fullness and highest good possible for our lot when, having trampled each and every vice, they seek the heights and depths and reach nature’s innermost recesses. Then is it such joy to wander among the very stars and laugh at the done-up houses of the rich, at the whole earth with all its gold! And I don’t just mean the gold we press into use for coins, but the gold we hoard privately to feed our descendants’ greed, too.

One can’t hold in contempt porticos, vaulted ceilings glimmering with ivory, coiffed forests, or rivers diverted into the house until one has circled the whole cosmos and looked down on this world from above—a puny world, covered for the most part by the sea, squalid where it manages to peek out, always either burning or freezing. They’ll say—this is that point that is carved up amongst so many nations by sword and by flame?

How laughable the borders set by mortals are! Dacia cannot extend past the Danube; the Strymon must shut in Thrace; let the Euphrates block the Parthians; the Danube should divide the Sarmatican from what is Rome’s; let the Rhine bound Germania; the Pyrenees must rise up to divide the Gauls from Spanish provinces, and let a sterile sandy vastness lie between Egypt and Ethiopia!

Were someone to give ants human intelligence, wouldn’t they too carve up one region into many districts? When you rise yourself up to the truly vast heights, whenever you see armies go forth with flags raised (as if something big were happening!), perhaps a horseman now scouting ahead, now enclosed on all sides, you will want to say with Vergil, “a black column moves over the plain.” For it is just a stampede of ants, laboring in narrow straits. What’s the difference between them and us, besides the extent of their tiny bodies?

That place is a mere speck in which you sail, make war, divide up realms: these territories are tiny, even when they touch the Ocean on both sides. Only the realms above are gigantic, which the soul is allowed possession over so long as it has brought with it not even the tiniest part of the body, has washed itself of every stain—then it blazes forth unencumbered, nimble, content with however much it’s given.

When the soul reaches those realms it is nourished, it grows, and it returns to its beginnings as if freed from its chains; and that divine things delight it argues for its own divinity. See, it regards these things not as foreign, but as familiar: it watches the settings and risings of the stars without a care, and the many diverging paths traveled by things that are yet in harmony with each other. The soul then observes intently when each star first shows its light to the earth, when it attains its highest point, what path it runs, and to where it at last descends. Its curious gaze pierces each thing one by one, and searches. Why should it not investigate? It knows all these things are in its hold.