On The Shortness of Life

f all people, they alone who give their time to philosophy are at leisure, they alone really live. For it’s not just their own lifetime that they watch over carefully, but they annex every age to their own; all the years that have gone before are added to their own. Unless we prove most ungrateful, those most distinguished founders of hallowed thoughts came into being for us, and for us they prepared a way of living.

We are led by the work of others into the presence of the most beautiful treasures, which have been pulled from darkness and brought to light. From no age are we debarred, we have access to all; and if we want to transcend the narrow limitations of human weakness by our expansiveness of mind, there is a great span of time for us to range over. We can debate with Socrates, entertain doubt with Carneades be at peace with Epicurus, overcome human nature with the Stoics, and go beyond it with the Cynics. Since nature allows us shared possession of any age, why not turn from this short and fleeting passage of time and give ourselves over completely to the past, which is measureless and eternal and shared with our betters? As for those who run about performing their social duties, agitating themselves and others: when they’ve duly acted like madmen, when they’ve crossed every threshold on their daily rounds and passed no open door, and when they’ve delivered their money grubbing greetings to houses very distant from one another, how few patrons will they be able to catch sight of in a city so vast and so fragmented by varied passions!

Do we suppose these men spend time on morally commendable duties? Or can we say as much of those who’ll want to have Zeno, Pythagoras, Democritus, and the other high priests of philosophical study, and Aristotle and Theophrastus, as their closest companions every day. None of these will ever be unavailable to you, none of these will fail to send his visitor off in a happier condition and more at ease with himself. None will let anyone leave empty handed; they can be approached by all mortals by night and by day. None of these philosophers will force you to die, but all will teach you how to live. None of them will diminish your years, but each will share his own years with you. With none of them will conversation be dangerous, friendship life threatening, or cultivation of them expensive. From them you’ll take whatever you wish; it will be no fault of theirs if you fail to take in the very fullest amount you have room for.

What happiness, what a fine old age lies in store for the person who’s put himself under the patronage of these people! He’ll have friends whose advice he can seek on the greatest or least important matters, whom he can consult daily about himself, from whom he can hear the truth without insult and receive praise without fawning, and who will provide a model after which to fashion himself. There is a common saying that it was not in our power to choose the parents we were allotted, and that they were given to us by chance; yet we can be born to whomever we wish. There are households of the most distinguished intellects: choose the one into which you’d like to be adopted, and you’ll inherit not just the idea but also the actual property, which is not to be hoarded in a miserly or mean spirit: the more people you share it with, the greater it will become. These will open for you the path to immortality, and raise you to an elevation from which no one is cast down. This is the sole means of prolonging mortality, or rather of transforming it into immortality. Honors, monuments, all that ostentatious ambition has ordered by decree or erected in stone, are soon destroyed: there’s nothing that the long lapse of time doesn’t demolish and transform.

But it cannot harm the works consecrated by wisdom: no age will efface them, no age reduce them at all. The next age and each one after that will only enhance the respect in which they are held, since envy focuses on what is close at hand, but we more freely admire things from a distance. So the sage’s life is ample in scope, and he’s not constricted by the same limit that confines others. He alone is released from the limitations of the human race, and he is master of all ages as though a god. Some time has passed? He holds it in recollection. Time is upon us? He uses it. Time is to come? This he anticipates. The combining of all times into one makes his life long.

Colin is a 21-year-old philosopher, artist and aspiring entrepreneur currently studying philosophy, physics and neuroscience at NYU. Colin’s philosophy and interests lie within the history of ideas, the reification of philosophy through art, metaphysics, ethics, phenomenology and the nature of consciousness, governance and the social contract, post-capitalist economics, Utopia, Greek, Roman and medieval literature, theoretical physics, and human potential.

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