Quotation
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“Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is young nor weary in the search thereof when he is grown old. For no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul.”
Epicurus · Epicureanism · Ancient · early 3rd century BCE
What does it mean?
The mainstream reading is practical: philosophy is the care of the soul's health, so youth is not too soon and age is not an excuse to stop. A competing reading hears a school advertisement, an invitation to join the Garden at any price. The next lines block that reading. He says that calling the season too early or too late is like saying the same of happiness, and the letter then turns to the gods, to death, and to desire. It sits at the start of the Letter to Menoeceus, the short ethical letter Diogenes Laertius preserved whole. Health of the soul is ataraxia, freedom from turmoil, not a mood you wait to deserve.
Did Epicurus really say this?
The library’s label is Paraphrase or translation. Hicks's Loeb English of the opening of the letter. Epicurus immediately compares refusing philosophy to saying that the season for happiness has not come or has passed. The two sentences belong together.
Where it comes from
Letter to Menoeceus, in Diogenes Laertius 10.122, R. D. Hicks's translation
Approximate date: early 3rd century BCE.
How to use it
A night class in Cardiff that a forty-year-old puts off until 'after the promotion', and that a student treats as something serious people do later, is the delay this opening refuses. The letter does not say every course is wisdom. It says the work of sorting vain desires from necessary ones has no waiting room. Starting badly is still starting. Stopping because you are busy is the weariness he names.
A mindset reading
Do not treat clear thinking as a prize for a stage of life you have not reached. The habit is to ask which fear or desire is actually on the table this year. He ties the search to happiness on purpose. A philosophy that cannot be started because the diary is full has already decided that happiness can wait.
Understand the philosophy
The letter is Epicurus's short ethics for a friend, not a physics. The key phrase is the health of the soul. He has just greeted Menoeceus, and he will go on to say that death is nothing to us and that pleasure, rightly understood, is the absence of pain and disturbance. The opening refuses the two postponements, of the young and of the old, before any doctrine is stated.
- knowledge
- happiness
- mind
FAQ
What does it mean?
The mainstream reading is practical: philosophy is the care of the soul's health, so youth is not too soon and age is not an excuse to stop. A competing reading hears a school advertisement, an invitation to join the Garden at any price. The next lines block that reading. He says that calling the season too early or too late is like saying the same of happiness, and the letter then turns to the gods, to death, and to desire. It sits at the start of the Letter to Menoeceus, the short ethical letter Diogenes Laertius preserved whole. Health of the soul is ataraxia, freedom from turmoil, not a mood you wait to deserve.
Did Epicurus really say this?
Paraphrase or translation. Hicks's Loeb English of the opening of the letter. Epicurus immediately compares refusing philosophy to saying that the season for happiness has not come or has passed. The two sentences belong together.
Which work is it in?
Letter to Menoeceus, in Diogenes Laertius 10.122, R. D. Hicks's translation Approximate date: early 3rd century BCE.