← catalogue

L. Annaeus Seneca on Benefits

by Lucius Annaeus Seneca · English · Gutenberg #3794 · 469,420 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of L. Annaeus Seneca on Benefits
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: L. Annaeus Seneca on Benefits

Author: Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Translator: Aubrey Stewart


        
Release date: February 1, 2003 [eBook #3794]
                Most recently updated: December 3, 2009

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3794

Credits: Produced by Charles Franks, Robert Rowe, David Widger, and the Online
        Distributed Proofreading Team


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK L. ANNAEUS SENECA ON BENEFITS ***




Produced by Charles Franks, Robert Rowe and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team






L. ANNAEUS SENECA, ON BENEFITS

By Seneca

Edited by Aubrey Stewart




PREFACE

Seneca, the favourite classic of the early fathers of the church and
of the Middle Ages, whom Jerome, Tertullian, and Augustine speak of as
"Seneca noster," who was believed to have corresponded with St. Paul,
and upon whom [Footnote: On the "De Clementia," an odd subject for the
man who burned Servetus alive for differing with him.] Calvin wrote a
commentary, seems almost forgotten in modern times. Perhaps some of his
popularity may have been due to his being supposed to be the author
of those tragedies which the world has long ceased to read, but which
delighted a period that preferred Euripides to Aeschylus: while casuists
must have found congenial matter in an author whose fantastic cases of
conscience are often worthy of Sanchez or Escobar. Yet Seneca's morality
is always pure, and from him we gain, albeit at second hand, an
insight into the doctrines of the Greek philosophers, Zeno, Epicurus,
Chrysippus, &c., whose precepts and system of religious thought had in
cultivated Roman society taken the place of the old worship of Jupiter
and Quirinus.

Since Lodge's edition (fol. 1614), no complete translation of Seneca has
been published in England, though Sir Roger L'Estrange wrote paraphrases
of several Dialogues, which seem to have been enormously popular,
running through more than sixteen editions. I think we may conjecture
that Shakespeare had seen Lodge's translation, from several allusions to
philosophy, to that impossible conception "the wise man," and especially
from a passage in "All's Well that ends Well," which seems to breathe
the very spirit of "De Beneficiis."

  "'Tis pity--
   That wishing well had not a body in it
   Which might be felt: that we, the poorer born,
   Whose baser stars do shut us up in wishes,
   Might with effects of them follow our friends
   And show what we alone must think; which never
   Returns us thanks."

   "All's Well that ends Well," Act i. sc. 1.

Though, if this will not fit the supposed date of that play, he may
have taken the idea from "The Woorke of Lucius Annaeus Seneca concerning
Benefyting, that is too say, the dooing, receyving, and requyting of
good turnes, translated out of Latin by A. Golding. J. Day, London,
1578." And even during the Restoration, Pepys's ideal of virtuous and
lettered seclusion is a country house in whose garden he might sit on
summer afternoons with his friend, Sir W. Coventry, "it maybe, to read a
chapter of Seneca." In sharp contrast to this is Vahlen's preface to the
minor Dialogues, which he edited after the death of his friend Koch, who
had begun that work, in which he remarks that "he has read much of this
writer, in order to perfect his knowledge of Latin, for otherwise he
neither admires his artificial subtleties of thought, nor his childish
mannerisms of style" (Vahlen, preface, p. v., ed. 1879, Jena).

Yet by the student of the history of Rome under the Caesars, Seneca is
not to be neglected, because, whatever may be thought of the intrinsic
merit of his speculations, he represents, more perhaps even than
Tacitus, the intellectual characteristics of his age, and the tone of
society in Rome--nor could we well spare the gossiping stories which we
find imbedded in his graver dissertations. The following extract from
Dean Merivale's "History of the Romans under the Empire" will show the
estimate of him which has been formed by that accomplished writer:--

"At Rome, we, have no reason, to suppose that Christianity was only the
refuge of the afflicted and miserable; rather, if we may lay any stress
on the documents above referred to, it was first embraced by persons in
a certain grade of comfort and respectability; by persons approaching
to what we should call the MIDDLE CLASSES in their condition, their
education, and their moral views. Of this class Seneca himself was the
idol, the oracle; he was, so to speak, the favourite preacher of the
more intelligent and humane disciples of nature and virtue. Now the
writings of Seneca show, in their way, a real anxiety among this class
to raise the moral tone of mankind around them; a spirit of reform, a
zeal for the conversion of souls, which, though it never rose, indeed,
under the teaching of the philosophers, to boiling heat, still simmered
with genial warmth on the surface of society. Far different as was their
social standing-point, far different as were the foundations and the
presumed sanctions of their teaching respectively, Seneca and St.
Paul were both moral reformers; both, be it said with reverence, were
fellow-workers in the cause of humanity, though the Christian could
look beyond the proximate aims of morality and prepare men for a final
development on which the Stoic could not venture to gaze. Hence there
is so much in their principles, so much even in their language, which
agrees together, so that the one has been thought, though it must be
allowed without adequate reason, to have borrowed directly from the
other. [Footnote: It is hardly necessary to refer to the pretended
letters between St. Paul and Seneca. Besides the evidence from style,
some of the dates they contain are quite sufficient to condemn them as
clumsy forgeries. They are mentioned, but with no expression of belief
in their genuineness, by Jerome and Augustine. See Jones, "On the
Canon," ii. 80.]

"But the philosopher, be it remembered, discoursed to a large and not
inattentive audience, and surely the soil was not all unfruitful on
which his seed was scattered when he proclaimed that God dwells not
in temples of wood and stone, nor wants the ministrations of human
hands;[Footnote: Sen., Ep. 95, and in Lactantius, Inst. vi.] that He has
no delight in the blood of victims:[Footnote: Ep. 116: "Colitur Deus
non tauris sed pia et recta voluntate."] that He is near to all His
creatures:[Footnote: Ep. 41, 73.] that His Spirit resides in men's
hearts:[Footnote: Ep. 46: "Sacer intra nos spiritus sedet."] that
all men are truly His offspring:[Footnote: "De Prov," i.] that we are
members of one body, which is God or Nature;[Footnote: Ep. 93, 95:
"Membra sumus magni corporis."] that men must believe in God before
they can approach Him:[Footnote: Ep. 95: "Primus Deorum cultus est
Deos credere."] that the true service of God is to be like unto
Him:[Footnote: Ep. 95: "Satis coluit quisquis imitatus est."] that all
men have sinned, and none performed all the works of the law:[Footnote:
Sen. de Ira. i. 14; ii. 27: "Quis est iste qui se profitetur omnibus
legibus innocentem?"] that God is no respecter of nations, ranks, or
conditions, but all, barbarian and Roman, bond and free, are alike under
His all-seeing Providence.[Footnote: "De Benef.," iii. 18: "Virtus omnes
admittit, libertinos, servos, reges." These and many other passages
are collected by Champagny, ii. 546, after Fabricius and others, and
compared with well-known texts of Scripture. The version of the Vulgate
shows a great deal of verbal correspondence. M. Troplong remarks, after
De Maistre, that Seneca has written a fine book on Providence, for which
there was not even a name at Rome in the time of Cicero.--"L'Influence
du Christianisme," &c., i., ch. 4.]

"St. Paul enjoined submission and obedience even to the tyranny of
Nero, and Seneca fosters no ideas subversive of political subjection.
Endurance is the paramount virtue of the Stoic. To forms of government
the wise man was wholly indifferent; they were among the
external circumstances above which his spirit soared in serene
self-contemplation. We trace in Seneca no yearning for a restoration
of political freedom, nor does he even point to the senate, after
the manner of the patriots of the day, as a legitimate check to the
autocracy of the despot. The only mode, in his view, of tempering
tyranny is to educate the tyrant himself in virtue. His was the
self-denial of the Christians, but without their anticipated
compensation. It seems impossible to doubt that in his highest flights
of rhetoric--and no man ever recommended the unattainable with a finer
grace--Seneca must have felt that he was labouring to build up a house
without foundations; that his system, as Caius said of his style, was
sand without lime. He was surely not unconscious of the inconsistency of
his own position, as a public man and a minister, with the theories to
which he had wedded himself; and of the impossibility of preserving in
it the purity of his character as a philosopher or a man. He was aware
that in the existing state of society at Rome, wealth was necessary to
men high in station; wealth alone could retain influence, and a poor
minister became at once contemptible. The distributor of the Imperial
favours must have his banquets, his receptions, his slaves and freedmen;
he must possess the means of attracting if not of bribing; he must not
seem too virtuous, too austere, among an evil generation; in order to do
good at all he must swim with the stream, however polluted it might be.
All this inconsistency Seneca must have contemplated without blenching;
and there is something touching in the serenity he preserved amidst the
conflict that must have perpetually raged between his natural sense
and his acquired principles. Both Cicero and Seneca were men of many
weaknesses, and we remark them the more because both were pretenders to
unusual strength of character; but while Cicero lapsed into political
errors, Seneca cannot be absolved of actual crime. Nevertheless, if we
may compare the greatest masters of Roman wisdom together, the Stoic
will appear, I think, the more earnest of the two, the more anxious to
do his duty for its own sake, the more sensible of the claims of mankind
upon him for such precepts of virtuous living as he had to give. In an
age of unbelief and compromise he taught that Truth was positive and
Virtue objective. He conceived, what never entered Cicero's mind, the
idea of improving his fellow-creatures; he had, what Cicero had not, a
heart for conversion to Christianity."

To this eloquent account of Seneca's position and of the tendency of his
writings I have nothing to add. The main particulars of his life,
his Spanish extraction (like that of Lacan and Martial), his father's
treatises on Rhetoric, his mother Helvia, his brothers, his wealth, his
exile in Corsica, his outrageous flattery of Claudius and his satiric
poem on his death--"The Vision of Judgment," Merivale calls it, after
Lord Byron--his position as Nero's tutor, and his death, worthy at once
of a Roman and a Stoic, by the orders of that tyrant, may be read of in
"The History of the Romans under the Empire," or in the article "Seneca"
in the "Dictionary of Classical Biography," and need not be reproduced
here: but I cannot resist pointing out how entirely Grote's view of the
"Sophists" as a sort of established clergy, and Seneca's account of the
various sects of philosophers as representing the religious thought of
the time, is illustrated by his anecdote of Julia Augusta, the mother of
Tiberius, better known to English readers as Livia the wife of Augustus,
who in her first agony of grief at the loss of her first husband applied
to his Greek philosopher, Areus, as to a kind of domestic chaplain, for
spiritual consolation. ("Ad Marciam de Consolatione," ch. iv.)

I take this opportunity of expressing my gratitude to the Rev. J. E.
B. Mayor, Professor of Latin in the University of Cambridge, for his
kindness in finding time among his many and important literary labours
for reading and correcting the proofs of this work.

The text which I have followed for De Beneficiis is that of Gertz,
Berlin (1876.).

AUBREY STEWART

London, March, 1887.






CONTENTS


BOOK I. The prevalence of ingratitude--How a benefit ought to be
bestowed--The three Graces--Benefits are the chief bond of human
society--What we owe in return for a benefit received--A benefit
consists not of a thing but of the wish to do good--Socrates and
Aeschines--What kinds of benefits should be bestowed, and in what
manner--Alexander and the franchise of Corinth.

BOOK II. Many men give through weakness of character--We ought to give
before our friends ask--Many benefits are spoiled by the manner of
the giver--Marius Nepos and Tiberius--Some benefits should be given
secretly--We must not give what would harm the receiver--Alexander's
gift of a city--Interchange of benefits like a game of ball--From
whom ought one to receive a benefit?--Examples--How to receive
a benefit--Ingratitude caused by self-love, by greed, or by
jealousy--Gratitude and repayment not the same thing--Phidias and the
statue.

BOOK III. Ingratitude--Is it worse to be ungrateful for kindness or
not even to remember it?--Should ingratitude be punished by law?--Can
a slave bestow a benefit?--Can a son bestow a benefit upon his
father?--Examples

BOOK IV. Whether the bestowal of benefits and the return of gratitude
for them are desirable objects in themselves? Does God bestow
benefits?--How to choose the man to be benefited--We ought not to look
for any return--True gratitude--Of keeping one's promise--Philip and the
soldier--Zeno

BOOK V. Of being worsted in a contest of benefits--Socrates and
Archelaus--Whether a man can be grateful to himself, or can bestow
a benefit upon himself--Examples of ingratitude--Dialogue on
ingratitude--Whether one should remind one's friends of what one has
done for them--Caesar and the soldier--Tiberius.

BOOK VI. Whether a benefit can be taken from one by force--Benefits
depend upon thought--We are not grateful for the advantages which we
receive from inanimate Nature, or from dumb animals--In order to lay me
under an obligation you must benefit me intentionally--Cleanthes's story
of the two slaves--Of benefits given in a mercenary spirit--Physicians
and teachers bestow enormous benefits, yet are sufficiently paid by a
moderate fee--Plato and the ferryman--Are we under an obligation to the
sun and moon?--Ought we to wish that evil may befall our benefactors, in
order that we may show our gratitude by helping them?

BOOK VII. The cynic Demetrius--his rules of conduct--Of the truly
wise man--Whether one who has done everything in his power to return
a benefit has returned it--Ought one to return a benefit to a bad
man?--The Pythagorean, and the shoemaker--How one ought to bear with the
ungrateful.






L. A. SENECA

ON BENEFITS.


DEDICATED TO

AEBUTIUS LIBERALIS.




BOOK I.

I.


Among the numerous faults of those who pass their lives recklessly and
without due reflexion, my good friend Liberalis, I should say that there
is hardly any one so hurtful to society as this, that we neither know
how to bestow or how to receive a benefit. It follows from this that
benefits are badly invested, and become bad debts: in these cases it is
too late to complain of their not being returned, for they were thrown
away when we bestowed them. Nor need we wonder that while the greatest
vices are common, none is more common than ingratitude: for this I see
is brought about by various causes. The first of these is, that we do
not choose worthy persons upon whom to bestow our bounty, but although
when we are about to lend money we first make a careful enquiry into
the means and habits of life of our debtor, and avoid sowing seed in a
worn-out or unfruitful soil, yet without any discrimination we scatter
our benefits at random rather than bestow them. It is hard to say
whether it is more dishonourable for the receiver to disown a benefit,
or for the giver to demand a return of it: for a benefit is a loan, the
repayment of which depends merely upon the good feeling of the debtor.
To misuse a benefit like a spendthrift is most shameful, because we
do not need our wealth but only our intention to set us free from the
obligation of it; for a benefit is repaid by being acknowledged. Yet
while they are to blame who do not even show so much gratitude as to
acknowledge their debt, we ourselves are to blame no less. We find many
men ungrateful, yet we make more men so, because at one time we harshly
and reproachfully demand some return for our bounty, at another we are
fickle and regret what we have given, at another we are peevish and
apt to find fault with trifles. By acting thus we destroy all sense of
gratitude, not only after we have given anything, but while we are in
the act of giving it. Who has ever thought it enough to be asked for
anything in an off-hand manner, or to be asked only once? Who, when he
suspected that he was going to be asked for any thing, has not frowned,
turned away his face, pretended to be busy, or purposely talked without
ceasing, in order not to give his suitor a chance of preferring his
request, and avoided by various tricks having to help his friend in his
pressing need? and when driven into a corner, has not either put the
matter off, that is, given a cowardly refusal, or promised his help
ungraciously, with a wry face, and with unkind words, of which he seemed
to grudge the utterance. Yet no one is glad to owe what he has not
so much received from his benefactor, as wrung out of him. Who can be
grateful for what has been disdainfully flung to him, or angrily cast
at him, or been given him out of weariness, to avoid further trouble? No
one need expect any return from those whom he has tired out with delays,
or sickened with expectation. A benefit is received in the same temper
in which it is given, and ought not, therefore, to be given carelessly,
for a man thanks himself for that which he receives without the
knowledge of the giver. Neither ought we to give after long delay,
because in all good offices the will of the giver counts for much, and
he who gives tardily must long have been unwilling to give at all. Nor,
assuredly, ought we to give in offensive manner, because human nature is
so constituted that insults sink deeper than kindnesses; the remembrance
of the latter soon passes away, while that of the former is treasured in
the memory; so what can a man expect who insults while he obliges? All
the gratitude which he deserves is to be forgiven for helping us. On
the other hand, the number of the ungrateful ought not to deter us
from earning men's gratitude; for, in the first place, their number is
increased by our own acts. Secondly, the sacrilege and indifference
to religion of some men does not prevent even the immortal gods from
continuing to shower their benefits upon us: for they act according to
their divine nature and help all alike, among them even those who so ill
appreciate their bounty. Let us take them for our guides as far as the
weakness of our mortal nature permits; let us bestow benefits, not put
them out at interest. The man who while he gives thinks of what he will
get in return, deserves to be deceived. But what if the benefit turns
out ill? Why, our wives and our children often disappoint our hopes,
yet we marry--and bring up children, and are so obstinate in the face of
experience that we fight after we have been beaten, and put to sea after
we have been shipwrecked. How much more constancy ought we to show in
bestowing benefits! If a man does not bestow benefits because he has
not received any, he must have bestowed them in order to receive them
in return, and he justifies ingratitude, whose disgrace lies in not
returning benefits when able to do so. How many are there who are
unworthy of the light of day? and nevertheless the sun rises. How many
complain because they have been born? yet Nature is ever renewing our
race, and even suffers men to live who wish that they had never lived.
It is the property of a great and good mind to covet, not the fruit of
good deeds, but good deeds themselves, and to seek for a good man even
after having met with bad men. If there were no rogues, what glory would
there be in doing good to many? As it is, virtue consists in bestowing
benefits for which we are not certain of meeting with any return, but
whose fruit is at once enjoyed by noble minds. So little influence ought
this to have in restraining us from doing good actions, that even though
I were denied the hope of meeting with a grateful man, yet the fear of
not having my benefits returned would not prevent my bestowing them,
because he who does not give, forestalls the vice of him who is
ungrateful. I will explain what I mean. He who does not repay a benefit,
sins more, but he who does not bestow one, sins earlier.

  "If thou at random dost thy bounties waste,
   Much must be lost, for one that's rightly placed."

II. In the former verse you may blame two things, for one should not
cast them at random, and it is not right to waste anything, much less
benefits; for unless they be given with judgement, they cease to be
benefits, and, may be called by any other name you please. The meaning
of the latter verse is admirable, that one benefit rightly bestowed
makes amends for the loss of many that have been lost. See, I pray you,
whether it be not truer and more worthy of the glory of the giver, that
we should encourage him to give, even though none of his gifts should
be worthily placed. "Much must be lost." Nothing is lost because he
who loses had counted the cost before. The book-keeping of benefits
is simple: it is all expenditure; if any one returns it, that is clear
gain; if he does not return it, it is not lost, I gave it for the sake
of giving. No one writes down his gifts in a ledger, or like a grasping
creditor demands repayment to the day and hour. A good man never thinks
of such matters, unless reminded of them by some one returning his
gifts; otherwise they become like debts owing to him. It is a base usury
to regard a benefit as an investment. Whatever may have been the result
of your former benefits, persevere in bestowing others upon other men;
they will be all the better placed in the hands of the ungrateful, whom
shame, or a favourable opportunity, or imitation of others may some day
cause to be grateful. Do not grow weary, perform your duty, and act
as becomes a good man. Help one man with money, another with credit,
another with your favour; this man with good advice, that one with
sound maxims. Even wild beasts feel kindness, nor is there any animal
so savage that good treatment will not tame it and win love from it. The
mouths of lions are handled by their keepers with impunity; to obtain
their food fierce elephants become as docile as slaves: so that constant
unceasing kindness wins the hearts even of creatures who, by their
nature, cannot comprehend or weigh the value of a benefit. Is a man
ungrateful for one benefit? perhaps he will not be so after receiving
a second. Has he forgotten two kindnesses? perhaps by a third he may be
brought to remember the former ones also.

III. He who is quick to believe that he has thrown away his benefits,
does really throw them away; but he who presses on and adds new benefits
to his former ones, forces out gratitude even from a hard and forgetful
breast. In the face of many kindnesses, your friend will not dare to
raise his eyes; let him see you whithersoever he turns himself to escape
from his remembrance of you; encircle him with your benefits. As for the
power and property of these, I will explain it to you if first you will
allow me to glance at a matter which does not belong to our subject, as
to why the Graces are three in number, why they are sisters, why hand in
hand, and why they are smiling and young, with a loose and transparent
dress. Some writers think that there is one who bestows a benefit,
one who receives it, and a third who returns it; others say that they
represent the three sorts of benefactors, those who bestow, those who
repay, and those who both receive and repay them. But take whichever
you please to be true; what will this knowledge profit us? What is the
meaning of this dance of sisters in a circle, hand in hand? It means
that the course of a benefit is from hand to hand, back to the giver;
that the beauty of the whole chain is lost if a single link fails, and
that it is fairest when it proceeds in unbroken regular order. In the
dance there is one, esteemed beyond the others, who represents the
givers of benefits. Their faces are cheerful, as those of men who give
or receive benefits are wont to be. They are young, because the memory
of benefits ought not to grow old. They are virgins, because benefits
are pure and untainted, and held holy by all; in benefits there should
be no strict or binding conditions, therefore the Graces wear loose
flowing tunics, which are transparent, because benefits love to be seen.
People who are not under the influence of Greek literature may say that
all this is a matter of course; but there can be no one who would think
that the names which Hesiod has given them bear upon our subject. He
named the eldest Aglaia, the middle one Euphrosyne, the third Thalia.
Every one, according to his own ideas, twists the meaning of these
names, trying to reconcile them with some system, though Hesiod merely
gave his maidens their names from his own fancy. So Homer altered
the name of one of them, naming her Pasithea, and betrothed her to a
husband, in order that you may know that they are not vestal virgins.
[Footnote: i.e. not vowed to chastity.]

I could find another poet, in whose writings they are girded, and wear
thick or embroidered Phrygian robes. Mercury stands with them for the
same reason, not because argument or eloquence commends benefits,
but because the painter chose to do so. Also Chrysippus, that man of
piercing intellect who saw to the very bottom of truth, who speaks
only to the point, and makes use of no more words than are necessary to
express his meaning, fills his whole treatise with these puerilities,
insomuch that he says but very little about the duties of giving,
receiving, and returning a benefit, and has not so much inserted fables
among these subjects, as he has inserted these subjects among a mass of
fables. For, not to mention what Hecaton borrows from him, Chrysippus
tells us that the three Graces are the daughters of Jupiter and
Eurynome, that they are younger than the Hours, and rather more
beautiful, and that on that account they are assigned as companions
to Venus. He also thinks that the name of their mother bears upon the
subject, and that she is named Eurynome because to distribute benefits
requires a wide inheritance; as if the mother usually received her name
after her daughters, or as if the names given by poets were true. In
truth, just as with a 'nomenclator' audacity supplies the place of
memory, and he invents a name for every one whose name he cannot
recollect, so the poets think that it is of no importance to speak the
truth, but are either forced by the exigencies of metre, or attracted by
sweetness of sound, into calling every one by whatever name runs neatly
into verse. Nor do they suffer for it if they introduce another name
into the list, for the next poet makes them bear what name he pleases.
That you may know that this is so, for instance Thalia, our present
subject of discourse, is one of the Graces in Hesiod's poems, while in
those of Homer she is one of the Muses.

IV. But lest I should do the very thing which I am blaming, I will pass
over all these matters, which are so far from the subject that they are
not even connected with it. Only do you protect me, if any one attacks
me for putting down Chrysippus, who, by Hercules, was a great man, but
yet a Greek, whose intellect, too sharply pointed, is often bent and
turned back upon itself; even when it seems to be in earnest it only
pricks, but does not pierce. Here, however, what occasion is there for
subtlety? We are to speak of benefits, and to define a matter which is
the chief bond of human society; we are to lay down a rule of life, such
that neither careless openhandedness may commend itself to us under the
guise of goodness of heart, and yet that our circumspection, while it
moderates, may not quench our generosity, a quality in which we ought
neither to exceed nor to fall short. Men must be taught to be willing
to give, willing to receive, willing to return; and to place before
themselves the high aim, not merely of equalling, but even of surpassing
those to whom they are indebted, both in good offices and in good
feeling; because the man whose duty it is to repay, can never do so
unless he out-does his benefactor; [Footnote: That is, he never comes up
to his benefactor unless he leaves him behind: he can only make a dead
heat of it by getting a start.] the one class must be taught to look
for no return, the other to feel deeper gratitude. In this noblest of
contests to outdo benefits by benefits, Chrysippus encourages us by
bidding us beware lest, as the Graces are the daughters of Jupiter, to
act ungratefully may not be a sin against them, and may not wrong those
beauteous maidens. Do thou teach me how I may bestow more good things,
and be more grateful to those who have earned my gratitude, and how the
minds of both parties may vie with one another, the giver in forgetting,
the receiver in remembering his debt. As for those other follies, let
them be left to the poets, whose purpose is merely to charm the ear and
to weave a pleasing story; but let those who wish to purify men's
minds, to retain honour in their dealings, and to imprint on their minds
gratitude for kindnesses, let them speak in sober earnest and act with
all their strength; unless you imagine, perchance, that by such flippant
and mythical talk, and such old wives' reasoning, it is possible for us
to prevent that most ruinous consummation, the repudiation of benefits.

V. However, while I pass over what is futile and irrelevant I must
point out that the first thing which we have to learn is, what we owe in
return for a benefit received. One man says that he owes the money which
he has received, another that he owes a consulship, a priesthood,
a province, and so on. These, however, are but the outward signs of
kindnesses, not the kindnesses themselves. A benefit is not to be felt
and handled, it is a thing which exists only in the mind. There is
a great difference between the subject-matter of a benefit, and the
benefit itself. Wherefore neither gold, nor silver, nor any of those
things which are most highly esteemed, are benefits, but the benefit
lies in the goodwill of him who gives them. The ignorant take notice
only of that which comes before their eyes, and which can be owned and
passed from hand to hand, while they disregard that which gives these
things their value. The things which we hold in our hands, which we see
with our eyes, and which our avarice hugs, are transitory, they may
be taken from us by ill luck or by violence; but a kindness lasts even
after the loss of that by means of which it was bestowed; for it is
a good deed, which no violence can undo. For instance, suppose that I
ransomed a friend from pirates, but another pirate has caught him and
thrown him into prison. The pirate has not robbed him of my benefit, but
has only robbed him of the enjoyment of it. Or suppose that I have saved
a man's children from a shipwreck or a fire, and that afterwards disease
or accident has carried them off; even when they are no more, the
kindness which was done by means of them remains. All those things,
therefore, which improperly assume the name of benefits, are means by
which kindly feeling manifests itself. In other cases also, we find a
distinction between the visible symbol and the matter itself, as when a
general bestows collars of gold, or civic or mural crowns upon any one.
What value has the crown in itself? or the purple-bordered robe? or the
fasces? or the judgment-seat and car of triumph? None of these things
is in itself an honour, but is an emblem of honour. In like manner,
that which is seen is not a benefit--it is but the trace and mark of a
benefit.

VI. What, then, is a benefit? It is the art of doing a kindness which
both bestows pleasure and gains it by bestowing it, and which does its
office by natural and spontaneous impulse. It is not, therefore, the
thing which is done or given, but the spirit in which it is done or
given, that must be considered, because a benefit exists, not in that
which is done or given, but in the mind of the doer or giver. How great
the distinction between them is, you may perceive from this, that
while a benefit is necessarily good, yet that which is done or given is
neither good nor bad. The spirit in which they are given can exalt small
things, can glorify mean ones, and can discredit great and precious
ones; the objects themselves which are sought after have a neutral
nature, neither good nor bad; all depends upon the direction given them
by the guiding spirit from which things receive their shape. That which
is paid or handed over is not the benefit itself, just as the honour
which we pay to the gods lies not in the victims themselves, although
they be fat and glittering with gold, [Footnote: Alluding to the
practice of gilding the horns of the victims.] but in the pure and holy
feelings of the worshippers.

Thus good men are religious, though their offering be meal and their
vessels of earthenware; whilst bad men will not escape from their
impiety, though they pour the blood of many victims upon the altars.

VII. If benefits consisted of things, and not of the wish to benefit,
then the more things we received the greater the benefit would be. But
this is not true, for sometimes we feel more gratitude to one who gives
us trifles nobly, who, like Virgil's poor old soldier, "holds himself as
rich as kings," if he has given us ever so little with a good will a man
who forgets his own need when he sees mine, who has not only a wish but
a longing to help, who thinks that he receives a benefit when he
bestows one, who gives as though he would receive no return, receives a
repayment as though he had originally given nothing, and who watches for
and seizes an opportunity of being useful. On the other hand, as I said
before, those gifts which are hardly wrung from the giver, or which drop
unheeded from his hands, claim no gratitude from us, however great they
may appear and may be. We prize much more what comes from a willing
hand, than what comes from a full one. This man has given me but little,
yet more he could not afford, while what that one has given is much
indeed, but he hesitated, he put it off, he grumbled when he gave it,
he gave it haughtily, or he proclaimed it aloud, and did it to please
others, not to please the person to whom he gave it; he offered it to
his own pride, not to me.

VIII. As the pupils of Socrates, each in proportion to his means, gave
him large presents, Aeschines, a poor pupil, said, "I can find nothing
to give you which is worthy of you; I feel my poverty in this respect
alone. Therefore I present you with the only thing I possess, myself. I
pray that you may take this my present, such as it is, in good part, and
may remember that the others, although they gave you much, yet left for
themselves more than they gave." Socrates answered, "Surely you have
bestowed a great present upon me, unless perchance you set a small value
upon yourself. I will accordingly take pains to restore you to yourself
a better man than when I received you." By this present Aeschines outdid
Alcibiades, whose mind was as great as his Wealth, and all the splendour
of the most wealthy youths of Athens.

IX. You see how the mind even in the straitest circumstances finds the
means of generosity. Aeschines seems to me to have said, "Fortune, it
is in vain that you have made me poor; in spite of this I will find a
worthy present for this man. Since I can give him nothing of yours, I
will give him something of my own." Nor need you suppose that he held
himself cheap; he made himself his own price. By a stroke of genius this
youth discovered a means of presenting Socrates to himself. We must not
consider how great presents are, but in what spirit they are given.

A rich man is well spoken of if he is clever enough to render himself
easy of access to men of immoderate ambition, and although he intends to
do nothing to help them, yet encourages their unconscionable hopes; but
he is thought the worse of if he be sharp of tongue, sour in appearance,
and displays his wealth in an invidious fashion. For men respect and
yet loathe a fortunate man, and hate him for doing what, if they had the
chance, they would do themselves.

       *       *       *       *       *       *       *

Men nowadays no longer secretly, but openly outrage the wives of others,
and allow to others access to their own wives. A match is thought
countrified, uncivilized, in bad style, and to be protested against by
all matrons, if the husband should forbid his wife to appear in
public in a litter, and to be carried about exposed to the gaze of all
observers. If a man has not made himself notorious by a LIAISON with
some mistress, if he does not pay an annuity to some one else's wife,
married women speak of him as a poor-spirited creature, a man given
to low vice, a lover of servant girls. Soon adultery becomes the most
respectable form of marriage, and widowhood and celibacy are commonly
practised. No one takes a wife unless he takes her away from some one
else. Now men vie with one another in wasting what they have stolen, and
in collecting together what they have wasted with the keenest avarice;
they become utterly reckless, scorn poverty in others, fear personal
injury more than anything else, break the peace by their riots, and by
violence and terror domineer over those who are weaker than themselves.
No wonder that they plunder provinces and offer the seat of judgment for
sale, knocking it down after an auction to the highest bidder, since it
is the law of nations that you may sell what you have bought.

X. However, my enthusiasm has carried me further than I intended, the
subject being an inviting one. Let me, then, end by pointing out that
the disgrace of these crimes does not belong especially to our own time.
Our ancestors before us have lamented, and our children after us will
lament, as we do, the ruin, of morality, the prevalence of vice, and
the gradual deterioration of mankind; yet these things are really
stationary, only moved slightly to and fro like the waves which at
one time a rising tide washes further over the land, and at another an
ebbing one restrains within a lower water mark. At one time the chief
vice will be adultery, and licentiousness will exceed all bounds; at
another time a rage for feasting will be in vogue, and men will waste
their inheritance in the most shameful of all ways, by the kitchen; at
another, excessive care for the body, and a devotion to personal beauty
which implies ugliness of mind; at another time, injudiciously granted
liberty will show itself in wanton recklessness and defiance of
authority; sometimes there will be a reign of cruelty both in public
and private, and the madness of the civil wars will come upon us, which
destroy all that is holy and inviolable. Sometimes even drunkenness will
be held in honour, and it will be a virtue to swallow most wine. Vices
do not lie in wait for us in one place alone, but hover around us in
changeful forms, sometimes even at variance one with another, so that
in turn they win and lose the field; yet we shall always be obliged to
pronounce the same verdict upon ourselves, that we are and always were
evil, and, I unwillingly add, that we always shall be. There always will
be homicides, tyrants, thieves, adulterers, ravishers, sacrilegious,
traitors: worse than all these is the ungrateful man, except we consider
that all these crimes flow from ingratitude, without which hardly any
great wickedness has ever grown to full stature. Be sure that you guard
against this as the greatest of crimes in yourself, but pardon it as the
least of crimes in another. For all the injury which you suffer is this:
you have lost the subject-matter of a benefit, not the benefit itself,
for you possess unimpaired the best part of it, in that you have given
it. Though we ought to be careful to bestow our benefits by preference
upon those who are likely to show us gratitude for them, yet we must
sometimes do what we have little hope will turn out well, and bestow
benefits upon those who we not only think will prove ungrateful, but who
we know have been so. For instance, if I should be able to save a
man's children from a great danger with no risk to myself, I should not
hesitate to do so. If a man be worthy I would defend him even with my
blood, and would share his perils; if he be unworthy, and yet by
merely crying for help I can rescue him from robbers, I would without
reluctance raise the shout which would save a fellow-creature.

XI. The next point to be defined is, what kind of benefits are to be
given, and in what manner. First let us give what is necessary, next
what is useful, and then what is pleasant, provided that they be
lasting. We must begin with what is necessary, for those things which
support life affect the mind very differently from, those which adorn
and improve it. A man may be nice, and hard to please, in things which
he can easily do without, of which he can say, "Take them back; I do not
want them, I am satisfied with what I have." Sometimes, we wish not
only to, return what we have received, but even to throw it away. Of
necessary things, the first class consists of things without which we
cannot live; the second, of things without which we ought not to live;
and the third, of things without which we should not care to live. The
first class are, to be saved from the hands of the enemy, from the anger
of tyrants, from proscription, and the various other perils which
beset human life. By averting any one of these, we shall earn gratitude
proportionate to the greatness of the danger, for when men think of
the greatness of the misery from which they have been saved, the terror
which they have gone through enhances the value of our services. Yet we
ought not to delay rescuing any one longer than we are obliged, solely
in order to make his fears add weight to our services. Next come those
things without which we can indeed live, but in such a manner that it
would be better to die, such as liberty, chastity, or a good conscience.
After these are what we have come to hold dear by connexion and
relationship and long use and custom, such as our wives and children,
our household gods, and so on, to which the mind so firmly attaches
itself that separation from them seems worse than death.

After these come useful things, which form a very wide and varied
class; in which will be money, not in excess, but enough for living in
a moderate style; public office, and, for the ambitious, due advancement
to higher posts; for nothing can be more useful to a man than to be
placed in a position in which he can benefit himself. All benefits
beyond these are superfluous, and are likely to spoil those who receive
them. In giving these we must be careful to make them acceptable by
giving them at the appropriate time, or by giving things which are not
common, but such as few people possess, or at any rate few possess in
our times; or again, by giving things in such a manner, that though not
naturally valuable, they become so by the time and place at which they
are given. We must reflect what present will produce the most pleasure,
what will most frequently come under the notice of the possessor of it,
so that whenever he is with it he may be with us also; and in all cases
we must be careful not to send useless presents, such as hunting weapons
to a woman or old man, or books to a rustic, or nets to catch wild
animals to a quiet literary man. On the other hand, we ought to be
careful, while we wish to send what will please, that we do not send
what will insultingly remind our friends of their failings, as, for
example, if we send wine to a hard drinker or drugs to an invalid, for a
present which contains an allusion to the shortcomings of the receiver,
becomes an outrage.

XII. If we have a free choice as to what to give, we should above all
choose lasting presents, in order that our gift may endure as long
as possible; for few are so grateful as to think of what they have
received, even when they do not see it. Even the ungrateful remember
us by our gifts, when they are always in their sight and do not allow
themselves to be forgotten, but constantly obtrude and stamp upon the
mind the memory of the giver. As we never ought to remind men of what we
have given them, we ought all the more to choose presents that will be
permanent; for the things themselves will prevent the remembrance of the
giver from fading away. I would more willingly give a present of plate
than of coined money, and would more willingly give statues than clothes
or other things which are soon worn out. Few remain grateful after the
present is gone: many more remember their presents only while they make
use of them. If possible, I should like my present not to be consumed;
let it remain in existence, let it stick to my friend and share his
life. No one is so foolish as to need to be told not to send gladiators
or wild beasts to one who has just given a public show, or not to send
summer clothing in winter time, or winter clothing in summer. Common
sense must guide our benefits; we must consider the time and the place,
and the character of the receiver, which are the weights in the
scale, which cause our gifts to be well or ill received. How far more
acceptable a present is, if we give a man what he has not, than if we
give him what he has plenty of! if we give him what he has long been
searching for in vain, rather than what he sees everywhere! Let us make
presents of things which are rare and scarce rather than costly, things
which even a rich man will be glad of, just as common fruits, such as
we tire of after a few days, please us if they have ripened before the
usual season. People will also esteem things which no one else has given
to them, or which we have given to no one else.

XIII. When the conquest of the East had flattered Alexander of Macedon
into believing himself to be more than man, the people of Corinth sent
an embassy to congratulate him, and presented him with the franchise of
their city. When Alexander smiled at this form of courtesy, one of
the ambassadors said, "We have never enrolled any stranger among our
citizens except Hercules and yourself." Alexander willingly accepted the
proffered honour, invited the ambassadors to his table, and showed them
other courtesies. He did not think of who offered the citizenship, but
to whom they had granted it; and being altogether the slave of glory,
though he knew neither its true nature or its limits, had followed in
the footsteps of Hercules and Bacchus, and had not even stayed his march
where they ceased; so that he glanced aside from the givers of this
honour to him with whom he shared it, and fancied that the heaven to
which his vanity aspired was indeed opening before him when he was made
equal to Hercules. In what indeed did that frantic youth, whose only
merit was his lucky audacity, resemble Hercules? Hercules conquered
nothing for himself; he travelled throughout the world, not coveting for
himself but liberating the countries which he conquered, an enemy to bad
men, a defender of the good, a peacemaker both by sea and land; whereas
the other was from his boyhood a brigand and desolator of nations, a
pest to his friends and enemies alike, whose greatest joy was to be the
terror of all mankind, forgetting that men fear not only the fiercest
but also the most cowardly animals, because of their evil and venomous
nature.

XIV. Let us now return to our subject. He who bestows a benefit without
discrimination, gives what pleases no one; no one considers himself to
be under any obligation to the landlord of a tavern, or to be the guest
of any one with whom he dines in such company as to be able to say,
"What civility has he shown to me? no more than he has shown to that
man, whom he scarcely knows, or to that other, who is both his personal
enemy and a man of infamous character. Do you suppose that he wished to
do me any honour? not so, he merely wished to indulge his own vice of
profusion." If you wish men to be grateful for anything, give it but
seldom; no one can bear to receive what you give to all the world.
Yet let no one gather from this that I wish to impose any bonds upon
generosity; let her go to what lengths she will, so that she go a steady
course, not at random. It is possible to bestow gifts in such a manner
that each of those who receive them, although he shares them with many
others, may yet feel himself to be distinguished from the common herd.
Let each man have some peculiarity about his gift which may make him
consider himself more highly favoured than the rest. He may say, "I
received the same present that he did, but I never asked for it." "I
received the same present, but mine was given me after a few days,
whereas he had earned it by long service." "Others have the same
present, but it was not given to them with the same courtesy and
gracious words with which it was given to me." "That man got it because
he asked for it; I did not ask." "That man received it as well as I, but
then he could easily return it; one has great expectations from a rich
man, old and childless, as he is; whereas in giving the same present to
me he really gave more, because he gave it without the hope of receiving
any return for it." Just as a courtesan divides her favours among
many men, so that no one of her friends is without some proof of her
affection, so let him who wishes his benefits to be prized consider how
he may at the same time gratify many men, and nevertheless give each one
of them some especial mark of favour to distinguish him from the rest.

XV. I am no advocate of slackness in giving benefits: the more and the
greater they are, the more praise they will bring to the giver. Yet
let them be given with discretion; for what is given carelessly and
recklessly can please no one. Whoever, therefore, supposes that in
giving this advice I wish to restrict benevolence and to confine it to
narrower limits, entirely mistakes the object of my warning. What virtue
do we admire more than benevolence? Which do we encourage more? Who
ought to applaud it more than we Stoics, who preach the brotherhood of
the human race? What then is it? Since no impulse of the human mind can
be approved of, even though it springs from a right feeling, unless it
be made into a virtue by discretion, I forbid generosity to degenerate
into extravagance. It is, indeed, pleasant to receive a benefit with
open arms, when reason bestows it upon the worthy, not when it is flung
hither or thither thoughtlessly and at random; this alone we care to
display and claim as our own. Can you call anything a benefit, if
you feel ashamed to mention the person who gave it you? How far more
grateful is a benefit, how far more deeply does it impress itself upon
the mind, never to be forgotten, when we rejoice to think not so much of
what it is, as from whom we have received it! Crispus Passienus was wont
to say that some men's advice was to be preferred to their presents,
some men's presents to their advice; and he added as an example, "I
would rather have received advice from Augustus than a present; I would
rather receive a present from Claudius than advice." I, however, think
that one ought not to wish for a benefit from any man whose judgement
is worthless. What then? Ought we not to receive what Claudius gives? We
ought; but we ought to regard it as obtained from fortune, which may at
any moment turn against us. Why do we separate this which naturally is
connected? That is not a benefit, to which the best part of a benefit,
that it be bestowed with judgment, is wanting: a really great sum of
money, if it be given neither with discernment nor with good will, is
no more a benefit than if it remained hoarded. There are, however,
many things which we ought not to reject, yet for which we cannot feel
indebted.




BOOK II.

I.


Let us consider, most excellent Liberalis, what still remains of the
earlier part of the subject; in what way a benefit should be bestowed. I
think that I can point out the shortest way to this; let us give in the
way in which we ourselves should like to receive. Above all we should
give willingly, quickly, and without any hesitation; a benefit commands
no gratitude if it has hung for a long time in the hands of the giver,
if he seems unwilling to part with it, and gives it as though he were
being robbed of it. Even though some delay should intervene, let us
by all means in our power strive not to seem to have been in two minds
about giving it at all. To hesitate is the next thing to refusing to
give, and destroys all claim to gratitude. For just as the sweetest part
of a benefit is the kindly feeling of the giver, it follows that one who
has by his very delay proved that he gives unwillingly, must be regarded
not as having given anything, but as having been unable to keep it from
an importunate suitor. Indeed, many men are made generous by want of
firmness. The most acceptable benefits are those which are waiting for
us to take them, which are easy to be received, and offer themselves to
us, so that the only delay is caused by the modesty of the receiver.
The best thing of all is to anticipate a person's wishes; the next, to
follow them; the former is the better course, to be beforehand with our
friends by giving them what they want before they ask us for it, for the
value of a gift is much enhanced by sparing an honest man the misery of
asking for it with confusion and blushes. He who gets what he asked
for does not get it for nothing, for indeed, as our austere ancestors
thought, nothing is so dear as that which is bought by prayers. Men
would be much more modest in their petitions to heaven, if these had to
be made publicly; so that even when addressing the gods, before whom
we can with all honour bend our knees, we prefer to pray silently and
within ourselves.

II. It is unpleasant, burdensome, and covers one with shame to have to
say, "Give me." You should spare your friends, and those whom you wish
to make your friends, from having to do this; however quick he may be,
a man gives too late who gives what he has been asked for. We ought,
therefore, to divine every man's wishes, and when we have discovered
them, to set him free from the hard necessity of asking; you may be sure
that a benefit which comes unasked will be delightful and will not be
forgotten. If we do not succeed in anticipating our friends, let us at
any rate cut them short when they ask us for anything, so that we may
appear to be reminded of what we meant to do, rather than to have been
asked to do it. Let us assent at once, and by our promptness make it
appear that we meant to do so even before we were solicited. As in
dealing with sick persons much depends upon when food is given, and
plain water given at the right moment sometimes acts as a remedy, so
a benefit, however slight and commonplace it may be, if it be promptly
given without losing a moment of time, gains enormously in importance,
and wins our gratitude more than a far more valuable present given after
long waiting and deliberation. One who gives so readily must needs give
with good will; he therefore gives cheerfully and shows his disposition
in his countenance.

III. Many who bestow immense benefits spoil them by their silence or
slowness of speech, which gives them an air of moroseness, as they say
"yes" with a face which seems to say "no." How much better is it to join
kind words to kind actions, and to enhance the value of our gifts by a
civil and gracious commendation of them! To cure your friend of being
slow to ask a favour of you, you may join to your gift the familiar
rebuke, "I am angry with you for not having long ago let me know what
you wanted, for having asked for it so formally, or for having made
interest with a third party." "I congratulate myself that you have been
pleased to make trial of me; hereafter, if you want anything, ask for it
as your right; however, for this time I pardon your want of manners."
By so doing you will cause him to value your friendship more highly
than that, whatever it may have been, which he came to ask of you. The
goodness and kindness of a benefactor never appears so great as when on
leaving him one says, "I have to-day gained much; I am more pleased at
finding him so kind than if I had obtained many times more of this, of
which I was speaking, by some other means; I never can make any adequate
return to this man for his goodness."

IV. Many, however, there are who, by harsh words and contemptuous
manner, make their very kindnesses odious, for by speaking and acting
disdainfully they make us sorry that they have granted our requests.
Various delays also take place after we have obtained a promise; and
nothing is more heartbreaking than to be forced to beg for the very
thing which you already have been promised. Benefits ought to be
bestowed at once, but from some persons it is easier to obtain the
promise of them than to get them. One man has to be asked to remind our
benefactor of his purpose; another, to bring it into effect; and thus a
single present is worn away in passing through many hands, until hardly
any gratitude is left for the original promiser, since whoever we are
forced to solicit after the giving of the promise receives some of the
gratitude which we owe to the giver. Take care, therefore, if you
wish your gifts to be esteemed, that they reach those to whom they are
promised entire, and, as the saying is, without any deduction. Let no
one intercept them or delay them; for no one can take any share of the
gratitude due for your gifts without robbing you of it.

V. Nothing is more bitter than long uncertainty; some can bear to have
their hopes extinguished better than to have them deferred. Yet many
men are led by an unworthy vanity into this fault of putting off the
accomplishment of their promises, merely in order to swell the crowd of
their suitors, like the ministers of royalty, who delight in prolonging
the display of their own arrogance, hardly thinking themselves possessed
of power unless they let each man see for a long time how powerful they
are. They do nothing promptly, or at one sitting; they are indeed swift
to do mischief, but slow to do good. Be sure that the comic poet speaks
the most absolute truth in the verses:--

   "Know you not this? If you your gifts delay,
    You take thereby my gratitude away."

And the following lines, the expression of virtuous pain--a
high-spirited man's misery,--

   "What thou doest, do quickly;"

and:--

    "Nothing in the world
    Is worth this trouble; I had rather you
    Refused it to me now."

When the mind begins through weariness to hate the promised benefit, or
while it is wavering in expectation of it, how can it feel grateful
for it? As the most refined cruelty is that which prolongs the torture,
while to kill the victim at once is a kind of mercy, since the extremity
of torture brings its own end with it--the interval is the worst part of
the execution--so the shorter time a benefit hangs in the balance, the
more grateful it is to the receiver. It is possible to look forward with
anxious disquietude even to good things, and, seeing that most benefits
consist in a release from some form of misery, a man destroys the value
of the benefit which he confers, if he has the power to relieve us,
and yet allows us to suffer or to lack pleasure longer than we need.
Kindness always eager to do good, and one who acts by love naturally
acts at once; he who does us good, but does it tardily and with long
delays, does not do so from the heart. Thus he loses two most important
things: time, and the proof of his good will to us; for a lingering
consent is but a form of denial.

VI. The manner in which things are said or done, my Liberalis, forms a
very important part of every transaction. We gain much by quickness, and
lose much by slowness. Just as in darts, the strength of the iron head
remains the same, but there is an immeasureable difference between the
blow of one hurled with the full swing of the arm and one which merely
drops from the hand, and the same sword either grazes or pierces
according as the blow is delivered; so, in like manner, that which
is given is the same, but the manner in which it is given makes the
difference. How sweet, how precious is a gift, when he who gives does
not permit himself to be thanked, and when while he gives he forgets
that he has given! To reproach a man at the very moment that you are
doing him a service is sheer madness; it is to mix insult with your
favours. We ought not to make our benefits burdensome, or to add any
bitterness to them. Even if there be some subject upon which you wish to
warn your friend, choose some other time for doing so.

VII. Fabius Verrucosus used to compare a benefit bestowed by a harsh man
in an offensive manner to a gritty loaf of bread, which a hungry man is
obliged to receive, but which is painful to eat. When Marius Nepos of
the praetorian guard asked Tiberius Caesar for help to pay his debts,
Tiberius asked him for a list of his creditors; this is calling a
meeting of creditors, not paying debts. When the list was made out,
Tiberius wrote to Nepos telling him that he had ordered the money to be
paid, and adding some offensive reproaches. The result of this was
that Nepos owed no debts, yet received no kindness; Tiberius, indeed,
relieved him from his creditors, but laid him under no obligation.
Tiberius, however, had some design in doing so; I imagine he did not
wish more of his friends to come to him with the same request. His mode
of proceeding was, perhaps, successful in restraining men's extravagant
desires by shame, but he who wishes to confer benefits must follow quite
a different path. In all ways you should make your benefit as acceptable
as possible by presenting it in the most attractive form; but the method
of Tiberius is not to confer benefits, but to reproach.

VIII. Moreover, if incidentally I should say what I think of this part
of the subject, I do not consider that it is becoming even to an emperor
to give merely in order to cover a man with shame. "And yet," we are
told, "Tiberius did not even by this means attain his object; for after
this a good many persons were found to make the same request. He ordered
all of them to explain the reasons of their indebtedness before the
senate, and when they did so, granted them certain definite sums of
money." This is not an act of generosity, but a reprimand. You may call
it a subsidy, or an imperial contribution; it is not a benefit, for
the receiver cannot think of it without shame. I was summoned before a
judge, and had to be tried at bar before I obtained what I asked for.

IX. Accordingly, all writers on ethical philosophy tell us that some
benefits ought to be given in secret, others in public. Those things
which it is glorious to receive, such as military decorations or public
offices, and whatever else gains in value the more widely it is known,
should be conferred in public; on the other hand, when they do not
promote a man or add to his social standing, but help him when in
weakness, in want, or in disgrace, they should be given silently, and so
as to be known only to those who profit by them.

X. Sometimes even the person who is assisted must be deceived, in order
that he may receive our bounty without knowing the source from whence
it flows. It is said that Arcesilaus had a friend who was poor, but
concealed his poverty; who was ill, yet tried to hide his disorder, and
who had not money for the necessary expenses of existence. Without his
knowledge, Arcesilaus placed a bag of money under his pillow, in order
that this victim of false shame might rather seem to find what he wanted
than to receive. "What," say you, "ought he not to know from whom he
received it?" Yes; let him not know it at first, if it be essential to
your kindness that he should not; afterwards I will do so much for him,
and give him so much that he will perceive who was the giver of the
former benefit; or, better still, let him not know that he has received
any thing, provided I know that I have given it. "This," you say, "is to
get too little return for one's goodness." True, if it be an investment
of which you are thinking; but if a gift, it should be given in the way
which will be of most service to the receiver. You should be satisfied
with the approval of your own conscience; if not, you do not really
delight in doing good, but in being seen to do good. "For all that," say
you, "I wish him to know it." Is it a debtor that you seek for? "For
all that, I wish him to know it." What! though it be more useful, more
creditable, more pleasant for him not to know his benefactor, will you
not consent to stand aside? "I wish him to know." So, then, you would
not save a man's life in the dark? I do not deny that, whenever the
matter admits of it, one ought to take into consideration the pleasure
which we receive from the joy of the receiver of our kindness; but if he
ought to have help and is ashamed to receive it--if what we bestow upon
him pains him unless it be concealed--I forbear to make my benefits
public. Why should I not refrain from hinting at my having given him
anything, when the first and most essential rule is, never to reproach
a man with what you have done for him, and not even to remind him of it.
The rule for the giver and receiver of a benefit is, that the one should
straightway forget that he has given, the other should never forget that
he has received it.

XI. A constant reference to one's own services wounds our friend's
feelings. Like the man who was saved from the proscription under
the triumvirate by one of Caesar's friends, and afterwards found it
impossible to endure his preserver's arrogance, they wish to cry, "Give
me back to Caesar." How long will you go on saying, "I saved you, I
snatched you from the jaws of death?" This is indeed life, if I remember
it by my own will, but death if I remember it at yours; I owe you
nothing, if you saved me merely in order to have some one to point at.
How long do you mean to lead me about? how long do you mean to forbid
me to forget my adventure? If I had been a defeated enemy, I should
have been led in triumph but once. We ought not to speak of the benefits
which we have conferred; to remind men of them is to ask them to return
them. We should not obtrude them, or recall the memory of them; you
should only remind a man of what you have given him by giving him
something else. We ought not even to tell others of our good deeds.
He who confers a benefit should be silent, it should be told by the
receiver; for otherwise you may receive the retort which was made to one
who was everywhere boasting of the benefit which he had conferred: "You
will not deny," said his victim, "that you have received a return for
it?" "When?" asked he. "Often," said the other, "and in many places,
that is, wherever and whenever you have told the story." What need is
there for you to speak, and to take the place which belongs to another?
There is a man who can tell the story in a way much more to your credit,
and thus you will gain glory for not telling it your self. You would
think me ungrateful if, through your own silence, no one is to know of
your benefit. So far from doing this, even if any one tells the story in
our presence, we ought to make answer, "He does indeed deserve much more
than this, and I am aware that I have not hitherto done any great things
for him, although I wish to do so." This should not be said jokingly,
nor yet with that air by which some persons repel those whom they
especially wish to attract. In addition to this, we ought to act with
the greatest politeness towards such persons. If the farmer ceases his
labours after he has put in the seed, he will lose what he has sown; it
is only by great pains that seeds are brought to yield a crop; no plant
will bear fruit unless it be tended with equal care from first to last,
and the same rule is true of benefits. Can any benefits be greater than
those which children receive from their parents? Yet these benefits
are useless if they be deserted while young, if the pious care of the
parents does not for a long time watch over the gift which they have
bestowed. So it is with other benefits; unless you help them, you will
lose them; to give is not enough, you must foster what you have given.
If you wish those whom you lay under an obligation to be grateful to
you, you must not merely confer benefits upon them, but you must also
love them. Above all, as I said before, spare their ears; you will weary
them if you remind them of your goodness, if you reproach them with it
you will make them hate you. Pride ought above all things to be avoided
when you confer a benefit. What need have you for disdainful airs,
or swelling phrases? the act itself will exalt you. Let us shun vain
boasting: let us be silent, and let our deeds speak for us. A benefit
conferred with haughtiness not only wins no gratitude, but causes
dislike.

XII. Gaius Caesar granted Pompeius Pennus his life, that is, if not
to take away life be to grant it; then, when Pompeius was set free and
returning thanks to him, he stretched out his left foot to be kissed.
Those who excuse this action, and say that it was not done through
arrogance, say that he wished to show him a gilded, nay a golden slipper
studded with pearls. "Well," say they, "what disgrace can there be in a
man of consular rank kissing gold and pearls, and what part of Caesar's
whole body was it less pollution to kiss?" So, then, that man,
the object of whose life was to change a free state into a Persian
despotism, was not satisfied when a senator, an aged man, a man who had
filled the highest offices in the state, prostrated himself before him
in the presence of all the nobles, just as the vanquished prostrate
themselves before their conqueror! He discovered a place below his knees
down to which he might thrust liberty. What is this but trampling upon
the commonwealth, and that, too, with the left foot, though you may say
that this point does not signify? It was not a sufficiently foul and
frantic outrage for the emperor to sit at the trial of a consular for
his life wearing slippers, he must needs push his shoes into a senator's
face.

XIII. O pride, the silliest fault of great good fortune! how pleasant
it is to take nothing from thee! how dost thou turn all benefits into
outrages! how dost thou delight in all excess! how ill all things become
thee! The higher thou risest the lower thou art, and provest that
the good things by which thou art so puffed up profit thee not; thou
spoilest all that thou givest. It is worth while to inquire why it is
that pride thus swaggers and changes the form and appearance of her
countenance, so that she prefers a mask to her own face. It is pleasant
to receive gifts when they are conferred in a kindly and gentle manner,
when a superior in giving them does not exalt himself over me, but shows
as much good feeling as possible, placing himself on a level with me,
giving without parade, and choosing a time when I am glad of his help,
rather than waiting till I am in the bitterest need. The only way by
which you can prevail upon proud men not to spoil their gifts by their
arrogance is by proving to them that benefits do not appear greater
because they are bestowed with great pomp and circumstance; that no one
will think them greater men for so doing, and that excessive pride is a
mere delusion which leads men to hate even what they ought to love.

XIV. There are some things which injure those who receive them, things
which it is not a benefit to give but to withhold; we should therefore
consider the usefulness of our gift rather than the wish of the
petitioner to receive it; for we often long for hurtful things, and are
unable to discern how ruinous they are, because our judgment is biassed
by our feelings; when, however, the longing is past, when that frenzied
impulse which masters our good sense has passed away, we abhor those
who have given us hurtful gifts. As we refuse cold water to the sick,
or swords to the grief-stricken or remorseful, and take from the insane
whatever they might in their delirium use to their own destruction, so
must we persist in refusing to give anything whatever that is hurtful,
although our friends earnestly and humbly, nay, sometimes even most
piteously beg for it. We ought to look at the end of our benefits as
well as the beginning, and not merely to give what men are glad to
receive, but what they will hereafter be glad to have received. There
are many who say, "I know that this will do him no good, but what am I
to do? he begs for it, I cannot withstand his entreaties. Let him see
to it; he will blame himself, not me." Not so: you he will blame, and
deservedly; when he comes to his right mind, when the frenzy which
now excites him has left him, how can he help hating the man who has
assisted him to harm and to endanger himself? It is a cruel kindness to
allow one's self to be won over into granting that which injures those
who beg for it. Just as it is the noblest of acts to save men from harm
against their will, so it is but hatred, under the mask of civility, to
grant what is harmful to those who ask for it. Let us confer benefits of
such a kind, that the more they are made use of the better they please,
and which never can turn into injuries. I never will give money to a man
if I know that he will pay it to an adulteress, nor will I be found in
connexion with any wicked act or plan; if possible, I will restrain men
from crime; if not, at least I will never assist them in it. Whether my
friend be driven into doing wrong by anger, or seduced from the path of
safety by the heat of ambition, he shall never gain the means of doing
mischief except from himself, nor will I enable him one day to say,
"He ruined me out of love for me." Our friends often give us what our
enemies wish us to receive; we are driven by the unseasonable fondness
of the former into the ruin which the latter hope will befall us. Yet,
often as it is the case, what can be more shameful than that there
should be no difference between a benefit and hatred?

XV. Let us never bestow gifts which may recoil upon us to our shame.
As the sum total of friendship consists in making our friends equal to
ourselves, we ought to consider the interests of both parties; I must
give to him that wants, yet so that I do not want myself; I must help
him who is perishing, yet so that I do not perish myself, unless by so
doing I can save a great man or a great cause. I must give no benefit
which it would disgrace me to ask for. I ought not to make a small
benefit appear a great one, nor allow great benefits to be regarded as
small; for although it destroys all feeling of gratitude to treat what
you give like a creditor, yet you do not reproach a man, but merely
set off your gift to the best advantage by letting him know what it is
worth. Every man must consider what his resources and powers are, so
that we may not give either more or less than we are able. We must also
consider the character and position of the person to whom we give, for
some men are too great to give small gifts, while others are too small
to receive great ones. Compare, therefore, the character both of the
giver and the receiver, and weigh that which you give between the two,
taking care that what is given be neither too burdensome nor too trivial
for the one to give, nor yet such as the receiver will either treat with
disdain as too small, or think too great for him to deal with.

XVI. Alexander, who was of unsound mind, and always full of magnificent
ideas, presented somebody with a city. When the man to whom he gave it
had reflected upon the scope of his own powers, he wished to avoid the
jealousy which so great a present would excite, saying that the gift did
not suit a man of his position. "I do not ask," replied Alexander, "what
is becoming for you to receive, but what is becoming for me to give."
This seems a spirited and kingly speech, yet really it is a most foolish
one. Nothing is by itself a becoming gift for any one: all depends upon
who gives it, to whom he gives it, when, for what reason, where, and
so forth, without which details it is impossible to argue about it.
Inflated creature! if it did not become him to receive this gift, it
could not become thee to give it. There should be a proportion between
men's characters and the offices which they fill; and as virtue in all
cases should be our measure, he who gives too much acts as wrongly as he
who gives too little. Even granting that fortune has raised you so high,
that, where other men give cups, you give cities (which it would show a
greater mind in you not to take than to take and squander), still there
must be some of your friends who are not strong enough to put a city in
their pockets.

XVII. A certain cynic asked Antigonus for a talent. Antigonus answered
that this was too much for a cynic to ask for. After this rebuff he
asked for a penny. Antigonus answered that this was too little for a
king to give. "This kind of hair-splitting" (you say) "is contemptible:
he found the means of giving neither. In the matter of the penny he
thought of the king, in that of the talent he thought of the cynic,
whereas with respect to the cynic it would have been right to receive
the penny, with respect to the king it would have been right to give the
talent. Though there may be things which are too great for a cynic to
receive, yet nothing is so small, that it does not become a gracious
king to bestow it." If you ask me, I applaud Antigonus; for it is not to
be endured that a man who despises money should ask for it. Your cynic
has publicly proclaimed his hatred of money, and assumed the character
of one who despises it: let him act up to his professions. It is most
inconsistent for him to earn money by glorifying his poverty. I wish
to use Chrysippus's simile of the game of ball, in which the ball must
certainly fall by the fault either of the thrower or of the catcher; it
only holds its course when it passes between the hands of two persons
who each throw it and catch it suitably. It is necessary, however, for a
good player to send the ball in one way to a comrade at a long distance,
and in another to one at a short distance. So it is with a benefit:
unless it be suitable both for the giver and the receiver, it will
neither leave the one nor reach the other as it ought. If we have to
do with a practised and skilled player, we shall throw the ball more
recklessly, for however it may come, that quick and agile hand will send
it back again; if we are playing with an unskilled novice, we shall not
throw it so hard, but far more gently, guiding it straight into his very
hands, and we shall run to meet it when it returns to us. This is just
what we ought to do in conferring benefits; let us teach some men how to
do so, and be satisfied if they attempt it, if they have the courage and
the will to do so. For the most part, however, we make men ungrateful,
and encourage them, to be so, as if our benefits were only great when
we cannot receive any gratitude for them; just as some spiteful
ball-players purposely put out their companion, of course to the ruin of
the game, which cannot be carried on without entire agreement Many men
are of so depraved a nature that they had rather lose the presents which
they make than be thought to have received a return for them, because
they are proud, and like to lay people under obligations: yet how much
better and more kindly would it be if they tried to enable the others
also to perform their parts, if they encouraged them in returning
gratitude, put the best construction upon all their acts, received one
who wished to thank them just as cordially as if he came to repay what
he had received, and easily lent themselves to the belief that those
whom they have laid under an obligation wish to repay it. We blame
usurers equally when they press harshly for payment, and when they delay
and make difficulties about taking back the money which they have lent;
in the same way, it is just as right that a benefit should be returned,
as it is wrong to ask any one to return it. The best man is he who gives
readily, never asks for any return, and is delighted when the return
is made, because, having really and truly forgotten what he gave, he
receives it as though it were a present.

XVIII. Some men not only give, but even receive benefit haughtily, a
mistake into which we ought not to fall: for now let us cross over to
the other side of the subject, and consider how men should behave when
they receive benefits. Every function which is performed by two persons
makes equal demands upon both: after you have considered what a father
ought to be, you will perceive that there remains an equal task, that
of considering what a son ought to be: a husband has certain duties,
but those of a wife are no less important. Each of these give and take
equally, and each require a similar rule of life, which, as Hecaton
observes, is hard to follow: indeed, it is difficult for us to attain
to virtue, or even to anything that comes near virtue: for we ought not
only to act virtuously but to do so upon principle. We ought to follow
this guide throughout our lives, and to do everything great and small
according to its dictates: according as virtue prompts us we ought both
to give and to receive. Now she will declare at the outset that we ought
not to receive benefits from every man. "From whom, then, ought we to
receive them?" To answer you briefly, I should say, from those to whom
we have given them. Let us consider whether we ought not to be even more
careful in choosing to whom we should owe than to whom we should give.
For even supposing that no unpleasantness should result (and very much
always does), still it is a great misery to be indebted to a man to whom
you do not wish to be under an obligation; whereas it is most delightful
to receive a benefit from one whom you can love even after he has
wronged you, and when the pleasure which you feel in his friendship is
justified by the grounds on which it is based. Nothing is more wretched
for a modest and honourable man than to feel it to be his duty to love
one whom it does not please him to love. I must constantly remind you
that I do not speak of wise men, who take pleasure in everything that is
their duty, who have their feelings under command, and are able to lay
down whatever law they please to themselves and keep it, but that I
speak of imperfect beings struggling to follow the right path, who often
have trouble in bending their passions to their will. I must therefore
choose the man from whom I will accept a benefit; indeed, I ought to be
more careful in the choice of my creditor for a benefit than for money;
for I have only to pay the latter as much as I received of him, land
when I have paid it I am free from all obligation; but to the other I
must both repay more, and even when I have repaid his kindness we remain
connected, for when I have paid my debt I ought again to renew it,
while our friendship endures unbroken. Thus, as I ought not to make an
unworthy man my friend, so I ought not to admit an unworthy man into
that most holy bond of gratitude for benefits, from which friendship
arises. You reply, "I cannot always say 'No': sometimes I must receive a
benefit even against my will. Suppose I were given something by a cruel
and easily offended tyrant, who would take it as an affront if his
bounty were slighted? am I not to accept it? Suppose it were offered by
a pirate, or a brigand, or a king of the temper of a pirate or brigand.
What ought I to do? Such a man is not a worthy object for me to owe a
benefit to." When I say that you ought to choose, I except vis major
and fear, which destroy all power of choice. If you are free, if it lies
with you to decide whether you will or not, then you will turn over in
your own mind whether you will take a gift from a man or not; but if
your position makes it impossible for you to choose, then be assured
that you do not receive a gift, you merely obey orders. No one incurs
any obligation by receiving what it was not in his power to refuse; if
you want to know whether I wish to take it, arrange matters so that I
have the power of saying 'No.' "Yet suppose he gave you your life." It
does not matter what the gift was, unless it be given and received with
good will: you are not my preserver because you have saved my life.
Poison sometimes acts as a medicine, yet it is not on that account
regarded as wholesome. Some things benefit us but put us under no
obligation: for instance a man who intended to kill a tyrant, cut with
his sword a tumour from which he suffered: yet the tyrant did not show
him gratitude because by wounding him he had healed a disease which
surgeons had feared to meddle with.

XIX. You see that the actual thing itself is not of much importance,
because it is not regarded as a benefit at all, if you do good when you
intended to do evil; in such a case the benefit is done by chance, the
man did harm. I have seen a lion in the amphitheatre, who recognized one
of the men who fought with wild beasts, who once had been his keeper,
and protected him against the attacks of the other animals. Are we,
then, to say that this assistance of the brute was a benefit? By no
means, because it did not intend to do it, and did not do it with kindly
intentions. You may class the lion and your tyrant together: each of
them saved a man's life, yet neither conferred a benefit. Because it is
not a benefit to be forced to receive one, neither is it a benefit to be
under an obligation to a man to whom we do not wish to be indebted. You
must first give me personal freedom of decision, and then your benefit.

XX. The question has been raised, whether Marcus Brutus ought to have
received his life from the hands of Julius Caesar, who, he had decided,
ought to be put to death.

As to the grounds upon which he put him to death, I shall discuss them
elsewhere; for to my mind, though he was in other respects a great man,
in this he seems to have been entirely wrong, and not to have followed
the maxims of the Stoic philosophy. He must either have feared the name
of "King," although a state thrives best under a good king, or he must
have hoped that liberty could exist in a state where some had so much to
gain by reigning, and others had so much to gain by becoming slaves. Or,
again, he must have supposed that it would be possible to restore the
ancient constitution after all the ancient manners had been lost, and
that citizens could continue to possess equal rights, or laws remain
inviolate, in a state in which he had seen so many thousands of men
fighting to decide, not whether they should be slaves or free, but which
master they should serve. How forgetful he seems to have been, both of
human nature and of the history of his own country, in supposing that
when one despot was destroyed another of the same temper would not take
his place, though, after so many kings had perished by lightning and the
sword, a Tarquin was found to reign! Yet Brutus did right in receiving
his life from Caesar, though he was not bound thereby to regard Caesar
as his father, since it was by a wrong that Caesar had come to be in a
position to bestow this benefit. A man does not save your life who does
not kill you; nor does he confer a benefit, but merely gives you your
discharge. [The 'discharge' alluded to is that which was granted to
the beaten one of a pair of gladiators, when their duel was not to the
death.]

XXI. It seems to offer more opportunity for debate to consider what a
captive ought to do, if a man of abominable vices offers him the price
of his ransom? Shall I permit myself to be saved by a wretch? When safe,
what recompense can I make to him? Am I to live with an infamous person?
Yet, am I not to live with my preserver? I will tell you my opinion. I
would accept money, even from such a person, if it were to save my life;
yet I would only accept it as a loan, not as a benefit. I would repay
him the money, and if I were ever able to preserve him from danger I
would do so. As for friendship, which can only exist between equals, I
would not condescend to be such a man's friend; nor would I regard him
as my preserver, but merely as a money-lender, to whom I am only bound
to repay what I borrowed from him.

A man may be a worthy person for me to receive a benefit from, but it
will hurt him to give it. For this reason I will not receive it, because
he is ready to help me to his own prejudice, or even danger. Suppose
that he is willing to plead for me in court, but by so doing will make
the king his enemy. I should be his enemy, if, when he is willing to
risk himself for me, if I were not to risk myself without him, which
moreover is easier for me to do.

As an instance of this, Hecaton calls the case of Arcesilaus silly, and
not to the purpose. Arcesilaus, he says, refused to receive a large sum
of money which was offered to him by a son, lest the son should offend
his penurious father. What did he do deserving of praise, in not
receiving stolen goods, in choosing not to receive them, instead of
returning them? What proof of self-restraint is there in refusing to
receive another man's property. If you want an instance of magnanimity,
take the case of Julius Graecinus, whom Caius Caesar put to death merely
on the ground that he was a better man than it suited a tyrant for
anyone to be. This man, when he was receiving subscriptions from many of
his friends to cover his expenses in exhibiting public games, would not
receive a large sum which was sent him by Fabius Persicus; and when he
was blamed for rejecting it by those who think more of what is given
than of who gives it, he answered, "Am I to accept a present from a man
when I would not accept his offer to drink a glass of wine with him?"

When a consular named Rebilius, a man of equally bad character, sent
a yet larger sum to Graecinus, and pressed him to receive it. "I must
beg," answered he, "that you will excuse me. I did not take money from
Persicus either." Ought we to call this receiving presents, or rather
taking one's pick of the senate?

XXII. When we have decided to accept, let us accept with cheerfulness,
showing pleasure, and letting the giver see it, so that he may at once
receive some return for his goodness: for as it is a good reason for
rejoicing to see our friend happy, it is a better one to have made
him so. Let us, therefore, show how acceptable a gift is by loudly
expressing our gratitude for it; and let us do so, not only in the
hearing of the giver, but everywhere. He who receives a benefit with
gratitude, repays the first instalment of it.

XXIII. There are some, who only like to receive benefits privately: they
dislike having any witnesses and confidants. Such men, we may believe,
have no good intentions. As a giver is justified in dwelling upon those
qualities of his gift which will please the receiver, so a man, when he
receives, should do so publicly; you should not take from a man what
you are ashamed to owe him. Some return thanks to one stealthily, in a
corner, in a whisper. This is not modesty, but a kind of denying of the
debt: it is the part of an ungrateful man not to express his gratitude
before witnesses. Some object to any accounts being kept between them
and their benefactors, and wish no brokers to be employed or witnesses
to be called, but merely to give their own signature to a receipt. Those
men do the like, who take care to let as few persons as possible know
of the benefits which they have received. They fear to receive them in
public, in order that their success may be attributed rather to their
own talents than to the help of others: they are very seldom to be
found in attendance upon those to whom they owe their lives and their
fortunes, and thus, while avoiding the imputation of servility, they
incur that of ingratitude.

XXIV. Some men speak in the most offensive terms of those to whom they
owe most. There are men whom it is safer to affront than to serve,
for their dislike leads them to assume the airs of persons who are not
indebted to us: although nothing more is expected of them than that they
should remember what they owe us, refreshing their memory from time to
time, because no one can be grateful who forgets a kindness, and he
who remembers it, by so doing proves his gratitude. We ought neither to
receive benefits with a fastidious air, nor yet with a slavish humility:
for if a man does not care for a benefit when it is freshly bestowed--a
time at which all presents please us most--what will he do when its
first charms have gone off? Others receive with an air of disdain, as
much as to say. "I do not want it; but as you wish it so very much, I
will allow you to give it to me." Others take benefits languidly, and
leave the giver in doubt as to whether they know that they have received
them; others barely open their lips in thanks, and would be less
offensive if they said nothing. One ought to proportion one's thanks
to the importance of the benefit received, and to use the phrases, "You
have laid more of us than you think under an obligation," for everyone
likes to find his good actions extend further than he expected. "You do
not know what it is that you have done for me; but you ought to know
how much more important it is than you imagine." It is in itself
an expression of gratitude to speak of one's self as overwhelmed by
kindness; or "I shall never be able to thank you sufficiently; but, at
any rate, I will never cease to express everywhere my inability to thank
you."

XXV. By nothing did Furnius gain greater credit with Augustus, and make
it easy for him to obtain anything else for which he might ask, than
by merely saying, when at his request Augustus pardoned his father for
having taken Antonius's side, "One wrong alone I have received at your
hands, Caesar; you have forced me to live and to die owing you a greater
debt of gratitude than I can ever repay." What can prove gratitude
so well as that a man should never be satisfied, should never even
entertain the hope of making any adequate return for what he has
received? By these and similar expressions we must try not to conceal
our gratitude, but to display it as clearly as possible. No words need
be used; if we only feel as we ought, our thankfulness will be shown in
our countenances. He who intends to be grateful, let him think how he
shall repay a kindness while he is receiving it. Chrysippus says that
such a man must watch for his opportunity, and spring forward whenever
it offers, like one who has been entered for a race, and who stands at
the starting-point waiting for the barriers to be thrown open; and even
then he must use great exertions and great swiftness to catch the other,
who has a start of him.

XXVI. We must now consider what is the main cause of ingratitude. It is
caused by excessive self-esteem, by that fault innate in all mortals,
of taking a partial view of ourselves and our own acts, by greed, or by
jealousy.

Let us begin with the first of these. Every one is prejudiced in his own
favour, from which it follows that he believes himself to have earned
all that he receives, regards it as payment for his services, and does
not think that he has been appraised at a valuation sufficiently near
his own. "He has given me this," says he, "but how late, after how much
toil? how much more might I have earned if I had attached myself to So
and so, or to So and so? I did not expect this; I have been treated like
one of the herd; did he really think that I only deserved so little?
why, it would have been less insulting to have passed me over
altogether."

XXVII. The augur Cnaeus Lentulus, who, before his freedmen reduced him
to poverty, was one of the richest of men, who saw himself in possession
of a fortune of four hundred millions--I say advisedly, "saw," for he
never did more than see it--was as barren and contemptible in intellect
as he was in spirit. Though very avaricious, yet he was so poor a
speaker that he found it easier to give men coins than words. This man,
who owed all his prosperity to the late Emperor Augustus, to whom he had
brought only poverty, encumbered with a noble name, when he had risen to
be the chief man in Rome, both in wealth and influence, used sometimes
to complain that Augustus had interrupted his legal studies, observing
that he had not received anything like what he had lost by giving up the
study of eloquence. Yet the truth was that Augustus, besides loading him
with other gifts, had set him free from the necessity of making himself
ridiculous by labouring at a profession in which he never could succeed.

Greed does not permit any one to be grateful; for what is given is never
equal to its base desires, and the more we receive the more we
covet, for avarice is much more eager when it has to deal with great
accumulations of wealth, just as the power of a flame is enormously
greater in proportion to the size of the conflagration from which it
springs. Ambition in like manner suffers no man to rest satisfied with
that measure of public honours, to gain which was once the limit of his
wildest hope; no one is thankful for becoming tribune, but grumbles at
not being at once promoted to the post of praetor; nor is he grateful
for this if the consulship does not follow; and even this does not
satisfy him if he be consul but once. His greed ever stretches itself
out further, and he does not understand the greatness of his success
because he always looks forward to the point at which he aims, and never
back towards that from which he started.

XXVIII. A more violent and distressing vice than any of these is
jealousy which disturbs us by suggesting comparisons. "He gave me this,
but he gave more to that man, and he gave it to him before me;" after
which he sympathises with no one, but pushes his own claims to the
prejudice of every one else. How much more straightforward and modest
is it to make the most of what we have received, knowing that no man is
valued so highly by any one else as by his own, self! "I ought to have
received more, but it was not easy for him to give more; he was obliged
to distribute his liberality among many persons. This is only the
beginning; let me be contented, and by my gratitude encourage him to
show me more favour; he has not done as much as he ought, but he will
do so the more frequently; he certainly preferred that man to me, but he
has preferred me before many others; that man is not my equal either in
virtue or in services, but he has some charm of his own: by complaining
I shall not make myself deserve to receive more, but shall become
unworthy of what I have received. More has been given to those most
villainous men than has been given to me; well, what is that to the
purpose? how seldom does Fortune show judgment in her choice? We
complain every day of the success of bad men; very often the hail passes
over the estates of the greatest villains and strikes down the crops of
the best of men; every man has to take his chance, in friendship as well
as in everything else." There is no benefit so great that spitefulness
can pick no holes in it, none so paltry that it cannot be made more of
by friendly interpretation. We shall never want a subject for complaint
if we look at benefits on their wrong side.

XXIX. See how unjustly the gifts of heaven are valued even by some who
profess themselves philosophers, who complain that we are not as big
as elephants, as swift as stags, as light as birds, as strong as bulls;
that the skins of seals are stronger, of hinds prettier, of bears
thicker, of beavers softer than ours; that dogs excel us in delicacy of
scent, eagles in keenness of sight, crows in length of days, and many
beasts in ease of swimming. And although nature itself does not allow
some qualities, as for example strength and swiftness, to be combined
in the same person, yet they call it a monstrous thing that men are not
compounded of different and inconsistent good qualities, and call the
gods neglectful of us because we have not been given health which even
our vices cannot destroy, or knowledge of the future. They scarcely
refrain from rising to such a pitch of impudence as to hate nature
because we are below the gods, and not on an equality with them.
How much better is it to turn to the contemplation of so many great
blessings, and to be thankful that the gods have been pleased to give us
a place second only to themselves in this most beautiful abode, and that
they have appointed us to be the lords of the earth! Can any one compare
us with the animals over whom we rule? Nothing has been denied us except
what could not have been granted. In like manner, thou that takest an
unfair view of the lot of mankind, think what blessings our Father has
bestowed upon us, how far more powerful animals than ourselves we have
broken to harness, how we catch those which are far swifter, how
nothing that has life is placed beyond the reach of our weapons! We have
received so many excellencies, so many crafts, above all our mind, which
can pierce at once whatever it is directed against, which is swifter
than the stars in their courses, for it arrives before them at the place
which they will reach after many ages; and besides this, so many fruits
of the earth, so much treasure, such masses of various things piled one
upon another. You may go through the whole order of nature, and since
you find no entire creature which you would prefer to be, you may choose
from each, the special qualities which you would like to be given to
yourself; then, if you rightly appreciate the partiality of nature for
you, you cannot but confess yourself to be her spoiled child. So it is;
the immortal gods have unto this day always held us most dear, and
have bestowed upon us the greatest possible honour, a place nearest to
themselves. We have indeed received great things, yet not too great.

XXX. I have thought it necessary, my friend Liberalis, to state these
facts, both because when speaking of small benefits one ought to make
some mention of the greatest, and because also this shameless and
hateful vice (of ingratitude), starting with these, transfers itself
from them to all the rest. If a man scorn these, the greatest of all
benefits, to whom will he feel gratitude, what gift will he regard as
valuable or deserving to be returned: to whom will he be grateful for
his safety or his life, if he denies that he has received from the gods
that existence which he begs from them daily? He, therefore, who teaches
men to be grateful, pleads the cause not only of men, but even of the
gods, for though they, being placed above all desires, cannot be in want
of anything, yet we can nevertheless offer them our gratitude.

No one is justified in seeking an excuse for ingratitude in his own
weakness or poverty, or in saying, "What am I to do, and how? When can I
repay my debt to my superiors the lords of heaven and earth?" Avaricious
as you are, it is easy for you to give them thanks, without expense;
lazy though you be, you can do it without labour. At the same instant at
which you received your debt towards them, if you wish to repay it,
you have done as much as any one can do, for he returns a benefit who
receives it with good will.

XXXI. This paradox of the Stoic philosophy, that he returns a benefit
who receives it with good will, is, in my opinion, either far from
admirable, or else it is incredible. For if we look at everything merely
from the point of view of our intentions, every man has done as much
as he chose to do; and since filial piety, good faith, justice, and in
short every virtue is complete within itself, a man may be grateful in
intention even though he may not be able to lift a hand to prove his
gratitude. Whenever a man obtains what he aimed at, he receives the
fruit of his labour. When a man bestows a benefit, at what does he aim?
clearly to be of service and afford pleasure to him upon whom he bestows
it. If he does what he wishes, if his purpose reaches me and fills us
each with joy, he has gained his object. He does not wish anything to be
given to him in return, or else it becomes an exchange of commodities,
not a bestowal of benefits. A man steers well who reaches the port for
which he started: a dart hurled by a steady hand performs its duty if it
hits the mark; one who bestows a benefit wishes it to be received with
gratitude; he gets what he wanted if it be well received. "But," you
say, "he hoped for some profit also." Then it was not a benefit, the
property of which is to think nothing of any repayment. I receive what
was given me in the same spirit in which it was given: then I have
repaid it. If this be not true, then this best of deeds has this worst
of conditions attached to it, that it depends entirely upon fortune
whether I am grateful or not, for if my fortune is adverse I can make no
repayment. The intention is enough. What then? am I not to do whatever
I may be able to repay it, and ought I not ever to be on the watch for
an opportunity of filling the bosom [Footnote: Sinus, the fold of the
toga over the breast, used as a pocket by the Romans. The great French
actor Talma, when dressed for the first time in correct classical
costume, indignantly asked where he was to put his snuff-box.] of him
from whom I have received any kindness? True; but a benefit is in
an evil plight if we cannot be grateful for it even when we are
empty-handed.

XXXII. "A man," it is argued, "who has received a benefit, however
gratefully he may have received it, has not yet accomplished all his
duty, for there remains the part of repayment; just as in playing at
ball it is something to catch the ball cleverly and carefully, but a man
is not called a good player unless he can handily and quickly send
back the ball which he has caught." This analogy is imperfect; and why?
Because to do this creditably depends upon the movement and activity of
the body, and not upon the mind: and an act of which we judge entirely
by the eye, ought to be all clearly displayed. But if a man caught
the ball as he ought to do, I should not call him a bad player for not
returning it, if his delay in returning it was not caused by his own
fault. "Yet," say you, "although the player is not wanting in skill,
because he did one part of his duty, and was able to do the other part,
yet in such a case the game is imperfect, for its perfection lies in
sending the ball backwards and forwards." I am unwilling to expose this
fallacy further; let us think that it is the game, not the player that
is imperfect: so likewise in the subject which we are discussing, the
thing which is given lacks something, because another equal thing ought
to be returned for it, but the mind of the giver lacks nothing, because
it has found another mind equal to itself, and as far as intentions go,
has effected what it wished.

XXXIII. A man bestows a benefit upon me: I receive it just as he wished
it to be received: then he gets at once what he wanted, and the only
thing which he wanted, and therefore I have proved myself grateful.
After this it remains for me to enjoy my own resources, with the
addition of an advantage conferred upon me by one whom I have obliged;
this advantage is not the remainder of an imperfect service, but an
addition to a perfected service. [Footnote: Nothing is wanted to make
a benefit, conferred from good motives, perfect: if it is returned, the
gratitude is to be counted as net profit.] For example, Phidias makes a
statue. Now the product of an art is one thing, and that of a trade is
another. It is the business of the art to make the thing which he wished
to make, and that of the trade to make it with a profit. Phidias has
completed his work, even though he does not sell it. The product,
therefore, of his work is threefold: there is the consciousness of
having made it, which he receives when his work is completed; there is
the fame which he receives; and thirdly, the advantage which he obtains
by it, in influence, or by selling it, or otherwise. In like manner the
first fruit of a benefit is the consciousness of it, which we feel when
we have bestowed it upon the person whom we chose; secondly and thirdly
there is the credit which we gain by doing so, and there are those
things which we may receive in exchange for it. So when a benefit has
been graciously received, the giver has already received gratitude, but
has not yet received recompense for it: that which we owe in return is
therefore something apart from the benefit itself, for we have paid for
the benefit itself when we accept it in a grateful spirit.

XXXIV. "What," say you, "can a man repay a benefit, though he does
nothing?" He has taken the first step, he has offered you a good thing
with good feeling, and, which is the characteristic of friendship, has
placed you both on the same footing. In the next place, a benefit is not
repaid in the same manner as a loan: you have no reason for expecting
me to offer you any payment; the account between us depends upon the
feelings alone. What I say will not appear difficult, although it may
not at first accord with your ideas, if you will do me the favour to
remember that there are more things than there are words to express
them. There is an enormous mass of things without names, which we do not
speak of under distinctive names of their own, but by the names of other
things transferred to them. We speak of our own foot, of the foot of a
couch, of a sail, or of a poem; we apply the word 'dog' to a hound, a
fish, and a star. Because we have not enough words to assign a separate
name to each thing, we borrow a name whenever we want one. Bravery is
the virtue which rightly despises danger, or the science of repelling,
sustaining, or inviting dangers: yet we call a brave man a gladiator,
and we use the same word for a good-for-nothing slave, who is led by
rashness to defy death. Economy is the science of avoiding unnecessary
expenditure, or the art of using one's income with moderation: yet we
call a man of mean and narrow mind, most economical, although there is
an immeasurable distance between moderation and meanness. These things
are naturally distinct, yet the poverty of our language compels us to
call both these men economical, just as he who views slight accidents
with rational contempt, and he who without reason runs into danger are
alike called brave. Thus a benefit is both a beneficent action, and also
is that which is bestowed by that action, such as money, a house, an
office in the state: there is but one name for them both, though their
force and power are widely different.

XXXV. Wherefore, give me your attention, and you will soon perceive that
I say nothing to which you can object. That benefit which consists of
the action is repaid when we receive it graciously; that other, which
consists of something material, we have not then repaid, but we hope to
do so. The debt of goodwill has been discharged by a return of goodwill;
the material debt demands a material return. Thus, although we may
declare that he who has received a benefit with good-will has returned
the favour, yet we counsel him to return to the giver something of the
same kind as that which he has received. Some part of what we have said
departs from the conventional line of thought, and then rejoins it by
another path. We declare that a wise man cannot receive an injury; yet,
if a man hits him with his fist, that man will be found guilty of doing
him an injury. We declare that a fool can possess nothing; yet if a man
stole anything from a fool, we should find that man guilty of theft. We
declare that all men are mad, yet we do not dose all men with hellebore;
but we put into the hands of these very persons, whom we call madmen,
both the right of voting and of pronouncing judgment. Similarly, we say
that a man who has received a benefit with good-will has returned the
favour, yet we leave him in debt nevertheless--bound to repay it even
though he has repaid it. This is not to disown benefits, but is an
encouragement to us neither to fear to receive benefits, nor to faint
under the too great burden of them. "Good things have been given to me;
I have been preserved from starving; I have been saved from the misery
of abject poverty; my life, and what is dearer than life, my liberty,
has been preserved. How shall I be able to repay these favours? When
will the day come upon which I can prove my gratitude to him?" When a
man speaks thus, the day has already come. Receive a benefit, embrace
it, rejoice, not that you have received it, but that you have to owe it
and return it; then you will never be in peril of the great sin of being
rendered ungrateful by mischance. I will not enumerate any difficulties
to you, lest you should despair, and faint at the prospect of a long and
laborious servitude. I do not refer you to the future; do it with what
means you have at hand. You never will be grateful unless you are so
straightway. What, then, will you do? You need not take up arms, yet
perhaps you may have to do so; you need not cross the seas, yet it may
be that you will pay your debt, even when the wind threatens to blow a
gale. Do you wish to return the benefit? Then receive it graciously;
you have then returned the favour--not, indeed, so that you can think
yourself to have repaid it, but so that you can owe it with a quieter
conscience.




BOOK III.

I.


Not to return gratitude for benefits, my AEbutius Liberalis, is
both base in itself, and is thought base by all men; wherefore even
ungrateful men complain of ingratitude, and yet what all condemn is at
the same time rooted in all; and so far do men sometimes run into the
other extreme that some of them become our bitterest enemies, not merely
after receiving benefits from us, but because they have received them.
I cannot deny that some do this out of sheer badness of nature; but
more do so because lapse of time destroys their remembrance, for time
gradually effaces what they felt vividly at the moment. I remember
having had an argument with you about this class of persons, whom you
wished to call forgetful rather than ungrateful, as if that which caused
a man to be ungrateful was any excuse for his being so, or as if the
fact of this happening to a man prevented his being ungrateful, when we
know that it only happens to ungrateful men. There are many classes of
the ungrateful, as there are of thieves or of homicides, who all have
the same fault, though there is a great variety in its various forms.
The man is ungrateful who denies that he has received a benefit; who
pretends that he has not received it; who does not return it. The most
ungrateful man of all is he who forgets it. The others, though they do
not repay it, yet feel their debt, and possess some traces of worth,
though obstructed by their bad conscience. They may by some means and at
some time be brought to show their gratitude, if, for instance, they
be pricked by shame, if they conceive some noble ambition such as
occasionally rises even in the breasts of the wicked, if some easy
opportunity of doing so offers; but the man from whom all recollection
of the benefit has passed away can never become grateful. Which of the
two do you call the worse--he who is ungrateful for kindness, or he who
does not even remember it? The eyes which fear to look at the light are
diseased, but those which cannot see it are blind. It is filial impiety
not to love one's parents, but not to recognise them is madness.

II. Who is so ungrateful as he who has so completely laid aside and cast
away that which ought to be in the forefront of his mind and ever
before him, that he knows it not? It is clear that if forgetfulness of
a benefit steals over a man, he cannot have often thought about repaying
it.

In short, repayment requires gratitude, time, opportunity, and the help
of fortune; whereas, he who remembers a benefit is grateful for it, and
that too without expenditure. Since gratitude demands neither labour,
wealth, nor good fortune, he who fails to render it has no excuse behind
which to shelter himself; for he who places a benefit so far away that
it is out of his sight, never could have meant to be grateful for it.
Just as those tools which are kept in use, and are daily touched by the
hand, are never in danger of growing rusty, while those which are not
brought before our eyes, and lie as if superfluous, not being required
for common use, collect dirt by the mere lapse of time, so likewise that
which our thoughts frequently turn over and renew never passes from our
memory, which only loses those things to which it seldom directs its
eyes.

III. Besides this, there are other causes which at times erase the
greatest services from our minds. The first and most powerful of these
is that, being always intent upon new objects of desire, we think, not
of what we have, but of what we are striving to obtain. Those whose mind
is fixed entirely upon what they hope to gain, regard with contempt all
that is their own already. It follows that since men's eagerness for
something new makes them undervalue whatever they have received, they
do not esteem those from whom they have received it. As long as we are
satisfied with the position we have gained, we love our benefactor, we
look up to him, and declare that we owe our position entirely to him;
then we begin to entertain other aspirations, and hurry forward to
attain them after the manner of human beings, who when they have gained
much always covet more; straightway all that we used to regard as
benefits slip from our memory, and we no longer consider the advantages
which we enjoy over others, but only the insolent prosperity of those
who have outstripped us. Now no one can at the same time be both jealous
and grateful, because those who are jealous are querulous and sad, while
the grateful are joyous. In the next place, since none of us think of
any time but the present, and but few turn back their thoughts to the
past, it results that we forget our teachers, and all the benefits
which we have obtained from them, because we have altogether left
our childhood behind us: thus, all that was done for us in our youth
perishes unremembered, because our youth itself is never reviewed. What
has been is regarded by every one, not only as past, but as gone; and
for the same reason, our memory is weak for what is about to happen in
the future.

IV. Here I must do Epicurus the justice to say that he constantly
complains of our ingratitude for past benefits, because we cannot bring
back again, or count among our present pleasures, those good things
which we have received long ago, although no pleasures can be more
undeniable than those which cannot be taken from us. Present good is not
yet altogether complete, some mischance may interrupt it; the future is
in suspense, and uncertain; but what is past is laid up in safety. How
can any man feel gratitude for benefits, if he skips through his
whole life entirely engrossed with the present and the future? It is
remembrance that mates men grateful; and the more men hope, the less
they remember.

V. In the same way, my Liberalis, as some things remain in our memory as
soon as they are learned, while to know others it is not enough to have
learned them, for our knowledge slips away from us unless it be kept
up--I allude to geometry and astronomy, and such other sciences as are
Hard to remember because of their intricacy--so the greatness of some
benefits prevents their being forgotten, while others, individually
less, though many more in number, and bestowed at different times, pass
from our minds, because, as I have stated above, we do not constantly
think about them, and do not willingly recognize how much we owe to each
of our benefactors. Listen to the words of those who ask for favours.
There is not one of them who does not declare that his remembrance will
be eternal, who does not vow himself your devoted servant and slave, or
find, if he can, some even greater expression of humility with which to
pledge himself. After a brief space of time these same men avoid
their former expressions, thinking them abject, and scarcely befitting
free-born men; afterwards they arrive at the same point to which, as
I suppose, the worst and most ungrateful of men come--that is, they
forget. So little does forgetfulness excuse ingratitude, that even the
remembrance of a benefit may leave us ungrateful.

VI. The question has been raised, whether this most odious vice ought to
go unpunished; and whether the law commonly made use of in the schools,
by which we can proceed against a man for ingratitude, ought to be
adopted by the State also, since all men agree that it is just. "Why
not?" you may say, "seeing that even cities cast in each other's teeth
the services which they have performed to one another, and demand from
the children some return for benefits conferred upon their fathers?" On
the other hand, our ancestors, who were most admirable men, made demands
upon their enemies alone, and both gave and lost their benefits with
magnanimity. With the exception of Macedonia, no nation has ever
established an action at law for ingratitude. And this is a strong
argument against its being established, because all agree in blaming
crime; and homicide, poisoning, parricide, and sacrilege are visited
with different penalties in different countries, but everywhere with
some penalty; whereas this most common vice is nowhere punished, though
it is everywhere blamed. We do not acquit it; but as it would be most
difficult to reckon accurately the penalty for so varying a matter, we
condemn it only to be hated, and place it upon the list of those crimes
which we refer for judgment to the gods.

VII. Many arguments occur to me which prove that this vice ought not
to come under the action of the law. First of all, the best part of a
benefit is lost if the benefit can be sued for at law, as in the case of
a loan, or of letting and hiring. Indeed, the finest part of a benefit
is that we have given it without considering whether we shall lose it or
not, that we have left all this to the free choice of him who receives
it: if I call him before a judge, it begins to be not a benefit, but a
loan. Next, though it is a most honourable thing to show gratitude, it
ceases to be honourable if it be forced, for in that case no one will
praise a grateful man any more than he praises him who restores the
money which was deposited in his keeping, or who pays what he borrowed
without the intervention of a judge. We should therefore spoil the two
finest things in human life,--a grateful man and a beneficent man; for
what is there admirable in one who does not give but merely lends a
benefit, or in one who repays it, not because he wishes, but because he
is forced to do so? There is no credit in being grateful, unless it
is safe to be ungrateful. Besides this, all the courts would hardly be
enough for the action of this one law. Who would not plead under it? Who
would not be pleaded against? for every one exalts his own merits,
every one magnifies even the smallest matters which he has bestowed upon
another. Besides this, those things which form the subject of a judicial
inquiry can be distinctly defined, and cannot afford unlimited licence
to the judge; wherefore a good cause is in a better position if it
before a judge than before an arbitrator, because the words of the law
tie down a judge and define certain limits beyond which he may not pass,
whereas the conscience of an arbitrator is free and not fettered by
any rules, so that he can either give or take away, and can arrange his
decision, not according to the precepts of law and justice, but just
as his own kindly feeling or compassion may prompt him. An action for
ingratitude would not bind a judge, but would place him in the position
of an autocrat. It cannot be known what or how great a benefit is; all
that would be really important would be, how indulgently the judge might
interpret it. No law defines an ungrateful person, often, indeed, one
who repays what he has received is ungrateful, and one who has not
returned it is grateful. Even an unpractised judge can give his vote
upon some matters; for instance, when the thing to be determined is
whether something has or has not been done, when a dispute is terminated
by the parties giving written bonds, or when the casting up of accounts
decides between the disputants. When, however, motives have to be
guessed at, when matters upon which wisdom alone can decide, are brought
into court, they cannot be tried by a judge taken at random from the
list of "select judges," [Footnote: See Smith's "Dict. of Antiq.," s.
v] whom property and the inheritance of an equestrian fortune [Footnote:
400,000 sesterces] has placed upon the roll.

VIII. Ingratitude, therefore, is not only matter unfit to be brought
into court, but no judge could be found fit to try it; and this you
will not be surprised at, if you examine the difficulties of any one who
should attempt to prosecute a man upon such a charge. One man may
have given a large sum of money, but he is rich and would not feel it;
another may have given it at the cost of his entire inheritance. The
sum given is the same in each case, but the benefit conferred is not the
same. Add another instance: suppose that to redeem a debtor from slavery
one man paid money from his own private means, while another man paid
the same sum, but had to borrow it or beg for it, and allow himself to
be laid under a great obligation to some one; would you rank the man who
so easily bestowed his benefit on an equality with him who was obliged
to receive a benefit himself before he could bestow it? Some benefits
are great, not because of their amount, but because of the time at which
they are bestowed; it is a benefit to give an estate whose fertility
can bring down the price of corn, and it is a benefit to give a loaf of
bread in time of famine; it is a benefit to give provinces through which
flow vast navigable rivers, and it is a benefit, when men are parched
with thirst, and can scarcely draw breath through their dry throats,
to show them a spring of water. Who will compare these cases with one
another, or weigh one against the other? It is hard to give a decision
when it is not the thing given, but its meaning, which has to be
considered; though what is given is the same, yet if it be given
under different circumstances it has a different value. A man may have
bestowed a benefit upon me, but unwillingly; he may have complained of
having given it; he may have looked at me with greater haughtiness than
he was wont to do; he may have been so slow in giving it, that he would
have done me a greater service if he had promptly refused it. How could
a judge estimate the value of these things, when words, hesitation, or
looks can destroy all their claim to gratitude?

IX. What, again, could he do, seeing that some things are called
benefits because they are unduly coveted, whilst others are not benefits
at all, according to this common valuation, yet are of even greater
value, though not so showy? You call it a benefit to cause a man to be
adopted as a member of a powerful city, to get him enrolled among the
knights, or to defend one who is being tried for his life: what do you
say of him who gives useful advice? of him who holds you back when you
would rush into crime? of him who strikes the sword from the hands of
the suicide? of him who by his power of consolation brings back to the
duties of life one who was plunged in grief, and eager to follow those
whom he had lost? of him who sits at the bedside of the sick man, and
who, when health and recovery depend upon seizing the right moment,
administers food in due season, stimulates the failing veins with wine,
or calls in the physician to the dying man? Who can estimate the value
of such services as these? who can bid us weigh dissimilar benefits one
with another? "I gave you a house," says one. Yes, but I forewarned
you that your own house would come down upon your head. "I gave you an
estate," says he. True, but I gave a plank to you when shipwrecked. "I
fought for you and received wounds for you," says another. But I saved
your life by keeping silence. Since a benefit is both given and returned
differently by different people, it is hard to make them balance.

X. Besides this, no day is appointed for repayment of a benefit, as
there is for borrowed money; consequently he who has not yet repaid a
benefit may do so hereafter: for tell me, pray, within what time a man
is to be declared ungrateful? The greatest benefits cannot be proved by
evidence; they often lurk in the silent consciousness of two men
only; are we to introduce the rule of not bestowing benefits without
witnesses? Next, what punishment are we to appoint for the ungrateful?
is there to be one only for all, though the benefits which they have
received are different? or should the punishment be varying, greater
or less according to the benefit which each has received? Are our
valuations to be restricted to pecuniary fines? what are we to do,
seeing that in some cases the benefit conferred is life, and things
dearer than life? What punishment is to be assigned to ingratitude for
these? One less than the benefit? That would be unjust. One equal to it;
death? What could be more inhuman than to cause benefits to result in
cruelty?

XI. It may be argued, "Parents have certain privileges: these are
regarded as exempt from the action of ordinary rules, and so also ought
to be the case with other beneficent persons." Nay; mankind has
assigned a peculiar sanctity to the position of parents, because it
was advantageous that children should be reared, and people had to be
tempted into undergoing the toil of doing so, because the issue of their
experiment was doubtful. One cannot say to them, as one does to others
who bestow benefits, "Choose the man to whom you give: you must only
blame yourself if you are deceived; help the deserving." In rearing
children nothing depends upon the judgment of those who rear them; it is
a matter of hope: in order, therefore, that people may be more willing
to embark upon this lottery, it was right that they should be given a
certain authority; and since it is useful for youth to be governed, we
have placed their parents in the position of domestic magistrates, under
whose guardianship their lives may be ruled. Moreover, the position of
parents differs from that of other benefactors, for their having given
formerly to their children does not stand in the way of their giving
now and hereafter; and also, there is no fear of their falsely asserting
that they have given: with others one has to inquire not only whether
they have received, but whether they have given; but the good deeds of
parents are placed beyond doubt. In the next place, one benefit bestowed
by parents is the same for all, and might be counted once for all;
while the others which they bestow are of various kinds, unlike one to
another, differing from one another by the widest possible intervals;
they can therefore come under no regular rule, since it would be more
just to leave them all unrewarded than to give the same reward to all.

XII. Some benefits cost much to the givers, some are of much value
to the receivers but cost the givers nothing. Some are bestowed upon
friends, others on strangers: now although that which is given be the
same, yet it becomes more when it is given to one with whom you
are beginning to be acquainted through the benefits which you have
previously conferred upon him. One man may give us help, another
distinctions, a third consolation. You may find one who thinks nothing
pleasanter or more important than to have some one to save him from
distress; you may again find one who would rather be helped to great
place than to security; while some consider themselves more indebted to
those who save their lives than to those who save their honour. Each
of these services will be held more or less important, according as the
disposition of our judge inclines to one or the other of them. Besides
this, I choose my creditors for myself, whereas I often receive benefits
from those from whom I would not, and sometimes I am laid under an
obligation without my knowledge. What will you do in such a case? When
a man has received a benefit unknown to himself, and which, had he known
of it, he would have refused to receive, will you call him ungrateful if
he does not repay it, however he may have received it? Suppose that some
one has bestowed a benefit upon me, and that the same man has afterwards
done me some wrong; am I to be bound by his one bounty to endure with
patience any wrong that he may do me, or will it be the same as if I had
repaid it, because he himself has by the subsequent wrong cancelled his
own benefit? How, in that case, would you decide which was the greater;
the present which the man has received, or the injury which has
been done him? Time would fail me if I attempted to discuss all the
difficulties which would arise.

XIII. It may be argued that "we render men less willing to confer
benefits by not supporting the claim of those which have been bestowed
to meet with gratitude, and by not punishing those who repudiate them."
But you would find, on the other hand, that men would be far less
willing to receive benefits, if by so doing they were likely to incur
the danger of having to plead their cause in court, and having more
difficulty in proving their integrity. This legislation would also
render us less willing to give: for no one is willing to give to those
who are unwilling to receive, but one who is urged to acts of kindness
by his own good nature and by the beauty of charity, will give all the
more freely to those who need make no return unless they choose. It
impairs the credit of doing a service, if in doing it we are carefully
protected from loss.

XIV. "Benefits, then, will be fewer, but more genuine: well, what harm
is there in restricting people from giving recklessly?" Even those who
would have no legislation upon the subject follow this rule, that we
ought to be somewhat careful in giving, and in choosing those upon whom
we bestow favours. Reflect over and over again to whom you are giving:
you will have no remedy at law, no means of enforcing repayment. You are
mistaken if you suppose that the judge will assist you: no law will
make full restitution to you, you must look only to the honour of the
receiver. Thus only can benefits retain their influence, and thus only
are they admirable: you dishonour them if you make them the grounds of
litigation, "Pay what you owe" is a most just proverb; and one which
carries with it the sanction of all nations; but in dealing with
benefits it is most shameful. "Pay!" How is a man to pay who owes his
life, his position, his safety, or his reason to another? None of the
greatest benefits can be repaid. "Yet," it is said, "you ought to give
in return for them something of equal value." This is just what I have
been saying, that the grandeur of the act is ruined if we make our
benefits commercial transactions. We ought hot to encourage ourselves in
avarice, in discontent, or in quarrels; the human mind is prone enough
to these by nature. As far as we are able, let us check it, and cut off
the opportunities for which it seeks.

XV. Would that we could indeed persuade men to receive back money which
they have lent from those debtors only who are willing to pay! would
that no agreement ever bound the buyer to the seller, and that their
interests were not protected by sealed covenants and agreements, but
rather by honour and a sense of justice! However, men prefer what
is needful to what is truly best, and choose rather to force their
creditors to keep faith with them than to trust that they will do so.
Witnesses are called on both sides; the one, by calling in brokers,
makes several names appear in his accounts as his debtors instead of
one; the other is not content with the legal forms of question and
answer unless he holds the other party by the hand. What a shameful
admission of the dishonesty and wickedness of mankind! men trust more to
our signet-rings than to our intentions. For what are these respectable
men summoned? for what do they impress their seals? it is in order that
the borrower may not deny that he has received what he has received.
You regard these men, I suppose, as above bribes, as maintainers of the
truth: well, these very men will not be entrusted with money except on
the same terms. Would it not, then, be more honourable to be deceived
by some than to suspect all men of dishonesty? To fill up the measure
of avarice one thing only is lacking, that we should bestow no benefit
without a surety. To help, to be of service, is the part of a generous
and noble mind; he who gives acts like a god, he who demands repayment
acts like a money-lender. Why then, by trying to protect the rights of
the former class, should we reduce them to the level of the basest of
mankind?

XVI. "More men," our opponent argues, "will be ungrateful, if no legal
remedy exists against ingratitude." Nay, fewer, because then benefits
will be bestowed with more discrimination, In the next place, it is not
advisable that it should be publicly known how many ungrateful men there
are: for the number of sinners will do away with the disgrace of
the sin, and a reproach which applies to all men will cease to be
dishonourable. Is any woman ashamed of being divorced, now that some
noble ladies reckon the years of their lives, not by the number of the
consuls, but by that of their husbands, now that they leave their
homes in order to marry others, and marry only in order to be divorced?
Divorce was only dreaded as long as it was unusual; now that no gazette
appears without it, women learn to do what they hear so much about. Can
any one feel ashamed of adultery, now that things have come to such
a pass that no woman keeps a husband at all unless it be to pique her
lover? Chastity merely implies ugliness. Where will you find any woman
so abject, so repulsive, as to be satisfied with a single pair of
lovers, without having a different one for each hour of the day; nor is
the day long enough for all of them, unless she has taken her airing
in the grounds of one, and passes the night with another. A woman is
frumpish and old-fashioned if she does not know that "adultery with one
paramour is nick-named marriage." Just as all shame at these vices has
disappeared since the vice itself became so widely spread, so if you
made the ungrateful begin to count their own numbers, you would both
make them more numerous, and enable them to be ungrateful with greater
impunity.

XVII. "What then? shall the ungrateful man go unpunished?" What then,
I answer, shall we punish the undutiful, the malicious, the avaricious,
the headstrong, and the cruel? Do you imagine that those things which
are loathed are not punished, or do you suppose that any punishment is
greater than the hate of all men? It is a punishment not to dare receive
a benefit from anyone, not to dare to bestow one, to be, or to fancy
that you are a mark for all men's eyes, and to lose all appreciation of
so excellent and pleasant a matter. Do you call a man unhappy who has
lost his sight, or whose hearing has been impaired by disease, and do
you not call him wretched who has lost the power of feeling benefits? He
fears the gods, the witnesses of all ingratitude; he is tortured by
the thought of the benefit which he has misapplied, and, in fine, he is
sufficiently punished by this great penalty, that, as I said before, he
cannot enjoy the fruits of this most delightful act. On the other hand,
he who takes pleasure in receiving a benefit, enjoys an unvarying and
continuous happiness, which he derives from consideration, not of
the thing given, but of the intention of the giver. A benefit gives
perpetual joy to a grateful man, but pleases an ungrateful one only for
a moment. Can the lives of such men be compared, seeing that the one
is sad and gloomy--as it is natural that a denier of his debts and a
defrauder should be, a man who does not give his parents, his nurses, or
his teachers the honour which is their due--while the other is joyous,
cheerful, on the watch for an opportunity of proving his gratitude, and
gaining much pleasure from this frame of mind itself? Such a man has no
wish to become bankrupt, but only to make the fullest and most copious
return for benefits, and that not only to parents and friends, but also
to more humble persons; for even if he receives a benefit from his
own slave, he does not consider from whom he receives it, but what he
receives.

XVIII. It has, however, been doubted by Hecaton and some other writers,
whether a slave can bestow a benefit upon his master. Some distinguish
between benefits, duties, and services, calling those things benefits
which are bestowed by a stranger--that is, by one who could discontinue
them without blame--while duties are performed by our children, our
wives, and those whom relationship prompts and orders to afford us help;
and, thirdly, services are performed by slaves, whose position is such
that nothing which they do for their master can give them any claim upon
him....

Besides this, he who affirms that a slave does not sometimes confer
a benefit upon his master is ignorant of the rights of man; for the
question is, not what the station in life of the giver may be, but what
his intentions are. The path of virtue is closed to no one, it lies open
to all; it admits and invites all, whether they be free-born men, slaves
or freed-men, kings or exiles; it requires no qualifications of family
or of property, it is satisfied with a mere man. What, indeed, should we
have to trust to for defence against sudden misfortunes, what could--a
noble mind promise to itself to keep unshaken, if virtue could be lost
together with prosperity? If a slave cannot confer a benefit upon his
master, then no subject can confer a benefit upon his king, and no
soldier upon his general; for so long as the man is subject to supreme
authority, the form of authority can make no difference. If main force,
or the fear of death and torture, can prevent a slave from gaining any
title to his master's gratitude, they will also prevent the subjects of
a king, or the soldiers of a general from doing so, for the same things
may happen to either of these classes of men, though under different
names.

Yet men do bestow benefits upon their kings and their generals;
therefore slaves can bestow benefits upon their masters. A slave can be
just, brave, magnanimous; he can therefore bestow a benefit, for this
is also the part of a virtuous man. So true is it that slaves can bestow
benefits upon their masters, that the masters have often owed their
lives to them.

XIX. There is no doubt that a slave can bestow a benefit upon anyone;
why, then, not upon his master? "Because," it is argued, "he cannot
become his master's creditor if he gives him money. If this be not so,
he daily lays his master under an obligation to him; he attends him when
on a journey, he nurses him when sick, he works most laboriously at the
cultivation of his estate; yet all these, which would be called benefits
if done for us by anyone else, are merely called service when done by
a slave. A benefit is that which some one bestows who has the option of
withholding it:--now a slave has no power to refuse, so that he does
not afford us his help, but obeys our orders, and cannot boast of having
done what he could not leave undone." Even under these conditions I
shall win the day, and will place a slave in such positions, that for
many purposes he will be free; in the meanwhile, tell me, if I give you
an instance of a slave fighting for his master's safety without regard
to himself, pierced through with wounds, yet spending the last drops of
his blood, and gaining time for his master to escape by the sacrifice of
his life, will you say that this man did not bestow a benefit upon his
master because he was a slave? If I give an instance of one who could
not be bribed to betray his master's secrets by any of the offers of
a tyrant, who was not terrified by any threats, nor overpowered by any
tortures, but who, as far as he was able, placed his questioners upon a
wrong scent, and, paid for his loyalty with his life; will you say
that this man did not confer a benefit upon his master because he was a
slave? Consider, rather, whether an example of virtue in a slave be not
all the greater because it is rarer than in free men, and whether it be
not all the more gratifying that, although to be commanded is odious,
and all submission to authority is irksome, yet in some particular cases
love for a master has been more powerful than men's general dislike to
servitude. A benefit does not, therefore, cease to be a benefit because
it is bestowed by a slave, but is all the greater on that account,
because not even slavery could restrain him from bestowing it.

XX. It is a mistake to imagine that slavery pervades a man's whole
being; the better part of him is exempt from it: the body indeed is
subjected and in the power of a master, but the mind is independent, and
indeed is so free and wild, that it cannot be restrained even by this
prison of the body, wherein it is confined, from following its own
impulses, dealing with gigantic designs, and soaring into the infinite,
accompanied by all the host of heaven. It is, therefore, only the body
which misfortune hands over to a master, and which he buys and sells;
this inward part cannot be transferred as a chattel. Whatever comes
from this, is free; indeed, we are not allowed to order all things to be
done, nor are slaves compelled to obey us in all things; they will not
carry out treasonable orders, or lend their hands to an act of crime.

XXI. There are some things which the law neither enjoins nor forbids; it
is in these that a slave finds the means of bestowing benefits. As long
as we only receive what is generally demanded from a slave, that is
mere service; when more is given than a slave need afford us, it is a
benefit; as soon as what he does begins to partake of the affection of
a friend, it can no longer be called service. There are certain things
with which a master is bound to provide his slave, such as food and
clothing; no one calls this a benefit; but supposing that he indulges
his slave, educates him above his station, teaches him arts which
free-born men learn, that is a benefit. The converse is true in the case
of the slave; anything which goes beyond the rules of a slave's duty,
which is done of his own free will, and not in obedience to orders, is a
benefit, provided it be of sufficient importance to be called by such a
name if bestowed by any other person.

XXII. It has pleased Chrysippus to define a slave as "a hireling for
life." Just as a hireling bestows a benefit when he does more than he
engaged himself to do, so when a slave's love for his master raises him
above his condition and urges him to do something noble--something which
would be a credit even to men more fortunate by birth--he surpasses the
hopes of his master, and is a benefit found in the house. Do you think
it is just that we should be angry with our slaves when they do less
than their duty, and that we should not be grateful to them when they do
more? Do you wish to know when their service is not a benefit? When the
question can be asked, "What if he had refused to do it?" When he does
that which he might have refused to do, we must praise his good will.
Benefits and wrongs are opposites; a slave can bestow a benefit upon his
master, if he can receive a wrong from his master. Now an official has
been appointed to hear complaints of the wrongs done by masters to their
slaves, whose duty it is to restrain cruelty and lust, or avarice in
providing them with the necessaries of life. What follows, then? Is it
the master who receives a benefit from his slave? nay, rather, it is
one man who receives it from another. Lastly, he did all that lay in his
power; he bestowed a benefit upon his master; it lies in your power to
receive or not to receive it from a slave. Yet who is so exalted, that
fortune may not make him need the aid even of the lowliest?

XXIII. I shall now quote a number of instances of benefits, not all
alike, some even contradictory. Some slaves have given their master
life, some death; have saved him when perishing, or, as if that were
not enough, have saved him by their own death; others have helped
their master to die, some have saved his life by stratagem. Claudius
Quadrigarius tells us in the eighteenth book of his "Annals," that
when Grumentum was being besieged, and had been reduced to the greatest
straits, two slaves deserted to the enemy, and did valuable service.
Afterwards, when the city was taken, and the victors were rushing wildly
in every direction, they ran before every one else along the streets,
which they well knew, to the house in which they had been slaves, and
drove their mistress before them; when they were asked who she might
be, they answered that she was their mistress, and a most cruel one, and
that they were leading her away for punishment. They led her outside the
walls, and concealed her with the greatest care until the fighting
was over; then, as the soldiery, satisfied with the sack of the city,
quickly resumed the manners of Romans, they also returned to their
own countrymen, and themselves restored their mistress to them. She
manumitted each of them on the spot, and was not ashamed to receive her
life from men over whom she had held the power of life and death. She
might, indeed, especially congratulate herself upon this; for had
she been saved otherwise, she would merely have received a common and
hackneyed piece of kindness, whereas, by being saved as she was, she
became a glorious legend, and an example to two cities. In the confusion
of the captured city, when every one was thinking only of his own
safety, all deserted her except these deserters; but they, that they
might prove what had been their intentions in effecting that desertion,
deserted again from the victors to the captive, wearing the masks of
unnatural murderers.

They thought--and this was the greatest part of the service which they
rendered--they were content to seem to have murdered their mistress, if
thereby their mistress might be saved from murder. Believe me, it is
the mark of no slavish soul to purchase a noble deed by the semblance of
crime.

When Vettius, the praetor of the Marsi, was being led into the presence
of the Roman general, his slave snatched a sword from the soldier who
was dragging him along, and first slew his master. Then he said, "It is
now time for me to look to myself; I have already set my master free,"
and with these words transfixed himself with one blow. Can you tell me
of anyone who saved his master more gloriously?

XXIV. When Caesar was besieging Corfinium, Domitius, who was shut up in
the city, ordered a slave of his own, who was also a physician, to give
him poison. Observing the man's hesitation, he said, "Why do you delay,
as though the whole business was in your power? I ask for death with
arms in my hands." Then the slave assented, and gave him a harmless drug
to drink. When Domitius fell asleep after drinking this, the slave went
to his son, and said, "Give orders for my being kept in custody until
you learn from the result whether I have given your father poison or
no." Domitius lived, and Caesar saved his life; but his slave had saved
it before.

XXV. During the civil war, a slave hid his master, who had been
proscribed, put on his rings and clothes, met the soldiers who were
searching for him, and, after declaring that he would not stoop to
entreat them not to carry out their orders, offered his neck to their
swords. What a noble spirit it shows in a slave to have been willing
to die for his master, at a time when few were faithful enough to
wish their master to live! to be found kind when the state was cruel,
faithful when it was treacherous! to be eager for the reward of
fidelity, though it was death, at a time when such rich rewards were
offered for treachery!

XXVI. I will not pass over the instances which our own age affords. In
the reign of Tiberius Caesar, there was a common and almost universal
frenzy for informing, which was more ruinous to the citizens of Rome
than the whole civil war; the talk of drunkards, the frankness of
jesters, was alike reported to the government; nothing was safe; every
opportunity of ferocious punishment was seized, and men no longer waited
to hear the fate of accused persons, since it was always the same. One
Paulus, of the Praetorian guard, was at an entertainment, wearing a
portrait of Tiberius Caesar engraved in relief upon a gem. It would be
absurd for me to beat about the bush for some delicate way of explaining
that he took up a chamber-pot, an action which was at once noticed by
Maro, one of the most notorious informers of that time, and the slave of
the man who was about to fall into the trap, who drew the ring from the
finger of his drunken master. When Maro called the guests to witness
that Paulus had dishonoured the portrait of the emperor, and was already
drawing up an act of accusation, the slave showed the ring upon his
own finger. Such a man no more deserves to be called a slave, than Maro
deserved to be called a guest.

XXVII. In the reign of Augustus men's own words were not yet able to
ruin them, yet they sometimes brought them into trouble. A senator named
Rufus, while at dinner, expressed a hope that Caesar would not return
safe from a journey for which he was preparing, and added that all bulls
and calves wished the same thing. Some of those present carefully noted
these words. At daybreak, the slave who had stood at his feet during the
dinner, told him what he had said in his cups, and urged him to be the
first to go to Caesar, and denounce himself. Rufus followed this advice,
met Caesar as he was going down to the forum, and, swearing that he was
out of his mind the day before, prayed that what he had said might fall
upon his own head and that of his children; he then begged Caesar pardon
him, and to take him back into favour. When Caesar said that he would
do so, he added, "No one will believe that you have taken me back into
favour unless you make me a present of something;" and he asked for and
obtained a sum of money so large, that it would have been a gift not to
be slighted even if bestowed by an unoffended prince. Caesar added: "In
future I will take care never to quarrel with you, for my own sake."
Caesar acted honourably in pardoning him, and in being liberal as well
as forgiving; no one can hear this anecdote without praising Caesar,
but he must praise the slave first. You need not wait for me to tell
you that the slave who did his master this service was set free; yet his
master did not do this for nothing, for Caesar had already paid him the
price of the slave's liberty.

XXVIII. After so many instances, can we doubt that a master may
sometimes receive a benefit from a slave? Why need the person of the
giver detract from the thing which he gives? why should not the gift add
rather to the glory of the giver. All men descend from the same original
stock; no one is better born than another, except in so far as his
disposition is nobler and better suited for the performance of good
actions. Those who display portraits of their ancestors in their halls,
and set up in the entrance to their houses the pedigree of their family
drawn out at length, with many complicated collateral branches, are they
not notorious rather than noble? The universe is the one parent of all,
whether they trace their descent from this primary source through a
glorious or a mean line of ancestors. Be not deceived when men who are
reckoning up their genealogy, wherever an illustrious name is wanting,
foist in that of a god in its place. You need despise no one, even
though he bears a commonplace name, and owes little to fortune. Whether
your immediate ancestors were freedmen, or slaves, or foreigners, pluck
up your spirits boldly, and leap over any intervening disgraces of your
pedigree; at its source, a noble origin awaits you. Why should our
pride inflate us to such a degree that we think it beneath us to receive
benefits from slaves, and think only of their position, forgetting their
good deeds? You, the slave of lust, of gluttony, of a harlot, nay, who
are owned as a joint chattel by harlots, can you call anyone else
a slave? Call a man a slave? why, I pray you, whither are you being
hurried by those bearers who carry your litter? whither are these men
with their smart military-looking cloaks carrying you? is it not to the
door of some door-keeper, or to the gardens of some one who has not even
a subordinate office? and then you, who regard the salute of another
man's slave as a benefit, declare that you cannot receive a benefit from
your own slave. What inconsistency is this? At the same time you despise
and fawn upon slaves, you are haughty and violent at home, while out of
doors you are meek, and as much despised as you despise your slaves;
for none abase themselves lower than those who unconscionably give
themselves airs, nor are anymore prepared to trample upon others than
those who have learned how to offer insults by having endured them.

XXIX. I felt it my duty to say this, in order to crush the arrogance of
men who are themselves at the mercy of fortune, and to claim the right
of bestowing a benefit for slaves, in order that I may claim it also for
sons. The question arises, whether children can ever bestow upon their
parents greater benefits than those which they have received from them.

It is granted that many sons become greater and more powerful than their
parents, and also that they are better men. If this be true, they may
give better gifts to their fathers than they have received from them,
seeing that their fortune and their good nature are alike greater than
that of their father. "Whatever a father receives from his son," our
opponent will urge, "must in any case be lees than what the son received
from him, because the son owes to his father the very power of giving.
Therefore the father can never be surpassed in the bestowal of benefits,
because the benefit which surpasses his own is really his." I answer,
that some things derive their first origin from others, yet are greater
than those others; and a thing may be greater than that from which it
took its rise, although without that thing to start from it never could
have grown so great. All things greatly outgrow their beginnings. Seeds
are the causes of all things, and yet are the smallest part of the
things which they produce. Look at the Rhine, or the Euphrates, or any
other famous rivers; how small they are, if you only view them at the
place from whence they take their rise? they gain all that makes them
terrible and renowned as they flow along. Look at the trees which are
tallest if you consider their height, and the broadest if you look at
their thickness and the spread of their branches; compared with all
this, how small a part of them is contained in the slender fibres of
the root? Yet take away their roots, and no more groves will arise, nor
great mountains be clothed with trees. Temples and cities are supported
by their foundations; yet what is built as the foundation of the entire
building lies out of sight. So it is in other matters; the subsequent
greatness of a thing ever eclipses its origin. I could never have
obtained anything without having previously received the boon of
existence from my parents; yet it does not follow from this that
whatever I obtain is less than that without which I could not obtain it.
If my nurse had not fed me when I was a child, I should not have been
able to conduct any of those enterprises which I now carry on, both with
my head and with my hand, nor should I ever have obtained the fame which
is due to my labours both in peace and war; would you on that account
argue that the services of a nurse were more valuable than the most
important undertakings? Yet is not the nurse as important as the father,
since without the benefits which I have received from each of them
alike, I should have been alike unable to effect anything? If I owe all
that I now can do to my original beginning, I cannot regard my father or
my grandfather as being this original beginning; there always will be a
spring further back, from which the spring next below is derived. Yet no
one will argue that I owe more to unknown and forgotten ancestors
than to my father; though really I do owe them more, if I owe it to my
ancestors that my father begat me.

XXX. "Whatever I have bestowed upon my father," says my opponent,
"however great it may be, yet is less valuable than what my father has
bestowed upon me, because if he had not begotten me, it never could
have existed at all." By this mode of reasoning, if a man has healed
my father when ill, and at the point of death, I shall not be able to
bestow anything upon him equivalent to what I have received from him;
for had my father not been healed, he could not have begotten me. Yet
think whether it be not nearer the truth to regard all that I can do,
and all that I have done, as mine, due to my own powers and my own will?
Consider what the fact of my birth is in itself; you will see that it
is a small matter, the outcome of which is dubious, and that it may lead
equally to good or to evil; no doubt it is the first step to everything,
but because it is the first, it is not on that account more important
than all the others. Suppose that I have saved my father's life, raised
him to the highest honours, and made him the chief man in his city,
that I have not merely made him illustrious by my own deeds, but have
furnished him himself with an opportunity of performing great exploits,
which is at once important, easy, and safe, as well as glorious; that I
have loaded him with appointments, wealth, and all that attracts men's
minds; still, even when I surpass all others, I am inferior to him.
Now if you say, "You owe to your father the power of doing all this," I
shall answer, "Quite true, if to do all this it is only necessary to be
born; but if life is merely an unimportant factor in the art of living
well, and if you have bestowed upon me only that which I have in common
with wild beasts and the smallest, and some of the foulest of creatures,
do not claim for yourself what did not come into being in consequence of
the benefits which you bestowed, even though it could not have come into
being without them."

XXXI. Suppose, father, that I have saved your life, in return for the
life which I received from you: in this case also I have outdone your
benefit, because I have given life to one who understands what I have
done, and because I understood what I was doing, since I gave you your
life not for the sake of, or by the means of my own pleasure; for just
as it is less terrible to die before one has time to fear death, so it
is a much greater boon to preserve one's life than to receive it. I have
given life to one who will at once enjoy it, you gave it to one who knew
not if he should ever live; I have given life to one who was in fear of
death, your gift of life merely enables me to die; I have given you a
life complete, perfect; you begat me without intelligence, a burden upon
others. Do you wish to know how far from a benefit it was to give life
under such conditions? You should have exposed me as a child, for you
did me a wrong in begetting me. What do I gather from this? That the
cohabitation of a father and mother is the very least of benefits to
their child, unless in addition this beginning of kindnesses be followed
up by others, and confirmed by other services. It is not a good thing
to live, but to live well. "But," say you, "I do live well." True, but
I might have lived ill; so that your part in me is merely this, that I
live. If you claim merit to yourself for giving me mere life, bare and
helpless, and boast of it as a great boon, reflect that this you claim
merit for giving me is a boon which I possess in common with flies and
worms. In the next place, if I say no more than that I have applied
myself to honourable pursuits, and have guided the course of my life
along the path of rectitude, then you have received more from your
benefit than you gave; for you gave me to myself ignorant and unlearned,
and I have returned to you a son such as you would wish to have
begotten.

XXXII. My father supported me. If I repay this kindness, I give him
more than I received, because he has the pleasure, not only of being
supported, but of being supported by a son, and receives more delight
from my filial devotion than from the food itself, whereas the food
which he used to give me merely affected my body. What? if any man
rises so high as to become famous among nations for his eloquence, his
justice, or his military skill, if much of the splendour of his renown
is shed upon his father also, and by its clear light dispels the
obscurity of his birth, does not such a man confer an inestimable
benefit upon his parents? Would anyone have heard of Aristo and Gryllus
except through Xenophon and Plato, their sons? Socrates keeps alive
the memory of Sophroniscus. It would take long to recount the other
men whose names survive for no other reason than that the admirable
qualities of their sons have handed them down to posterity. Did the
father of Marcus Agrippa, of whom nothing was known, even after Agrippa
became famous, confer the greater benefit upon his son, or was that
greater which Agrippa conferred upon his father when he gained the
glory, unique in the annals of war, of a naval crown, and when he raised
so many vast buildings in Rome, which not only surpassed all former
grandeur, but have been surpassed by none since? Did Octavius confer a
greater benefit upon his son, or the Emperor Augustus upon his father,
obscured as he was by the intervention of an adoptive father? What joy
would he have experienced, if, after the putting down of the civil war,
he had seen his son ruling the state in peace and security? He would not
have recognized the good which he had himself bestowed, and would hardly
have believed, when he looked back upon himself, that so great a man
could have been born in his house. Why should I go on to speak of others
who would now be forgotten, if the glory of their sons had not raised
them from obscurity, and kept them in the light until this day? In the
next place, as we are not considering what son may have given back to
his father greater benefits than he received from him, but whether a son
can give back greater benefits, even if the examples which I have quoted
are not sufficient, and such benefits do not outweigh the benefits
bestowed by the parents, if no age has produced. an actual example,
still it is not in the nature of things impossible. Though no solitary
act can outweigh the deserts of a parent, yet many such acts combined by
one son may do so.

XXXIII. Scipio, while under seventeen years of age, rode among the enemy
in battle, and saved his father's life. Was it not enough, that in order
to reach his father he despised so many dangers when they were pressing
hardest upon the greatest generals, that he, a novice in his first
battle, made his way through so many obstacles, over the bodies of so
many veteran soldiers, and showed strength and courage beyond his years?
Add to this, that he also defended his father in court, and saved him
from a plot of his powerful enemies, that he heaped upon him a second
and a third consulship and other posts which were coveted even by
consulars, that when his father was poor he bestowed upon him the
plunder which he took by military licence, and that he made him rich
with the spoils of the enemy, which is the greatest honour of a soldier.
If even this did not repay his debt, add to it that he caused him to
be constantly employed in the government of provinces and in special
commands, add, that after he had destroyed the greatest cities,
and became without a rival either in the east or in the west, the
acknowledged protector and second founder of the Roman Empire, he
bestowed upon one who was already of noble birth the higher title of
"the father of Scipio;" can we doubt that the commonplace benefit of his
birth was outdone by his exemplary conduct, and by the valour which was
at once the glory and the protection of his country? Next, if this
be not enough, suppose that a son were to rescue his father from the
torture, or to undergo it in his stead. You can suppose the benefits
returned by the son as great as you please, whereas the gift he received
from his father was of one sort only, was easily performed, and was
a pleasure to the giver; that he must necessarily have given the same
thing to many others, even to some to whom he knows not that he has
given it, that he had a partner in doing so, and that he had in view the
law, patriotism, the rewards bestowed upon fathers of families by the
state, the maintenance of his house and family: everything rather than
him to whom he was giving life. What? supposing that any one were to
learn philosophy and teach it to his father, could it be any longer
disputed that the son had given him something greater than he had
received from him, having returned to his father a happy life, whereas
he had received from him merely life?

XXXIV. "But," says our opponent, "whatever you do, whatever you are able
to give to your father, is part of his benefit bestowed upon you." So
it is the benefit of my teacher that I have become proficient in liberal
studies; yet we pass on from those who taught them to us, at any rate
from those who taught us the alphabet; and although no one can learn
anything without them, yet it does not follow that whatsoever success
one subsequently obtains, one is still inferior to those teachers. There
is a great difference between the beginning of a thing and its final
development; the beginning is not equal to the thing at its greatest,
merely upon the ground that, without the beginning, it could never have
become so great.

XXXV. It is now time for me to bring forth something, so to speak, from
my own mint. So long as there is something better than the benefit which
a man bestows, he may be outdone. A father gives life to his son;
there is something better than life; therefore a father may be outdone,
because there is something better than the benefit which he has
bestowed. Still further, he who has given any one his life, if he be
more than once saved from peril of death by him, has received a greater
benefit than he bestowed. Now, a father has given life to his son: if,
therefore, he be more than once saved from peril by his son, he can
receive a greater benefit than he gave. A benefit becomes greater to the
receiver in proportion to his need of it. Now he who is alive needs life
more than he who has not been born, seeing that such a one can have no
need at all; consequently a father, if his life is saved by his son,
receives a greater benefit than his son received from him by being born.
It is said, "The benefits conferred by fathers cannot be outdone by
those returned by their sons." Why? "Because the son received life from
his father, and had he not received it, he could not have returned any
benefits at all." A father has this in common with all those who have
given any men their lives; it is impossible that these men could repay
the debt if they had not received their life. Then I suppose one cannot
overpay one's debt to a physician, for a physician gives life as well
as a father; or to a sailor who has saved us when shipwrecked? Yet the
benefits bestowed by these and by all the others who give us life in
whatever fashion, can be outdone: consequently those of our fathers can
be outdone. If any one bestows upon me a benefit which requires the help
of benefits from many other persons, whereas I give him what requires no
one to help it out, I have given more than I have received; now a father
gave to his son a life which, without many accessories to preserve it,
would perish; whereas a son, if he gives life to his father, gives him
a life which requires no assistance to make it lasting; therefore the
father who receives life from his son, receives a greater benefit than
he himself bestowed upon his son.

XXXVI. These considerations do not destroy the respect due to parents,
or make their children behave worse to them, nay, better; for virtue
is naturally ambitious, and wishes to outstrip those who are before it.
Filial piety will be all the more eager, if, in returning a father's
benefits, it can hope to outdo them; nor will this be against the will
or the pleasure of the father, since in many contests it is to our
advantage to be outdone. How does this contest become so desirable?
How comes it to be such happiness to parents that they should confess
themselves outdone by the benefits bestowed by their children? Unless we
decide the matter thus, we give children an excuse, and make them less
eager to repay their debt, whereas we ought to spur them on, saying,
"Noble youths, give your attention to this! You are invited to contend
in an honourable strife between parents and children, as to which party
has received more than it has given. Your fathers have not necessarily
won the day because they are first in the field: only take courage, as
befits you, and do not give up the contest; you will conquer if you wish
to do so. In this honourable warfare you will have no lack of leaders
who will encourage you to perform deeds like their own, and bid you
follow in their footsteps upon a path by which victory has often before
now been won over parents."

XXXVII. AEneas conquered his father in well doing, for he himself had
been but a light and a safe burden for him when he was a child, yet he
bore his father, when heavy with age, through the midst of the enemy's
lines and the crash of the city which was falling around him, albeit the
devout old man, who bore the sacred images and the household gods in
his hands, pressed him with more than his own weight; nevertheless
(what cannot filial piety accomplish!) AEneas bore him safe through the
blazing city, and placed him in safety, to be worshipped as one of the
founders of the Roman Empire. Those Sicilian youths outdid their parents
whom they bore away safe, when Aetna, roused to unusual fury, poured
fire over cities and fields throughout a great part of the island. It
is believed that the fires parted, and that the flames retired on either
side, so as to leave a passage for these youths to pass through, who
certainly deserved to perform their daring task in safety. Antigonus
outdid his father when, after having conquered the enemy in a great
battle, he transferred the fruits of it to him, and handed over to him
the empire of Cyprus. This is true kingship, to choose not to be a king
when you might. Manlius conquered his father, imperious [Footnote:
There is an allusion to the surname of both the father and the son,
"Imperiosus" given them on account of their severity.] though he was,
when, in spite of his having previously been banished for a time by his
father on, account of his dulness and stupidity as a boy, he came to an
interview which he had demanded with the tribune of the people, who
had filed an action against his father. The tribune had granted him the
interview, hoping that he would betray his hated father, and believed
that he had earned the gratitude of the youth, having, amongst other
matters, reproached old Manlius with sending him into exile, treating
it as a very serious accusation; but the youth, having caught him alone,
drew a sword which he had hidden in his robe, and said, "Unless you
swear to give up your suit against my father, I will run you through
with this sword. It is in your power to decide how my father shall be
freed from his prosecutor." The tribune swore, and kept his oath; he
related the reason of his abandonment of his action to an assembly at
the Rostra. No other man was ever permitted to put down a tribune with
impunity.

XXXVIII. There are instances without number of men who have saved their
parents from danger, have raised them from the lowest to the highest
station, and, taking them from the nameless mass of the lower classes,
have given them a name glorious throughout all ages. By no force of
words, by no power of genius, can one rightly express how desirable, how
admirable, how never to be erased from human memory it is to be able to
say, "I obeyed my parents, I gave way to them, I was submissive to their
authority whether it was just, or unjust and harsh; the only point in
which I resisted them was, not to be conquered by them in benefits."
Continue this struggle, I beg of you, and even though weary, yet re-form
your ranks. Happy are they who conquer, happy they who are conquered.
What can be more glorious than the youth who can say to himself--it
would not be right to say it to another--"I have conquered my father
with benefits"? What is more fortunate than that old man who declares
everywhere to everyone that he has been conquered in benefits by
his son? What, again, is more blissful than to be overcome in such a
contest?




BOOK IV.

I.


Of all the matters which we have discussed, Aebutius Liberalis, there is
none more essential, or which, as Sallust says, ought to be stated with
more care than that which is now before us: whether the bestowal of
benefits and the return of gratitude for them are desirable objects
in themselves. Some men are found who act honourably from commercial
motives, and who do not care for unrewarded virtue, though it can confer
no glory if it brings any profit. What can be more base than for a man
to consider what it costs him to be a good man, when virtue neither
allures by gain nor deters by loss, and is so far from bribing any one
with hopes and promises, that on the other hand she bids them spend
money upon herself, and often consists in voluntary gifts? We must go to
her, trampling what is merely useful under our feet: whithersoever she
may call us or send us we must go, without any regard for our private
fortunes, sometimes without sparing even our own blood, nor must we
ever refuse to obey any of her commands. "What shall I gain," says my
opponent, "if I do this bravely and gratefully?" You will gain the doing
of it--the deed itself is your gain. Nothing beyond this is promised. If
any advantage chances to accrue to you, count it as something extra.
The reward of honourable dealings lies in themselves. If honour is to be
sought after for itself, since a benefit is honourable, it follows that
because both of these are of the same nature, their conditions must also
be the same. Now it has frequently and satisfactorily been proved, that
honour ought to be sought after for itself alone.

II. In this part of the subject we oppose the Epicureans, an effeminate
and dreamy sect who philosophize in their own paradise, amongst whom
virtue is the handmaid of pleasures, obeys them, is subject to them,
and regards them as superior to itself. You say, "there is no pleasure
without virtue." But wherefore is it superior to virtue? Do you imagine
that the matter in dispute between them is merely one of precedence?
Nay, it is virtue itself and its powers which are in question. It cannot
be virtue if it can follow; the place of virtue is first, she ought to
lead, to command, to stand in the highest rank; you bid her look for a
cue to follow. "What," asks our opponent, "does that matter to you? I
also declare that happiness is impossible without virtue. Without virtue
I disapprove of and condemn the very pleasures which I pursue, and to
which I have surrendered myself. The only matter in dispute is this,
whether virtue be the cause of the highest good, or whether it be itself
the highest good." Do you suppose, though this be the only point in
question, that it is a mere matter of precedence? It is a confusion and
obvious blindness to prefer the last to the first. I am not angry at
virtue being placed below pleasure, but at her being mixed up at all
with pleasure, which she despises, whose enemy she is, and from which
she separates herself as far as possible, being more at home with labour
and sorrow, which are manly troubles, than with your womanish good
things.

III. It was necessary to insert this argument, my Liberalis, because
it is the part of virtue to bestow those benefits which we are now
discussing, and it is most disgraceful to bestow benefits for any other
purpose than that they should be free gifts. If we give with the hope of
receiving a return, we should give to the richest men, not to the most
deserving: whereas we prefer a virtuous poor man to an unmannerly rich
one. That is not a benefit, which takes into consideration the fortune
of the receiver. Moreover, if our only motive for benefiting others was
our own advantage, those who could most easily distribute benefits, such
as rich and powerful men, or kings, and persons who do not stand in need
of the help of others, ought never to do so at all; the gods would
not bestow upon us the countless blessings which they pour upon us
unceasingly by night and by day, for their own nature suffices them in
all respects, and renders them complete, safe, and beyond the reach of
harm; they will, therefore, never bestow a benefit upon any one, if self
and self interest be the only cause for the bestowal of benefits. To
take thought, not where your benefit will be best bestowed, but where
it may be most profitably placed at interest, from whence you will most
easily get it back, is not bestowal of benefits, but usury. Now the gods
have nothing to do with usury; it follows, therefore, that they cannot
be liberal; for if the only reason for giving is the advantage of the
giver, since God cannot hope to receive any advantages from us, there is
no cause why God should give anything.

IV. I know what answer may be made to this. "True; therefore God does
not bestow benefits, but, free from care and unmindful of us, He
turns away from our world and either does something else, or else does
nothing, which Epicurus thought the greatest possible happiness, and
He is not affected either by benefits or by injuries." The man who says
this cannot surely hear the voices of worshippers, and of those who all
around him are raising their hands to heaven and praying for the success
both of their private affairs and those of the state; which certainly
would not be the case, all men would not agree in this madness of
appealing to deaf and helpless gods, unless we knew that their benefits
are sometimes bestowed upon us unasked, sometimes in answer to our
prayers, and that they give us both great and seasonable gifts, which
shield us from the most terrible dangers. Who is there so poor, so
uncared for, born to sorrow by so unkind a fate, as never to have felt
the vast generosity of the Gods? Look even at those who complain and are
discontented with their lot; you will find that they are not altogether
without a share in the bounty of heaven, that there is no one upon whom
something has not been shed from that most gracious fount. Is the gift
which is bestowed upon all alike, at their birth, not enough? However
unequally the blessings of after life may be dealt out to us, did nature
give us too little when she gave us herself?

V. It is said, "God does not bestow benefits." Whence, then, comes all
that you possess, that you give or refuse to give, that you hoard or
steal? whence come these innumerable delights of our eyes, our ears, and
our minds? whence the plenty which provides us even with luxury--for it
is not our bare necessities alone against which provision is made;
we are loved so much as actually to be pampered--whence so many trees
bearing various fruits, so many wholesome herbs, so many different sorts
of food distributed throughout the year, so that even the slothful may
find sustenance in the chance produce of the earth? Then, too, whence
come the living creatures of all kinds, some inhabiting the dry land,
others the waters, others alighting from the sky, that every part of
nature may pay us some tribute; the rivers which encircle our meadows
with most beauteous bends, the others which afford a passage to merchant
fleets as they flow on, wide and navigable, some of which in summer
time are subject to extraordinary overflowings in order that lands lying
parched under a glowing sun may suddenly be watered by the rush of a
midsummer torrent?

What of the fountains of medicinal waters? What of the bursting forth of
warm waters upon the seashore itself? Shall I

  "Tell of the seas round Italy that flow,
   Which laves her shore above, and which below;
   Or of her lakes, unrivalled Larius, thee,
   Or thee, Benacus, roaring like a sea?"

VI. If any one gave you a few acres, you would say that you had received
a benefit; can you deny that the boundless extent of the earth is a
benefit? If any one gave you money, and filled your chest, since you
think that so important, you would call that a benefit. God has buried
countless mines in the earth, has poured out from the earth countless
rivers, rolling sands of gold; He has concealed in every place huge
masses of silver, copper and iron, and has bestowed upon you the means
of discovering them, placing upon the surface of the earth signs of the
treasures hidden below; and yet do you say that you have received
no benefit? If a house were given you, bright with marble, its roof
beautifully painted with colours and gilding, you would call it no small
benefit. God has built for you a huge mansion that fears no fire or
ruin, in which you see no flimsy veneers, thinner than the very saw with
which they are cut, but vast blocks of most precious stone, all composed
of those various and different substances whose paltriest fragments you
admire so much; he has built a roof which glitters in one fashion by
day, and in another by night; and yet do you say that you have received
no benefit? When you so greatly prize what you possess, do you act the
part of an ungrateful man, and think that there is no one to whom you
are indebted for them? Whence comes the breath which you draw? the light
by which you arrange and perform all the actions of your life? the blood
by whose circulation your vital warmth is maintained? those meats
which excite your palate by their delicate flavour after your hunger is
appeased? those provocatives which rouse you when wearied with pleasure?
that repose in which you are rotting and mouldering? Will you not, if
you are grateful, say--

  "'Tis to a god that this repose I owe,
   For him I worship, as a god below.
   Oft on his altar shall my firstlings bleed,
   See, by his bounty here with rustic reed
   I play the airs I love the livelong day,
   The while my oxen round about me stray."

The true God is he who has placed, not a few oxen, but all the herds on
their pastures throughout the world; who furnishes food to the flocks
wherever they wander; who has ordained the alternation of summer and
winter pasturage, and has taught us not merely to play upon a reed, and
to reduce to some order a rustic and artless song, but who has invented
so many arts and varieties of voice, so many notes to make music,
some with our own breath, some with instruments. You cannot call our
inventions our own any more than you call our growth our own, or the
various bodily functions which correspond to each stage of our lives; at
one time comes the loss of childhood's teeth, at another, when our age
is advancing and growing into robuster manhood, puberty and the last
wisdom-tooth marks the end of our youth. "We have implanted in us the
seeds of all ages, of all arts, and God our master brings forth our
intellects from obscurity."

VII. "Nature," says my opponent, "gives me all this." Do you not
perceive when you say this that you merely speak of God under another
name? for what is nature but God and divine reason, which pervades the
universe and all its parts? You may address the author of our world
by as many different titles as you please; you may rightly call him
Jupiter, Best and Greatest, and the Thunderer, or the Stayer, so called,
not because, as the historians tell us, he stayed the flight of the
Roman army in answer to the prayer of Romulus, but because all things
continue in their stay through his goodness. If you were to call this
same personage Fate, you would not lie; for since fate is nothing more
than a connected chain of causes, he is the first cause of all upon
which all the rest depend. You will also be right in applying to him any
names that you please which express supernatural strength and power: he
may have as many titles as he has attributes.

VIII. Our school regards him as Father Liber, and Hercules, and
Mercurius: he is Father Liber because he is the parent of all, who first
discovered the power of seed, and our being led by pleasure to plant it;
he is Hercules, because his might is unconquered, and when it is wearied
after completing its labours, will retire into fire; he is Mercurius,
because in him is reasoning, and numbers, and system, and knowledge.
Whither-soever you turn yourself you will see him meeting you:
nothing is void of him, he himself fills his own work. Therefore, most
ungrateful of mortals, it is in vain that you declare yourself indebted,
not to God, but to nature, because there can be no God without nature,
nor any nature without God; they are both the same thing, differing only
in their functions. If you were to say that you owe to Annaeus or
to Lucius what you received from Seneca, you would not change your
creditor, but only his name, because he remains the same man whether you
use his first, second, or third name. So whether you speak of nature,
fate, or fortune, these are all names of the same God, using his power
in different ways. So likewise justice, honesty, discretion, courage,
frugality, are all the good qualities of one and the same mind; if you
are pleased with any one of these, you are pleased with that mind.

IX. However, not to drift aside into a distinct controversy, God bestows
upon us very many and very great benefits without hope of receiving any
return; since he does not require any offering from us, and we are
not capable of bestowing anything upon him: wherefore, a benefit is
desirable in itself. In it the advantage of the receiver is all that
is taken into consideration: we study this without regarding our own
interests. "Yet," argues our opponent, "you say that we ought to choose
with care the persons upon whom we bestow benefits, because neither do
husbandmen sow seed in the sand: now if this be true, we follow our own
interest in bestowing benefits, just as much as in ploughing and sowing:
for sowing is not desirable in itself. Besides this you inquire where
and how you ought to bestow a benefit, which would not need to be
done if the bestowal of a benefit was desirable in itself: because in
whatever place and whatever manner it might be bestowed, it still would
be a benefit." We seek to do honourable acts, solely because they are
honourable; yet even though we need think of nothing else, we consider
to whom we shall do them, and when, and how; for in these points the act
has its being. In like manner, when I choose upon whom I shall bestow
a benefit, and when I aim at making it a benefit; because if it were
bestowed upon a base person, it could neither be a benefit nor an
honourable action.

X. To restore what has been entrusted to one is desirable in itself; yet
I shall not always restore it, nor shall I do so in any place or at any
time you please. Sometimes it makes no difference whether I deny that I
have received it, or return it openly. I shall consider the interests
of the person to whom I am to return it, and shall deny that I have
received a deposit, which would injure him if returned. I shall act in
the same manner in bestowing a benefit: I shall consider when to give
it, to whom, in what manner, and on what grounds. Nothing ought to be
done without a reason: a benefit is not truly so, if it be bestowed
without a reason, since reason accompanies all honorable action. How
often do we hear men reproaching themselves for some thoughtless gift,
and saying, "I had rather have thrown it away than have given it to
him!" What is thoughtlessly given away is lost in the most discreditable
manner, and it is much worse to have bestowed a benefit badly than to
have received no return for it; that we receive no return is the fault
of another; that we did not choose upon whom we should bestow it, is our
own. In choosing a fit person, I shall not, as you expect, pay the
least attention to whether I am likely to get any return from him, for
I choose one who will be grateful, not one who will return my goodness,
and it often happens that the man who makes no return is grateful, while
he who returns a benefit is ungrateful for it. I value men by their
hearts alone, and, therefore, I shall pass over a rich man if he be
unworthy, and give to a good man though he be poor; for he will be
grateful however destitute he may be, since whatever he may lose, his
heart will still be left him.

XI. I do not fish for gain, for pleasure, or for credit, by bestowing
benefits: satisfied in doing so with pleasing one man alone, I shall
give in order to do my duty. Duty, however, leaves one some choice; do
you ask me, how I am to choose? I shall choose an honest, plain, man,
with a good memory, and grateful for kindness; one who keeps his hands
off other men's goods, yet does not greedily hold to his own, and who is
kind to others; when I have chosen such a man, I shall have acted to my
mind, although fortune may have bestowed upon him no means of returning
my kindness. If my own advantage and mean calculation made me liberal,
if I did no one any service except in order that he might in turn do a
service to me, I should never bestow a benefit upon one who was setting
out for distant and foreign countries, never to return; I should not
bestow a benefit upon one who was so ill as to be past hope of recovery,
nor should I do so when I myself was failing, because I should not live
long enough to receive any return. Yet, that you may know that to do
good is desirable in itself, we afford help to strangers who put into
our harbour only to leave it straightway; we give a ship and fit it out
for a shipwrecked stranger to sail back in to his own country. He leaves
us hardly knowing who it was who saved him, and, as he will never return
to our presence, he hands over his debt of gratitude to the gods, and
beseeches them to fulfil it for him: in the meanwhile we rejoice in the
barren knowledge that we have done a good action. What? when we stand
upon the extreme verge of life, and make our wills, do we not assign to
others benefits from which we ourselves shall receive no advantage? How
much time we waste, how long we consider in secret how much property we
are to leave, and to whom! What then? does it make any difference to us
to whom we leave our property, seeing that we cannot expect any return
from any one? Yet we never give anything with more care, we never take
such pains in deciding upon our verdict, as when, without any views of
personal advantage, we think only of what is honourable, for we are bad
judges of our duty as long as our view of it is distorted by hope and
fear, and that most indolent of vices, pleasure: but when death has shut
off all these, and brought us as incorrupt judges to pronounce sentence,
we seek for the most worthy men to leave our property to, and we never
take more scrupulous care than in deciding what is to be done with what
does not concern us. Yet, by Hercules, then there steals over us a
great satisfaction as we think, "I shall make this man richer, and by
bestowing wealth upon that man I shall add lustre to his high position."
Indeed, if we never give without expecting some return, we must all die
without making our wills.

XII. It may be said, "You define a benefit as a loan which cannot be
repaid: now a loan is not a desirable thing in itself." When we speak of
a loan, we make use of a figure, or comparison, just as we speak of law
as; the standard of right and wrong, although a standard is not a thing
to be desired for its own sake. I have adopted this phrase in order to
illustrate my subject: when I speak of a loan, I must be understood to
mean something resembling a loan. Do you wish to know how it differs
from one? I add the words "which cannot be repaid," whereas every loan
both can and ought to be repaid. It is so far from being right to bestow
a benefit for one's own advantage, that often, as I have explained, it
is one's duty to bestow it when it involves one's own loss and risk: for
instance, if I assist a man when beset by robbers, so that he gets away
from them safely, or help some victim of power, and bring upon myself
the party spite of a body of influential men, very, probably incurring
myself the same disgrace from which I saved him, although I might have
taken the other side, and looked on with safety at struggles with
which I have nothing to do: if I were to give bail for one who has been
condemned, and when my friend's goods were advertised for sale I were
to give a bond to the effect that I would make restitution to the
creditors, if, in order to save a proscribed person I myself run the
risk of being proscribed. No one, when about to buy a villa at Tusculum
or Tibur, for a summer retreat, because of the health of the locality,
considers how many years' purchase he gives for it; this must be looked
to by the man who makes a profit by it. The same is true with benefits;
when you ask what return I get for them, I answer, the consciousness
of a good action. "What return does one get for benefits?" Pray tell
me what return on

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/3794