On Benefits
L. Annaeus Seneca
Translated by Aubrey Stewart
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PREFACE
BOOK I.
BOOK II.
BOOK III.
BOOK IV.
BOOK V.
BOOK VI.
BOOK VII.
t new LETTER, bnfts10a.txt
This etext was produced by Charles Franks, Robert Rowe and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
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, 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," 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.
DEDICATED TO
AEBUTIUS LIBERALIS.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.]
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?
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.
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.
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."
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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?
"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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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."
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.
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.
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?
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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?"
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?"
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 one
gets for righteousness, innocence, magnanimity, chastity, temperance?
If you wish for anything beyond these virtues, you do not wish for the
virtues themselves. For what does the order of the universe bring
round the seasons? for what does the sun make the day now longer and
now shorter? all these things are benefits, for they take place for
our good. As it is the duty of the universe to maintain the round of
the seasons, as it is the duty of the sun to vary the points of his
rising and setting, and to do all these things by which we profit,
without any reward, so is it the duty of man, amongst other things, to
bestow benefits. Wherefore then does he give? He gives for fear that
he should not give, lest he might lose an opportunity of doing a good
action.
You Epicureans take pleasure in making a study of dull torpidity, in
seeking for a repose which differs little from sound sleep, in lurking
beneath the thickest shade, in amusing with the feeblest possible
trains of thought that sluggish condition of your languid minds which
you term tranquil contemplation, and in stuffing with food and drink,
in the recesses of your gardens, your bodies which are pallid with
want of exercise; we Stoics, on the other hand, take pleasure in
bestowing benefits, even though they cost us labour, provided that
they lighten the labours of others; though they lead us into danger,
provided that they save others, though they straiten our means, if
they alleviate the poverty and distresses of others. What difference
does it make to me whether I receive benefits or not? even if I
receive them, it is still my duty to bestow them. A benefit has in
view the advantage of him upon whom we bestow it, not our own;
otherwise we merely bestow it upon ourselves. Many things, therefore,
which are of the greatest possible use to others lose all claim to
gratitude by being paid for. Merchants are of use to cities,
physicians to invalids, dealers to slaves; yet all these have no claim
to the gratitude of those whom they benefit, because they seek their
own advantage through that of others. That which is bestowed with a
view to profit is not a benefit. "I will give this in order that I may
get a return for it" is the language of a broker.
I should not call a woman modest, if she rebuffed her lover in order
to increase his passion, or because she feared the law or her husband;
as Ovid says:
"She that denies, because she does not dare
To yield, in spirit grants her lover's prayer."
Indeed, the woman who owes her chastity, not to her own virtue, but
to fear, may rightly be classed as a sinner. In the same manner, he
who merely gave in order that he might receive, cannot be said to
have given. Pray, do we bestow benefits upon animals when we feed
them for our use or for our table? do we bestow benefits upon trees
when we tend them that they may not suffer from drought or from
hardness of ground? No one is moved by righteousness and goodness of
heart to cultivate an estate, or to do any act in which the reward is
something apart from the act itself; but he is moved to bestow
benefits, not by low and grasping motives, but by a kind and generous
mind, which even after it has given is willing to give again, to renew
its former bounties by fresh ones, which thinks only of how much good
it can do the man to whom it gives; whereas to do any one a service
because it is our interest to do so is a mean action, which deserves
no praise, no credit. What grandeur is there in loving oneself,
sparing oneself, gaining profit for oneself? The true love of giving
calls us away from all this, forcibly leads us to put up with loss,
and foregoes its own interest, deriving its greatest pleasure from the
mere act of doing good.
Can we doubt that the converse of a benefit is an injury? As the
infliction of injuries is a thing to be avoided, so is the bestowal of
benefits to be desired for its own sake. In the former, the disgrace
of crime outweighs all the advantages which incite us to commit it;
while we are urged to the latter course by the appearance of honour,
in itself a powerful incentive to action, which attends it.
I should not lie if I were to affirm that every one takes pleasure
in the benefits which he has bestowed, that everyone loves best to
see the man whom he has most largely benefited. Who does not thinks
that to have bestowed one benefit is a reason for bestowing a second?
and would this be so, if the act of giving did not itself give us
pleasure? How often you may hear a man say, "I cannot bear to desert
one whose life I have preserved, whom I have saved from danger. True,
he asks me to plead his cause against men of great influence. I do not
wish to do so, yet what am I to do? I have already helped him once,
nay twice." Do you not perceive how very powerful this instinct must
be, if it leads us to bestow benefits first because it is right to do
so, and afterwards because we have already bestowed somewhat? Though
at the outset a man may have had no claim upon us, we yet continue to
give to him because we have already given to him. So untrue is it that
we are urged to bestow benefits by our own interest, that even when
our benefits prove failures we continue to nurse them and encourage
them out of sheer love of benefiting, which has a natural weakness
even for what has been ill-bestowed, like that which we feel for our
vicious children.
These same adversaries of ours admit that they are grateful, yet not
because it is honourable, but because it is profitable to be so. This
can be proved to be untrue all the more easily, because it can be
established by the same arguments by which we have established that to
bestow a benefit is desirable for its own sake. All our arguments
start from this settled point, that honour is pursued for no reason
except because it is honour. Now, who will venture to raise the
question whether it be honourable to be grateful? who does not loathe
the ungrateful man, useless as he is even to himself? How do you feel
when any one is spoken of as being ungrateful for great benefits
conferred upon him by a friend? Is it as though he had done something
base, or had merely neglected to do something useful and likely to be
profitable to himself? I imagine that you think him a bad man, and one
who deserves punishment, not one who needs a guardian; and this would
not be the case, unless gratitude were desirable in itself and
honourable. Other qualities, it may be, manifest their importance less
clearly, and require an explanation to prove whether they be
honourable or no; this is openly proved to be so in the sight of all,
and is too beautiful for anything to obscure or dim its glory. What is
more praiseworthy, upon what are all men more universally agreed, than
to return gratitude for good offices?
Pray tell me, what is it that urges us to do so? Is it profit? Why,
unless a man despises profit, he is not grateful. Is it ambition? why,
what is there to boast of in having paid what you owe? Is it fear? The
ungrateful man feels none, for against this one crime we have provided
no law, as though nature had taken sufficient precautions against it.
Just as there is no law which bids parents love and indulge their
children, seeing that it is superfluous to force us into the path
which we naturally take, just as no one needs to be urged to love
himself, since self-love begins to act upon him as soon as he is born,
so there is no law bidding us to seek that which is honourable in
itself; for such things please us by their very nature, and so
attractive is virtue that the disposition even of bad men leads them
to approve of good rather than of evil. Who is there who does not wish
to appear beneficent, who does not even when steeped in crime and
wrong-doing strive after the appearance of goodness, does not put some
show of justice upon even his most intemperate acts, and endeavour to
seem to have conferred a benefit even upon those whom he has injured?
Consequently, men allow themselves to be thanked by those whom they
have ruined, and pretend to be good and generous, because they cannot
prove themselves so; and this they never would do were it not that a
love of honour for its own sake forces them to seek a reputation quite
at variance with their real character, and to conceal their baseness,
a quality whose fruits we covet, though we regard it itself with
dislike and shame. No one has ever so far rebelled against the laws of
nature and put off human feeling as to act basely for mere amusement.
Ask any of those who live by robbery whether he would not rather
obtain what he steals and plunders by honest means; the man whose
trade is highway robbery and the murder of travellers would rather
find his booty than take it by force; you will find no one who would
not prefer to enjoy the fruits of wickedness without acting wickedly.
Nature bestows upon us all this immense advantage, that the light of
virtue shines into the minds of all alike; even those who do not
follow her, behold her.
A proof that gratitude is desirable for itself lies in the fact that
ingratitude is to be avoided for itself, because no vice more
powerfully rends asunder and destroys the union of the human race. To
what do we trust for safety, if not in mutual good offices one to
another? It is by the interchange of benefits alone that we gain some
measure of protection for our lives, and of safety against sudden
disasters. Taken singly, what should we be? a prey and quarry for wild
beasts, a luscious and easy banquet; for while all other animals have
sufficient strength to protect themselves, and those which are born to
a wandering solitary life are armed, man is covered by a soft skin,
has no powerful teeth or claws with which to terrify other creatures,
but weak and naked by himself is made strong by union.
God has bestowed upon him two gifts, reason and union, which raise
him from weakness to the highest power; and so he, who if taken alone
would be inferior to every other creature, possesses supreme dominion.
Union has given him sovereignty over all animals; union has enabled a
being born upon the earth to assume power over a foreign element, and
bids him be lord of the sea also; it is union which has checked the
inroads of disease, provided supports for our old age, and given us
relief from pain; it is union which makes us strong, and to which we
look for protection against the caprices of fortune. Take away union,
and you will rend asunder the association by which the human race
preserves its existence; yet you will take it away if you succeed in
proving that ingratitude is not to be avoided for itself, but because
something is to be feared for it; for how many are there who can with
safety be ungrateful? In fine, I call every man ungrateful who is
merely made grateful by fear.
No sane man fears the gods; for it is madness to fear what is
beneficial, and no man loves those whom he fears. You, Epicurus,
ended by making God unarmed; you stripped him of all weapons, of all
power, and, lest anyone should fear him, you banished him out of the
world. There is no reason why you should fear this being, cut off as
he is, and separated from the sight and touch of mortals by a vast and
impassable wall; he has no power either of rewarding or of injuring
us; he dwells alone half-way between our heaven and that of another
world, without the society either of animals, of men, or of matter,
avoiding the crash of worlds as they fall in ruins above and around
him, but neither hearing our prayers nor interested in us. Yet you
wish to seem to worship this being just as a father, with a mind, I
suppose, full of gratitude; or, if you do not wish to seem grateful,
why should you worship him, since you have received no benefit from
him, but have been put together entirely at random and by chance by
those atoms and mites of yours? "I worship him," you answer, "because
of his glorious majesty and his unique nature." Granting that you do
this, you clearly do it without the attraction of any reward, or any
hope; there is therefore something which is desirable for itself,
whose own worth attracts you, that is, honour. Now what is more
honourable than gratitude? the means of practising this virtue are as
extensive as life itself.
"Yet," argues he, "there is also a certain amount of profit inherent
in this virtue." In what virtue is there not? But that which we speak
of as desirable for itself is such, that although it may possess some
attendant advantages, yet it would be desirable even if stripped of
all these. It is profitable to be grateful; yet I will be grateful
even though it harm me. What is the aim of the grateful man? is it
that his gratitude may win for him more friends and more benefits?
What then? If a man is likely to meet with affronts by showing his
gratitude, if he knows that far from gaining anything by it, he must
lose much even of what he has already acquired, will he not cheerfully
act to his own disadvantage? That man is ungrateful who, in returning
a kindness, looks forward to a second gift—who hopes while he repays.
I call him ungrateful who sits at the bedside of a sick man because he
is about to make a will, when he is at leisure to think of
inheritances and legacies. Though he may do everything which a good
and dutiful friend ought to do, yet, if any hope of gain be floating
in his mind, he is a mere legacy-hunter, and is angling for an
inheritance. Like the birds which feed upon carcases, which come close
to animals weakened by disease, and watch till they fall, so these men
are attracted by death and hover around a corpse.
A grateful mind is attracted only by a sense of the beauty of its
purpose. Do you wish to know this to be so, and that it is not bribed
by ideas of profit? There are two classes of grateful men: a man is
called grateful who has made some return for what he received; this
man may very possibly display himself in this character, he has
something to boast of, to refer to. We also call a man grateful who
receives a benefit with goodwill, and owes it to his benefactor with
goodwill; yet this man's gratitude lies concealed within his own mind.
What profit can accrue to him from this latent feeling? yet this man,
even though he is not able to do anything more than this, is grateful;
he loves his benefactor, he feels his debt to him, he longs to repay
his kindness; whatever else you may find wanting, there is nothing
wanting in the man. He is like a workman who has not the tools
necessary for the practice of his craft, or like a trained singer
whose voice cannot be heard through the noise of those who interrupt
him. I wish to repay a kindness: after this there still remains
something for me to do, not in order that I may become grateful, but
that I may discharge my debt; for, in many cases, he who returns a
kindness is ungrateful for it, and he who does not return it is
grateful. Like all other virtues, the whole value of gratitude lies in
the spirit in which it is done; so, if this man's purpose be loyal,
any shortcomings on his part are due not to himself, but to fortune. A
man who is silent may, nevertheless, be eloquent; his hands may be
folded or even bound, and he may yet be strong; just as a pilot is a
pilot even when upon dry land, because his knowledge is complete, and
there is nothing wanting to it, though there may be obstacles which
prevent his making use of it. In the same way, a man is grateful who
only wishes to be so, and who has no one but himself who can bear
witness to his frame of mind. I will go even further than this: a man
sometimes is grateful when he appears to be ungrateful, when
ill-judging report has declared him to be so. Such a man can look to
nothing but his own conscience, which can please him even when
overwhelmed by calumny, which contradicts the mob and common rumour,
relies only upon itself, and though it beholds a vast crowd of the
other way of thinking opposed to it, does not count heads, but wins by
its own vote alone. Should it see its own good faith meet with the
punishment due to treachery, it will not descend from its pedestal,
and will remain superior to its punishment. "I have," it says, "what I
wished, what I strove for. I do not regret it, nor shall I do so; nor
shall fortune, however unjust she may be, ever hear me say, 'What did
I want? What now is the use of having meant well?'" A good conscience
is of value on the rack, or in the fire; though fire be applied to
each of our limbs, gradually encircle our living bodies, and burst our
heart, yet if our heart be filled with a good conscience, it will
rejoice in the fire which will make its good faith shine before the
world.
Now let that question also which has been already stated be again
brought forward; Why is it that we should wish to be grateful when we
are dying, that we should carefully weigh the various services
rendered us by different individuals, and carefully review our whole
life, that we may not seem to have forgotten any kindness? Nothing
then remains for us to hope for; yet when on the very threshold, we
wish to depart from human life as full of gratitude as possible. There
is in truth an immense reward for this thing merely in doing it, and
what is honourable has great power to attract men's minds, which are
overwhelmed by its beauty and carried off their balance, enchanted by
its brilliancy and splendour. "Yet," argues our adversary, "from it
many advantages take their rise, and good men obtain a safer life and
love, and the good opinion of the better class, while their days are
spent in greater security when accompanied by innocence and
gratitude."
Indeed, nature would have been most unjust had she rendered this
great blessing miserable, uncertain, and fruitless. But consider this
point, whether you would make your way to that virtue, to which it is
generally safe and easy to attain, even though the path lay over rocks
and precipices, and were beset with fierce beasts and venomous
serpents. A virtue is none the less to be desired for its own sake,
because it has some adventitious profit connected with it: indeed, in
most cases the noblest virtues are accompanied by many extraneous
advantages, but it is the virtues that lead the way, and these merely
follow in their train.
Can we doubt that the climate of this abode of the human race is
regulated by the motion of the sun and moon in their orbits? that our
bodies are sustained, the hard earth loosened, excessive moisture
reduced, and the surly bonds of winter broken by the heat of the one,
and that crops are brought to ripeness by the effectual all-pervading
warmth of the other? that the fertility of the human race corresponds
to the courses of the moon? that the sun by its revolution marks out
the year, and that the moon, moving in a smaller orbit, marks out the
months? Yet, setting aside all this, would not the sun be a sight
worthy to be contemplated and worshipped, if he did no more than rise
and set? would not the moon be worth looking at, even if it passed
uselessly through the heavens? Whose attention is not arrested by the
universe itself, when by night it pours forth its fires and glitters
with innumerable stars? Who, while he admires them, thinks of their
being of use to him? Look at that great company gliding over our
heads, how they conceal their swift motion under the semblance of a
fixed and immovable work. How much takes place in that night which
you make use of merely to mark and count your days! What a mass of
events is being prepared in that silence! What a chain of destiny
their unerring path is forming! Those which you imagine to be merely
strewn about for ornament are really one and all at work. Nor is there
any ground for your belief that only seven stars revolve, and that the
rest remain still: we understand the orbits of a few, but countless
divinities, further removed from our sight, come and go; while the
greater part of those whom our sight reaches move in a mysterious
manner and by an unknown path.
What then? would you not be captivated by the sight of such a
stupendous work, even though it did not cover you, protect you,
cherish you, bring you into existence and penetrate you with its
spirit? Though these heavenly bodies are of the very first importance
to us, and are, indeed, essential to our life, yet we can think of
nothing but their glorious majesty, and similarly all virtue,
especially that of gratitude, though it confers great advantages upon
us, does not wish to be loved for that reason; it has something more
in it than this, and he who merely reckons it among useful things does
not perfectly comprehend it. A man, you say, is grateful because it is
to his advantage to be so. If this be the case, then his advantage
will be the measure of his gratitude. Virtue will not admit a covetous
lover; men must approach her with open purse. The ungrateful man
thinks, "I did wish to be grateful, but I fear the expense and danger
and insults to which I should expose myself: I will rather consult my
own interest." Men cannot be rendered grateful and ungrateful by the
same line of reasoning: their actions are as distinct as their
purposes. The one is ungrateful, although it is wrong, because it is
his interest; the other is grateful, although it is not his interest,
because it is right.
It is our aim to live in harmony with the scheme of the universe, and
to follow the example of the gods. Yet in all their acts the gods have
no object in view other than the act itself, unless you suppose that
they obtain a reward for their work in the smoke of burnt sacrifices
and the scent of incense. See what great things they do every day, how
much they divide amongst us, with how great crops they fill the earth,
how they move the seas with convenient winds to carry us to all
shores, how by the fall of sudden showers they soften the ground,
renew the dried-up springs of fountains, and call them into new life
by unseen supplies of water. All this they do without reward, without
any advantage accruing to themselves. Let our line of conduct, if it
would not depart from its model, preserve this direction, and let us
not act honourably because we are hired to do so. We ought to feel
ashamed that any benefit should have a price: we pay nothing for the
gods.
"If," our adversary may say, "you wish to imitate the gods, then
bestow benefits upon the ungrateful as well as the grateful; for the
sun rises upon the wicked as well as the good, the seas are open even
to pirates." By this question he really asks whether a good man would
bestow a benefit upon an ungrateful person, knowing him to be
ungrateful. Allow me here to introduce a short explanation, that we
may not be taken in by a deceitful question. Understand that according
to the system of the Stoics there are two classes of ungrateful
persons. One man is ungrateful because he is a fool; a fool is a bad
man; a man who is bad possesses every vice: therefore he is
ungrateful. In the same way we speak of all bad men as dissolute,
avaricious, luxurious, and spiteful, not because each man has all
these vices in any great or remarkable degree, but because he might
have them; they are in him, even though they be not seen. The second
form of ungrateful person is he who is commonly meant by the term, one
who is inclined by nature to this vice. In the case of him who has the
vice of ingratitude just as he has every other, a wise man will bestow
a benefit, because if he sets aside all such men there will be no one
left for him to bestow it on. As for the ungrateful man who habitually
misapplies benefits and acts so by choice, he will no more bestow a
benefit upon him than he would lend money to a spendthrift, or place a
deposit in the hands of one who had already often refused to many
persons to give up the property with which they had entrusted him.
We call some men timid because they are fools: in this they are like
the bad men who are steeped in all vices without distinction. Strictly
speaking, we call those persons timid who are alarmed even at
unmeaning noises. A fool possesses all vices, but he is not equally
inclined by nature to all; one is prone to avarice, another to luxury,
and another to insolence. Those persons, therefore, are mistaken, who
ask the Stoics, "What do you say, then? is Achilles timid? Aristides,
who received a name for justice, is he unjust? Fabius, who 'by delays
retrieved the day,' is he rash? Does Decius fear death? Is Mucius a
traitor? Camillus a betrayer?" We do not mean that all vices are
inherent in all men in the same way in which some especial ones are
noticeable in certain men, but we declare that the bad man and the
fool possess all vices; we do not even acquit them of fear when they
are rash, or of avarice when they are extravagant. Just as a man has
all his senses, yet all men have not on that account as keen a sight
as Lynceus, so a man that is a fool has not all vices in so active and
vigorous a form as some persons have spine of them, yet he has them
all. All vices exist in all of them, yet all are not prominent in
each individual. One man is naturally prone to avarice, another is
the slave of wine, a third of lust; or, if not yet enslaved by these
passions, he is so fashioned by nature that this is the direction in
which his character would probably lead him. Therefore, to return to
my original proposition, every bad man is ungrateful, because he has
the seeds of every villainy in him; but he alone is rightly so called
who is naturally inclined to this vice. Upon such a person as this,
therefore, I shall not bestow a benefit. One who betrothed his
daughter to an ill-tempered man from whom many women had sought a
divorce, would be held to have neglected her interests; a man would be
thought a bad father if he entrusted the care of his patrimony to one
who had lost his own family estate, and it would be the act of a
madman to make a will naming as the guardian of one's son a man who
had already defrauded other wards. So will that man be said to bestow
benefits as badly as possible, who chooses ungrateful persons, in
whose hands they will perish.
"The gods," it may be said, "bestow much, even upon the ungrateful."
But what they bestow they had prepared for the good, and the bad have
their share as well, because they cannot be separated. It is better to
benefit the bad as well, for the sake of benefiting the good, than to
stint the good for fear of benefiting the bad. Therefore the gods have
created all that you speak of, the day, the sun, the alternations of
winter and summer, the transitions through spring and autumn from one
extreme to the other, showers, drinking fountains, and regularly
blowing winds for the use of all alike; they could not except
individuals from the enjoyment of them. A king bestows honours upon
those who deserve them, but he gives largesse to the undeserving as
well. The thief, the bearer of false witness, and the adulterer, alike
receive the public grant of corn, and all are placed on the register
without any examination as to character; good and bad men share alike
in all the other privileges which a man receives, because he is a
citizen, not because he is a good man. God likewise has bestowed
certain gifts upon the entire human race, from which no one is shut
out. Indeed, it could not be arranged that the wind which was fair
for good men should be foul for bad ones, while it is for the good of
all men that the seas should be open for traffic and the kingdom of
mankind be enlarged; nor could any law be appointed for the showers,
so that they should not fall upon the fields of wicked and evil men.
Some things are given to all alike: cities are founded for good and
bad men alike; works of genius reach, by publication, even unworthy
men; medicine points out the means of health even to the wicked; no
one has checked the making up of wholesome remedies for fear that the
undeserving should be healed. You must seek for examination and
preference of individuals in such things as are bestowed separately
upon those who are thought to deserve them; not in these, which admit
the mob to share them without distinction. There is a great difference
between not shutting a man out and choosing him. Even a thief receives
justice; even murderers enjoy the blessings of peace; even those who
have plundered others can recover their own property; assassins and
private bravoes are defended against the common enemy by the city
wall; the laws protect even those who have sinned most deeply against
them. There are some things which no man could obtain unless they were
given to all; you need not, therefore, cavil about those matters in
which all mankind is invited to share. As for things which men receive
or not at my discretion, I shall not bestow them upon one whom I know
to be ungrateful.
"Shall we, then," argues he, "not give our advice to an ungrateful
man when he is at a loss, or refuse him a drink of water when he is
thirsty, or not show him the path when he has lost his way? or would
you do him these services and yet not give him anything?" Here I will
draw a distinction, or at any rate endeavour to do so. A benefit is a
useful service, yet all useful service is not a benefit; for some are
so trifling as not to claim the title of benefits. To produce a
benefit two conditions must concur. First, the importance of the thing
given; for some things fall short of the dignity of a benefit. Who
ever called a hunch of bread a benefit, or a farthing dole tossed to a
beggar, or the means of lighting a fire? yet sometimes these are of
more value than the most costly benefits; still their cheapness
detracts from their value even when, by the exigency of time, they are
rendered essential. The next condition, which is the most important of
all, must necessarily be present, namely, that I should confer the
benefit for the sake of him whom I wish to receive it, that I should
judge him worthy of it, bestow it of my own free will, and receive
pleasure from my own gift, none of which conditions are present in the
cases of which we have just now spoken; for we do not bestow such
things as those upon these who are worthy of them, but we give them
carelessly, as trifles, and do not give them so much to a man as to
humanity.
I shall not deny that sometimes I would give even to the unworthy,
out of respect for others; as, for instance, in competition for public
offices, some of the basest of men are preferred on account of their
noble birth, to industrious men of no family, and that for good
reasons; for the memory of great virtues is sacred, and more men will
take pleasure in being good, if the respect felt for good men does not
cease with their lives. What made Cicero's son a consul, except his
father? What lately brought Cinna [Footnote: See Seneca on "Clemency,"
book i., ch. ix.] out of the camp of the enemy and raised him to the
consulate? What made Sextus Pompeius and the other Pompeii consuls,
unless it was the greatness of one man, who once was raised so high
that, by his very fall, he sufficiently exalted all his relatives.
What lately made Fabius Persicus a member of more than one college of
priests, though even profligates avoided his kiss? Was it not
Verrucosus, and Allobrogicus, and the three hundred who to serve their
country blocked the invader's path with the force of a single family?
It is our duty to respect the virtuous, not only when present with us,
but also when removed from our sight: as they have made it their
study not to bestow their benefits upon one age alone, but to leave
them existing after they themselves have passed away, so let us not
confine our gratitude to a single age. If a man has begotten great
men, he deserves to receive benefits, whatever he himself may be: he
has given us worthy men. If a man descends from glorious ancestors,
whatever he himself may be, let him find refuge under the shadow of
his ancestry. As mean places are lighted up by the rays of the sun, so
let the degenerate shine in the light of their forefathers.
In this place, my Liberalis, I wish to speak in defence of the gods.
We sometimes say, "What could Providence mean by placing an Arrhidaeus
upon the throne?" Do you suppose that the crown was given to
Arrhidaeus? nay, it was given to his father and his brother. Why did
Heaven bestow the empire of the world upon Caius Caesar, the most
bloodthirsty of mankind, who was wont to order blood to be shed in his
presence as freely as if he wished to drink of it? Why, do you suppose
that it was given to him? It was given to his father, Germanicus, to
his grandfather, his great grandfather, and to others before them, no
less illustrious men, though they lived as private citizens on a
footing of equality with others. Why, when you yourself were making
Mamercus Scaurus consul, were you ignorant of his vices? did he
himself conceal them? did he wish to appear decent?
Did you admit a man who was so openly filthy to the fasces and the
tribunal? Yes, it was because you were thinking of the great old
Scaurus, the chief of the Senate, and were unwilling that his
descendant should be despised.
It is probable that the gods act in the same manner, that they show
greater indulgence to some for the sake of their parents and their
ancestry, and to others for the sake of their children and
grandchildren, and a long line of descendants beyond them; for they
know the whole course of their works, and have constant access to the
knowledge of all that shall hereafter pass through their hands. These
things come upon us from the unknown future, and the gods have
foreseen and are familiar with the events by which we are startled.
"Let these men," says Providence, "be kings, because their ancestors
were good kings, because they regarded righteousness and temperance as
the highest rule of life, because they did not devote the state to
themselves, but devoted themselves to the state. Let these others
reign, because some one of their ancestors before them was a good man,
who bore a soul superior to fortune, who preferred to be conquered
rather than to conquer in civil strife, because it was more to the
advantage of the state. [Footnote: Gertz, "Stud. Crit," p. 159, note.]
It was not possible to make a sufficient return to him for this during
so long a time; let this other, therefore, out of regard for him, be
chief of the people, not because he knows how, or is capable, but
because the other has earned it for him. This man is misshapen,
loathsome to look upon, and will disgrace the insignia of his office.
Men will presently blame me, calling me blind and reckless, not
knowing upon whom I am conferring what ought to be given to the
greatest and noblest of men; but I know that, in giving this dignity
to one man, I am paying an old debt to another. How should the men of
to-day know that ancient hero, who so resolutely avoided the glory
which pressed upon him, who went into danger with the same look which
other men wear when they have escaped from danger, who never regarded
his own interest as apart from that of the commonwealth?" "Where," you
ask, "or who is he? whence does he come?" "You know him not; it lies
with me to balance the debit and credit account in such cases as
these; I know how much I owe to each man; I repay some after a long
interval, others beforehand, according as my opportunities and the
exigencies of my social system permit." I shall, therefore, sometimes
bestow somewhat upon an ungrateful man, though not for his own sake.
"What," argues he, "if you do not know whether your man be ungrateful
or grateful—will you wait until you know, or will you not lose the
opportunity of bestowing a benefit? To wait is a long business—for,
as Plato says, it is hard to form an opinion about the human
mind,—not to wait, is rash." To this objector we shall answer, that
we never should wait for absolute knowledge of the whole case, since
the discovery of truth is an arduous task, but should proceed in the
direction in which truth appeared to direct us. All our actions
proceed in this direction: it is thus that we sow seed, that we sail
upon the sea, that we serve in the army, marry, and bring up children.
The result of all these actions is uncertain, so we take that course
from which we believe that good results may be hoped for. Who can
guarantee a harvest to the sower, a harbour to the sailor, victory to
the soldier, a modest wife to the husband, dutiful children to the
father? We proceed in the way in which reason, not absolute truth,
directs us. Wait, do nothing that will not turn out well, form no
opinion until you have searched but the truth, and your life will pass
in absolute in action. Since it is only the appearance of truth, not
truth itself, which leads me hither or thither, I shall confer
benefits upon the man who apparently will be grateful.
"Many circumstances," argues he, "may arise which may enable a bad man
to steal into the place of a good one, or may cause a good man to be
disliked as though he were a bad one; for appearances, to which we
trust, are deceptive." Who denies it? Yet I can find nothing else by
which to guide my opinion. I must follow these tracks in my search
after truth, for I have none more trustworthy than these; I will take
pains to weigh the value of these with all possible care, and will not
hastily give my assent to them. For instance, in a battle, it may
happen that my hand may be deceived by some mistake into turning my
weapon against my comrade, and sparing my enemy as though he were on
my side; but this will not often take place, and will not take place
through any fault of mine, for my object is to strike the enemy, and
defend my countryman. If I know a man to be ungrateful, I shall not
bestow a benefit upon him. But the man has passed himself off as a
good man by some trick, and has imposed upon me. Well, this is not at
all the fault of the giver, who gave under the impression that his
friend was grateful. "Suppose," asks he, "that you were to promise to
bestow a benefit, and afterwards were to learn that your man was
ungrateful, would you bestow it or not? If you do, you do wrong
knowingly, for you give to one to whom you ought not; if you refuse,
you do wrong likewise, for you do not give to him to whom you promised
to give. This case upsets your consistency, and that proud assurance
of yours that the wise man never regrets his actions, or amends what
he has done, or alters his plans." The wise man never changes his
plans while the conditions under which he formed them remain the same;
therefore, he never feels regret, because at the time nothing better
than what he did could have been done, nor could any better decision
have been arrived at than that which was made; yet he begins
everything with the saving clause, "If nothing shall occur to the
contrary." This is the reason why we say that all goes well with him,
and that nothing happens contrary to his expectation, because he bears
in mind the possibility of something happening to prevent the
realization of his projects. It is an imprudent confidence to trust
that fortune will be on our side. The wise man considers both sides:
he knows how great is the power of errors, how uncertain human affairs
are, how many obstacles there are to the success of plans. Without
committing himself, he awaits the doubtful and capricious issue of
events, and weighs certainty of purpose against uncertainty of result.
Here also, however, he is protected by that saving clause, without
which he decides upon nothing, and begins nothing.
When I promise to bestow a benefit, I promise it, unless something
occurs which makes it my duty not to do so. What if, for example, my
country orders me to give to her what I had promised to my friend? or
if a law be passed forbidding any one to do what I had promised to do
for him? Suppose that I have promised you my daughter in marriage,
that then you turn out to be a foreigner, and that I have no right of
intermarriage with foreigners; in this case, the law, by which I am
forbidden to fulfil my promise, forms my defence. I shall be
treacherous, and hear myself blamed for inconsistency, only if I do
not fulfil, my promise when all conditions remain the same as when I
made it; otherwise, any change makes me free to reconsider the entire
case, and absolves me from my promise. I may have promised to plead a
cause; afterwards it appears that this cause is designed to form a
precedent for an attack upon my father. I may have promised to leave
my country, and travel abroad; then news comes that the road is beset
with robbers. I was going to an appointment at some particular place;
but my son's illness, or my wife's confinement, prevented me. All
conditions must be the same as they were when I made the promise, if
you mean to hold me bound in honour to fulfil it. Now what greater
change can take place than that I should discover you to be a bad and
ungrateful man? I shall refuse to an unworthy man that which I had
intended to give him supposing him to be worthy, and I shall also have
reason to be angry with him for the trick which he has put upon me.
I shall nevertheless look into the matter, and consider what the
value of the thing promised may be. If it be trifling, I shall give
it, not because you are worthy of it, but because I promised it, and I
shall not give it as a present, but merely in order to make good my
words and give myself a twitch of the ear. I will punish my own
rashness in promising by the loss of what I gave. "See how grieved you
are; mind you take more care what you say in future." As the saying
is, I will take tongue money from you. If the matter be important, I
will not, as Maecenas said, let ten million sesterces reproach me. I
will weigh the two sides of the question one against the other: there
is something in abiding by what you have promised; on the other hand,
there is a great deal in not bestowing a benefit upon one who is
unworthy of it. Now, how great is this benefit? If it is a trifling
one, let us wink and let it pass; but if it will cause me much loss or
much shame to give it, I had rather excuse myself once for refusing it
than have to do so ever after for giving it. The whole point, I
repeat, depends upon how much the thing given is worth: let the terms
of my promise be appraised. Not only shall I refuse to give what I may
have promised rashly, but I shall also demand back again what I may
have wrongly bestowed: a man must be mad who keeps a promise made
under a mistake.
Philip, king of the Macedonians, had a hardy soldier whose services
he had found useful in many campaigns. From time to time he made this
man presents of part of the plunder as the reward of his valour, and
used to excite his greedy spirit by his frequent gifts. This man was
cast by shipwreck upon the estate of a certain Macedonian, who as soon
as he heard the news hastened to him, restored his breath, removed him
to his own farmhouse, gave up his own bed to him, nursed him out of
his weakened and half-dead condition, took care of him at his own
expense for thirty days, restored him to health and gave him a sum of
money for his journey, as the man kept constantly saying, "If only I
can see my chief, I will repay your kindness." He told Philip of his
shipwreck, said nothing about the help which he had received, and at
once demanded that a certain man's estate should be given to him. The
man was a friend of his: it was that very man by whom he had been
rescued and restored to health. Sometimes, especially in time of war,
kings bestow many gifts with their eyes shut. One just man cannot deal
with such a mass of armed selfishness. It is not possible for any one
to be at the same time a good man and a good general. How are so many
thousands of insatiable men to be satiated? What would they have, if
every man had his own? Thus Philip reasoned with himself while he
ordered the man to be put in possession of the property which he asked
for. However, the other, when driven out of his estate, did not, like
a peasant, endure his wrongs in silence, thankful that he himself was
not given away also, but sent a sharp and outspoken letter to Philip,
who, on reading it, was so much enraged that he straightway ordered
Pausanias to restore the property to its former owner, and to brand
that wickedest of soldiers, that most ungrateful of guests, that
greediest of shipwrecked men, with letters bearing witness to his
ingratitude. He, indeed, deserved to have the letters not merely
branded but carved in his flesh, for having reduced his host to the
condition in which he himself had been when he lay naked and
shipwrecked upon the beach; still, let us see within what limits one
ought to keep in punishing him. Of course what he had so villainously
seized ought to be taken from him. But who would be affected by the
spectacle of his punishment? The crime which he had committed would
prevent his being pitied even by any humane person.
Will Philip then give you a thing because he has promised to give it,
even though he ought not to do so, even though he will commit a wrong
by doing so, nay, a crime, even though by this one act he will make it
impossible for shipwrecked men to reach the shore? There is no
inconsistency in giving up an intention which we have discovered to be
wrong and have condemned as wrong; we ought candidly to admit, "I
thought that it was something different; I have been deceived." It is
mere pride and folly to persist, "what I once have said, be it what it
may, shall remain unaltered and settled." There is no disgrace in
altering one's plans according to circumstances. Now, if Philip had
left this man in possession of that seashore which he obtained by his
shipwreck, would he not have practically pronounced sentence of
banishment against all unfortunates for the future? "Rather," says
Philip, "do thou carry upon thy forehead of brass those letters, that
they may be impressed upon the eyes of all throughout my kingdom. Go,
let men see how sacred a thing is the table of hospitality; show them
your face, that upon it they may read the decree which prevents its
being a capital crime to give refuge to the unfortunate under one's
roof. The order will be more certainly respected by this means than
if I had inscribed it upon tablets of brass."
"Why then," argues our adversary, "did your Stoic philosopher Zeno,
when he had promised a loan of five hundred denarii to some person,
whom he afterwards discovered to be of doubtful character, persist in
lending it, because of his promise, though his friends dissuaded him
from doing so?" In the first place a loan is on a different footing to
a benefit. Even when we have lent money to an undesirable person we
can recall it; I can demand payment upon a certain day, and if he
becomes bankrupt, I can obtain my share of his property; but a benefit
is lost utterly and instantly. Besides, the one is the act of a bad
man, the other that of a bad father of a family. In the next place, if
the sum had been a larger one, not even Zeno would have persisted in
lending it. It was five hundred denarii; the sort of sum of which one
says, "May he spend it in sickness," and it was worth paying so much
to avoid breaking his promise. I shall go out to supper, even though
the weather be cold, because I have promised to go; but I shall not if
snow be falling. I shall leave my bed to go to a betrothal feast,
although I may be suffering from indigestion; but I shall not do so
if I am feverish. I will become bail for you, because I promised; but
not if you wish me to become bail in some transaction of uncertain
issue, if you expose me to forfeiting my money to the state. There
runs through all these cases, I argue, an implied exception; if I am
able, provided it is right for me to do so, if these things be so and
so. Make the position the same when you ask me to fulfil my promise,
as it was when I gave it, and it will be mere fickleness to disappoint
you; but if something new has taken place in the meanwhile, why should
you wonder at my intentions being changed when the conditions under
which I gave the promise are changed? Put everything back as it was,
and I shall be the same as I was. We enter into recognizances to
appear, yet if we fail to do so an action will not in all cases lie
against us, for we are excused for making default if forced to do so
by a power which we cannot resist.
You may take the same answer to the question as to whether we ought
in all cases to show gratitude for kindness, and whether a benefit
ought in all cases to be repaid. It is my duty to show a grateful
mind, but in some cases my own poverty, in others the prosperity of
the friend to whom I owe some return, will not permit me to give it.
What, for instance, am I, a poor man, to give to a king or a rich man
in return for his kindness, especially as some men regard it as a
wrong to have their benefits repaid, and are wont to pile one benefit
upon another? In dealing with such persons, what more can I do than
wish to repay them? Yet I ought not to refuse to receive a new
benefit, because I have not repaid the former one. I shall take it as
freely as it is given, and will offer myself to my friend as a wide
field for the exercise of his good nature: he who is unwilling to
receive new benefits must be dissatisfied with what he has already
received. Do you say, "I shall not be able to return them?" What is
that to the purpose? I am willing enough to do so if opportunity or
means were given me. He gave it to me, of course, having both
opportunity and means: is he a good man or a bad one? if he is a good
man, I have a good case against him, and I will not plead if he be a
bad one. Neither do I think it right to insist on making repayment,
even though it be against the will of those whom we repay, and to
press it upon them however reluctant they may be; it is not repayment
to force an unwilling man to resume what you were once willing to
take. Some people, if any trifling present be sent to them, afterwards
send back something else for no particular reason, and then declare
that they are under no obligation; to send something back at once, and
balance one present by another, is the next thing to refusing to
receive it. On some occasions I shall not return a benefit, even
though I be able to do so. When? When by so doing I shall myself lose
more than he will gain, or if he would not notice any advantage to
himself in receiving that which it would be a great loss to me to
return. The man who is always eager to repay under all circumstances,
has not the feeling of a grateful man, but of a debtor; and, to put it
shortly, he who is too eager to repay, is unwilling to be in his
friend's debt; he who is unwilling, and yet is in his friend's debt,
is ungrateful.
In the preceding books I seem to have accomplished the object which
I proposed to myself, since in them I have discussed how a benefit
ought to be bestowed, and how it ought to be received. These are the
limits of this action; when I dwell upon it further I am not obeying
the orders, but the caprices of my subject which ought to be followed
whither it leads, not whither it allures us to wander; for now and
then something will arise, which, although it is all but unconnected
with the subject, instead of being a necessary part of it, still
thrills the mind with a certain charm. However, since you wish it to
be so, let us go on, after having completed our discussion of the
heads of the subject itself, to investigate those matters which, if
you wish for truth, I must call adjacent to it, not actually connected
with it; to examine which carefully is not one worth one's while, and
yet is not labour in vain. No praise, however, which I can give to
benefits does justice to you, Aebutius Liberalis, a man of excellent
disposition and naturally inclined to bestow them. Never have I seen
any one esteem even the most trifling services more kindly; indeed,
your good-nature goes so far as to regard whatever benefit is bestowed
upon anyone as bestowed upon yourself; you are prepared to pay even
what is owed by the ungrateful, that no one may regret having bestowed
benefits. You yourself are so far from any boastfulness, you are so
eager at once to free those whom you serve from any feeling of
obligation to you, that you like, when giving anything to any one, to
seem not so much to be giving a present as returning one; and
therefore what you give in this manner will all the more fully he
repaid to you: for, as a rule, benefits come to one who does not
demand repayment of them; and just as glory follows those who avoid
it, so men receive a more plentiful harvest in return for benefits
bestowed upon those who had it in their power to be ungrateful. With
you there is no reason why those who have received benefits from you
should not ask for fresh ones; nor would you refuse to bestow others,
to overlook and conceal what you have given, and to add to it more and
greater gifts, since it is the aim of all the best men and the noblest
dispositions to bear with an ungrateful man until you make him
grateful. Be not deceived in pursuing this plan; vice, if you do not
too soon begin to hate it, will yield to virtue.
Thus it is that you are especially pleased with what you think the
grandly-sounding phrase, "It is disgraceful to be worsted in a contest
of benefits." Whether this be true or not deserves to be investigated,
and it means something quite different from what you imagine; for it
is never disgraceful to be worsted in any honourable contest, provided
that you do not throw down your arms, and that even when conquered you
wish to conquer. All men do not strive for a good object with the same
strength, resources, and good fortune, upon which depend at all events
the issues of the most admirable projects, though we ought to praise
the will itself which makes an effort in the right direction. Even
though another passes it by with swifter pace, yet the palm of victory
does not, as in publicly-exhibited races, declare which is the better
man; though even in the games chance frequently brings an inferior man
to the front. As far as loyalty of feeling goes, which each man
wishes to be possessed in the fullest measure on his own side, if one
of the two be the more powerful, if he have at his disposal all the
resources which he wishes to use, and be favoured by fortune in his
most ambitious efforts, while the other, although equally willing, can
only return less than he receives, or perhaps can make no return at
all, but still wishes to do so and is entirely devoted to this object;
then the latter is no more conquered than he who dies in arms, whom
the enemy found it easier to slay than to turn back. To be conquered,
which you consider disgraceful, cannot happen to a good man; for he
will never surrender, never give up the contest, to the last day of
his life he will stand prepared and in that posture he will die,
testifying that though he has received much, yet that he had the will
to repay as much as he had received.
The Lacedaemonians forbid their young men to contend in the
pancratium, or with the caestus, in which games the defeated party
has to acknowledge himself beaten. The winner of a race is he who
first reaches the goal; he outstrips the others in swiftness, but not
in courage. The wrestler who has been thrown three times loses the
palm of victory, but does not yield it up. Since the Lacedaemonians
thought it of great importance that their countrymen should be
invincible, they kept them away from those contests in which victory
is assigned, not by the judge, or by the issue of the contest itself,
but by the voice of the vanquished begging the victor to spare him as
he falls. This attribute of never being conquered, which they so
jealously guard among their citizens, can be attained by all men
through virtue and goodwill, because even when all else is vanquished,
the mind remains unconquered. For this cause no one speaks of the
three hundred Fabii as conquered, but slaughtered. Regulus was taken
captive by the Carthaginians, not conquered; and so were all other men
who have not yielded in spirit when overwhelmed by the strength and
weight of angry fortune.
So is it with benefits. A man may have received more than he gave,
more valuable ones, more frequently bestowed; yet is he not
vanquished. It may be that, if you compare the benefits with one
another, those which he has received will outweigh those which he has
bestowed; but if you compare the giver and the receiver, whose
intentions also ought to be considered apart, neither will prove the
victor. It often happens that even when one combatant is pierced with
many wounds, while the other is only slightly injured, yet they are
said to have fought a drawn battle, although the former may appear to
be the worse man.
No one, therefore, can be conquered in a contest of benefits, if he
knows how to owe a debt, if he wishes to make a return for what he has
received, and raises himself to the same level with his friend in
spirit, though he cannot do so in material gifts. As long as he
remains in this temper of mind, as long as he has the wish to declare
by proofs that he has a grateful mind, what difference does it make
upon which side we can count the greater number of presents? You are
able to give much; I can do nothing but receive. Fortune abides with
you, goodwill alone with me; yet I am as much on an equality with you
as naked or lightly armed men are with a large body armed to the
teeth. No one, therefore, is worsted by benefits, because each man's
gratitude is to be measured by his will. If it be disgraceful to be
worsted in a contest of benefits, you ought not to receive a benefit
from very powerful men whose kindness you cannot return, I mean such
as princes and kings, whom fortune has placed in such a station that
they can give away much, and can only receive very little and quite
inadequate returns for what they give. I have spoken of kings and
princes, who alone can cause works to be accomplished, and whose
superlative power depends upon the obedience and services of
inferiors; but some there are, free from all earthly lusts, who are
scarcely affected by any human objects of desire, upon whom fortune
herself could bestow nothing. I must be worsted in a contest of
benefits with Socrates, or with Diogenes, who walked naked through the
treasures of Macedonia, treading the king's wealth under his feet. In
good sooth, he must then rightly have seemed, both to himself and to
all others whose eyes were keen enough to perceive the real truth, to
be superior even to him at whose feet all the world lay. He was far
more powerful, far richer even than Alexander, who then possessed
everything; for there was more that Diogenes could refuse to receive
than that Alexander was able to give.
It is not disgraceful to be worsted by these men, for I am not the
less brave because you pit me against an invulnerable enemy, nor does
fire not burn because you throw into it something over which flames
have no power, nor does iron lose its power of cutting, though you may
wish to cut up a stone which is hard, impervious to blows, and of such
a nature that hard tools are blunted upon it. I give you the same
answer about gratitude. A man is not disgracefully worsted in a
contest of benefits if he lays himself under an obligation to such
persons as these, whose enormous wealth or admirable virtue shut out
all possibility of their benefits being returned. As a rule we are
worsted by our parents; for while we have them with us, we regard them
as severe, and do not understand what they do for us. When our age
begins to bring us a little sense, and we gradually perceive that they
deserve our love for those very things which used to prevent our
loving them, their advice, their punishments, and the careful watch
which they used to keep over our youthful recklessness, they are
taken from us. Few live to reap any real fruit from children; most
men feel their sons only as a burden. Yet there is no disgrace in
being worsted by one's parent in bestowing benefits; how should there
be, seeing that there is no disgrace in being worsted by anyone. We
are equal to some men, and yet not equal; equal in intention, which is
all that they care for, which is all that we promise to be, but
unequal in fortune. And if fortune prevents any one from repaying a
kindness, he need not, therefore, blush, as though he were vanquished;
there is no disgrace in failing to reach your object, provided you
attempt to reach it. It often is necessary, that before making any
return for the benefits which we have received, we should ask for new
ones; yet, if so, we shall not refrain from asking for them, nor shall
we do so as though disgraced by so doing, because, even if we do not
repay the debt, we shall owe it; because, even if something from
without befalls us to prevent our repaying it, it will not be our
fault if we are not grateful. We can neither be conquered in
intention, nor can we be disgraced by yielding to what is beyond our
strength to contend with.
Alexander, the king of the Macedonians, used to boast that he had
never been worsted by anybody in a contest of benefits. If so, it was
no reason why, in the fulness of his pride, he should despise the
Macedonians, Greeks, Carians, Persians, and other tribes of whom his
army was composed, nor need he imagine that it was this that gave him
an empire reaching from a corner of Thrace to the shore of the unknown
sea. Socrates could make the same boast, and so could Diogenes, by
whom Alexander was certainly surpassed; for was he not surpassed on
the day when, swelling as he was beyond the limits of merely human
pride, he beheld one to whom he could give nothing, from whom he could
take nothing? King Archelaus invited Socrates to come to him. Socrates
is reported to have answered that he should be sorry to go to one who
would bestow benefits upon him, since he should not be able to make
him an adequate return for them. In the first place, Socrates was at
liberty not to receive them; next, Socrates himself would have been
the first to bestow a benefit, for he would have come when invited,
and would have given to Archelaus that for which Archelaus could have
made no return to Socrates. Even if Archelaus were to give Socrates
gold and silver, if he learned in return for them to despise gold and
silver, would not Socrates be able to repay Archelaus? Could Socrates
receive from him as much value as he gave, in displaying to him a man
skilled in the knowledge of life and of death, comprehending the true
purpose of each? Suppose that he had found this king, as it were,
groping his way in the clear sunlight, and had taught him the secrets
of nature, of which he was so ignorant, that when there was an eclipse
of the sun, he up his palace, and shaved his son's head, [Footnote:
Gertz very reasonably conjectures that he shaved his own head which
reading would require a very trifling alteration of the text.] which
men are wont to do in times of mourning and distress. What a benefit
it would have been if he had dragged the terror-stricken king out of
his hiding- place, and bidden him be of good cheer, saying, "This is
not a disappearance of the sun, but a conjunction of two heavenly
bodies; for the moon, which proceeds along a lower path, has placed
her disk beneath the sun, and hidden it by the interposition of her
own mass. Sometimes she only hides a small portion of the sun's disk,
because she only grazes it in passing; sometimes she hides more, by
placing more of herself before it; and sometimes she shuts it out
from our sight altogether, if she passes in an exactly even course
between the sun and the earth. Soon, however, their own swift motion
will draw these two bodies apart; soon the earth will receive back
again the light of day. And this system will continue throughout
centuries, having certain days, known beforehand, upon which the sun
cannot display all rays, because of the intervention of the moon. Wait
only for a short time; he will soon emerge, he will soon leave that
seeming cloud, and freely shed abroad his light without any
hindrances." Could Socrates not have made an adequate return to
Archelaus, if he had taught him to reign? as though Socrates would not
benefit him sufficiently, merely by enabling him to bestow a benefit
upon Socrates. Why, then, did Socrates say this? Being a joker and a
speaker in parables—a man who turned all, especially the great, into
ridicule—he preferred giving him a satirical refusal, rather than an
obstinate or haughty one, and therefore said that he did not wish to
receive benefits from one to whom he could not return as much as he
received. He feared, perhaps, that he might be forced to receive
something which he did not wish, he feared that it might be something
unfit for Socrates to receive. Some one may say, "He ought to have
said that he did not wish to go." But by so doing he would have
excited against himself the anger of an arrogant king, who wished
everything connected with himself to be highly valued. It makes no
difference to a king whether you be unwilling to give anything to him
or to accept anything from him; he is equally incensed at either
rebuff, and to be treated with disdain is more bitter to a proud
spirit than not to be feared. Do you wish to know what Socrates really
meant? He, whose freedom of speech could not be borne even by a free
state, was not willing of his own choice to become a slave.
I think that we have sufficiently discussed this part of the subject,
whether it be disgraceful to be worsted in a contest of benefits.
Whoever asks this question must know that men are not wont to bestow
benefits upon themselves, for evidently it could not be disgraceful to
be worsted by oneself. Yet some of the Stoics debate this question,
whether any one can confer a benefit upon himself, and whether one
ought to return one's own kindness to oneself. This discussion has
been raised in consequence of our habit of saying, "I am thankful to
myself," "I can complain of no one but myself," "I am angry with
myself," "I will punish myself," "I hate myself," and many other
phrases of the same sort, in which one speaks of oneself as one would
of some other person. "If," they argue, "I can injure myself, why
should I not be able also to bestow a benefit upon myself? Besides
this, why are those things not called benefits when I bestow them upon
myself which would be called benefits if I bestowed them upon another?
If to receive a certain thing from another would lay me under an
obligation to him, how is it that if I give it to myself, I do not
contract an obligation to myself? why should I be ungrateful to my own
self, which is no less disgraceful than it is to be mean to oneself,
or hard and cruel to oneself, or neglectful of oneself? The procurer
is equally odious whether he prostitutes others or himself. We blame
a flatterer, and one who imitates another man's mode of speech, or is
prepared to give praise whether it be deserved or not; we ought
equally to blame one who humours himself and looks up to himself, and
so to speak is his own flatterer. Vices are not only hateful when
outwardly practised, but also when they are repressed within the mind.
Whom would you admire more than he who governs himself and has himself
under command? It is easier to rule savage nations, impatient of
foreign control, than to restrain one's own mind and keep it under
one's own control. Plato, it is argued, was grateful to Socrates for
having been taught by him; why should not Socrates be grateful to
himself for having taught himself? Marcus Cato said, "Borrow from
yourself whatever you lack;" why, then, if I can lend myself anything,
should I be unable to give myself anything? The instances in which
usage divides us into two persons are innumerable; we are wont to say,
"Let me converse with myself," and, "I will give myself a twitch of
the ear;" [Footnote: See book iv. ch. xxxvi.] and if it be true that
one can do so, then a man ought to be grateful to himself, just as he
is angry with himself; as he blames himself, SO he ought to praise
himself; since he can impoverish himself, he can also enrich himself.
Injuries and benefits are the converse of one another: if we say of a
man, 'he has done himself an injury,' we can also say 'he has bestowed
upon himself a benefit?'
It is natural that a man should first incur an obligation, and then
that he should return gratitude for it; a debtor cannot exist without
a creditor, any more than a husband without a wife, or a son without a
father; someone must give in order that some one may receive. Just as
no one carries himself, although he moves his body and transports it
from place to place; as no one, though he may have made a speech in
his own defence, is said to have stood by himself, or erects a statue
to himself as his own patron; as no sick man, when by his own care he
has regained his health, asks himself for a fee; so in no transaction,
even when a man does what is useful to himself, need he return thanks
to himself, because there is no one to whom he can return them. Though
I grant that a man can bestow a benefit upon himself, yet at the same
time that he gives it, he also receives it; though I grant that a man
may receive a benefit from himself, yet he receives it at the same
time that he gives it. The exchange takes place within doors, as they
say, and the transfer is made at once, as though the debt were a
fictitious one; for he who gives is not a different person to he who
receives, but one and the same. The word "to owe" has no meaning
except as between two persons; how then can it apply to one man who
incurs an obligation, and by the same act frees himself from it? In a
disk or a ball there is no top or bottom, no beginning or end, because
the relation of the parts is changed when it moves, what was behind
coming before, and what went down on one side coming up on the other,
so that all the parts, in whatever direction they may move, come back
to the same position. Imagine that the same thing takes place in a
man; into however many pieces you may divide him, he remains one. If
he strikes himself, he has no one to call to account for the insult;
if he binds himself and locks himself up, he cannot demand damages; if
he bestows a benefit upon himself, he straightway returns it to the
giver. It is said that there is no waste in nature, because everything
which is taken from nature returns to her again, and nothing can
perish, because it cannot fall out of nature, but goes round again to
the point from whence it started. You ask, "What connection has this
illustration with the subject?" I will tell you. Imagine yourself to
be ungrateful, the benefit bestowed upon you is not lost, he who gave
it has it; suppose that you are unwilling to receive it, it still
belongs to you before it is returned. You cannot lose anything,
because what you take away from yourself, you nevertheless gain
yourself. The matter revolves in a circle within yourself; by
receiving you give, by giving you receive.
"It is our duty," argues our adversary, "to bestow benefits upon
ourselves, therefore we ought also to be grateful to ourselves." The
original axiom, upon which the inference depends, is untrue, for no
one bestows benefits upon himself, but obeys the dictates of his
nature, which disposes him to affection for himself, and which makes
him take the greatest pains to avoid hurtful things, and to follow
after those things which are profitable to him. Consequently, the man
who gives to himself is not generous, nor is he who pardons himself
forgiving, nor is he who is touched by his own misfortunes
tender-hearted; it is natural to do those things to oneself which when
done to others become generosity, clemency, and tenderness of heart. A
benefit is a voluntary act, but to do good to oneself is an
instinctive one. The more benefits a man bestows, the more beneficent
he is, yet who ever was praised for having been of service to himself?
or for having rescued himself from brigands? No one bestows a benefit
upon himself any more than he bestows hospitality upon himself; no one
gives himself anything, any more than he lends himself anything. If
each man bestows benefits upon himself, is always bestowing them, and
bestows them without any cessation, then it is impossible for him to
make any calculation of the number of his benefits; when then can he
show his gratitude, seeing that by the very act of doing so he would
bestow a benefit? for what distinction can you draw between giving
himself a benefit or receiving a benefit for himself, when the whole
transaction takes place in the mind of the same man? Suppose that I
have freed myself from danger, then I have bestowed a benefit upon
myself; suppose I free myself a second time, by so doing do I bestow
or repay a benefit? In the next place, even if I grant the primary
axiom, that we can bestow benefits upon ourselves, I do not admit that
which follows; for even if we can do so, we ought not to do so.
Wherefore? Because we receive a return for them at once. It is right
for me to receive a benefit, then to lie under an obligation, then to
repay it; now here there is no time for remaining under an obligation,
because we receive the return without any delay. No one really gives
except to another, no one owes except to another, no one repays except
to another. An act which always requires two persons cannot take place
within the mind of one.
A benefit means the affording of something useful, and the word
AFFORDING implies other persons. Would not a man be thought mad if he
said that he had sold something to himself, because selling means
alienation, and the transferring of a thing and of one's rights in
that thing to another person? Yet giving, like selling anything,
consists in making it pass away from you, handing over what you
yourself once owned into the keeping of some one else.
If this be so, no one ever gave himself a benefit, because no one
gives to himself; if not, two opposites coalesce, so that it becomes
the same thing to give and to receive. Yet there is a great difference
between giving and receiving; how should there not be, seeing that
these words are the converse of one another? Still, if any one can
give himself a benefit, there can be no difference between giving and
receiving. I said a little before that some words apply only to other
persons, and are so constituted that their whole meaning lies apart
from ourselves; for instance, I am a brother, but a brother of some
other man, for no one is his own brother; I am an equal, but equal to
somebody else, for who is equal to himself? A thing which is compared
to another thing is unintelligible without that other thing; a thing
which is joined to something else does not exist apart from it; so
that which is given does not exist without the other person, nor can a
benefit have any existence without another person. This is clear from
the very phrase which describes it, 'to do good,' yet no one does good
to himself, any more than he favours himself or is on his own side. I
might enlarge further upon this subject and give many examples. Why
should benefits not be included among those acts which require two
persons to perform them? Many honourable, most admirable and highly
virtuous acts cannot take place without a second person. Fidelity is
praised and held to be one of the chief blessings known among men, yet
was any one ever on that account said to have kept faith with himself?
I come now to the last part of this subject. The man who returns a
kindness ought to expend something, just as he who repays expends
money; but the man who returns a kindness to himself expends nothing,
just as he who receives a benefit from himself gains nothing. A
benefit and gratitude for it must pass to and fro between two persons;
their interchange cannot take place within one man. He who returns a
kindness does good in his turn to him from whom he has received
something; but the man who returns his own kindness, to whom does he
do good? To himself? Is there any one who does not regard the
returning of a kindness, and the bestowal of a benefit, as distinct
acts? 'He who returns a kindness to himself does good to himself.' Was
any man ever unwilling to do this, even though he were ungrateful?
nay, who ever was ungrateful from any other motive than this? "If," it
is argued, "we are right in thanking ourselves, we ought to return our
own kindness;" yet we say, "I am thankful to myself for having refused
to marry that woman," or "for having refused to join a partnership
with that man." When we speak thus, we are really praising ourselves,
and make use of the language of those who return thanks to approve our
own acts. A benefit is something which, when given, may or may not be
returned. Now, he who gives a benefit to himself must needs receive
what he gives; therefore, this is not a benefit. A benefit is received
at one time, and is returned at another; (but when a man bestows a
benefit upon himself, he both receives it and returns it at the same
time). In a benefit, too, what we commend and admire is, that a man
has for the time being forgotten his own interests, in order that he
may do good to another; that he has deprived himself of something, in
order to bestow it upon another. Now, he who bestows a benefit upon
himself does not do this. The bestowal of a benefit is an act of
companionship—it wins some man's friendship, and lays some man under
an obligation; but to bestow it upon oneself is no act of
companionship—it wins no man's friendship, lays no man under an
obligation, raises no man's hopes, or leads him to say, "This man must
be courted; he bestowed a benefit upon that person, perhaps he will
bestow one upon me also." A benefit is a thing which one gives not for
one's own sake, but for the sake of him to whom it is given; but he
who bestows a benefit upon himself, does so for his own sake;
therefore, it is not a benefit.
Now I seem to you not to have made good what I said at the beginning
of this book. You say that I am far from doing what is worth any one's
while; nay, that in real fact I have thrown away all my trouble. Wait,
and soon you will be able to say this more truly, for I shall lead you
into covert lurking-places, from which when you have escaped, you will
have gained nothing except that you will have freed yourself from
difficulties with which you need never have hampered yourself. What is
the use of laboriously untying knots which you yourself have tied, in
order that you might untie them? Yet, just as some knots are tied in
fun and for amusement, so that a tyro may find difficulty in untying
them, which knots he who tied them can loose without any trouble,
because he knows the joinings and the difficulties of them, and these
nevertheless afford us some pleasure, because they test the sharpness
of our wits, and engross, our attention; so also these questions,
which seem subtle and tricky, prevent our intellects becoming careless
and lazy, for they ought at one time to have a field given them to
level, in order that they may wander about it, and at another to have
some dark and rough passage thrown in their way for them to creep
through, and make their way with caution. It is said by our opponent
that no one is ungrateful; and this is supported by the following
arguments: "A benefit is that which does good; but, as you Stoics say,
no one can do good to a bad man; therefore, a bad man does not receive
a benefit. (If he does not receive it, he need not return it;
therefore, no bad man is ungrateful.) Furthermore, a benefit is an
honourable and commendable thing. No honourable or commendable thing
can find any place with a bad man; therefore, neither can a benefit.
If he cannot receive one, he need not repay one; therefore, he does
not become ungrateful. Moreover, as you say, a good man does
everything rightly; if he does everything rightly, he cannot be
ungrateful. A good man returns a benefit, a bad man does not receive
one. If this be so, no man, good or bad, can be ungrateful. Therefore,
there is no such thing in nature as an ungrateful man: the word is
meaningless." We Stoics have only one kind of good, that which is
honourable. This cannot come to a bad man, for he would cease to be
bad if virtue entered into him; but as long as he is bad, no one can
bestow a benefit upon him, because good and bad are contraries, and
cannot exist together. Therefore, no one can do good to such a man,
because whatever he receives is corrupted by his vicious way of using
it. Just as the stomach, when disordered by disease and secreting
bile, changes all the food which it receives, and turns every kind of
sustenance into a source of pain, so whatever you entrust to an
ill-regulated mind becomes to it a burden, an annoyance, and a source
of misery. Thus the most prosperous and the richest men have the most
trouble; and the more property they have to perplex them, the less
likely they are to find out what they really are. Nothing, therefore,
can reach bad men which would do them good; nay, nothing which would
not do them harm. They change whatever falls to their lot into their
own evil nature; and things which elsewhere would, if given to better
men, be both beautiful and profitable, are ruinous to them. They
cannot, therefore, bestow benefits, because no one can give what he
does not possess, and, therefore, they lack the pleasure of doing good
to others.
But, though this be so, yet even a bad man can receive some things
which resemble benefits, and he will be ungrateful if he does not
return them. There are good things belonging to the mind, to the body,
and to fortune. A fool or a bad man is debarred from the first—those,
that is, of the mind; but he is admitted to a share in the two latter,
and, if he does not return them, he is ungrateful. Nor does this
follow from our (Stoic) system alone the Peripatetics, also, who
widely extend the boundaries of human happiness, declare that trifling
benefits reach bad men, and that he who does not return them is
ungrateful. We therefore do not agree that things which do not tend to
improve the mind should be called benefits, yet do not deny that these
things are convenient and desirable. Such things as these a bad man
may bestow upon a good man, or may receive from him—such, for
example, as money, clothes, public office, or life; and, if he makes
no return for these, he will come under the denomination of
ungrateful. "But how can you call a man ungrateful for not returning
that which you say is not a benefit?" Some things, on account of their
similarity, are included under the same designation, although they do
not really deserve it. Thus we speak of a silver or golden box; ["The
original word is 'pyx,' which means a box made of box-wood."] thus we
call a man illiterate, although he may not be utterly ignorant, but
only not acquainted with the higher branches of literature; thus,
seeing a badly-dressed ragged man we say that we have seen a naked
man. These things of which we spoke are not benefits, but they possess
the appearance of benefits. "Then, just as they are quasi-benefits,
so your man is quasi-ungrateful, not really ungrateful." This is
untrue, because both he who gives and he who receives them speaks of
them as benefits; so he who fails to return the semblance of a real
benefit is as much an ungrateful man as he who mixes a sleeping
draught, believing it to be poison, is a poisoner.
Cleanthes speaks more impetuously than this. "Granted," says he,
"that what he received was not a benefit, yet he is ungrateful,
because he would not have returned a benefit if he had received one."
So he who carries deadly weapons and has intentions of robbing and
murdering, is a brigand even before he has dipped his hands in blood;
his wickedness consists and is shown in action, but does not begin
thereby. Men are punished for sacrilege, although no one's hands can
reach to the gods. "How," asks our opponent, "can any one be
ungrateful to a bad man, since a bad man cannot bestow a benefit?" In
the same way, I answer, because that which he received was not a
benefit, but was called one; if any one receives from a bad man any of
those things which are valued by the ignorant, and of which bad men
often possess great store, it becomes his duty to make a return in the
same kind, and to give back as though they were truly good those
things which he received as though they were truly good. A man is said
to be in debt, whether he owes gold pieces or leather marked with a
state stamp, such as the Lacedaemonians used, which passes for coined
money. Pay your debts in that kind in which you incurred them. You
have nothing to do with the definition of benefits, or with the
question whether so great and noble a name ought to be degraded by
applying it to such vulgar and mean matters as these, nor do we seek
for truth that we may use it to the disadvantage of others; do you
adjust your minds to the semblance of truth, and while you are
learning what is really honourable, respect everything to which the
name of honour is applied.
"In the same way," argues our adversary, "that your school proves
that no one is ungrateful, you afterwards prove that all men are
ungrateful. For, as you say, all fools are bad men; he who has one
vice has all vices; all men are both fools and bad men; therefore all
men are ungrateful." Well, what then? Are they not? Is not this the
universal reproach of the human race? is there not a general complaint
that benefits are thrown away, and that there are very few men who do
not requite their benefactors with the basest ingratitude? Nor need
you suppose that what we say is merely the grumbling of men who think
every act wicked and depraved which falls short of an ideal standard
of righteousness. Listen! I know not who it is who speaks, yet the
voice with which he condemns mankind proceeds, not from the schools of
philosophers, but from the midst of the crowd:
"Host is not safe from guest;
Father-in-law from son; but seldom love
Exists 'twixt brothers; wives long to destroy
Their husbands; husbands long to slay their wives."
This goes even further: according to this, crimes take the place of
benefits, and men do not shrink from shedding the blood of those for
whom they ought to shed their own; we requite benefits by steel and
poison. We call laying violent hands upon our own country, and putting
down its resistance by the fasces of its own lictors, gaining power
and great place; every man thinks himself to be in a mean and degraded
position if he has not raised himself above the constitution; the
armies which are received from the state are turned against her, and a
general now says to his men, "Fight against your wives, fight against
your children, march in arms against your altars, your hearths and
homes!" Yes, [Footnote: I believe, in spite of Gertz, that this is
part of the speech of the Roman general, and that the conjecture of
Muretus, "without the command of the senate," gives better sense.]
you, who even when about to triumph ought not to enter the city at the
command of the senate, and who have often, when bringing home a
victorious army, been given an audience outside the walls, you now,
after slaughtering your countrymen, stained with the blood of your
kindred, march into the city with standards erect. "Let liberty," say
you, "be silent amidst the ensigns of war, and now that wars are
driven far away and no ground for terror remains, let that people
which conquered and civilized all nations be beleaguered within its
own walls, and shudder at the sight of its own eagles."
Coriolanus was ungrateful, and became dutiful late, and after
repenting of his crime; he did indeed lay down his arms, but only in
the midst of his unnatural warfare. Catilina was ungrateful; he was
not satisfied with taking his country captive without overturning it,
without despatching the hosts of the Allobroges against it, without
bringing an enemy from beyond the Alps to glut his old inborn hatred,
and to offer Roman generals as sacrifices which had been long owing to
the tombs of the Gaulish dead. Caius Marius was ungrateful, when,
after being raised from the ranks to the consulship, he felt that he
would not have wreaked his vengeance upon fortune, and would sink to
his original obscurity, unless he slaughtered Romans as freely as he
had slaughtered the Cimbri, and not merely gave the signal, but was
himself the signal for civil disasters and butcheries. Lucius Sulla
was ungrateful, for he saved his country by using remedies worse than
the perils with which it was threatened, when he marched through human
blood all the way from the citadel of Praeneste to the Colline Gate,
fought more battles and caused more slaughter afterwards within the
city, and most cruelly after the victory was won, most wickedly after
quarter had been promised them, drove two legions into a corner and
put them to the sword, and, great gods! invented a proscription by
which he who slew a Roman citizen received indemnity, a sum of money,
everything but a civic crown! Cnaeus Pompeius was ungrateful, for the
return which he made to his country for three consulships, three
triumphs, and the innumerable public offices into most of which he
thrust himself when under age, was to lead others also to lay hands
upon her under the pretext of thus rendering his own power less
odious; as though what no one ought to do became right if more than
one person did it. Whilst he was coveting extraordinary commands,
arranging the provinces so as to have his own choice of them, and
dividing the whole state with a third person, [Footnote: Crassus.] in
such a manner as to leave two-thirds of it in the possession of his
own family, [Footnote: Pompey was married to Caesar's daughter. Cf.
Virg., "Aen.," vi., 831, sq., and Lucan's beautiful verses, "Phars.,"
i., 114.] he reduced the Roman people to such a condition that they
could only save themselves by submitting to slavery. The foe and
conqueror [Footnote: Seneca is careful to avoid the mention of
Caesar's name, which might have given offence to the emperors under
whom he lived, who used the name as a title.] of Pompeius was himself
ungrateful; he brought war from Gaul and Germany to Rome, and he, the
friend of the populace, the champion of the commons, pitched his camp
in the Circus Flaminus, nearer to the city than Porsena's camp had
been. He did, indeed, use the cruel privileges of victory with
moderation; as was said at the time, he protected his countrymen, and
put to death no man who was not in arms. Yet what credit is there in
this? Others used their arms more cruelly, but flung them away when
glutted with blood, while he, though he soon sheathed the sword, never
laid it aside. Antonius was ungrateful to his dictator, who he
declared was rightly slain, and whose murderers he allowed to depart
to their commands in the provinces; as for his country, after it had
been torn to pieces by so many proscriptions, invasions, and civil
wars, he intended to subject it to kings, not even of Roman birth, and
to force that very state to pay tribute to eunuchs, [Footnote: The
allusion is to Antonius's connection with Cleopatra. Cf. Virg. "Aen.,"
viii., 688.] which had itself restored sovereign rights, autonomy, and
immunities, to the Achaeans, the Rhodians, and the people of many
other famous cities.
The day would not be long enough for me to enumerate those who have
pushed their ingratitude so far as to ruin their native land. It would
be as vast a task to mention how often the state has been ungrateful
to its best and most devoted lovers, although it has done no less
wrong than it has suffered. It sent Camillus and Scipio into exile;
even after the death of Catiline it exiled Cicero, destroyed his
house, plundered his property, and did everything which Catiline would
have done if victorious; Rutilius found his virtue rewarded with a
hiding-place in Asia; to Cato the Roman people refused the
praetorship, and persisted in refusing the consulship. We are
ungrateful in public matters; and if every man asks himself, you will
find that there is no one who has not some private ingratitude to
complain of. Yet it is impossible that all men should complain, unless
all were deserving of complaint, therefore all men are ungrateful. Are
they ungrateful alone? nay, they are also all covetous, all spiteful,
and all cowardly, especially those who appear daring; and, besides
this, all men fawn upon the great, and all are impious. Yet you need
not be angry with them; pardon them, for they are all mad. I do not
wish to recall you to what is not proved, or to say, "See how
ungrateful is youth! what young man, even if of innocent life, does
not long for his father's death? even if moderate in his desires, does
not look forward to it? even if dutiful, does not think about it? How
few there are who fear the death even of the best of wives, who do not
even calculate the probabilities of it. Pray, what litigant, after
having been successfully defended, retains any remembrance of so
great a benefit for more than a few days?" All agree that no one dies
without complaining. Who on his last day dares to say,
"I've lived, I've done the task which Fortune set me."
Who does not leave the world with reluctance, and with
lamentations? Yet it is the part of an ungrateful man not to be
satisfied with the past. Your days will always be few if you count
them. Reflect that length of time is not the greatest of blessings;
make the best of your time, however short it may be; even if the day
of your death be postponed, your happiness will not be increased, for
life is merely made longer, not pleasanter, by delay. How much better
is it to be thankful for the pleasures which one has received, not to
reckon up the years of others, but to set a high value upon one's own,
and score them to one's credit, saying, "God thought me worthy of
this; I am satisfied with it; he might have given me more, but this,
too, is a benefit." Let us be grateful towards both gods and men,
grateful to those who have given us anything, and grateful even to
those who have given anything to our relatives.
"You render me liable to an infinite debt of gratitude," says our
opponent, "when you say 'even to those who have given any thing to our
relations,' so fix some limit. He who bestows a benefit upon the son,
according to you, bestows it likewise upon the father: this is the
first question I wish to raise. In the next place I should like to
have a clear definition of whether a benefit, if it be bestowed upon
your friend's father as well as upon himself, is bestowed also upon
his brother? or upon his uncle? or his grandfather? or his wife and
his father-in-law? tell me where I am to stop, how far I am to follow
out the pedigree of the family?"
SENECA. If I cultivate your land, I bestow a benefit upon
you; if I extinguish your house when burning, or prop it so as to save
it from falling, I shall bestow a benefit upon you; if I heal your
slave, I shall charge it to you; if I save your son's life, will you
not thereby receive a benefit from me?
THE ADVERSARY. Your instances are not to the purpose, for he
who cultivates my land, does not benefit the land, but me; he who
props my house so that it does not fall, does this service to me, for
the house itself is without feeling, and as it has none, it is I who
am indebted to him; and he who cultivates my land does so because he
wishes to oblige me, not to oblige the land. I should say the same of
a slave; he is a chattel owned by me; he is saved for my advantage,
therefore I am indebted for him. My son is himself capable of
receiving a benefit; so it is he who receives it; I am gratified at a
benefit which comes so near to myself, but am not laid under any
obligation.
SE. Still I should like you, who say that you are under no
obligation, to answer me this. The good health, the happiness, and
the inheritance of a son are connected with his father; his father
will be more happy if he keeps his son safe, and more unhappy if he
loses him. What follows, then? when a man is made happier by me and
is freed from the greatest danger of unhappiness, does he not receive
a benefit?
AD. No, because there are some things which are bestowed
upon others, and yet flow from them so as to reach ourselves; yet we
must ask the person upon whom it was bestowed for repayment; as for
example, money must be sought from the man to whom it was lent,
although it may, by some means, have come into my hands. There is no
benefit whose advantages do not extend to the receiver's nearest
friends, and sometimes even to those less intimately connected with
him; yet we do not enquire whither the benefit has proceeded from him
to whom it was first given, but where it was first placed. You must
demand repayment from the defendant himself personally.
SE. Well, but I pray you, do you not say, "you have
preserved my son for me; had he perished, I could not have survived
him?" Do you not owe a benefit for the life of one whose safety you
value above your own? Moreover, should I save your son's life, you
would fall down before my knees, and would pay vows to heaven as
though you yourself had been saved; you would say, "It makes no
difference whether you have saved mine or me; you have saved us both,
yet me more than him." Why do you say this, if you do not receive a
benefit?
AD. Because, if my son were to contract a loan, I should pay
his creditor, yet I should not, therefore, be indebted to him; or if
my son were taken in adultery, I should blush, yet I should not,
therefore, be an adulterer. I say that I am under an obligation to
you for saving my son, not because I really am, but because I am
willing to constitute myself your debtor of my own free will. On the
other hand I have derived from his safety the greatest possible
pleasure and advantage, and I have escaped that most dreadful blow,
the loss of my child. True, but we are not now discussing whether you
have done me any good or not, but whether you have bestowed a benefit
upon me; for animals, stones, and herbs can do one good, but do not
bestow benefits, which can only be given by one who wishes well to the
receiver. Now you do not wish well to the father, but only to the son;
and sometimes you do not even know the father. So when you have said,
"Have I not bestowed a benefit upon the father by saving the son?" you
ought to meet this with, "Have I, then, bestowed a benefit upon a
father whom I do not know, whom I never thought of?" And what will you
say when, as is sometimes the case, you hate the father, and yet save
his son? Can you be thought to have bestowed a benefit upon one whom
you hated most bitterly while you were bestowing it?
However, if I were to lay aside the bickering of dialogue, and
answer you as a lawyer, I should say that you ought to consider the
intention of the giver, you must regard his benefit as bestowed upon
the person upon whom he meant to bestow it. If he did it in honour of
the father, then the father received the benefit; if he thought only
of the son, then the father is not laid under any obligation: by the
benefit which was conferred upon the son, even though the father
derives pleasure from it. Should he, however, have an opportunity, he
will himself wish to give you something, yet not as though he were
forced to repay a debt, but rather as if he had grounds for beginning
an exchange of favours. No return for a benefit ought to be demanded
from the father of the receiver; if he does you any kindness in return
for it, he should be regarded as, a righteous man, but not as a
grateful one. For there is no end to it; if I bestow a benefit on the
receiver's father, do I likewise bestow it upon his mother, his
grandfather, his maternal uncle, his children, relations, friends,
slaves, and country? Where, then, does a benefit begin to stop? for
there follows it this endless chain of people, to whom it is hard to
assign bounds, because they join it by degrees, and are always
creeping on towards it.
A common question is, "Two brothers are at variance. If I save the
life of one, do I confer a benefit upon the other, who will be sorry
that his hated brother did not perish?" There can be no doubt that it
is a benefit to do good to a man, even against that man's will, just
as he, who against his own will does a man good, does not bestow a
benefit upon him. "Do you," asks our adversary, "call that by which he
is displeased and hurt a benefit?" Yes; many benefits have a harsh and
forbidding appearance, such as cutting or burning to cure disease, or
confining with chains. We must not consider whether a man is grieved
at receiving a benefit, but whether he ought to rejoice: a coin is not
bad because it is refused by a savage who is unacquainted with its
proper stamp. A man receives a benefit even though he hates what is
done, provided that it does him good, and that the giver bestowed it
in order to do him good. It makes no difference if he receives a good
thing in a bad spirit. Consider the converse of this. Suppose that a
man hates his brother, though it is to his advantage to have a
brother, and I kill this brother, this is not a benefit, though he may
say that it is, and be glad of it. Our most artful enemies are those
whom we thank for the wrongs which they do us.
"I understand; a thing which does good is a benefit, a thing which
does harm is not a benefit. Now I will suggest to you an act which
neither does good nor harm, and yet is a benefit. Suppose that I find
the corpse of some one's father in a wilderness, and bury it, then I
certainly have done him no good, for what difference could it make to
him in what manner his body decayed? Nor have I done any good to his
son, for what advantage does he gain by my act?" I will tell you what
he gains. He has by my means performed a solemn and necessary rite; I
have performed a service for his father which he would have wished,
nay, which it would have been his duty to have performed himself. Yet
this act is not a benefit, if I merely yielded to those feelings of
pity and kindliness which would make me bury any corpse whatever, but
only if I recognized this body, and buried it, with the thought in my
mind that I was doing this service to the son; but, by merely throwing
earth over a dead stranger, I lay no one under an obligation for an
act performed on general principles of humanity.
It may be asked, "Why are you so careful in inquiring upon whom you
bestow benefits, as though some day you meant to demand repayment of
them? Some say that repayment should never be demanded; and they give
the following reasons. An unworthy man will not repay the benefit
which he has received, even if it be demanded of him, while a worthy
man will do so of his own accord. Consequently, if you have bestowed
it upon a good man, wait; do not outrage him by asking him for it, as
though of his own accord he never would repay it. If you have bestowed
it upon a bad man, suffer for it, but do not spoil your benefit by
turning it into a loan. Moreover the law, by not authorizing you,
forbids you, by implication, to demand the repayment of a benefit."
All this is nonsense. As long as I am in no pressing need, as long as
I am not forced by poverty, I will lose my benefits rather than ask
for repayment; but if the lives of my children were at stake, if my
wife were in danger, if my regard for the welfare of my country and
for my own liberty were to force me to adopt a course which I
disliked, I should overcome my delicacy, and openly declare that I had
done all that I could to avoid the necessity of receiving help from an
ungrateful man; the necessity of obtaining repayment of one's benefit
will in the end overcome one's delicacy about asking for it. In the
next place, when I bestow a benefit upon a good man, I do so with the
intention of never demanding repayment, except in case of absolute
necessity.
"But," argues he, "by not authorizing you, the law forbids you to
exact repayment." There are many things which are not enforced by any
law or process, but which the conventions of society, which are
stronger than any law, compel us to observe. There is no law
forbidding us to divulge our friend's secrets; there is no law which
bids us keep faith even with an enemy; pray what law is there which
binds us to stand by what we have promised? There is none.
Nevertheless I should remonstrate with one who did not keep a secret,
and I should be indignant with one who pledged his word and broke it.
"But," he argues, "you are turning a benefit into a loan." By no
means, for I do not insist upon repayment, but only demand it; nay, I
do not even demand it, but remind my friend of it. Even the direst
need will not bring me to apply for help to one with whom I should
have to undergo a long struggle.
If there be any one so ungrateful that it is not sufficient to
remind him of his debt, I should pass him over, and think that he did
not deserve to be made grateful by force. A money-lender does not
demand repayment from his debtors if he knows they have become
bankrupt, and, to their shame, have nothing but shame left to lose;
and I, like him, should pass over those who are openly and
obstinately ungrateful, and would demand repayment only from those
who were likely to give it me, not from those from whom I should have
to extort it by force.
There are many who cannot deny that they have received a benefit, yet
cannot return it—men who are not good enough to be termed grateful,
nor yet bad enough to be termed ungrateful; but who are dull and
sluggish, backward debtors, though not defaulters. Such men as these I
should not ask for repayment, but forcibly remind them of it, and,
from a state of indifference, bring them back to their duty. They
would at once reply, "Forgive me; I did not know, by Hercules, that
you missed this, or I would have offered it of my own accord, I beg
that you will not think me ungrateful; I remember your goodness to
me." Why need I hesitate to make such men as these better to
themselves and to me? I would prevent any one from doing wrong, if I
were able; much more would I prevent a friend, both lest he should do
wrong, and lest he should do wrong to me in particular. I bestow a
second benefit upon him by not permitting him to be ungrateful; and I
should not reproach him harshly with what I had done for him, but
should speak as gently as I could. In order to afford him an
opportunity of returning my kindness, I should refresh his remembrance
of it, and ask for a benefit; he would understand that I was asking
for repayment. Sometimes I would make use of somewhat severe language,
if I had any hope that by it he might be amended; though I would not
irritate a hopelessly ungrateful man, for fear that I might turn him
into an enemy. If we spare the ungrateful even the affront of
reminding them of their conduct, we shall render them' more backward
in returning benefits; and although some might be cured of their evil
ways, and be made into good men, if their consciences were stung by
remorse, yet we shall allow them to perish for want of a word of
warning, with which a father sometimes corrects his son, a wife brings
back to herself an erring husband, or a man stimulates the wavering
fidelity of his friend.
To awaken some men, it is only necessary to stir them, not to strike
them; in like manner, with some men, the feeling of honour about
returning a benefit is not extinct, but slumbering. Let us rouse it.
"Do not," they will say, "make the kindness you have done me into a
wrong: for it is a wrong, if you do not demand some return from me,
and so make me ungrateful. What if I do not know what sort of
repayment you wish for? if I am so occupied by business, and my
attention is so much diverted to other subjects that I have not been
able to watch for an opportunity of serving you? Point out to me what
I can do for you, what you wish me to do. Why do you despair, before
making a trial of me? Why are you in such haste to lose both your
benefit and your friend? How can you tell whether I do not wish, or
whether I do not know how to repay you: whether it be in intention or
in opportunity that I am wanting? Make a trial of me." I would
therefore remind him of what I had done, without bitterness, not in
public, or in a reproachful manner, but so that he may think that he
himself has remembered it rather than that it has been recalled to
him.
One of Julius Caesar's veterans was once pleading before him against
his neighbours, and the cause was going against him. "Do you remember,
general," said he, "that in Spain you dislocated your ankle near the
river Sucro [Footnote: Xucar]?" When Caesar said that he remembered
it, he continued, "Do you remember that when, during the excessive
heat, you wished to rest under a tree which afforded very little
shade, as the ground in which that solitary tree grew was rough and
rocky, one of your comrades spread his cloak under you?" Caesar
answered, "Of course, I remember; indeed, I was perishing with thirst;
and since was unable to walk to the nearest spring, I would have
crawled thither on my hands and knees, had not my comrade, a brave and
active man, brought me water in his helmet." "Could you, then, my
general, recognize that man or that helmet?" Caesar replied that he
could not remember the helmet, but that he could remember the man
well; and he added, I fancy in anger at being led away to this old
story in the midst of a judicial enquiry, "At any rate, you are not
he." "I do not blame you, Caesar," answered the man, "for not
recognizing me; for when this took place, I was unwounded; but
afterwards, at the battle of Munda, my eye was struck out, and the
bones of my skull crushed. Nor would you recognize that helmet if you
saw it, for it was split by a Spanish sword." Caesar would not permit
this man to be troubled with lawsuits, and presented his old soldier
with the fields through which a village right of way had given rise to
the dispute.
In this case, what ought he to have done? Because his commander's
memory was confused by a multitude of incidents, and because his
position as the leader of vast armies did not permit him to notice
individual soldiers, ought the man not to have asked for a return for
the benefit which he had conferred? To act as he did is not so much to
ask for a return as to take it when it lies in a convenient position
ready for us, although we have to stretch out our hands in order to
receive it. I shall therefore ask for the return of a benefit,
whenever I am either reduced to great straits, or where by doing so I
shall act to the advantage of him from whom I ask it. Tiberius Caesar,
when some one addressed him with the words, "Do you remember . . . .?"
answered, before the man could mention any further proofs of former
acquaintance, "I do not remember what I was." Why should it not be
forbidden to demand of this man repayment of former favours? He had a
motive for forgetting them: he denied all knowledge of his friends and
comrades, and wished men only to see, to think, and to speak of him
as emperor. He regarded his old friend as an impertinent meddler.
We ought to be even more careful to choose a favorable opportunity
when we ask for a benefit to be repaid to us than when we ask for one
to be bestowed upon us. We must be temperate in our language, so that
the grateful may not take offence, or the ungrateful pretend to do so.
If we lived among wise men, it would be our duty to wait in silence
until our benefits were returned. Yet even to wise men it would be
better to give some hint of what our position required. We ask for
help even from the gods themselves, from whose knowledge nothing is
hid, although our prayers cannot alter their intentions towards us,
but can only recall them to their minds. Homer's priest, [Il. i. 39
sqq.] I say, recounts even to the gods his duteous conduct and his
pious care of their altars. The second best form of virtue is to be
willing and able to take advice.[Hes. Op. 291.] A horse who is docile
and prompt to obey can be guided hither and thither by the slightest
movement of the reins. Very few men are led by their own reason: those
who come next to the best are those who return to the right path in
consequence of advice; and these we must not deprive of their guide.
When our eyes are covered they still possess sight; but it is the
light of day which, when admitted to them, summons them to perform
their duty: tools lie idle, unless the workman uses them to take part
in his work. Similarly men's minds contain a good feeling, which,
however, lies torpid, either through luxury and disuse, or through
ignorance of its duties. This we ought to render useful, and not to
get into a passion with it, and leave it in its wrong doing, but bear
with it patiently, just as schoolmasters bear patiently with the
blunders of forgetful scholars; for as by the prompting of a word or
two their memory is often recalled to the text of the speech which
they have to repeat, so men's goodwill can be brought to return
kindness by reminding them of it.
There are some things, my most excellent Liberalis, which lie
completely outside of our actual life, and which we only inquire into
in order to exercise our intellects, while others both give us
pleasure while we are discovering them, and are of use when
discovered. I will place all these in your hands; you, at your own
discretion, may order them either to be investigated thoroughly, or
to be reserved, and be used as agreeable interludes. Something will
be gained even by those which you dismiss at once, for it is
advantageous even to know what subjects are not worth learning. I
shall be guided, therefore, by your face: according to its
expression, I shall deal with some questions at greater length, and
drive others out of court, and put an end to them at once.
It is a question whether a benefit can be taken away from one by
force. Some say that it cannot, because it is not a thing, but an act.
A gift is not the same as the act of giving, any more than a sailor is
the same as the act of sailing. A sick man and a disease are not the
same thing, although no one can be ill without disease; and,
similarly, a benefit itself is one thing, and what any of us receive
through a benefit is another. The benefit itself is incorporeal, and
never becomes invalid; but its subject-matter changes owners, and
passes from hand to hand. So, when you take away from anyone what you
have given him, you take away the subject-matter only of the benefit,
not the benefit itself. Nature herself cannot recall what she has
given. She may cease to bestow benefits, but cannot take them away: a
man who dies, yet has lived; a man who becomes blind, nevertheless has
seen. She can cut off her blessings from us in the future, but she
cannot prevent our having enjoyed them in the past. We are frequently
not able to enjoy a benefit for long, but the benefit is not thereby
destroyed. Let Nature struggle as hard as she please, she cannot give
herself retrospective action. A man may lose his house, his money, his
property—everything to which the name of benefit can be given— yet
the benefit itself will remain firm and unmoved; no power can prevent
his benefactor's having bestowed them, or his having received them.
I think that a fine passage in Rabirius's poem, where M. Antonius,
seeing his fortune deserting him, nothing left him except the
privilege of dying, and even that only on condition that he used it
promptly, exclaims,
"What I have given, that I now possess!"
How much he might have possessed, had he chosen! These are riches
to be depended upon, which through all the turmoil of human life will
remain steadfast; and the greater they are, the less envy they will
attract. Why are you sparing of your property, as though it were your
own? You are but the manager of it. All those treasures, which make
you swell with pride, and soar above mere mortals, till you forget the
weakness of your nature; all that which you lock up in iron-grated
treasuries, and guard in arms, which you win from other men with their
lives, and defend at the risk of your own; for which you launch fleets
to dye the sea with blood, and shake the walls of cities, not knowing
what arrows fortune may be preparing for you behind your back; to gain
which you have so often violated all the ties of relationship, of
friendship, and of colleagueship, till the whole world lies crushed
between the two combatants: all these are not yours; they are a kind
of deposit, which is on the point of passing into other hands: your
enemies, or your heirs, who are little better, will seize upon them.
"How," do you ask, "can you make them your own?" "By giving them
away." Do, then, what is best for your own interests, and gain a sure
enjoyment of them, which cannot be taken from you, making them at once
more certainly yours, and more honorable to you. That which you esteem
so highly, that by which you think that you are made rich and
powerful, owns but the shabby title of "house," "slave," or "money;"
but when you have given it away, it becomes a benefit.
"You admit," says our adversary, "that we sometimes are under no
obligation to him from whom we have received a benefit. In that case
it has been taken by force." Nay, there are many things which would
cause us to cease to feel gratitude for a benefit, not because the
benefit has been taken from me, but because it has been spoiled.
Suppose that a man has defended me in a lawsuit, but has forcibly
outraged my wife; he has not taken away the benefit which he conferred
upon me, but by balancing it with an equivalent wrong, he has set me
free from my debt; indeed, if he has injured me more than he had
previously benefited me, he not only puts an end to my gratitude, but
makes me free to revenge myself upon him, and to complain of him, when
the wrong outweighs the benefit; in such a case the benefit is not
taken away, but is overcome. Why, are not some fathers so cruel and so
wicked that it is right and proper for their sons to turn away from
them, and disown them? Yet, pray, have they taken away the life which
they gave? No, but their unnatural conduct in later years has
destroyed all the gratitude which was due to them for their original
benefit. In these cases it is not a benefit itself, but the gratitude
owing for a benefit which is taken away, and the result is, not that
one does not possess the benefit, but that one is not laid under any
obligation by it. It is as though a man were to lend me money, and
then burn my house down; the advantage of the loan is balanced by the
damage which he has caused: I do not repay him, and yet I am not in
his debt. In like manner any one who may have acted kindly and
generously to me, and who afterwards has shown himself haughty,
insulting, and cruel, places me in just the same position as though I
never had received anything from him: he has murdered his own
benefits. Though the lease may remain in force, still a man does not
continue to be a tenant if his landlord tramples down his crops, or
cuts down his orchard; their contract is at an end, not because the
landlord has received the rent which was agreed upon, but because he
has made it impossible that he should receive it. So, too, a creditor
often has to pay money to his debtor, should he have taken more
property from him in other transactions than he claims as having lent
him. The judge does not sit merely to decide between debtor and
creditor, when he says, "You did lend the man money; but then, what
followed? You have driven away his cattle, you have murdered his
slave, you have in your possession plate which you have not paid for.
After valuing what each has received, I order you, who came to this
court as a creditor, to leave it as a debtor." In like manner a
balance is struck between benefits and injuries. In many cases, I
repeat, a benefit is not taken away from him who receives it, and yet
it lays him under no obligation, if the giver has repented of giving
it, called himself unhappy because he gave it, sighed or made a wry
face while he gave it; if he thought that he was throwing it away
rather than giving it, if he gave it to please himself, or to please
any one except me, the receiver; if he persistently makes himself
offensive by boasting of what he has done, if he brags of his gift
everywhere, and makes it a misery to me, then indeed the benefit
remains in my hands, but I owe him nothing for it, just as sums of
money to which a creditor has no legal right are owed to him, but
cannot be claimed by him;
Though you have bestowed a benefit upon me, yet you have since done
me a wrong; the benefit demanded gratitude, the wrong required
vengeance: the result is that I do not owe you gratitude, nor do you
owe me compensation—each is cancelled by the other. When we say, "I
returned him his benefit," we do not mean that we restored to him the
very thing which we had received, but something else in its place. To
return is to give back one thing instead of another, because, of
course, in all repayment it is not the thing itself, but its
equivalent which is returned. We are said to have returned money even
though we count out gold pieces instead of silver ones, or even if no
money passes between us, but the transaction be effected verbally by
the assignment of a debt.
I think I see you say, "You are wasting your time; of what use is
it to me to know whether what I do not owe to another still remains
in my hands or not? These are like the ingenious subtleties of the
lawyers, who declare that one cannot acquire an inheritance by
prescription, but can only acquire those things of which the
inheritance consists, as though there were any difference between the
heritage and the things of which it consists. Rather decide this point
for me, which may be of use. If the same man confers a benefit upon
me, and afterwards does me a wrong, is it my duty to return the
benefit to him, and nevertheless to avenge myself upon him, having, as
it were, two distinct accounts open with him, or to mix them both
together, and do nothing, leaving the benefit to be wiped out by the
injury, the injury by the benefit? I see that the former course is
adopted by the law of the land; you know best what the law may be
among you Stoic philosophers in such a case. I suppose that you keep
the action which I bring against another distinct from that which he
Strings against me, and the two processes are not merged into one? For
instance, if a man entrusts me with money, and afterwards robs me, I
shall bring an action against him for theft, and he will bring one
against me for unlawfully detaining his property?"
The cases which you have mentioned, my Liberalis, come under
well-established laws, which it is necessary for us to follow. One
law cannot be merged in another: each one proceeds its own way. There
is a particular action which deals with deposits just as there is one
which deals with theft. A benefit is subject to no law; it depends
upon my own arbitration. I am at liberty to contrast the amount of
good or harm which any one may have done me, and then to decide which
of us is indebted to the other. In legal processes we ourselves have
no power, we must go whither they lead us; in the case of a benefit
the supreme power is mine, I pronounce sentence. Consequently I do not
separate or distinguish between benefits and wrongs, but send them
before the same judge. Unless I did so, you would bid me love and
hate, give thanks and make complaints at the same time, which human
nature does not admit of. I would rather compare the benefit and the
injury with one another, and see whether there were any balance in my
favour. If anybody puts lines of other writing upon my manuscript he
conceals, though he does not take away, the letters which were there
before, and in like manner a wrong coming after a benefit does not
allow it to be seen.
Your face, by which I have agreed to be guided, now becomes wrinkled
with frowns, as though I were straying too widely from the subject.
You seem to say to me:
"Why steer to seaward? Hither bend thy course, Hug close the
shore..."
I do hug it as close as possible. So now, if you think that we have
dwelt sufficiently upon this point, let us proceed to the
consideration of the next—that is, whether we are at all indebted to
any one who does us good without wishing to do so. I might have
expressed this more clearly, if it were not right that the question
should be somewhat obscurely stated, in order that by the distinction
immediately following it may be shown that we mean to investigate the
case both of him who does us good against his will, and that of him
who does us good without knowing it. That a man who does us good by
acting under compulsion does not thereby lay us under any obligation,
is so clear, that no words are needed to prove it. Both this question,
and any other of the like character which may be raised, can easily be
settled if in each case we bear in mind that, for anything to be a
benefit, it must reach us in the first place through some thought, and
secondly through the thought of a friend and well-wisher. Therefore we
do not feel any gratitude towards rivers, albeit they may bear large
ships, afford an ample and unvarying stream for the conveyance of
merchandise, or flow beauteously and full of fish through fertile
fields. No one conceives himself to be indebted for a benefit to the
Nile, any more than he would owe it a grudge if its waters flooded his
fields to excess, and retired more slowly than usual; the wind does
not bestow benefits, gentle and favorable though it may be, nor does
wholesome and useful food; for he who would bestow a benefit upon me,
must not only do me good, but must wish to do so. No obligation can
therefore be incurred towards dumb animals; yet how many men have been
saved from peril by the swiftness of a horse!—nor yet towards
trees—yet how many sufferers from summer heat have been sheltered by
the thick foliage of a tree! What difference can it make, whether I
have profited by the act of one who did not know that he was doing me
good, or one who could not know it, when in each case the will to do
me good was wanting? You might as well bid me be grateful to a ship, a
carriage, or a lance for saving me from danger, as bid me be grateful
to a man who may have done me good by chance, but with no more
intention of doing me good than those things could have.
Some men may receive benefits without knowing it, but no man can
bestow them without knowing it. Many sick persons have been cured by
chance circumstances, which do not therefore become specific remedies;
as, for instance, one man was restored to health by falling into a
river during very cold weather, as another was set free from a quartan
fever by means of a flogging, because the sudden terror turned his
attention into a new channel, so that the dangerous hours passed
unnoticed. Yet none of these are remedies, even though they may have
been successful; and in like manner some men do us good, though they
are unwilling—indeed, because they are unwilling to do so—yet we
need not feel grateful to them as though we had received a benefit
from them, because fortune has changed the evil which they intended
into good. Do you suppose that I am indebted to a man who strikes my
enemy with a blow which he aimed at me, who would have injured me had
he not missed his mark? It often happens that by openly perjuring
himself a man makes even trustworthy witnesses disbelieved, and
renders his intended victim an object of compassion, as though he were
being ruined by a conspiracy. Some have been saved by the very power
which was exerted to crush them, and judges who would have condemned a
man by law, have refused to condemn him by favour. Yet they did not
confer a benefit upon the accused, although they rendered him a
service, because we must consider at what the dart was aimed, not what
it hits, and a benefit is distinguished from an injury not by its
result, but by the spirit in which it was meant. By contradicting
himself, by irritating the judge by his arrogance, or by rashly
allowing his whole case to depend upon the testimony of one witness,
my opponent may have saved my cause. I do not consider whether his
mistakes benefited me or not, for he wished me ill.
In order that I may be grateful, I must wish to do what my benefactor
must have wished in order that he might bestow a benefit. Can anything
be more unjust than to bear a grudge against a person who may have
trodden upon one's foot in a crowd, or splashed one, or pushed one the
way which one did not wish to go? Yet it was by his act that we were
injured, and we only refrain from complaining of him, because he did
not know what he was doing. The same reason makes it possible for men
to do us good without conferring benefits upon us, or to harm us
without doing us wrong, because it is intention which distinguishes
our friends from our enemies. How many have been saved from service in
the army by sickness! Some men have been saved from sharing the fall
of their house, by being brought up upon their recognizances to a
court of law by their enemies; some have been saved by ship-wreck from
falling into the hands of pirates; yet we do not feel grateful to
such things, because chance has no feeling of the service it renders,
nor are we grateful to our enemy, though his lawsuit, while it
harassed and detained us, still saved our lives. Nothing can be a
benefit which does not proceed from good will, and which is not meant
as such by the giver. If any one does me a service, without knowing
it, I am under no obligation to him; should he do so, meaning to
injure me, I shall imitate his conduct.
Let us turn our attention to the first of these. Can you desire me to
do anything to express my gratitude to a man who did nothing in order
to confer a benefit upon me? Passing on to the next, do you wish me to
show my gratitude to such a man, and of my own will to return to him
what I received from him against his will? What am I to say of the
third, he who, meaning to do an injury, blunders into bestowing a
benefit? That you should have wished to confer a benefit upon me is
not sufficient to render me grateful; but that you should have wished
not to do so is enough to set me free from any obligation to you. A
mere wish does not constitute a benefit; and just as the best and
heartiest wish is not a benefit when fortune prevents its being
carried into effect, neither is what fortune bestows upon us a
benefit, unless good wishes preceded it. In order to lay me under an
obligation, you must not merely do me a service, but you must do so
intentionally.
Cleanthes makes use of the following example:—"I sent," says he,
"two slaves to look for Plato and bring him to me from the Academy.
One of them searched through the whole of the colonnade, and every
other place in which he thought that he was likely to be found, and
returned home alike weary and unsuccessful; the other sat down among
the audience of a mountebank close by, and, while amusing himself in
the society of other slaves like a careless vagabond as he was, found
Plato, without seeking for him, as he happened to pass that way. We
ought," says he, "to praise that slave who, as far as lay in his
power, did what he was ordered, and we ought to punish the other whose
laziness turned out so fortunate." It is goodwill alone which does one
real service; let us then consider under what conditions it lays us
under obligations. It is not enough to wish a man well, without doing
him good; nor is it enough to do him good without wishing him well.
Suppose that some one wished to give me a present, but did not give
it; I have his good will, but I do not have his benefit, which
consists of subject matter and goodwill together. I owe nothing to
one who wished to lend me money but did not do so, and in like manner
I shall be the friend of one who wished but was not able to bestow a
benefit upon me, but I shall not be under any obligation to him. I
also shall wish to bestow something upon him, even as he did upon me;
but if fortune be more favorable to me than to him, and I succeed in
bestowing something upon him, my doing so will be a benefit bestowed
upon him, not a repayment out of gratitude for what he did for me. It
will become his duty to be grateful to me; I shall have begun the
interchange of benefits; the series must be counted from my act.
I already understand what you wish to ask; there is no need for you
to say anything, your countenance speaks for you. "If any one does us
good for his own sake, are we," you ask, "under an obligation to him?
I often hear you complain that there are some things which men make
use of themselves, but which they put down to the account of others."
I will tell you, my Liberalis; but first let me distinguish between
the two parts of your question, and separate what is fair from what is
unfair. It makes a great difference whether any one bestows a benefit
upon us for his own sake, or whether he does so partly for his own
sake and partly for ours. He who looks only to his own interests, and
who does us good because he cannot otherwise make a profit for
himself, seems to me to be like the farmer who provides winter and
summer fodder for his flocks, or like the man who feeds up the
captives whom he has bought in order that they may fetch a better
price in the slave market, or who crams and curry-combs fat oxen for
sale; or like the keeper of a school of arms, who takes great pains in
exercising and equipping his gladiators. As Cleanthes says, there is a
great difference between benefits and trade.
On the other hand, I am not so unjust as to feel no gratitude to a
man, because, while helping me, he helped himself also; for I do not
insist upon his consulting my interests to the exclusion of his
own—nay, I should prefer that the benefit which I receive may be of
even greater advantage to the giver, provided that he thought of us
both when giving it, and meant to divide it between me and himself.
Even should he possess the larger portion of it, still, if he admits
me to a share, if he meant it for both of us, I am not only unjust but
ungrateful, if I do not rejoice in what has benefited me benefiting
him also. It is the essence of spitefulness to say that nothing can be
a benefit which does not cause some inconvenience to the giver.
As for him who bestows a benefit for his own sake, I should say to
him, "You have made use of me, and how can you say that you have
bestowed a benefit upon me, rather than I upon you?" "Suppose,"
answers he, "that I cannot obtain a public office except by ransoming
ten citizens out of a great number of captives, will you owe me
nothing for setting you free from slavery and bondage? Yet I shall do
so for my own sake." To this I should answer, "You do this partly for
my sake, partly for your own. It is for your own sake that you ransom
captives, but it is for my sake that you ransom me; for to serve your
purpose it would be enough for you to ransom any one. I am therefore
your debtor, not for ransoming me but for choosing me, since you might
have attained the same result by ransoming some one else instead of
me. You divide the advantages of the act between yourself and me, and
you confer upon me a benefit by which both of us profit. What you do
entirely for my sake is, that you choose me in preference to others.
If therefore you were to be made praetor for ransoming ten captives,
and there were only ten of us captives, none of us would be under any
obligation to you, because there is nothing for which you can ask any
one of us to give you credit apart from your own advantage. I do not
regard a benefit jealously and wish it to be given to myself alone,
but I wish to have a share in it."
"Well, then," says he, "suppose that I were to order all your names
to be put into a ballot-box, and that your name was drawn among those
who were to be ransomed, would you owe me nothing?" Yes, I should owe
you something, but very little: how little, I will explain to you. By
so doing you do something for my sake, in that you grant me the chance
of being ransomed; I owe to fortune that my name was drawn, all I owe
to you is that my name could be drawn. You have given me the means of
obtaining your benefit. For the greater part of that benefit I am
indebted to fortune; that I could be so indebted, I owe to you.
I shall take no notice whatever of those whose benefits are
bestowed in a mercenary spirit, who do not consider to whom, but upon
what terms they give, whose benefits are entirely selfish. Suppose
that some one sells me corn; I cannot live unless I buy it; yet I do
not owe my life to him because I have bought it. I do not consider how
essential it was to me, and that I could not live without it; but how
little thanks are due for it, since I could not have had it without
paying for it, and since the merchant who imported it did not consider
how much good he would do me, but how much he would gain for himself,
I owe nothing for what I have bought and paid for.
"According to this reasoning," says my opponent, "you would say that
you owe nothing to a physician beyond his paltry fee, nor to your
teacher, because you have paid him some money; yet these persons are
all held very dear, and are very much respected." In answer to this I
should urge that some things are of greater value than the price which
we pay for them. You buy of a physician life and good health, the
value of which cannot be estimated in money; from a teacher of the
liberal sciences you buy the education of a gentleman and mental
culture; therefore you pay these persons the price, not of what they
give us, but of their trouble in giving it; you pay them for devoting
their attention to us, for disregarding their own affairs to attend to
us: they receive the price, not of their services, but of the
expenditure of their time. Yet this may be more truly stated in
another way, which I will at once lay before you, having first pointed
out how the above may be confuted. Our adversary would say, "If some
things are of greater value than the price which we pay for them,
then, though you may have bought them, you still owe me something more
for them." I answer, in the first place, what does their real value
matter, since the buyer and seller have settled the price between
them? Next, I did not buy it at it's own price, but at yours. "It is,"
you say, "worth more than its sale price." True, but it cannot be sold
for more. The price of everything varies according to circumstances;
after you have well praised your wares, they are worth only the
highest price at which you can sell them; a man who buys things cheap
is not on that account under any obligation to the seller. In the next
place, even if they are worth more, there is no generosity in your
letting them go for less, since the price is settled by custom and the
rate of the market, not by the uses and powers of the merchandise.
What would you state to be the proper payment of a man who crosses the
seas, holding a true course through the midst of the waves after the
land has sunk out of sight, who foresees coming storms, and suddenly,
when no one expects danger, orders sails to be furled, yards to be
lowered, and the crew to stand at their posts ready to meet the fury
of the unexpected gale? and yet the price of such great skill is fully
paid for by the passage money. At what sum can you estimate the value
of a lodging in a wilderness, of a shelter in the rain, of a bath or
fire in cold weather? Yet I know on what terms I shall be supplied
with these when I enter an inn. How much the man does for us who props
our house when it is about to fall, and who, with a skill beyond
belief, suspends in the air a block of building which has begun to
crack at the, foundation; yet we can contract for underpinning at a
fixed and cheap rate. The city wall keeps us safe from our enemies,
and from sudden inroads of brigands; yet it is, well known how much a
day a smith would earn for erecting towers and scaffoldings [Footnote:
See Viollet-le- Duc's "Dictionnaire d'Architecture," articles
"Architecture Militaire" and "Hourds," for the probable meaning of
"Propugnacula."]to provide for the public safety.
I might go on for ever collecting instances to prove that valuable
things are sold at a low price. What then? why is it that I owe
something extra both to my physician and to my teacher, and that I do
not acquit myself of all obligation to them by paying them their fee?
It is because they pass from physicians and teachers into friends, and
lay us under obligations, not by the skill which they sell to us, but
by kindly and familiar good will. If my physician does no more than
feel my pulse and class me among those whom he sees in his daily
rounds, pointing out what I ought to do or to avoid without any
personal interest, then I owe him no more than his fee, because he
views me with the eye not of a friend, but of a commander. [Footnote:
I read "Nbn tamquam amicus videt sed tamquam imperator."] Neither have
I any reason for loving my teacher, if he has regarded me merely as
one of the mass of his scholars, and has not thought me worthy of
taking especial pains with by myself, if he has never fixed his
attention upon me, and if when he discharged his knowledge on the
public, I might be said rather to have picked it up than to have
learnt it from him. What then is our reason for owing them much? It
is, not that what they have sold us is worth more than we paid for it,
but that they have given something to us personally. Suppose that my
physician has spent more consideration upon my case than was
professionally necessary; that it was for me, not for his own credit,
that he feared: that he was not satisfied with pointing out remedies,
but himself applied them, that he sat by my bedside among my anxious
friends, and came to see me at the crises of my disorder; that no
service was too troublesome or too disgusting for him to perform;
that he did not hear my groans unmoved; that among the numbers who
called for him I was his favourite case; and that he gave the others
only so much time as his care of my health permitted him: I should
feel obliged to such a man not as to a physician, but as to a friend.
Suppose again that my teacher endured labour and weariness in
instructing me; that he taught me something more than is taught by all
masters alike; that he roused my better feelings by his encouragement,
and that at one time he would raise my spirits by praise, and at
another warn me to shake off slothfulness: that he laid his hand, as
it were, upon my latent and torpid powers of intellect and drew them
out into the light of day; that he did not stingily dole out to me
what he knew, in order that he might be wanted for a longer time, but
was eager, if possible, to pour all his learning into me; then I am
ungrateful, if I do not love him as much as I love my nearest
relatives and my dearest friends.
We give something additional even to those who teach the meanest
trades, if their efforts appear to be extraordinary; we bestow a
gratuity upon pilots, upon workmen who deal with the commonest
materials and hire themselves out by the day. In the noblest arts,
however, those which either preserve or beautify our lives, a man
would be ungrateful who thinks he owes the artist no more than he
bargained for. Besides this, the teaching of such learning as we have
spoken of blends mind with mind; now when this takes place, both in
the case of the physician and of the teacher the price of his work is
paid, but that of his mind remains owing.
Plato once crossed a river, and as the ferryman did not ask him for
anything, he supposed that he had let him pass free out of respect,
and said that the ferryman had laid Plato under an obligation. Shortly
afterwards, seeing the ferryman take one person after another across
the river with the same pains, and without charging anything, Plato
declared that the ferryman had not laid him under an obligation. If
you wish me to be grateful for what you give, you must not merely give
it to me, but show that you mean it specially for me; you cannot make
any claim upon one for having given him what you fling away broad-cast
among the crowd. What then? shall I owe you nothing for it? Nothing,
as an individual; I will pay, when the rest of mankind do, what I owe
no more than they.
"Do you say," inquires my opponent, "that he who carries me gratis in
a boat across the river Po, does not bestow any benefit upon me?" I
do. He does me some good, but he does not bestow a benefit upon me;
for he does it for his own sake, or at any rate not for mine; in
short, he himself does not imagine that he is bestowing a benefit upon
me, but does it for the credit of the State, or of the neighbourhood,
or of himself, and expects some return for doing so, different from
what he would receive from individual passengers. "Well," asks my
opponent, "if the emperor were to grant the franchise to all the
Gauls, or exemption, from taxes to all the Spaniards, would each
individual of them owe him nothing on that account?" Of course he
would: but he would be indebted to him, not as having personally
received a benefit intended for himself alone, but as a partaker in
one conferred upon his nation. He would argue, "The emperor had no
thought of me at the time when he benefited us all; he did not care to
give me the franchise separately, he did not fix his attention upon
me; why then should I be grateful to one who did not have me in his
mind when he was thinking of doing what he did? In answer to this, I
say that when he thought of doing good to all the Gauls, he thought of
doing good to me also, for I was a Gaul, and he included me under my
national, if not under my personal appellation. In like manner, I
should feel grateful to him, not as for a personal, but for a general
benefit; being only one of the people, I should regard the debt of
gratitude as incurred, not by myself, but by my country, and should
not pay it myself, but only contribute my share towards doing so. I do
not call a man my creditor because he has lent money to my country,
nor should I include that money in a schedule of my debts were I
either a candidate for a public office, or a defendant in the courts;
yet I would pay my share towards extinguishing such a debt. Similarly,
I deny that I am laid under an obligation by a gift bestowed upon my
entire nation, because although the giver gave it to me, yet he did
not do so for my sake, but gave it without knowing whether he was
giving it to me or not: nevertheless I should feel that I owed
something for the gift, because it did reach me, though not directly.
To lay me under an obligation, a thing must be done for my sake alone.
"According to this," argues our opponent, "you are under no
obligation to the sun or the moon; for they do not move for your sake
alone." No, but since they move with the object of preserving the
balance of the universe, they move for my sake also, seeing that I am
a fraction of the universe. Besides, our position and theirs is not
the same, for he who does me good in order that he may by my means do
good to himself, does not bestow a benefit upon me, because he merely
makes use of me as an instrument for his own advantage; whereas the
sun and the moon, even if they do us good for their own sakes, still
cannot do good to us in order that by our means they may do good to
themselves, for what is there which we can bestow upon them?
"I should be sure," replies he, "that the sun and the moon wished to
do us good, if they were able to refuse to do so; but they cannot help
moving as they do. In short, let them stop and discontinue their
work."
See now, in how many ways this argument may be refuted. One who
cannot refuse to do a thing may nevertheless wish to do it; indeed
there is no greater proof of a fixed desire to do anything, than not
to be able to alter one's determination. A good man cannot leave
undone what he does: for unless he does it he will not be a good man.
Is a good man, then, not able to bestow a benefit, because he does
what he ought to do, and is not able not to do what he ought to do?
Besides this, it makes a great difference whether you say, "He is not
able not to do this, because he is forced to do it," or "He is not
able to wish not to do it;" for, if he could not help doing it, then I
am not indebted for it to him, but to the person who forced him to do
it; if he could not help wishing for it because he had nothing better
to wish for, then it is he who forces himself to do it, and in this
case the debt which as acting under compulsion he could not claim, is
due to him as compelling himself.
"Let the sun and moon cease to wish to benefit us," says our
adversary. I answer, "Remember what has been said. Who can be so
crazy as to refuse the name of free-will to that which has no danger
of ceasing to act, and of adopting the opposite course, since, on the
contrary, he whose will is fixed for ever, must be thought to wish
more earnestly than any one else. Surely if he, who may at any moment
change his mind, can be said to wish, we must not deny the existence
of will in a being whose nature does not admit of change of mind.
"Well," says he "let them stop, if it be possible." What you say is
this:—Let all those heavenly bodies, placed as they are at vast
distances from each other, and arranged to preserve the balance of the
universe, leave their appointed posts: let sudden confusion arise, so
that constellations may collide with constellations, that the
established harmony of all things may be destroyed and the works of
God be shaken into ruin; let the whole frame of the rapidly moving
heavenly bodies abandon in mid career those movements which we were
assured would endure for ages, and let those which now by their
regular advance and retreat keep the world at a moderate temperature,
be instantly consumed by fire, so that instead of the infinite variety
of the seasons all may be reduced to one uniform condition; let fire
rage everywhere, followed by dull night, and let the bottomless abyss
swallow up all the gods." Is it worth while to destroy all this merely
in order to refute you? Even though you do not wish it, they do you
good, and they wheel in their courses for your sake, though their
motion may be due to some earlier and more important cause.
Besides this, the gods act under no external constraint, but their
own will is a law to them for all time. They have established an order
which is not to be changed, and consequently it is impossible that
they should appear to be likely to do anything against their will,
since they wish to continue doing whatever they cannot cease from
doing, and they never regret their original decision, No doubt it is
impossible for them to stop short, or to desert to the other side, but
it is so for no other reason than that their own force holds them to
their purpose. It is from no weakness that they persevere; no, they
have no mind to leave the best course, and by this it is fated that
they should proceed. When, at the time of the original creation, they
arranged the entire universe, they paid attention to us as well as to
the rest, and took thought about the human race; and for this reason
we cannot suppose that it is merely for their own pleasure that they
move in their orbits and display their work since we also are a part
of that work. We are, therefore; under an obligation to the sun and
moon and the rest of the heavenly host, because, although they may
rise in order to bestow more important benefits than those which we
receive from them, yet they do bestow these upon us as they pass on
their way to greater things. Besides this, they assist us of set
purpose, and, therefore, lay us under an obligation, because we do not
in their case stumble by chance upon a benefit bestowed by one who
knew not what he was doing, but they knew that we should receive from
them the advantages which we do; so that, though they may have some
higher aim, though the result of their movements may be something of
greater importance than the preservation of the human race, yet from
the beginning thought has been directed to our comforts, and the
scheme of the world has been arranged in a fashion which proves that
our interests were neither their least nor last concern. It is our
duty to show filial love for our parents, although many of them had no
thought of children when they married. Not so with the gods: they
cannot but have known what they were doing when they furnished mankind
with food and comforts. Those for whose advantage so much was created,
could not have been created without design. Nature conceived the idea
of us before she formed us, and, indeed, we are no such trifling piece
of work as could have fallen from her hands unheeded. See how great
privileges she has bestowed upon us, how far beyond the human race
the empire of mankind extends; consider how widely she allows us to
roam, not having restricted us to the land alone, but permitted us to
traverse every part of herself; consider, too, the audacity of our
intellect, the only one which knows of the gods or seeks for them, and
how we can raise our mind high above the earth, and commune with those
divine influences: you will perceive that man is not a hurriedly put
together, or an unstudied piece of work. Among her noblest products
nature has none of which she can boast more than man, and assuredly no
other which can comprehend her boast. What madness is this, to call
the gods in question for their bounty? If a man declares that he has
received nothing when he is receiving all the while, and from those
who will always be giving without ever receiving anything in return,
how will he be grateful to those whose kindness cannot be returned
without expense? and how great a mistake is it not to be thankful to a
giver, because he is good even to him who disowns him, or to use the
fact of his bounty being poured upon us in an uninterrupted stream, as
an argument to prove that he cannot help bestowing it. Suppose that
such men as these say, "I do not want it," "Let him keep it to
himself," "Who asks him for it?" and so forth, with all the other
speeches of insolent minds: still, he whose bounty reaches you,
although you say that it does not, lays you under an obligation
nevertheless; indeed, perhaps the greatest part of the benefit which
he bestows is that he is ready to give even when you are complaining
against him.
Do you not see how parents force children during their infancy to
undergo what is useful for their health? Though the children cry and
struggle, they swathe them and bind their limbs straight lest
premature liberty should make them grow crooked, afterwards instill
into them a liberal education, threatening those who are unwilling to
learn, and finally, if spirited young men do not conduct themselves
frugally, modestly, and respectably, they compel them to do so. Force
and harsh measures are used even to youths who have grown up and are
their own masters, if they, either from fear or from insolence, refuse
to take what is good for them. Thus the greatest benefits that we
receive, we receive either without knowing it, or against our will,
from our parents.
Those persons who are ungrateful and repudiate benefits, not because
they do not wish to receive them, but in order that they may not be
laid under an obligation for them, are like those who fall into the
opposite extreme, and are over grateful, who pray that some trouble or
misfortune may befall their benefactors to give them an opportunity of
proving how gratefully they remember the benefit which they have
received. It is a question whether they are right, and show a truly
dutiful feeling; their state of mind is morbid, like that of frantic
lovers who long for their mistress to be exiled, that they may
accompany her when she leaves her country forsaken by all her friends,
or that she may be poor in order that she may the more need what they
give her, or who long that she may be ill in order that they may sit
by her bedside, and who, in short, out of sheer love form the same
wishes as her enemies would wish for her. Thus the results of hatred
and of frantic love are very nearly the same; and these lovers are
very like those who hope that their friends may meet with difficulties
which they may remove, and who thus do a wrong that they may bestow a
benefit, whereas it would have been much better for them to do
nothing, than by a crime to gain an opportunity of doing good service.
What should we say of a pilot who prayed to the gods for dreadful
storms and tempests, in order that danger might make his skill more
highly esteemed? what of a general who should pray that a vast number
of the enemy surround his camp, fill the ditches by a sudden charge,
tear down the rampart round his panic-stricken army, and plant its
hostile standards at the very gates, in order that he might gain more
glory by restoring his broken ranks and shattered fortunes? All such
men confer their benefits upon us by odious means, for they beg the
gods to harm those whom they mean to help, and wish them to be struck
down before they raise them up; it is a cruel feeling, brought about
by a distorted sense of gratitude, to wish evil to befall one whom one
is bound in honour to succour.
"My wish," argues our opponent, "does him no harm, because when I
wish for the danger I wish for the rescue at the same time." What you
mean by this is not that you do no wrong, but that you do less than if
you wished that the danger might befall him, without wishing for the
rescue. It is wicked to throw a man into the water in order that you
may pull him out, to throw him down that you may raise him up, or to
shut him up that you may release him. You do not bestow a benefit upon
a man by ceasing to wrong him, nor can it ever be a piece of good
service to anyone to remove from him a burden which you yourself
imposed on him. True, you may cure the hurt which you inflict, but I
had rather that you did not hurt me at all. You may gain my gratitude
by curing me because I am wounded, but not by wounding me in order
that you may cure me: no man likes scars except as compared with
wounds, which he is glad to see thus healed, though he had rather not
have received them. It would be cruel to wish such things to befall
one from whom you had never received a kindness; how much more cruel
is it to wish that they may befall one in whose debt you are.
"I pray," replies he, "at the same time, that I may be able to help
him." In the first place, if I stop you short in the middle of your
prayer, it shows at once that you are ungrateful: I have not yet heard
what you wish to do for him; I have heard what you wish him to suffer.
You pray that anxiety and fear and even worse evil than this may come
upon him. You desire that he may need aid: this is to his
disadvantage; you desire that he may need your aid: this is to your
advantage. You do not wish to help him, but to be set free from your
obligation to him: for when you are eager to repay your debt in such a
way as this, you merely wish to be set free from the debt, not to
repay it. So the only part of your wish that could be thought
honourable proves to be the base and ungrateful feeling of
unwillingness to lie under an obligation: for what you wish for is,
not that you may have an opportunity of repaying his kindness, but
that he may be forced to beg you to do him a kindness. You make
yourself the superior, and you wickedly degrade beneath your feet the
man who has done you good service. How much better would it be to
remain in his debt in an honourable and friendly manner, than to seek
to discharge the debt by these evil means! You would be less to blame
if you denied that you had received it, for your benefactor would then
lose nothing more than what he gave you, whereas now you wish him to
be rendered inferior to you, and brought by the loss of his property
and social position into a condition below his own benefits. Do you
think yourself grateful? Just utter your wishes in the hearing of him
to whom you wish to do good. Do you call that a prayer for his
welfare, which can be divided between his friend and his enemy, which,
if the last part were omitted, you would not doubt was pronounced, by
one who opposed and hated him? Enemies in war have sometimes wished to
capture certain towns in order to spare them, or to conquer certain
persons in order to pardon, them, yet these were the wishes of
enemies, and what was the kindest part of them began by cruelty.
Finally, what sort of prayers do you think those can be which he, on
whose behalf they are made, hopes more earnestly than any one else may
not be granted? In hoping that the gods may injure a man, and that you
may help him, you deal most dishonourably with him, and you do not
treat the gods themselves fairly, for you give them the odious part to
play, and reserve the generous one for yourself: the gods must do him
wrong in order that you may do him a service. If you were to suborn an
informer to accuse a man, and afterwards withdrew him, if you engaged
a man in a law suit and afterwards gave it up, no one would hesitate
to call you a villain: what difference does it make, whether you
attempt to do this by chicanery or by prayer, unless it be that by
prayer you raise up more powerful enemies to him than by the other
means? You cannot say "Why, what harm do I do him?" your prayer is
either futile or harmful, indeed it is harmful even though nothing
comes of it. You do your friend wrong by wishing him harm: you must
thank the gods that you do him no harm. The fact of your wishing it is
enough: we ought to be just as angry with you as if you had effected
it.
"If," argues our adversary, "my prayers had any efficacy, they would
also have been efficacious to save him from danger." In the first
place, I reply, the danger into which you wish me to fall is certain,
the help which I should receive is uncertain. Or call them both
certain; it is that which injures me that comes first. Besides, YOU
understand the terms of your wish; _I_ shall be tossed by the storm
without being sure that I have a haven of rest at hand.
Think what torture it must have been to me, even if I receive your
help, to have stood in need of it: if I escape safely, to have
trembled for myself; if I be acquitted, to have had to plead my
cause. To escape from fear, however great it may be, can never be so
pleasant as to live in sound unassailable safety. Pray that you may
return my kindnesses when I need their return, but do not pray that I
may need them. You would have done what you prayed for, had it been in
your power.
How far more honourable would a prayer of this sort be: "I pray that
he may remain in such a position as that he may always bestow benefits
and never need them: may he be attended by the means of giving and
helping, of which he makes such a bountiful use; may he never want
benefits to bestow, or be sorry for any which he has bestowed; may his
nature, fitted as it is for acts of pity, goodness, and clemency, be
stimulated and brought out by numbers of grateful persons, whom I
trust he will find without needing to make trial of their gratitude;
may he refuse to be reconciled to no one, and may no one require to be
reconciled to him: may fortune so uniformly continue to favour him
that no one may be able to return his kindness in any way except by
feeling grateful to him."
How far more proper are such prayers as these, which do not put you
off to some distant opportunity, but express your gratitude at once?
What is there to prevent your returning your benefactor's kindness,
even while he is in prosperity? How many ways are there by which we
can repay what we owe even to the affluent—for instance, by honest
advice, by constant intercourse, by courteous conversation, pleasing
him without flattering him, by listening attentively to any subject
which he may wish to discuss, by keeping safe any secret that he may
impart to us, and by social intercourse. There is no one so highly
placed by fortune as not to want a friend all the more because he
wants nothing.
The other is a melancholy opportunity, and one which we ought always
to pray may be kept far from us: must the gods be angry with a man in
order that you may prove your gratitude to him? Do you not perceive
that you are doing wrong, from the very fact that those to whom you
are ungrateful fare better? Call up before your mind dungeons, chains,
wretchedness, slavery, war, poverty: these are the opportunities for
which you pray; if any one has any dealings with you, it is by means
of these that you square your account. Why not rather wish that he to
whom you owe most may be powerful and happy? for, as I have just said,
what is there to prevent your returning the kindness even of those who
enjoy the greatest prosperity? to do which, ample and various
opportunities will present themselves to you, What! do you not know
that a debt can be paid even to a rich man? Nor will I trouble you
with many instances of what you may do. Though a man's riches and
prosperity may prevent your making him any other repayment, I will
show you what the highest in the land stand in need of, what is
wanting to those who possess everything. They want a man to speak the
truth, to save them from the organized mass of falsehood by which they
are beset, which so bewilders them with lies that the habit of hearing
only what is pleasant instead of what is true, prevents their knowing
what truth really is. Do you not see how such persons are driven to
ruin by the want of candour among their friends, whose loyalty has
degenerated into slavish obsequiousness? No one, when giving them his
advice, tells them what he really thinks, but each vies with the other
in flattery; and while the man's friends make it their only object to
see who can most pleasantly deceive him, he himself is ignorant of his
real powers, and, believing himself to be as great a man as he is told
that he is, plunges the State in useless wars, which bring disasters
upon it, breaks off a useful and necessary peace, and, through a
passion of anger which no one checks, spills the blood of numbers of
people, and at last sheds his own. Such persons assert what has never
been investigated as certain facts, consider that to modify their
opinion is as dishonourable as to be conquered, believe that
institutions which are just flickering out of existence will last for
ever, and, thus overturn great States, to the destruction of
themselves and all who are connected with them. Living as they do in a
fool's paradise, resplendent with unreal and short-lived advantages,
they forget that, as soon as they put it out of their power to hear
the truth, there is no limit to the misfortunes which they may expect.
When Xerxes declared war against Greece, all his courtiers encouraged
his boastful temper, which forgot how unsubstantial his grounds for
confidence were. One declared that the Greeks would not endure to hear
the news of the declaration of war, and would take to flight at the
first rumour of his approach; another, that with such a vast army
Greece could not only be conquered, but utterly overwhelmed, and that
it was rather to be feared that they would find the Greek cities empty
and abandoned, and that the panic flight of the enemy would leave them
only vast deserts, where no use could be made of their enormous
forces. Another told him that the world was hardly large enough to
contain him, that the seas were too narrow for his fleets, the camps
would not take in his armies, the plains were not wide enough to
deploy his cavalry in, and that the sky itself was scarcely large
enough to enable all his troops to hurl their darts at once. While
much boasting of this sort was going on around him, raising his
already overweening self- confidence to a frantic pitch, Demaratus,
the Lacedaemonian, alone told him that the disorganized and unwieldy
multitude in which he trusted, was in itself a danger to its chief,
because it possessed only weight without strength; for an army which
is too large cannot be governed, and one which cannot be governed,
cannot long exist. "The Lacedaemonians," said he, "will meet you upon
the first mountain in Greece, and will give you a taste of their
quality. All these thousands of nations of yours will be held in check
by three hundred men: they will stand firm at their posts, they will
defend the passes entrusted to them with their weapons, and block them
up with their bodies: all Asia will not force them to give way; few as
they are, they will stop all this terrible invasion, attempted though
it be by nearly the whole human race. Though the laws of nature may
give way to you, and enable you to pass from Europe to Asia, yet you
will stop short in a bypath; consider what your losses will be
afterwards, when you have reckoned up the price which you have to pay
for the pass of Thermopylae; when you learn that your march can be
stayed, you will discover that you may be put to flight. The Greeks
will yield up many parts of their country to you, as if they were
swept out of them by the first terrible rush of a mountain torrent;
afterwards they will rise against you from all quarters and will crush
you by means of your own strength. What people say, that your warlike
preparations are too great to be contained in the countries which you
intend to attack, is quite true; but this is to our disadvantage.
Greece will conquer you for this very reason, that she cannot contain
you; you cannot make use of the whole of your force. Besides this, you
will not be able to do what is essential to victory—that is, to meet
the manoeuvres of the enemy at once, to support your own men if they
give way, or to confirm and strengthen them when their ranks are
wavering; long before you know it, you will be defeated. Moreover, you
should not think that because your army is so large that its own chief
does not know its numbers, it is therefore irresistible; there is
nothing so great that it cannot perish; nay, without any other cause,
its own excessive size may prove its ruin." What Demaratus predicted
came to pass. He whose power gods and men obeyed, and who swept away
all that opposed him, was bidden to halt by three hundred men, and the
Persians, defeated in every part of Greece, learned how great a
difference there is between a mob and an army. Thus it came to pass
that Xerxes, who suffered more from the shame of his failure than from
the losses which he sustained, thanked Demaratus for having been the
only man who told him the truth, and permitted him to ask what boon he
pleased. He asked to be allowed to drive a chariot into Sardis, the
largest city in Asia, wearing a tiara erect upon his head, a privilege
which was enjoyed by kings alone. He deserved his reward before he
asked for it, but how wretched must the nation have been, in which
there was no one who would speak the truth to the king except one man.
who did not speak it to himself.
The late Emperor Augustus banished his daughter, whose conduct went
beyond the shame of ordinary immodesty, and made public the scandals
of the imperial house
Led away by his passion, he divulged all these crimes which, as
emperor, he ought to have kept secret with as much care as he
punished them, because the shame of some deeds asperses even him who
avenges them. Afterwards, when by lapse of time shame took the place
of anger in his mind, he lamented that he had not kept silence about
matters which he had not learned until it was disgraceful to speak of
them, and often used to exclaim, "None of these things would have
happened to me, if either Agrippa or Maecenas had lived!" So hard was
it for the master of so many thousands of men to repair the loss of
two. When his legions were slaughtered, new ones were at once
enrolled; when his fleet was wrecked, within a few days another was
afloat; when the public buildings were consumed by fire, finer ones
arose in their stead; but the places of Agrippa and Maecenas remained
unfilled throughout his life. What am I to imagine? that there were
not any men like these, who could take their place, or that it was the
fault of Augustus himself, who preferred mourning for them to seeking
for their likes? We have no reason for supposing that it was the habit
of Agrippa or Maecenas to speak the truth to him; indeed, if they had
lived they would have been as great dissemblers as the rest. It is one
of the habits of kings to insult their present servants by praising
those whom they have lost, and to attribute the virtue of truthful
speaking to those from whom there is no further risk of hearing it.
However, to return to my subject, you see how easy it is to return
the kindness of the prosperous, and even of those who occupy the
highest places of all mankind. Tell them, not what they wish to hear,
but what they will wish that they always had heard; though their ears
be stopped by flatteries, yet sometimes truth may penetrate them; give
them useful advice. Do you ask what service you can render to a
prosperous man? Teach him not to rely upon his prosperity, and to
understand that it ought to be supported by the hands of many trusty
friends. Will you not have done much for him, if you take away his
foolish belief that his influence will endure for ever, and teach him
that what we gain by chance passes away soon, and at a quicker rate
than it came; that we cannot fall by the same stages by which we rose
to the height of good fortune, but that frequently between it and ruin
there is but one step? You do not know how great is the value of
friendship, if you do not understand how much you give to him to whom
you give a friend, a commodity which is scarce not only in men's
houses, but in whole centuries, and which is nowhere scarcer than in
the places where it is thought to be most plentiful. Pray, do you
suppose that those books of names, which your nomenclator [Footnote:
The nomenclator was a slave who attended his master in canvassing and
on similar occasions, for the purpose of telling him the names of whom
he met in the street.] can hardly carry or remember, are those of
friends? It is not your friends who crowd to knock at your door, and
who are admitted to your greater or lesser levees.
To divide one's friends into classes is an old trick of kings and
their imitators; it shows great arrogance to think that to touch or to
pass one's threshold can be a valuable privilege, or to grant as an
honour that you should sit nearer one's front door than others, or
enter house before them, although within the house there are many more
doors, which shut out even those who have been admitted so far. With
us Gaius Gracchus, and shortly after him Livius Drusus, were the first
to keep themselves apart from the mass of their adherents, and to
admit some to their privacy, some to their more select, and others to
their general receptions. These men consequently had friends of the
first and second rank, and so on, but in none had they true friends.
Can you apply the name of friend to one who is admitted in his regular
order to pay his respects to you? or can you expect perfect loyalty
from one who is forced to slip into your presence through a
grudgingly-opened door? How can a man arrive at using bold freedom of
speech with you, if he is only allowed in his proper turn to make use
of the common phrase, "Hail to you," which is used by perfect
strangers? Whenever you go to any of these great men, whose levees
interest the whole city, though you find all the streets beset with
throngs of people, and the passers-by hardly able to make their way
through the crowd, you may be sure that you have come to a place where
there are many men, but no friends of their patron. We must not seek
our friends in our entrance hall, but in our own breast; it is there
that he ought to be received, there retained, and hoarded up in our
minds. Teach this, and you will have repaid your debt of gratitude.
If you are useful to your friend only when he is in distress, and are
superfluous when all goes well with him, you form a mean estimate of
your own value. As you can bear yourself wisely both in doubtful, in
prosperous, and in adverse circumstances, by showing prudence in
doubtful cases, courage in misfortune, and self- restraint in good
fortune, so in all circumstances you can make yourself useful to your
friend. Do not desert him in adversity, but do not wish that it may
befall him: the various incidents of human life will afford you many
opportunities of proving your loyalty to him without wishing him evil.
He who prays that another may become rich, in order that he may share
his riches, really has a view to his own advantage, although his
prayers are ostensibly offered in behalf of his friend; and similarly
he who wishes that his friend may get into some trouble from which his
own friendly assistance may extricate him—a most ungrateful
wish—prefers himself to his friend, and thinks it worthwhile that his
friend should be unhappy, in order that he may prove his gratitude.
This very wish makes him ungrateful, for he wishes to rid himself of
his gratitude as though it were a heavy burden. In returning a
kindness it makes a great difference whether you are eager to bestow a
benefit, or merely to free yourself from a debt. He who wishes to
return a benefit will study his friend's interests, and will hope that
a suitable occasion will arise; he who only wishes to free himself
from an obligation will be eager to do so by any means whatever, which
shows very bad feeling. "Do you say," we may be asked, "that
eagerness to repay kindness belongs to a morbid feeling of
gratitude?" I cannot explain my meaning more clearly than by
repeating what I have already said. You do not want to repay, but to
escape from the benefit which you. have received. You seem to say,
"When shall I get free from this obligation? I must strive by any
means in my power to extinguish my debt to him." You would be thought
to be far from grateful, if you wished to pay a debt to him with his
own money; yet this wish of yours is even more unjust; for you invoke
curses upon him, and call down terrible imprecations upon the head of
one who ought to be held sacred by you. No one, I suppose, would have
any doubt of your wickedness if you were openly to pray that he might
suffer poverty, captivity, hunger, or fear; yet what is the difference
between openly praying for some of these things, and silently wishing
for them? for you do wish for some of these. Go, and enjoy your belief
that this is gratitude, to do what not even an ungrateful man would
do, supposing he confined himself to repudiating the benefit, and did
not go so far as to hate his benefactor.
Who would call Aeneas pious, if he wished that his native city might
be captured, in order that he might save his father from captivity?
Who would point to the Sicilian youths as good examples for his
children, if they had prayed that Aetna might flame with unusual heat
and pour forth a vast mass of fire in order to afford them an
opportunity of displaying their filial affection by rescuing their
parents from the midst of the conflagration? Rome owes Scipio nothing
if he kept the Punic War alive in order that he might have the glory
of finishing it; she owes nothing to the Decii if they prayed for
public disasters, to give themselves an opportunity of displaying
their brave self-devotion. It is the greatest scandal for a physician
to make work for himself; and many who have aggravated the diseases of
their patients that they may have the greater credit for curing them,
have either failed to cure them, at all or have done so at the cost of
the most terrible suffering to their victims.
It is said (at any rate Hecaton tells us) that when Callistratus with
many others was driven into exile by his factious and licentiously
free country, some one prayed that such trouble might befall the
Athenians that they would be forced to recall the exiles, on hearing
which, he prayed that God might forbid his return upon such terms.
When some one tried to console our own countryman, Rutilius, for his
exile, pointing out that civil war was at hand, and that all exiles
would soon be restored to Rome, he answered with even greater spirit,
"What harm have I done you, that you should wish that I may return to
my country more unhappily than I quit it? My wish is, that my country
should blush at my being banished, rather than that she should mourn
at my having returned." An exile, of which every one is more ashamed
than the sufferer, is not exile at all. These two persons, who did not
wish to be restored to their homes at the cost of a public disaster,
but preferred that two should suffer unjustly than that all should
suffer alike, are thought to have acted like good citizens; and in
like manner it does not accord with the character of a grateful man,
to wish that his benefactor may fall into troubles which he may
dispel; because, even though he may mean well to him, yet he wishes
him evil. To put out a fire which you yourself have lighted, will not
even gain acquittal for you, let alone credit.
In some states an evil wish was regarded as a crime. It is certain
that at Athens Demades obtained a verdict against one who sold
furniture for funerals, by proving that he had prayed for great gains,
which he could not obtain without the death of many persons. Yet it is
a stock question whether he was rightly found guilty. Perhaps he
prayed, not that he might sell his wares to many persons, but that he
might sell them dear, or that he might procure what he was going to
sell, cheaply. Since his business consisted of buying and selling, why
should you consider his prayer to apply to one branch of it only,
although he made profit from both? Besides this, you might find every
one of his trade guilty, for they all wish, that is, secretly pray, as
he did. You might, moreover, find a great part of the human race
guilty, for who is there who does not profit by his neighbour's wants?
A soldier, if he wishes for glory, must wish for war; the farmer
profits by corn being dear; a large number of litigants raises the
price of forensic eloquence; physicians make money by a sickly season;
dealers in luxuries are made rich by the effeminacy of youth; suppose
that no storms and no conflagrations injured our dwellings, the
builder's trade would be at a standstill. The prayer of one man was
detected, but it was just like the prayers of all other men. Do you
imagine that Arruntius and Haterius, and all other professional
legacy-hunters do not put up the same prayers as undertakers and
grave-diggers? though the latter know not whose death it is that they
wish for, while the former wish for the death of their dearest
friends, from whom, on account of their intimacy, they have most hopes
of inheriting a fortune. No one's life does the undertaker any harm,
whereas these men starve if their friends are long about dying; they
do not, therefore, merely wish for their deaths in order that they may
receive what they have earned by a disgraceful servitude, but in order
that they may be set free from a heavy tax. There can, therefore, be
no doubt that such persons repeat with even greater earnestness the
prayer for which the undertaker was condemned, for whoever is likely
to profit such men by dying, does them an injury by living. Yet the
wishes of all these are alike well known and unpunished. Lastly, let
every man examine his own self, let him look into the secret thoughts
of his heart and consider what it is that he silently hopes for; how
many of his prayers he would blush to acknowledge, even to himself;
how few there are which we could repeat in the presence of witnesses!
Yet we must not condemn every thing which we find worthy of blame,
as, for instance, this wish about our friends which we have been
discussing, arises from a misdirected feeling of affection, and falls
into the very error which it strives to avoid, for the man is
ungrateful at the very time when he hurries to prove his gratitude. He
prays aloud, "May he fall into my power, may he need my influence, may
not be able to be safe and respectable without my aid, may he be so
unfortunate that whatever return I make to him may be regarded as a
benefit." To the gods alone he adds, "May domestic treasons encompass
him, which can be quelled by me alone; may some powerful and virulent
enemy, some excited and armed mob, assail him; may he be set upon by a
creditor or an informer."
See, how just you are; you would never have wished any of these
misfortunes to befall him, if he had not bestowed a benefit upon you.
Not to speak of the graver guilt which you incur by returning evil for
good, you distinctly do wrong in not waiting for the fitting time for
each action, for it is as wrong to anticipate this as it is not to
take it when it comes. A benefit ought not always to be accepted, and
ought not in all cases to be returned. If you were to return it to me
against my will, you would be ungrateful, how much more ungrateful are
you, if you force me to wish for it? Wait patiently; why are you
unwilling to let my bounty abide with you? Why do you chafe at being
laid under an obligation? why, as though you were dealing with a harsh
usurer, are you in such a hurry to sign and seal an equivalent bond?
Why do you wish me to get into trouble? Why do you call upon the gods
to ruin me? If this is your way of returning a kindness, what would
you do if you were exacting repayment of a debt?
Above all, therefore, my Liberalis, let us learn to live calmly under
an obligation to others, and watch for opportunities of repaying our
debt without manufacturing them. Let us remember that this anxiety to
seize the first opportunity of setting ourselves free shows
ingratitude; for no one repays with good will that which he is
unwilling to owe, and his eagerness to get it out of his hands shows
that he regards it as a burden rather than as a favour. How much
better and more righteous is it to bear in mind what we owe to our
friends, and to offer repayment, not to obtrude it, nor to think
ourselves too much indebted; because a benefit is a common bond which
connects two persons. Say "I do not delay to repay your kindness to
me; I hope that you will accept my gratitude cheerfully. If
irresistible fate hangs over either of us, and destiny rules either
that you must receive your benefit back again, or that I must receive
a second benefit, why then, of us two, let him give that was wont to
give. I am ready to receive it.
"'Tis not the part of Turnus to delay."
That is the spirit which I shall show whenever the time comes; in
the meanwhile the gods shall be my witnesses.
I have noted in you, my Liberalis, and as it were touched with my
hand a feeling of fussy anxiety not to be behindhand in doing what is
your duty. This anxiety is not suitable to a grateful mind, which, on
the contrary, produces the utmost confidence in oneself, and which
drives away all trouble by the consciousness of real affection towards
one's benefactor. To say "Take back what you gave me," is no less a
reproach than to say "You are in my debt." Let this be the first
privilege of a benefit, that he who bestowed it may choose the time
when he will have it returned. "But I fear that men may speak ill of
me." You do wrong if you are grateful only for the sake of your
reputation, and not to satisfy your conscience. You have in this
matter two judges, your benefactor, whom you ought not, and yourself,
whom you cannot deceive. "But," say you, "if no occasion of repayment
offers, am I always to remain in his debt?" Yes; but you should do so
openly, and willingly, and should view with great pleasure what he has
entrusted to you. If you are vexed at not having yet returned a
benefit, you must be sorry that you ever received it; but if he
deserved that you should receive a benefit from him, why should he not
deserve that you should long remain in his debt?
Those persons are much mistaken who regard it as a proof of a great
mind to make offers to give, and to fill many men's pockets and houses
with their presents, for sometimes these are due not to a great mind,
but to a great fortune; they do not know how far more great and more
difficult it sometimes is to receive than to lavish gifts. I must
disparage neither act; it is as proper to a noble heart to owe as to
receive, for both are of equal value when done virtuously; indeed, to
owe is the more difficult, because it requires more pains to keep a
thing safe than to give it away. We ought not therefore to be in a
hurry to repay, nor need we seek to do so out of due season, for to
hasten to make repayment at the wrong time is as bad as to be slow to
do so at the right time. My benefactor has entrusted his bounty to me:
I ought not to have any fears either on his behalf or on my own. He
has a sufficient security; he cannot lose it except he loses me—nay,
not even if he loses me. I have returned thanks to him for it—that
is, I have requited him. He who thinks too much about repaying a
benefit must suppose that his friend thinks too much about receiving
repayment. Make no difficulty about either course. If he wishes to
receive his benefit back again, let us return it cheerfully; if he
prefers to leave it in our hands, why should we dig up his treasure?
why should we decline to be its guardians? he deserves to be allowed
to do whichever he pleases. As for fame and reputation, let us regard
them as matters which ought to accompany, but which ought not to
direct our actions.
Be of good cheer, my Liberalis:
"Our port is close, and I will not delay,
Nor by digressions wander from the way."
This book collects together all that has been omitted, and in it,
having exhausted my subject, I shall consider not what I am to say,
but what there is which I have not yet said. If there be anything
superfluous in it, I pray you take it in good part, since it is for
you that it is superfluous. Had I wished to set off my work to the
best advantage, I ought to have added to it by degrees, and to have
kept for the last that part which would be eagerly perused even by a
sated reader. However, instead of this, I have collected together all
that was essential in the beginning; I am now collecting together
whatever then escaped me; nor, by Hercules, if you ask me, do I think
that, after the rules which govern our conduct have been stated, it is
very much to the purpose to discuss the other questions which have
been raised more for the exercise of our intellects than for the
health of our minds. The cynic Demetrius, who in my opinion was a
great man even if compared with the greatest philosophers, had an
admirable saying about this, that one gained more by having a few wise
precepts ready and in common use than by learning many without having
them at hand. "The best wrestler," he would say, "is not he who has
learned thoroughly all the tricks and twists of the art, which are
seldom met with in actual wrestling, but he who has well and carefully
trained himself in one or two of them, and watches keenly for an
opportunity of practising them. It does not matter how many of them he
knows, if he knows enough to give him the victory; and so in this
subject of ours there are many points of interest, but few of
importance. You need not know what is the system of the ocean tides,
why each seventh year leaves its mark upon the human body, why the
more distant parts of a long portico do not keep their true
proportion, but seem to approach one another until at last the spaces
between the columns disappear, how it can be that twins are conceived
separately, though they are born together, whether both result from
one, or each from a separate act, why those whose birth was the same
should have such different fates in life, and dwell at the greatest
possible distance from one another, although they were born touching
one another; it will not do you much harm to pass over matters which
we are not permitted to know, and which we should not profit by
knowing. Truths so obscure may be neglected with impunity. [Footnote:
The old saying, 'Truth lurks deep in a well (or abyss).'] Nor can we
complain that nature deals hardly with us, for there is nothing which
is hard to discover except those things by which we gain nothing
beyond the credit of having discovered them; whatever things tend to
make us better or happier are either obvious or easily discovered.
Your mind can rise superior to the accidents of life, if it can raise
itself above fears and not greedily covet boundless wealth, but has
learned to seek for riches within itself; if it has cast out the fear
of men and gods, and has learned that it has not much to fear from
man, and nothing to fear from God; if by scorning all those things
which make life miserable while they adorn it, the mind can soar to
such a height as to see clearly that death cannot be the beginning of
any trouble, though it is the end of many; if it can dedicate itself
to righteousness and think any path easy which leads to it; if, being
a gregarious creature, and born for the common good, it regards the
world as the universal home, if it keeps its conscience clear towards
God and lives always as though in public, fearing itself more than
other men, then it avoids all storms, it stands on firm ground in fair
daylight, and has brought to perfection its knowledge of all that is
useful and essential. All that remains serves merely to amuse our
leisure; yet, when once anchored in safety, the mind may consider
these matters also, though it can derive no strength, but only culture
from their discussion."
The above are the rules which my friend Demetrius bids him who would
make progress in philosophy to clutch with both hands, never to let
go, but to cling to them, and make them a part of himself, and by
daily meditation upon them to bring himself into such a state of mind,
that these wholesome maxims occur to him of their own accord, that
wherever he may be, they may straightway be ready for use when
required, and that the criterion of right and wrong may present itself
to him without delay. Let him know that nothing is evil except what is
base, and nothing good except what is honourable: let him guide his
life by this rule: let him both act and expect others to act in
accordance with this law, and let him regard those whose minds are
steeped in indolence, and who are given up to lust and gluttony, as
the most pitiable of mankind, no matter how splendid their fortunes
may be. Let him say to himself, "Pleasure is uncertain, short, apt to
pall upon us, and the more eagerly we indulge in it, the sooner we
bring on a reaction of feeling against it; we must necessarily
afterwards blush for it, or be sorry for it, there is nothing grand
about it, nothing worthy of man's nature, little lower as it is than
that of the gods; pleasure is a low act, brought about by the agency
of our inferior and baser members, and shameful in its result. True
pleasure, worthy of a human being and of a man, is, not to stuff or
swell his body with food and drink, nor to excite lusts which are
least hurtful when they are most quiet, but to be free from all forms
of mental disturbance, both those which arise from men's ambitious
struggles with one another, and those which come from on high and are
more difficult to deal with, which flow from our taking the
traditional view of the gods, and estimating them by the analogy of
our own vices." This equable, secure, uncloying pleasure is enjoyed by
the man now described; a man skilled, so to say, in the laws of gods
and men alike. Such a man enjoys the present without anxiety for the
future: for he who depends upon what is uncertain can rely confidently
upon nothing. Thus he is free from all those great troubles which
unhinge the mind, he neither hopes for, nor covets anything, and
engages in no uncertain adventures, being satisfied with what he has.
Do not suppose that he is satisfied with a little; for everything is
his, and that not in the sense in which all was Alexander's, who,
though he reached the shore of the Red Sea, yet wanted more territory
than that through which he had come. He did not even own those
countries which he held or had conquered, while Onesicritus, whom he
had sent on before him to discover new countries, was wandering about
the ocean and engaging in war in unknown seas. Is it clear that he who
pushed his armies beyond the bounds of the universe, who with reckless
greed dashed headlong into a boundless and unexplored sea, must in
reality have been full of wants? It matters not how many kingdoms he
may have seized or given away, or how great a part of the world may
pay him tribute; such a man must be in need of as much as he desires.
This was not the vice of Alexander alone, who followed with a
fortunate audacity in the footsteps of Bacchus and Hercules, but it
is common to all those whose covetousness is whetted rather than
appeased by good fortune. Look at Cyrus and Cambyses and all the
royal house of Persia: can you find one among them who thought his
empire large enough, or was not at the last gasp still aspiring after
further conquests? We need not wonder at this, for whatever is
obtained by covetousness is simply swallowed up and lost, nor does it
matter how much is poured into its insatiable maw. Only the wise man
possesses everything without having to struggle to retain it; he alone
does not need to send ambassadors across the seas, measure out camps
upon hostile shores, place garrisons in commanding forts, or manoeuvre
legions and squadrons of cavalry. Like the immortal gods, who govern
their realm without recourse to arms, and from their serene and lofty
heights protect their own, so the wise man fulfils his duties, however
far-reaching they may be, without disorder, and looks down upon the
whole human race, because he himself is the greatest and most powerful
member thereof. You may laugh at him, but if you in your mind survey
the east and the west, reaching even to the regions separated from us
by vast wildernesses, if you think of all the creatures of the earth,
all the riches which the bounty of nature lavishes, it shows a great
spirit to be able to say, as though you were a god, "All these are
mine." Thus it is that he covets nothing, for there is nothing which
is not contained in everything, and everything is his.
"This," say you, "is the very thing that I wanted! I have caught you!
I shall be glad to see how you will extricate yourself from the toils
into which you have fallen of your own accord. Tell me, if the wise
man possesses everything, how can one give anything to a wise man? for
even what you give him is his already. It is impossible, therefore, to
bestow a benefit upon a wise man, if whatever is given him comes from
his own store; yet you Stoics declare that it is possible to give to a
wise man. I make the same inquiry about friends as well: for you say
that friends own everything in common, and if so, no one can give
anything to his friend, for he gives what his friend owned already in
common with himself."
There is nothing to prevent a thing belonging to a wise man, and
yet being the property of its legal owner. According to law
everything in a state belongs to the king, yet all that property over
which the king has rights of possession is parcelled out among
individual owners, and each separate thing belongs to somebody: and
so one can give the king a house, a slave, or a sum of money without
being said to give him what was his already; for the king has rights
over all these things, while each citizen has the ownership of them.
We speak of the country of the Athenians, or of the Campanians, though
the inhabitants divide them amongst themselves into separate estates;
the whole region belongs to one state or another, but each part of it
belongs to its own individual proprietor; so that we are able to give
our lands to the state, although they are reckoned as belonging to the
state, because we and the state own them in different ways. Can there
be any doubt that all the private savings of a slave belong to his
master as well as he himself? yet he makes his master presents. The
slave does not therefore possess nothing, because if his master chose
he might possess nothing; nor does what he gives of his own free will
cease to be a present, because it might have been wrung from him
against his will. As for how we are to prove that the wise man
possesses all things, we shall see afterwards; for the present we are
both agreed to regard this as true; we must gather together something
to answer the question before us, which is, how any means remain of
acting generously towards one who already possesses all things? All
things that a son has belong to his father, yet who does not know that
in spite of this a son can make presents to his father? All things
belong to the gods; yet we make presents and bestow alms even upon the
gods. What I have is not necessarily not mine because it belongs to
you; for the same thing may belong both to me and to you.
"He to whom courtezans belong," argues our adversary, "must be a
procurer: now courtezans are included in all things, therefore
courtezans belong to the wise man. But he to whom courtezans belong
is a procurer; therefore the wise man is a procurer." Yes! by the
same reasoning, our opponents would forbid him to buy anything,
arguing, "No man buys his own property. Now all things are the
property of the wise man; therefore the wise man buys nothing." By
the same reasoning they object to his borrowing, because no one pays
interest for the use of his own money. They raise endless quibbles,
although they perfectly well understand what we say.
For, when I say that the wise man possesses everything, I mean that
he does so without thereby impairing each man's individual rights in
his own property, in the same way as in a country ruled by a good
king, everything belongs to the king, by the right of his authority,
and to the people by their several rights of ownership. This I shall
prove in its proper place; in the mean time it is a sufficient answer
to the question to declare that I am able to give to the wise man that
which is in one way mine, and in another way his. Nor is it strange
that I should be able to give anything to one who possesses
everything. Suppose I have hired a house from you: some part of that
house is mine, some is yours; the house itself is yours, the use of
your house belongs to me. Crops may ripen upon your land, but you
cannot touch them against the will of your tenant; and if corn be
dear, or at famine price, you will
"In vain another's mighty store behold,"
grown upon your land, lying upon your land, and to be deposited in
your own barns. Though you be the landlord, you must not enter my
hired house, nor may you take away your own slave from me if I have
contracted for his services; nay, if I hire a carriage from you, I
bestow a benefit by allowing you to take your seat in it, although it
is your own. You see, therefore, that it is possible for a man to
receive a present by accepting what is his own.
In all the cases which I have mentioned, each party is the owner of
the same thing. How is this? It is because the one owns the thing, the
other owns the use of the thing. We speak of the books of Cicero.
Dorus, the bookseller, calls these same books his own; the one claims
them because he wrote them, the other because he bought them; so that
they may quite correctly be spoken of as belonging to either of the
two, for they do belong to each, though in a different manner. Thus
Titus Livius may receive as a present, or may buy his own books from
Dorus. Although the wise man possesses everything, yet I can give him
what I individually possess; for though, king-like, he in his mind
possesses everything, yet the ownership of all things is divided among
various individuals, so that he can both receive a present and owe
one; can buy, or hire things. Everything belongs to Caesar; yet he
has no private property beyond his own privy purse; as Emperor all
things are his, but nothing is his own except what he inherits. It is
possible, without treason, to discuss what is and what is not his; for
even what the court may decide not to be his, from another point of
view is his. In the same way the wise man in his mind possesses
everything, in actual right and ownership he possesses only his own
property.
Bion is able to prove by argument at one time that everyone is
sacrilegious, at another that no one is. When he is in a mood for
casting all men down the Tarpeian rock, he says, "Whosoever touches
that which belongs to the gods, and consumes it or converts it to his
own uses, is sacrilegious; but all things belong to the gods, so that
whatever thing any one touches belongs to them to whom all belongs;
whoever, therefore, touches anything is sacrilegious." Again, when he
bids men break open temples and pillage the Capitol without fear of
the wrath of heaven, he declares that no one can be sacrilegious;
because, whatever a man takes away, he takes from one place which
belongs to the gods into another place which belongs to the gods. The
answer to this is that all places do indeed belong to the gods, but
all are not consecrated to them, and that sacrilege can only be done
in places solemnly dedicated to heaven. Thus, also, the whole world is
a temple of the immortal gods, and, indeed, the only one worthy of
their greatness and splendour, and yet there is a distinction between
things sacred and profane; all things which it is lawful to do under
the sky and the stars are not lawful to do within consecrated walls.
The sacrilegious man cannot do God any harm, for He is placed beyond
his reach by His divine nature; yet he is punished because he seems to
have done Him harm: his punishment is demanded by our feeling on the
matter, and even by his own. In the same way, therefore, as he who
carries off any sacred things is regarded as sacrilegious, although
that which he stole is nevertheless within the limits of the world, so
it is possible to steal from a wise man: for in that case it will be
some, not of that universe which he possesses, but some of those
things of which he is the acknowledged owner, and which are severally
his own property, which will be stolen from him. The former of these
possessions he will recognize as his own, the latter he will be
unwilling, even if he be able to possess; he will say, as that Roman
commander said, when, to reward his courage and good service to the
state, he was assigned as much land as he could inclose in one day's
ploughing. "You do not," said he, "want a citizen who wants more than
is enough for one citizen." Do you not think that it required a much
greater man to refuse this reward than to earn it? for many have taken
away the landmarks of other men's property, but no one sets up limits
to his own.
When, then, we consider that the mind of the truly wise man has power
over all things and pervades all things, we cannot help declaring that
everything is his, although, in the estimation of our common law, it
may chance that he may be rated as possessing no property whatever. It
makes a great difference whether we estimate what he owns by the
greatness of his mind, or by the public register. He would pray to be
delivered from that possession of everything of which you speak. I
will not remind you of Socrates, Chrysippus, Zeno, and other great
men, all the greater, however, because envy prevents no one from
praising the ancients. But a short time ago I mentioned Demetrius, who
seems to have been placed by nature in our times that he might prove
that we could neither corrupt him nor be corrected by him; a man of
consummate wisdom, though he himself disclaimed it, constant to the
principles which he professed, of an eloquence worthy to deal with the
mightiest subjects, scorning mere prettinesses and verbal niceties,
but expressing with infinite spirit, the ideas which inspired it. I
doubt not that he was endowed by divine providence with so pure a
life and such power of speech in order that our age might neither be
without a model nor a reproach. Had some god wished to give all our
wealth to Demetrius on the fixed condition that he should not be
permitted to give it away, I am sure that he would have refused to
accept it, and would have said,
"I do not intend to fasten upon my back a burden like this, of which
I never can rid myself, nor do I, nimble and lightly equipped as I am,
mean to hinder my progress by plunging into the deep morass of
business transactions. Why do you offer to me what is the bane of all
nations? I would not accept it even if I meant to give it away, for I
see many things which it would not become me to give. I should like to
place before my eyes the things which fascinate both kings and
peoples, I wish to behold the price of your blood and your lives.
First bring before me the trophies of Luxury, exhibiting them as you
please, either in succession, or, which is better, in one mass. I see
the shell of the tortoise, a foul and slothful brute, bought for
immense sums and ornamented with the most elaborate care, the contrast
of colours which is admired in it being obtained by the use of dyes
resembling the natural tints. I see tables and pieces of wood valued
at the price of a senator's estate, which are all the more precious,
the more knots the tree has been twisted into by disease. I see
crystal vessels, whose price is enhanced by their fragility, for among
the ignorant the risk of losing things increases their value instead
of lowering it, as it ought. I see murrhine cups, for luxury would be
too cheap if men did not drink to one another out of hollow gems the
wine to be afterwards thrown up again. I see more than one large pearl
placed in each ear; for now our ears are trained to carry burdens,
pearls are hung from them in pairs, and each pair has other single
ones fastened above it. This womanish folly is not exaggerated enough
for the men of our time, unless they hang two or three estates upon
each ear. I see ladies' silk dresses, if those deserve to be called
dresses which can neither cover their body or their shame; when
wearing which, they can scarcely with a good conscience, swear that
they are not naked. These are imported at a vast expense from nations
unknown even to trade, in order that our matrons may show as much of
their persons in public as they do to their lovers in private."
What are you doing, Avarice? see how many things there are whose
price exceeds that of your beloved gold: all those which I have
mentioned are more highly esteemed and valued. I now wish to review
your wealth, those plates of gold and silver which dazzle our
covetousness. By Hercules, the very earth, while she brings forth upon
the surface every thing that is of use to us, has buried these, sunk
them deep, and rests upon them with her whole weight, regarding them
as pernicious substances, and likely to prove the ruin of mankind if
brought into the light of day. I see that iron is brought out of the
same dark pits as gold and silver, in order that we may lack neither
the means nor the reward of murder. Thus far we have dealt with actual
substances; but some forms of wealth deceive our eyes and minds alike.
I see there letters of credit, promissory notes, and bonds, empty
phantoms of property, ghosts of sick Avarice, with which she deceives
our minds, which delight in unreal fancies; for what are these things,
and what are interest, and account books, and usury, except the names
of unnatural developments of human covetousness? I might complain of
nature for not having hidden gold and silver deeper, for not having
laid over it a weight too heavy to be removed: but what are your
documents, your sale of time, your blood-sucking twelve per cent.
interest? these are evils which we owe to our own will, which flow
merely from our perverted habit, having nothing about them which can
be seen or handled, mere dreams of empty avarice. Wretched is he who
can take pleasure in the size of the audit book of his estate, in
great tracts of land cultivated by slaves in chains, in huge flocks
and herds which require provinces and kingdoms for their pasture
ground, in a household of servants, more in number than some of the
most warlike nations, or in a private house whose extent surpasses
that of a large city! After he has carefully reviewed all his wealth,
in what it is invested, and on what it is spent, and has rendered
himself proud by the thoughts of it, let him compare what he has with
what he wants: he becomes a poor man at once. Let me go: restore me to
those riches of mine. I know the kingdom of wisdom, which is great and
stable: I possess every thing, and in such a manner that it belongs to
all men nevertheless."
When, therefore, Gaius Csesar offered him two hundred thousand
sesterces, he laughingly refused it, thinking it unworthy of himself
to boast of having refused so small a sum. Ye gods and goddesses, what
a mean mind must the emperor have had, if he hoped either to honour or
to corrupt him. I must here repeat a proof of his magnanimity. I have
heard that when he was expressing his wonder at the folly of Gaius at
supposing that he could be influenced by such a bribe, he said, "If he
meant to tempt me, he ought to have tried to do so by offering his
entire kingdom."
It is possible, then, to give something to the wise man, although all
things belong to the wise man. Similarly, though we declare that
friends have all things in common, it is nevertheless possible to give
something to a friend: for I have not everything in common with a
friend in the same manner as with a partner, where one part belongs to
him, and another to me, but rather as a father and a mother possess
their children in common when they have two, not each parent
possessing one child, but each possessing both. First of all I will
prove that any chance would-be partner of mine has nothing in common
with me: and why? Because this community of goods can only exist
between wise men, who are alone capable of friendship: other men can
neither be friends nor partners one to another. In the next place,
things may be owned in common in various ways. The knights' seats in
the theatre belong to all the Roman knights; yet of these the seat
which I occupy becomes my own, and if I yield it up to any one,
although I only yield him a thing which we own in common, still I
appear to have given him something. Some things belong to certain
persons under particular conditions. I have a place among the knights,
not to sell, or to let, or to dwell in, but simply to see the
spectacle from, wherefore I do not tell an untruth when I say that I
have a place among the knights' seats. Yet if, when I come into the
theatre, the knights' seats are full, I both have a seat there by
right, because I have the privilege of sitting there, and I have not a
seat there, because my seat is occupied by those who share my right to
those places. Suppose that the same thing takes place between friends;
whatever our friend possesses, is common to us, but is the property of
him who owns it; I cannot make use of it against his will. "You are
laughing at me," say you; "if what belongs to my friend is mine, I am
able to sell it." You are not able; for you are not able to sell your
place among the knights' seats, and yet they are in common between you
and the other knights. Consequently, the fact that you cannot sell a
thing, or consume it, or exchange it for the better or the worse does
not prove that it is not yours; for that which is yours under certain
conditions is yours nevertheless.
I have received, but certainly not less. Not to detain you longer
than is necessary, a benefit can be no more than a benefit; but the
means employed to convey benefits may be both greater and more
numerous. I mean those things by which kindness expresses and gives
vent to itself, like lovers, whose many kisses and close embraces do
not increase their love but give it play.
The next question which arises has been thoroughly threshed out in
the former books, so here it shall only be touched on shortly; for the
arguments which have been used for other cases can be transferred to
it.
The question is, whether one who has done everything in his power
to return a benefit, has returned it. "You may know," says our
adversary, "that he has not returned it, because he did everything in
his power to return it; it is evident, therefore, that he did not not
do that which he did not have an opportunity of doing. A man who
searches everywhere for his creditor without finding him does not
thereby pay him what he owes." Some are in such a position that it is
their duty to effect something material; in the case of others to have
done all in their power to effect it is as good as effecting it. If a
physician has done all in his power to heal his patient he has
performed his duty; an advocate who employs his whole powers of
eloquence on his client's behalf, performs his duty even though his
client be convicted; the generalship even of a beaten commander is
praised if he has prudently, laboriously, and courageously exercised
his functions. Your friend has done all in his power to return your
kindness, but your good fortune stood in his way; no adversity befell
you in which he could prove the truth of his friendship; he could not
give you money when you were rich, or nurse you when you were in
health, or help you when you were succeeding; yet he repaid your
kindness, even though you did not receive a benefit from him.
Moreover, this man, being always eager, and on the watch for an
opportunity of doing this, as he has expended much anxiety and much
trouble upon it, has really done more than he who quickly had an
opportunity of repaying your kindness. The case of a debtor is not the
same, for it is not enough for him to have tried to find the money
unless he pays it; in his case a harsh creditor stands over him who
will not let a single day pass without charging him interest; in yours
there is a most kind friend, who seeing you busy, troubled, and
anxious would say.
"'Dismiss this trouble from thy breast;'
leave off disturbing yourself; I have received from you all that I
wish; you wrong me, if you suppose that I want anything further; you
have fully repaid me in intention."
"Tell me," says our adversary, "if he had repaid the benefit you
would say that he had returned your kindness: is, then, he who repays
it in the same position as he who does not repay it?"
On the other hand, consider this: if he had forgotten the benefit
which he had received, if he had not even attempted to be grateful,
you would say that he had not returned the kindness; but this man has
laboured day and night to the neglect of all his other duties in his
devoted care to let no opportunity of proving his gratitude escape
him; is then he who took no pains to return a kindness to be classed
with this man who never ceased to take pains? you are unjust, if you
require a material payment from me when you see that I am not wanting
in intention.
In short, suppose that when you are taken captive, I have borrowed
money, made over my property as security to my creditor, that I have
sailed in a stormy winter season along coasts swarming with pirates,
that I have braved all the perils which necessarily attend a voyage
even on a peaceful sea, that I have wandered through all wildernesses
seeking for those men whom all others flee from, and that when I have
at length reached the pirates, someone else has already ransomed you:
will you say that I have not returned your kindness? Even if during
this voyage I have lost by shipwreck the money that I had raised to
save you, even if I myself have fallen into the prison from which I
sought to release you, will you say that I have not returned your
kindness? No, by Hercules! the Athenians call Harmodius and
Aristogiton, tyrannicides; the hand of Mucius which he left on the
enemy's altar was equivalent to the death of Porsena, and valour
struggling against fortune is always illustrious, even if it falls
short of accomplishing its design. He who watches each opportunity as
it passes, and tries to avail himself of one after another, does more
to show his gratitude than he whom the first opportunity enabled to
be grateful without any trouble whatever. "But," says our adversary,
"he gave you two things, material help and kindly feeling; you,
therefore, owe him two." You might justly say this to one who returns
your kindly feeling without troubling himself further; this man is
really in your debt; but you cannot say so of one who wishes to repay
you, who struggles and leaves no stone unturned to do so; for, as far
as in him lies, he repays you in both kinds; in the next place,
counting is not always a true test, sometimes one thing is equivalent
to two; consequently so intense and ardent a wish to repay takes the
place of a material repayment. Indeed, if a feeling of gratitude has
no value in repaying a kindness without giving something material,
then no one can be grateful to the gods, whom we can repay by
gratitude alone. "We cannot," says our adversary, "give the gods
anything else." Well, but if I am not able to give this man, whose
kindness I am bound to return, anything beside my gratitude, why
should that which is all that I can bestow on a god be insufficient to
prove my gratitude towards a man?
If, however, you ask me what I really think, and wish me to give a
definite answer, I should say that the one party ought to consider his
benefit to have been returned, while the other ought to feel that he
has not returned it; the one should release his friend from the debt,
the other should hold himself bound to pay it; the one should say, "I
have received;" the other should answer, "I owe." In our whole
investigation, we ought to look entirely to the public good; we ought
to prevent the ungrateful having any excuses in which they can take
refuge, and under cover of which they can disown their debts. "I have
done all in my power," say you. Well, keep on doing so still. Do you
suppose that our ancestors were so foolish, as not to understand that
it is most unjust that the man who has wasted the money which he
received from his creditor on debauchery, or gambling, should be
classed with one who has lost his own property as well as that of
others in a fire, by robbery, or some sadder mischance? They would
take no excuse, that men might understand that they were always bound
to keep their word; it was thought better that even a good excuse
should not be accepted from a few persons, than that all men should be
led to try to make excuses. You say that you have done all in your
power to repay your debt; this ought to be enough for your friend, but
not enough for you. He to whom you owe a kindness, is unworthy of
gratitude if he lets all your anxious care and trouble to repay it go
for nothing; and so, too, if your friend takes your good will as a
repayment, you are ungrateful if you are not all the more eager to
feel the obligation of the debt which he has forgiven you. Do not snap
up his receipt, or call witnesses to prove it; rather seek
opportunities for repaying not less than before; repay the one man
because he asks for repayment, the other because he forgives you your
debt; the one because he is good, the other because he is bad. You,
need not, therefore, think that you have anything to do with the
question whether a man be bound to repay the benefit which he has
received from a wise man, if that man has ceased to be wise and has
turned into a bad man. You would return a deposit which you had
received from a wise man; you would return a loan even to a bad man;
what grounds have you for not returning a benefit also? Because he has
changed, ought he to change you? What? if you had received anything
from a man when healthy, would you not return it to him when he was
sick, though we always are more bound to treat our friends with more
kindness when they are ailing? So, too, this man is sick in his mind;
we ought to help him, and bear with him; folly is a disease of the
mind.
I think here we ought to make a distinction, in order to render this
point more intelligible. Benefits are of two kinds: one, the perfect
and true benefit, which can only be bestowed by one wise man upon
another; the other, the common vulgar form which ignorant men like
ourselves interchange. With regard to the latter, there is no doubt
that it is my duty to repay it whether my friend turns out to be a
murderer, a thief, or an adulterer. Crimes have laws to punish them;
criminals are better reformed by judges than by ingratitude; a man
ought not to make you bad by being so himself. I will fling a benefit
back to a bad man, I will return it to a good man; I do so to the
latter, because I owe it to him; to the former, that I may not be in
his debt.
With regard to the other class of benefit, the question arises
whether if I was not able to take it without being a wise man, I am
able to return it, except to a wise man. For suppose I do return it to
him, he cannot receive it, he is not any longer able to receive such a
thing, he has lost the knowledge of how to use it. You would not bid
me throw back [Footnote: i.e. in the game of ball.] a ball to a man
who has lost his hand; it is folly to give any one what he cannot
receive. If I am to begin to reply to the last argument, I say that I
should not give him what he is unable to take; but I would return it,
even though he is not able to receive it. I cannot lay him under an
obligation unless he takes my bounty; but by returning it I can free
myself from my obligations to him. You say, "he will not be able to
use it." Let him see to that; the fault will lie with him, not with
me.
"To return a thing," says our adversary, "is to hand it over to one
who can receive it. Why, if you owed some wine to any man, and he bade
you pour it into a net or a sieve, would you say that you had returned
it? or would you be willing to return it in such a way that in the act
of returning it was lost between you?" To return is to give that which
you owe back to its owner when he wishes for it. It is not my duty to
perform more than this; that he should possess what he has received
from me is a matter for further consideration; I do not owe him the
safe-keeping of his property, but the honourable payment of my debt,
and it is much better that he should not have it, than that I should
not return it to him. I would repay my creditor, even though he would
at once take what I paid him to the market; even if he deputed an
adulteress to receive the money from me, I would pay it to her; even
if he were to pour the coins which he receives into a loose fold of
his cloak, I would pay it. It is my business to return it to him, not
to keep it and save it for him after I have returned it; I am bound to
take care of his bounty when I have received it, but not when I have
returned it to him. While it remains with me, it must be kept safe;
but when he asks for it again I must give it to him, even though it
slips out of his hands as he takes it. I will repay a good man when it
is convenient; I will repay a bad man when he asks me to do so.
"You cannot," argues our adversary, "return him a benefit of the
same kind as that which you received; for you received it from a wise
man, and you are returning it to a fool." Do I not return to him such
a benefit, as he is now able to receive? It is not my fault if I
return it to him worse than I received it, the fault lies with him,
and so, unless he regains his former wisdom, I shall return it in such
a form as he in his fallen condition is able to receive. "But what,"
asks he, "if he become not only bad, but savage and ferocious, like
Apollodorus or Phalaris, would you return even to such a man as this a
benefit which you had received from him?" I answer, Nature does not
admit of so great a change in a wise man. Men do not change from the
best to the worst; even in becoming bad, he would necessarily retain
some traces of goodness; virtue is never so utterly quenched as not to
imprint on the mind marks which no degradation can efface. If wild
animals bred in captivity escape into the woods, they still retain
something of their original tameness, and are as remote from the
gentlest in the one extreme as they are in the other from those which
have always been wild, and have never endured to be touched by man's
hand. No one who has ever applied himself to philosophy ever becomes
completely wicked; his mind becomes so deeply coloured with it, that
its tints can never be entirely spoiled and blackened. In the next
place, I ask whether this man of yours be ferocious merely in intent,
or whether he breaks out into actual outrages upon mankind? You have
instanced the tyrants Apollodorus and Phalaris; if the bad man
restrains their evil likeness within himself, why should I not return
his benefit to him, in order to set myself free from any further
dealings with him? If, however, he not only delights in human blood,
but feeds upon it; if he exercises his insatiable cruelty in the
torture of persons of all ages, and his fury is not prompted by anger,
but by a sort of delight in cruelty, if he cuts the throats of
children before the eyes of their parents; if, not satisfied with
merely killing his victims, he tortures them, and not only burns but
actually roasts them; if his castle is always wet with freshly shed
blood; then it is not enough not to return his benefits. All connexion
between me and such a man has been broken off by his destruction of
the bonds of human society. If he had bestowed something upon me, but
were to invade my native country, he would have lost all claim to my
gratitude, and it would be counted a crime to make him any return; if
he does not attack my country, but is the scourge of his own; if he
has nothing to do with my nation, but torments and cuts to pieces his
own, then in the same manner such depravity, though it does not render
him my personal enemy, yet renders him hateful to me, and the duty
which I owe to the human race is anterior to and more important than
that which I owe to him as an individual.
However, although this be so, and although I am freed from all
obligation towards him, from the moment when, by outraging all laws,
he rendered it impossible for any man to do him a wrong, nevertheless,
I think I ought to make the following distinction in dealing with him.
If my repayment of his benefit will neither increase nor maintain his
powers of doing mischief to mankind, and is of such a character that I
can return it to him without disadvantage to the public, I would
return it: for instance, I would save the life of his infant child;
for what harm can this benefit do to any of those who suffer from his
cruelty? But I would not furnish him with money to pay his bodyguard.
If he wishes for marbles, or fine clothes, the trappings of his luxury
will harm no one; but with soldiers and arms I would not furnish him.
If he demands, as a great boon, actors and courtesans and such things
as will soften his savage nature, I would willingly bestow them upon
him. I would not furnish him with triremes and brass-beaked ships of
war, but I would send him fast sailing and luxuriously-fitted vessels,
and all the toys of kings who take their pleasure on the sea. If his
health was altogether despaired of, I would by the same act bestow a
benefit on all men and return one to him; seeing that for such
characters death is the only remedy, and that he who never will return
to himself, had best leave himself. However, such wickedness as this
is uncommon, and is always regarded as a portent, as when the earth
opens, or when fires break forth from caves under the sea; so let us
leave it, and speak of those vices which we can hate without
shuddering at them. As for the ordinary bad man, whom I can find in
the marketplace of any town, who is feared only by individuals, I
would return to him a benefit which I had received from him. It is not
right that I should profit by his wickedness; let me return what is
not mine to its owner. Whether he be good or bad makes no difference;
but I would consider the matter most carefully, if I were not
returning but bestowing it.
This point requires to be illustrated by a story. A certain
Pythagoraean bought a fine pair of shoes from a shoemaker; and as
they were an expensive piece of work, he did not pay ready money for
them. Some time afterwards he came to the shop to pay for them, and
after he had long been knocking at the closed door, some one said to
him, "Why do you waste your time? The shoemaker whom you seek has been
carried out of his house and buried; this is a grief to us who lose
our friends for ever, but by no means so to you, who know that he will
be born again," jeering at the Pythagoraean. Upon this our philosopher
not unwillingly carried his three or four denarii home again, shaking
them every now and then; afterwards, blaming himself for the pleasure
which he had secretly felt at not paying his debt, and perceiving that
he enjoyed having made this trifling gain, he returned to the shop,
and saying, "the man lives for you, pay him what you owe," he passed
four denarii into the shop through the crack of the closed door, and
let them fall inside, punishing himself for his unconscionable
greediness that he might not form the habit of appropriating that
which is not his own.
If you owe anything, seek for some one to whom you may repay it, and
if no one demands it, dun your own self; whether the man be good or
bad is no concern of yours; repay him, and then blame him. You have
forgotten, how your several duties are divided: it is right for him to
forget it, but we have bidden you bear it in mind. When, however, we
say that he who bestows a benefit ought to forget it, it is a mistake
to suppose that we rob him of all recollection of the business, though
it is most creditable to him; some of our precepts are stated over
strictly in order to reduce them to their true proportions. When we
say that he ought not to remember it, we mean he ought not to speak
publicly, or boast of it offensively. There are some, who, when they
have bestowed a benefit, tell it in all societies, talk of it when
sober, cannot be silent about it when drunk, force it upon strangers,
and communicate it to friends; it is to quell this excessive and
reproachful consciousness that we bid him who gave it forget it, and
by commanding him to do this, which is more than he is able, encourage
him to keep silence.
When you distrust those whom you order to do anything, you ought to
command them to do more than enough in order that they may do what is
enough. The purpose of all exaggeration is to arrive at the truth by
falsehood. Consequently, he who spoke of horses as being:
"Whiter than snows and swifter than the winds,"
said what could not possibly be in order that they might be thought
to be as much so as possible. And he who said:
"More firm than crags, more headlong than the stream,"
did not suppose that he should make any one believe that a man
could ever be as firm as a crag. Exaggeration never hopes all its
daring flights to be believed, but affirms what is incredible, that
thereby it may convey what is credible. When we say, "let the man who
has bestowed a benefit, forget it," what we mean is, "let him be as
though he had forgotten it; let not his remembrance of it appear or be
seen." When we say that repayment of a benefit ought not to be
demanded, we do not utterly forbid its being demanded; for repayment
must often be extorted from bad men, and even good men require to be
reminded of it. Am I not to point out a means of repayment to one who
does not perceive it? Am I not to explain my wants to one does not
know them? Why should he (if a bad man) have the excuse, or (if a good
man) have the sorrow of not knowing them? Men ought sometimes to be
reminded of their debts, though with modesty, not in the tone of one
demanding a legal right.
Socrates once said in the hearing of his friends: "I would have
bought a cloak, if I had had the money for it." He asked no one for
money, but he reminded them all to give it. There was a rivalry
between them, as to who should give it; and how should there not be?
Was it not a small thing which Socrates received? Yes, but it was a
great thing to be the man from whom Socrates received it. Could he
blame them more gently? "I would," said he, "have bought a cloak if I
had had the money for it." After this, however eager any one was to
give, he gave too late; for he had already been wanting in his duty to
Socrates. Because some men harshly demand repayment of debts, we
forbid it, not in order that it may never be done, but that it may be
done sparingly.
Aristippus once, when enjoying a perfume, said: "Bad luck to those
effeminate persons who have brought so nice a thing into disrepute."
We also may say, "Bad luck to those base extortioners who pester us
for a fourfold return of their benefits, and have brought into
disrepute so nice a thing as reminding our friends of their duty." I
shall nevertheless make use of this right of friendship, and I shall
demand the return of a benefit from any man from whom I would not have
scrupled to ask for one, such a man as would regard the power of
returning a benefit as equivalent to receiving a second one. Never,
not even when complaining of him, would I say,
"A wretch forlorn upon the shore he lay,
His ship, his comrades, all were swept away;
Fool that I was, I pitied his despair,
And even gave him of my realm a share."
This is not to remind, but to reproach; this is to make one's
benefits odious to enable him, or even to make him wish to be
ungrateful. It is enough, and more than enough, to remind him of it
gently and familiarly:
"If aught of mine hath e'er deserved thy thanks."
To this his answer would be, "Of course you have deserved my
thanks; you took me up, 'a wretch forlorn upon the shore.'"
"But," says our adversary, "suppose that we gain nothing by this;
suppose that he pretends that he has forgotten it, what ought I to
do?" You now ask a very necessary question, and one which fitly
concludes this branch of the subject, how, namely, one ought to bear
with the ungrateful. I answer, calmly, gently, magnanimously. Never
let any one's discourtesy, forgetfulness, or ingratitude, enrage you
so much that you do not feel any pleasure at having bestowed a benefit
upon him; never let your wrongs drive you into saying, "I wish I had
not done it." You ought to take pleasure even in the ill-success of
your benefit; he will always be sorry for it, even though you are not
even now sorry for it. You ought not to be indignant, as if something
strange had happened; you ought rather to be surprised if it had not
happened. Some are prevented by difficulties, some by expense, and
some by danger from returning your bounty; some are hindered by a
false shame, because by returning it, they would confess that they had
received it; with others ignorance of their duty, indolence, or excess
of business, stands in the way. Reflect upon the insatiability of
men's desires. You need not be surprised if no one repays you in a
world in which no one ever gains enough. What man is there of so firm
and trustworthy a mind that you can safely invest your benefits in
him? One man is crazed with lust, another is the slave of his belly,
another gives his whole soul to gain, caring nothing for the means by
which he amasses it; some men's minds are disturbed by envy, some
blinded by ambition till they are ready to fling themselves on the
sword's point. In addition to this, one must reckon sluggishness of
mind and old age; and also the opposites of these, restlessness and
disturbance of mind, also excessive self-esteem and pride in the very
things for which a man ought to be despised. I need not mention
obstinate persistence in wrong-doing, or frivolity which cannot remain
constant to one point; besides all this, there is headlong rashness,
there is timidity which never gives us trustworthy counsel, and the
numberless errors with which we struggle, the rashness of the most
cowardly, the quarrels of our best friends, and that most common evil
of trusting in what is most uncertain, and of undervaluing, when we
have obtained it, that which we once never hoped to possess. Amidst
all these restless passions, how can you hope to find a thing so full
of rest as good faith?
If a true picture of our life were to rise before your mental vision,
you would, I think, behold a scene like that of a town just taken by
storm, where decency and righteousness were no longer regarded, and no
advice is heard but that of force, as if universal confusion were the
word of command. Neither fire nor sword are spared; crime is
unpunished by the laws; even religion, which saves the lives of
suppliants in the very midst of armed enemies, does not check those
who are rushing to secure plunder. Some men rob private houses, some
public buildings; all places, sacred or profane, are alike stripped;
some burst their way in, others climb over; some open a wider path for
themselves by overthrowing the walls that keep them out, and make
their way to their booty over ruins; some ravage without murdering,
others brandish spoils dripping with their owner's blood; everyone
carries off his neighbours' goods. In this greedy struggle of the
human race surely you forget the common lot of all mankind, if you
seek among these robbers for one who will return what he has got. If
you are indignant at men being ungrateful, you ought also to be
indignant at their being luxurious, avaricious and lustful; you might
as well be indignant with sick men for being ugly, or with old men for
being pale. It is, indeed, a serious vice, it is not to be borne, and
sets men at variance with one another; nay, it rends and destroys that
union by which alone our human weakness can be supported; yet it is so
absolutely universal, that even those who complain of it most are not
themselves free from it.
Consider within yourself, whether you have always shown gratitude to
those to whom you owe it, whether no one's kindness has ever been
wasted upon you, whether you constantly bear in mind all the benefits
which you have received. You will find that those which you received
as a boy were forgotten before you became a man; that those bestowed
upon you as a young man slipped from your memory when you became an
old one. Some we have lost, some we have thrown away, some have by
degrees passed out of our sight, to some we have wilfully shut our
eyes. If I am to make excuses for your weakness, I must say in the
first place that human memory is a frail vessel, and is not large
enough to contain the mass of things placed in it; the more it
receives, the more it must necessarily lose; the oldest things in it
give way to the newest. Thus it comes to pass that your nurse has
hardly any influence with you, because the lapse of time has set the
kindness which you received from her at so great a distance; thus it
is that you no longer look upon your teacher with respect; and that
now when you are busy about your candidature for the consulate or the
priesthood, you forget those who supported you in your election to the
quaestorship. If you carefully examine yourself, perhaps you will find
the vice of which you complain in your own bosom; you are wrong in
being angry with a universal failing, and foolish also, for it is your
own as well; you must pardon others, that you may yourself be
acquitted. You will make your friend a better man by bearing with him,
you will in all cases make him a worse one by reproaching him. You can
have no reason for rendering him shameless; let him preserve any
remnants of modesty which he may have. Too loud reproaches have often
dispelled a modesty which might have borne good fruit. No man fears to
be that which all men see that he is; when his fault is made public,
he loses his sense of shame.
You say, "I have lost the benefit which I bestowed." Yet do we say
that we have lost what we consecrate to heaven, and a benefit well
bestowed, even though we get an ill return for it, is to be reckoned
among things consecrated. Our friend is not such a man as we hoped he
was; still, let us, unlike him, remain the same as we were. The loss
did not take place when he proved himself so; his ingratitude cannot
be made public without reflecting some shame upon us, since to
complain of the loss of a benefit is a sign that it was not well
bestowed. As far as we are able we ought to plead with ourselves on
his behalf: "Perhaps he was not able to return it, perhaps he did not
know of it, perhaps he will still do so." A wise and forbearing
creditor prevents the loss of some debts by encouraging his debtor and
giving him time. We ought to do the same, we ought to deal tenderly
with a weakly sense of honour.
"I have lost," say you, "the benefit which I bestowed." You are a
fool, and do not understand when your loss took place; you have indeed
lost it, but you did so when you gave it, the fact has only now come
to light. Even in the case of those benefits which appear to be lost,
gentleness will do much good; the wounds of the mind ought to be
handled as tenderly as those of the body. The string, which might be
disentangled by patience, is often broken by a rough pull. What is the
use of abuse, or of complaints? why do you overwhelm him with
reproaches? why do you set him free from his obligation? even if he be
ungrateful he owes you nothing after this. What sense is there in
exasperating a man on whom you have conferred great favours, so as out
of a doubtful friend to make a certain enemy, and one, too, who will
seek to support his own cause by defaming you, or to make men say, "I
do not know what the reason is that he cannot endure a man to whom he
owes so much; there must be something in the background?" Any man can
asperse, even if he does not permanently stain the reputation of his
betters by complaining of them; nor will any one be satisfied with
imputing small crimes to them, when it is only by the enormity of his
falsehood that he can hope to be believed.
What a much better way is that by which the semblance of friendship,
and, indeed, if the other regains to his right mind, friendship itself
is preserved! Bad men are overcome by unwearying goodness, nor does
any one receive kindness in so harsh and hostile a spirit as not to
love good men even while he does them wrong, when they lay him under
the additional obligation of requiring no return for their kindness.
Reflect, then, upon this: you say, "My kindness has met with no
return, what am I to do? I ought to imitate the gods, those noblest
disposers of all events, who begin to bestow their benefits on those
who know them not, and persist in bestowing them on those who are
ungrateful for them. Some reproach them with neglect of us, some with
injustice towards us; others place them outside of their own world, in
sloth and indifference, without light, and without any functions;
others declare that the sun itself, to whom we owe the division of our
times of labour and of rest, by whose means we are saved from being
plunged in the darkness of eternal night; who, by his circuit, orders
the seasons of the year, gives strength to our bodies, brings forth
our crops and ripens our fruits, is merely a mass of stone, or a
fortuitous collection of fiery particles, or anything rather than a
god. Yet, nevertheless, like the kindest of parents, who only smile at
the spiteful words of their children, the gods do not cease to heap
benefits upon those who doubt from what source their benefits are
derived, but continue impartially distributing their bounty among all
the peoples and nations of the earth. Possessing only the power of
doing good, they moisten the land with seasonable showers, they put
the seas in movement by the winds, they mark time by the course of the
constellations, they temper the extremes of heat and cold, of summer
and winter, by breathing a milder air upon us; and they graciously and
serenely bear with the faults of our erring spirits. Let us follow
their example; let us give, even if much be given to no purpose, let
us, in spite of this, give to others; nay, even to those upon whom our
bounty has been wasted. No one is prevented by the fall of a house
from building another; when one home has been destroyed by fire, we
lay the foundations of another before the site has had time to cool;
we rebuild ruined cities more than once upon the same spots, so
untiring are our hopes of success. Men would undertake no works either
on land or sea if they were not willing to try again what they have
failed in once.
Suppose a man is ungrateful, he does not injure me, but himself; I
had the enjoyment of my benefit when I bestowed it upon him. Because
he is ungrateful, I shall not be slower to give but more careful; what
I have lost with him, I shall receive back from others. But I will
bestow a second benefit upon this man himself, and will overcome him
even as a good husbandman overcomes the sterility of the soil by care
and culture; if I do not do so my benefit is lost to me, and he is
lost to mankind. It is no proof of a great mind to give and to throw
away one's bounty; the true test of a great mind is to throw away
one's bounty and still to give."