I.
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.
II. 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.
III. 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.
IV. "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.
V. 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?"
VI. 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.
VII. 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.
VIII. 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.
IX. 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.
X. 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.
XI. 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.
XII. 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.
XIII. 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."
XIV. "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.
XV. "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.
XVI. 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.
XVII. 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.
XVIII. 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.
XIX. "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."
XX. "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?
XXI. "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."
XXII. "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.
XXIII. 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.
XXIV. 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.
XXV. 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.
XXVI. "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.
XXVII. "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.
XXVIII. "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.
XXIX. 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.
XXX. 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.
XXXI. 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.
XXXII. 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.
XXXIII. 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.
XXXIV. 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.
XXXV. 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.
XXXVI. 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.
XXXVII. 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.
XXXVIII. 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!
XXXIX. 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."
XL. 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?
XLI. 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.
XLII. 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?
XLIII. 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.