Letter 81

You complain that you have fallen in with an ungrateful man. If this is the first time, give thanks either to your fortune or to your care. But in this matter care can do nothing except make you grudging. For if you wish to avoid this danger, you will give no benefits; and so, that they may not be lost upon another, they will be lost upon you. Better that there be no return than that none be given. Even after a bad harvest one must sow; often the abundance of a single year restores all that had been lost through the unbroken barrenness of an unlucky soil.

It is worth your while, in order to find a grateful man, to make trial even of ungrateful ones. No one has so sure a hand in conferring benefits that he is not often deceived; let them stray, that they may sometimes hit the mark. After a shipwreck men try the seas again. The bankrupt does not drive the money-lender from the forum.

But on this subject we have said quite enough in those books which are entitled On Benefits. The more pressing question, it seems to me, is one not sufficiently cleared up, I think: whether a man who has helped us and afterwards done us harm has brought our accounts to a balance and freed us from all obligation. Add, if you like, that he has done us much more harm than he had before done us good.

If you ask for the strict verdict of a rigid judge, he will acquit the one party by the other and will say: "Although the injuries outweigh, yet let what remains over from the injury be granted to the benefits. He did more harm; but he did the good first." Therefore let regard be had to the time as well. There are things too plain to need that I remind you that one must ask in what spirit the benefit was given, in what spirit the injury done.

These points are now too obvious to need that you should be reminded: one must inquire how gladly a man has helped, how unwillingly he has harmed, since both benefits and injuries reside in the intention. "I did not wish to give the benefit; I was overcome either by shame, or by the insistence of one pressing me, or by hope."

Everything is owed in the spirit in which it is given, and the weighing is not of how great it is, but from what sort of will it proceeded. Now let conjecture be set aside; that was a benefit, and this, which has exceeded the measure of the former benefit, is an injury. The good man so casts both reckonings as to cheat himself in his own favour; he adds to the benefit and takes from the injury. That other, the more lenient judge, whom I would rather be, will bid us forget the injury and remember the benefit.

"But surely," you say, "it accords with justice to render to each his due, gratitude for a benefit, retaliation, or at least ill-will, for an injury." That will be true when one man has done the injury and another given the benefit; for if it is the same man, the force of the injury is quenched by the benefit. For one who ought to have been pardoned even if no good deeds had gone before, when he does harm after benefits, deserves more than pardon.

I do not set an equal price on the two. I value a benefit more than an injury. Not all the grateful know that they owe a benefit; even the imprudent and rude man and one of the common herd may know it, especially while it is still fresh from the receiving; but he does not know how much he owes for it. To the wise man alone it is known at how much each thing is to be reckoned. For that fool of whom I was just speaking, even if he is of good will, either renders less than he ought, or at the wrong time, or in the wrong way; what he ought to pay out, he spills.

There is in certain matters a marvellous propriety of words, and the usage of the old speech marks with very telling and instructive terms certain duties. So at least we are wont to speak: "He returned thanks to him." To return is of one's own accord to bring back what you owe. We do not say "he gave back thanks," for those give back who are dunned, and those who do it unwillingly, and anywhere, and through another. We do not say "he repaid the benefit" or "he discharged it"; no word that befits a debt of money has pleased us.

To return is to carry the thing back to him from whom you received it. This word signifies a voluntary returning; he who has returned has summoned himself. The wise man will weigh everything with himself: how much he has received, from whom, when, where, in what manner. And so we deny that anyone knows how to return thanks except the wise man; no more than anyone knows how to give a benefit except the wise man, namely the one who rejoices more in the giving than another in the receiving.

Someone counts this among those things which we seem to say unexpectedly to everyone, paradoxa the Greeks call them, and says: "Does no one, then, know how to return thanks except the wise man? Therefore no one else knows how to pay back his creditor what he owes, or, when he has bought some thing, to pay over the price to the seller?" Lest we incur ill-will, know that Epicurus says the same. Metrodorus, at any rate, says that the wise man alone knows how to return thanks.

Then the same man marvels when we say: "The wise man alone knows how to love. The wise man alone is a friend." And yet to return thanks is a part both of love and of friendship; nay, this is more common and falls to more men than true friendship. Then the same man marvels that we say there is no good faith except in the wise man, as though he himself did not say the same. Or does it seem to you that one has good faith who does not know how to return thanks?

Let them, therefore, cease to defame us as though we were boasting incredible things, and let them know that with the wise man are the honourable things themselves, with the crowd the semblances and likenesses of honourable things. No one knows how to return thanks except the wise man. Let the fool also return it as best he knows and as he can; let him lack the knowledge rather than the will. The will is not learned.

The wise man will compare all things among themselves; for a thing becomes greater or less, though it be the same, according to time, place, and cause. Often riches poured into a house have not been able to do what a thousand denarii given at the right moment have done. For there is a great difference whether you have made a gift or come to the rescue, whether your liberality has saved him or set him up. Often what is given is small, what follows from it great. How much difference do you think there is whether a man takes from his own store what he gives, or whether, having received a benefit, he gives one in turn?

But let us not roll back into what we have sufficiently examined. In this comparison of benefit and injury the good man will indeed judge what is most fair, but he will favour the benefit; toward this side he will be more inclined.

But the person concerned is wont to bring the greatest weight to bear in matters of this kind. "You gave me a benefit in the matter of a slave, you did me an injury in the matter of my father. You saved my son for me, but you robbed me of my father." He will pursue the other points, in turn, through which the whole comparison advances, and if the difference is slight, he will pretend not to notice it. Even if it has been great, yet if it can be forgiven with reverence and good faith unimpaired, he will remit it; that is, if the whole injury concerns himself alone.

The sum of the matter is this: he will be easy in the exchange. He will allow more to be charged to his own account. He will be reluctant to pay off a benefit by setting off an injury against it. To this side he will incline, this way he will lean, that he may desire to owe gratitude, may desire to return it. For a man is mistaken if he receives a benefit more gladly than he repays one. By as much as he is more cheerful who pays than he who borrows, by so much the more joyful ought he to be who unloads himself of the great debt of a benefit received, than he who is at the very moment being bound by it.

For in this too the ungrateful are deceived, that to a creditor indeed they pay, besides the principal, an additional sum out of due order, but they think the use of benefits is free. And these grow with delay, and so much the more must be paid as the payment is later. He is ungrateful who returns a benefit without interest. And so account will be taken of this matter too, when receipts and expenditures are compared.

Everything must be done that we may be as grateful as possible. For this is our own good, just as justice is not, as is commonly believed, something concerning others; a great part of it returns into ourselves. There is no one who, when he benefits another, has not benefited himself; I do not mean on the ground that the man he has helped will wish to help him, the man he has defended to protect him, that a good example comes round again to the doer, just as bad examples recoil upon their authors and no pity is felt for those who suffer the wrongs which by doing they taught could be done; but on the ground that the reward of all the virtues lies in themselves. For they are not practised for a reward; the wage of a right deed is to have done it.

I am grateful, not that another, stirred by the earlier example, may serve me more gladly, but that I may do a thing most pleasant and most beautiful; I am grateful, not because it profits me, but because it delights me. That you may know this is so: if it shall not be possible to be grateful except by seeming ungrateful, if I shall be able to return a benefit only under the appearance of an injury, with the most even mind I shall pursue the honourable course through the midst of disgrace. No one seems to me to value virtue more highly, no one to be more devoted to it, than the man who has lost the reputation of a good man rather than lose his good conscience.

And so, as I said, you are grateful more for your own good than for another's. For to him has fallen a common, everyday thing, to receive back what he had given; to you a great thing, proceeding from the most blessed state of mind, to have been grateful. For if wickedness makes men wretched, virtue makes them blessed, and to be grateful is a virtue, you have given back a common thing and gained an inestimable one, the consciousness of being grateful, which comes only to a divine and fortunate mind. But the opposite feeling to this the utmost unhappiness besets; no one will be wretched if he is grateful. I do not postpone his case: he is wretched at once.

Let us, therefore, shun being ungrateful, not for another's sake, but for our own. The least and lightest part of wickedness overflows upon others. What is worst in it, and, so to say, thickest, stays at home and weighs down its possessor, as our friend Attalus used to say: "Wickedness drinks the greatest part of its own poison." That poison which serpents bring forth for the destruction of others, but keep within themselves without harm, is not like this; this is worst for those who hold it.

The ungrateful man torments and frets himself; he hates what he has received, because he must return it, and belittles it, but spreads out and enlarges his injuries. And what is more wretched than a man with whom benefits slip away and injuries stick fast? Wisdom, on the contrary, sets off every benefit and commends it to herself and delights herself with constant remembrance of it.

The wicked have one pleasure, and that a brief one, while they are receiving benefits; from these the wise man's joy remains long and unfailing. For it is not the receiving but the having received that delights him, which is immortal and constant. He despises the things by which he has been injured, and forgets them, not through carelessness, but by his own will.

He does not turn everything to the worse, nor seek to whom he may charge a mishap, and he refers men's faults rather to fortune. He does not put a slanderous construction upon words or looks; whatever happens, he lightens it by interpreting it kindly. He remembers a service rather than an offence. As far as he can, he keeps himself in the earlier and better memory, and does not change his mind toward those who have deserved well of him, unless their evil deeds far outweigh and even to one who would close his eyes the difference is plain. And then, too, he is so disposed that he is the same after the injury as he was before it.

As an accused man is acquitted when the votes are equal, and humanity always inclines whatever is doubtful toward the better part, so the mind of the wise man, when the deserts are equal, ceases indeed to owe, but persists in willing to owe, and does what those do who insist on paying even what is not exacted.

But no one can be grateful unless he has despised those things over which the crowd is mad; if you wish to return thanks, you must go even into exile and pour out your blood and undergo poverty and often stain even your innocence and expose it to unworthy rumours.

A grateful man costs himself no small price. We value nothing more dearly than a benefit while we are seeking it, nothing more cheaply when we have received it. Do you ask what it is that makes us forget what we have received? The desire to receive more. We think not of what has been obtained, but of what is to be sought. Riches, honours, power, and the rest of the things which by our opinion are dear, by their own worth cheap, draw us away from the right.

We do not know how to value things about which we must deliberate not with the world's opinion but with the nature of things; those things have nothing splendid by which to draw our minds to them, except that we have grown accustomed to admire them. For they are not praised because they are to be desired, but desired because they have been praised, and when the error of individuals has made a public error, the public error makes the error of individuals.

But just as we have believed those things, let us also believe this same crowd, that nothing is more honourable than a grateful mind. All cities, all nations even from barbarous regions will cry out in agreement on this. On this good men and bad will agree.

There will be those who praise pleasures, there will be those who prefer toils; there will be those who call pain the greatest evil, there will be those who do not even call it an evil; one will admit riches to the highest good, another will say they were found to the harm of human life, that nothing is richer than the man for whom fortune finds nothing to give. Amid such diversity of judgments all will assure you, with one mouth, as the saying is, that thanks must be returned to those who have deserved well. On this the discordant crowd will agree; and yet meanwhile we return injuries for benefits, and the first reason why a man is ungrateful is that he could not be grateful enough.

To such madness has it come, that to confer great benefits on anyone is a most dangerous thing; for because he thinks it base not to return them, he wishes there to be no one to whom he must return them. "Keep what you have received; I do not ask it back, I do not exact it. Let it be safe to have helped you." There is no hatred more deadly than that born of shame at a violated benefit. Farewell.