Book 1

1.1 Among the many and various errors of those who live recklessly and without reflection, I could name almost nothing, my excellent Liberalis, more unworthy than this: that we do not know how either to give or to receive benefits. For it follows that, being ill placed, they are ill repaid; and when they are not returned, we complain too late, since they were already lost at the moment of giving. Nor is it any wonder that, among our many and our greatest vices, none is more common than ingratitude. 1.2 This, I see, comes about from several causes. The first is that we do not choose worthy persons on whom to bestow our gifts. When we are about to lend money at interest, we inquire carefully into the estate and the habits of the debtor; we do not scatter seed on exhausted and barren ground; yet our benefits we fling out with no discrimination at all, rather than bestow them. 1.3 And I could not easily say which is the more shameful: to disown a benefit, or to ask its return. For this is the kind of debt from which only so much is to be recovered as is repaid of the debtor's own accord. To default on it is utterly base, and for this very reason: that to discharge our faith we need not means but only the will, since he who owns the debt has repaid the benefit. But while the fault lies with those who are not grateful even by confession, it lies with us as well. 1.4 We find many men ungrateful; we make more so, because at one time we are harsh in our reproaches and our demands, at another fickle and quick to repent of our gift, at another querulous and quibbling over the smallest details. We corrupt all gratitude, not only after we have given our benefits, but in the very act of giving. 1.5 Which of us has ever been content to be asked once, or lightly? Who, when he suspected that something was being sought of him, has not knit his brow, turned away his face, feigned engagements, by long-winded talk deliberately brought to no conclusion robbed the other of his chance to ask, and by various devices baffled the pressing need; 1.6 and, when cornered in a tight place, either put the matter off, that is, gave a timid refusal, or else promised, but grudgingly, with frowning brows, with grudging words that scarcely passed his lips? 1.7 Yet no one willingly owes what he did not receive but extorted. Can anyone be grateful toward a man who flung his benefit at him in arrogance, or hurled it in anger, or gave it out of weariness, merely to be rid of the nuisance? He is mistaken who hopes for a return from one whom he has worn out by delay and tortured by suspense. 1.8 A benefit is repaid in the same spirit in which it is given, and for that reason it should not be given carelessly; for each man owes the debt to himself when he has received it from one who did not know he gave. Nor should it be given slowly, since in every act of service the giver's will is rated highly, and he who acted slowly was for a long time unwilling. Above all, it should not be given insultingly; for since nature has so arranged us that injuries sink deeper than kindnesses, and that the latter quickly slip away while a tenacious memory keeps guard over the former, what can he expect who gives offense in the very act of laying us under obligation? Toward such a man one is grateful enough if one merely forgives him his benefit. 1.9 But there is no reason why the multitude of the ungrateful should make us slower to do good. For, in the first place, as I have said, it is we who swell their number; and, in the second place, not even the immortal gods are deterred from their lavish and unceasing bounty by men who are sacrilegious and neglectful of them. They follow their own nature, and they help all things, even those very men who misjudge their gifts. Let us follow these as our guides, so far as human frailty allows; let us bestow benefits, not lend them out at interest. He deserves to be cheated who, when he gave, was thinking of repayment. "But it turned out badly." 1.10 Children and wives, too, have disappointed our hopes; yet we still rear the one and marry the other, and we are so stubborn in the face of experience that, beaten in war, we go back to war, and shipwrecked, we go back to the sea. How much more fitting it is to persevere in giving benefits! For if a man does not give because he has not received a return, he gave in order to receive, and he furnishes the ungrateful with a good excuse, men for whom it is shameful not to repay only if they may. 1.11 How many are unworthy of the light! Yet the day still dawns. How many complain that they were ever born! Yet Nature still begets new offspring, and suffers even those to exist who would rather never have been. 1.12 It is the mark of a great and good soul to pursue, not the fruits of its benefits, but the benefits themselves, and to seek the good man even after meeting bad ones. What would be magnificent in helping the many, if no one ever cheated us? As it is, it is a virtue to bestow benefits that will surely never be returned, the fruit of which has already been gathered, at once, by the man of true worth. 1.13 So far, indeed, should this thing not put us to flight and make us more sluggish toward the fairest of all undertakings, that, were I cut off from all hope of finding a grateful man, I would rather not receive benefits than not give them; for he who does not give anticipates the fault of the ungrateful. I will say what I think: he who does not repay a benefit sins the more; he who does not give it sins the sooner. 2.1 "When you have set out to lavish benefits upon the crowd, many must be lost so that you may once place one well." In the first line you may find fault on two counts: for benefits should not be poured out upon the crowd, and the lavishing of anything, least of all of benefits, is never honorable; for if you take judgment away from them, they cease to be benefits and fall under any other name you please. 2.2 The following thought is admirable, that one benefit well placed consoles us for the loss of many. But see, I beg you, whether this be not both truer and better suited to the greatness of the benefactor: that we should urge him to give even though he is destined to place none well. For that other saying is false, "many must be lost"; not one is lost, since he who loses it had reckoned the cost beforehand. 2.3 The accounting of benefits is simple: so much is paid out; if any is returned, it is gain; if none is returned, there is no loss. I gave it in order to give. No one enters his benefits in a ledger, nor, like a grasping creditor, calls them in to the hour and the day. The good man never thinks of them unless reminded by the one who repays; otherwise they pass into the form of a loan. To enter a benefit as an expense is base usury. 2.4 Whatever the outcome of your earlier gifts, persevere in bestowing them on others; they will lie better with the ungrateful, whom shame, or occasion, or imitation may one day make grateful. Do not slacken; carry through your work and play the part of the good man. Help one with money, another with credit, another with influence, another with counsel, another with wholesome precepts. 2.5 Even wild beasts feel kindnesses, nor is there any creature so savage that care does not tame it and turn it to love its keeper. The mouths of lions are handled with impunity by their trainers; the ferocity of elephants is won over to slavish obedience by food. So true is it that, even in things set beyond the understanding and appreciation of a benefit, the persistence of unflagging kindness nonetheless prevails. Is a man ungrateful for one benefit? He will not be so for a second. Has he forgotten two? A third will bring back to his memory even those that had slipped away. 3.1 That man will lose his benefits who is too quick to believe he has lost them; but he who presses on, and heaps new ones upon the old, draws out gratitude even from a hard and forgetful heart. The ungrateful man will not dare to lift his eyes against so many; wherever he turns, fleeing his own memory, let him see you there. Hem him in with your benefits. 3.2 What the force and the property of these things may be I shall tell, if first you will allow me to leap past those matters that do not bear upon our subject: why the Graces are three in number, and why they are sisters, and why with hands interlinked, and why smiling, and young, and maidens, and clad in loose and transparent robes. 3.3 Some, indeed, would have it that the one represents the bestowing of a benefit, the second the receiving of it, and the third the returning of it; others hold that there are three kinds of benefactors: those who earn benefits, those who return them, and those who at once receive and return them. 3.4 But judge either of these accounts true, what does such knowledge profit us? What does that ring of figures mean, dancing back upon itself with linked hands? This: that the course of a benefit passing from hand to hand nonetheless returns to the giver, and loses the beauty of the whole if it is ever broken, but is most beautiful if it holds together and keeps its turns unbroken. Yet within it there is some greater dignity, as in those who first earn our thanks. 3.5 Their faces are cheerful, as those of men who give or receive benefits are wont to be; they are young, because the memory of benefits ought not to grow old; they are maidens, because benefits are uncorrupted and sincere and held sacred by all, in which it is fitting that there be nothing binding or constraining; therefore they wear ungirded tunics, and these transparent, because benefits desire to be seen. 3.6 Let there be someone so enslaved to the Greeks as to call all this essential; yet there will be no one who judges that even this bears upon our subject: what names Hesiod bestowed upon them. He called the eldest Aglaia, the middle one Euphrosyne, the third Thalia. The interpretation of these names each man bends as he sees fit, and tries to lead them round to some principle, although Hesiod gave his maidens whatever name he pleased. 3.7 And so Homer changed the name of one, called her Pasithea, and promised her in marriage, that you may know they are not Vestal virgins. I shall find another poet in whom they go girt, and come forth in close-woven robes, or in robes of Phrygian wool. Mercury, too, stands with them, not because reason or eloquence commends benefits, but because the painter thought fit. 3.8 Chrysippus also, who possesses that subtle keenness which pierces to the inmost truth, who speaks for the sake of action and uses words no further than is enough for understanding, fills his whole book with these trifles, so that he says very little about the actual duty of giving, of receiving, and of returning a benefit; nor does he insert these fables into his subject, but his subject into the fables. 3.9 For, besides what Hecaton copies down, Chrysippus says that the three Graces are the daughters of Jupiter and Eurynome, younger in age than the Hours, but somewhat fairer of face, and for that reason given to Venus as her companions. He judges that the mother's name, too, bears upon the matter: that she was called Eurynome because to distribute benefits belongs to one of a widely extending estate, as though a mother were usually named after her daughters, or as though poets gave true names! 3.10 Just as audacity serves a nomenclator in place of memory, and to anyone whose name he cannot supply he assigns one, so poets think it has no bearing on their purpose to tell the truth, but, either compelled by necessity or corrupted by elegance, they bid each be called whatever falls neatly into the verse. Nor is it held against them if they have entered another name on the roll; for the next poet bids the Graces bear his own name. That you may know this is so, behold Thalia, who is precisely our subject here: in Hesiod she is one of the Graces, in Homer one of the Muses. 4.1 But, that I may not do the very thing I blame, I shall leave aside all these matters which are so far outside the subject as not even to lie near it. Only do you protect me if anyone reproaches me for having put Chrysippus in his place, a great man, by Hercules, but a Greek for all that, whose keenness, too finely whetted, is blunted and often turns back upon itself; even when he seems to be doing something, he pricks, he does not pierce through. But here what keenness is there? 4.2 We have to speak of benefits and to set in order a matter that more than any other binds human society together; we must lay down a law for life, lest under the appearance of kindness a heedless readiness should win our favor, lest this very vigilance should restrain liberality, which ought neither to be lacking nor to overflow, even while it tempers it; 4.3 men must be taught to give gladly, to receive gladly, to return gladly, and to set themselves a great contest, namely to surpass, and not merely to match, in deed and in spirit, those to whom they are bound, since he who owes a return of gratitude never overtakes the other unless he has outrun him; these must be taught to charge nothing to account, those to count themselves the deeper in debt. 4.4 To this most honorable contest of conquering benefits with benefits Chrysippus thus exhorts us: by saying that we must beware lest, since the Graces are the daughters of Jupiter, to behave ungratefully be a sacrilege and an injury done to such pretty maidens! 4.5 Do you teach me something of those things by which I may become more bountiful and more grateful toward those who deserve well of me, by which the souls of those who lay men under obligation and of those who are laid under it may strive together, so that they who have bestowed may forget, and the memory of those who owe may be tenacious. As for these trifles, let them be left to the poets, whose aim is to charm the ear and to weave a pleasing tale. 4.6 But those who wish to heal men's characters, to maintain good faith in human affairs, and to fix the memory of services in their souls, let them speak in earnest and act with all their might; unless, perhaps, you think that by light and fabulous talk, by old wives' arguments, the most ruinous of all things can be checked, the cancellation of the debts of benefits. 5.1 But, as I shall hurry past what is superfluous, so I must set forth that this is the first thing we have to learn: what we owe when we have received a benefit. For one man says that he owes the money he received, another a consulship, another a priesthood, another a province. 5.2 But these are the tokens of services, not the services themselves. A benefit cannot be touched by the hand; the matter is transacted in the mind. There is a great difference between the material of a benefit and the benefit itself; and therefore neither gold nor silver nor any of the things that are taken to be the greatest is a benefit, but the very will of the giver. The ignorant, however, mark only that which strikes the eye, which is handed over and possessed, while they set little store by that which in the transaction is precious and of price. 5.3 These things that we hold, that we gaze upon, on which our greed fastens, are perishable; both fortune and wrong can take them from us. But a benefit endures even after that has been lost through which it was given; for it is a right action, which no force can render void. 5.4 I ransomed a friend from pirates; another enemy seized him and shut him up in prison; he took away, not my benefit, but the use of my benefit. I gave back to a man his children, snatched from a shipwreck or rescued from a fire; disease, or some chance wrong, has carried them off; yet that which was given in them remains even without them. 5.5 All those things, then, which usurp the false name of benefit are but the instruments through which a friendly will unfolds itself. This happens in other matters too, that the appearance of a thing is in one place, the thing itself in another. A general decorates a man with collars, with the mural and the civic crown. 5.6 What value has the crown in itself? Or the bordered robe? Or the rods? Or the tribunal and the chariot? None of these is the honor; they are the emblems of honor. So too the benefit is not that which comes before the eyes, but the trace and the mark of the benefit. 6.1 What, then, is a benefit? A kindly action which bestows joy and in bestowing takes joy, inclined and of its own accord ready for what it does. And so it is not what is done or what is given that matters, but the spirit in which it is done, since a benefit consists, not in what is done or given, but in the very mind of the giver or doer. 6.2 That there is a great distinction between these you may understand even from this, that a benefit is undoubtedly a good, whereas that which is done or given is neither good nor evil. It is the mind that exalts small things, that gives luster to mean ones, that dishonors the great and highly prized; the things themselves that are sought have neither nature, neither good nor evil; it matters in which direction the ruling power drives them, by which form is given to things. 6.3 The benefit itself is not that which is counted out or handed over, just as in the case of victims, even though they be fat and gleam with gold, it is not these that constitute the worship of the gods, but the upright and devout will of the worshipers. And so the good are devout even with meal and a handful of grain; the wicked, on the other hand, do not escape impiety, though they drench the altars with abundant blood. 7.1 If benefits consisted in things, and not in the very will to do good, they would be greater in proportion as what we receive is greater. But this is false; for sometimes the man who lays us under deeper obligation is one who gave little but with a great spirit, who "matched the wealth of kings in soul," who bestowed a trifle but gladly, who forgot his own poverty while he looked to mine, who had not merely the will to help but the eager desire, who thought that he received a benefit when he gave it, who gave as though he would never recover it, recovered it as though he had not given it, who both seized and sought the chance to be of use. 7.2 On the contrary, as I have said, those gifts are thankless, however great they may seem in substance and appearance, which are either wrung from the giver or fall from him; and that comes far more welcome which is given with a ready hand than with a full one. 7.3 "It is a trifle that he bestowed on me, but he could do no more"; whereas "what this man gave is great, but he hesitated, but he delayed, but he groaned in the giving, but he gave it haughtily, but he carried it round for show, and wished to please, not the man on whom he bestowed it, but his own ambition; it was to vanity that he gave it, not to me." 8.1 When all were offering Socrates many gifts, each according to his means, Aeschines, a poor disciple, said: "I can find nothing worthy of you that I am able to give you, and in this one respect alone do I feel myself a poor man. And so I give you the one thing I possess, myself. This gift, such as it is, I beg you to accept in good part, and to bear in mind that others, when they gave you much, left more for themselves." To him Socrates replied: 8.2 "Why, surely you have given me a great gift, unless perhaps you rate yourself cheaply? I shall therefore make it my care to give you back to yourself a better man than I received you." By this gift Aeschines surpassed the soul of Alcibiades, the equal of riches, and all the munificence of the wealthy youths. 9.1 You see how the mind finds the material of liberality even amid straitened means. Aeschines seems to me to have said: "You have accomplished nothing, Fortune, by willing me to be poor; I shall nonetheless contrive a gift worthy of this man, and since I cannot give from what is yours, I shall give from what is my own." And there is no reason to suppose that he held himself cheap: he made of himself his own price. The ingenious youth found out how to give Socrates to himself. We must look, not at how great each gift is, but from what kind of person it proceeds. 9.2 The shrewd man did not grant easy access to those whose cravings were immoderate, and, while doing nothing for them in deed, cherished their wicked hopes with words; but he is held in worse repute who, harsh of tongue and stern of face, set forth his good fortune with an air of envy. For men court and detest the prosperous, and, ready themselves to do the same things if they could, they hate the man who does them. 9.3 Wives belong to others, and are made the laughing-stock not even in secret but openly; and men hand over their own to others. He is counted a boor, an uncivilized fellow of bad manners, and among matrons an abominable sort of husband, who has forbidden his wife to be carried about for sale in a sedan and conveyed visible on every side to a crowd of admitted spectators. 9.4 If a man has made himself conspicuous by no mistress, and pays no yearly allowance to another's wife, the matrons call him a fellow of low and sordid lust, a chaser of serving-maids. Hence the most respectable form of betrothal is adultery, and widowhood passes for celibacy by common consent, since no man has married a wife unless he first led another's away. 9.5 Now men vie to scatter what they have seized, and with fierce and keen greed to gather up again what they have scattered; to count nothing of weight, to despise another's poverty and to dread their own more than any other evil, to disturb the peace with wrongs, and to crush the weaker by force and by terror. That provinces are plundered, and the court of justice put up for sale, knocked down to one of two bidders after the bidding has been heard on both sides, is no wonder, since it is the law of nations that what you have bought you may sell! 10.1 But our impetus carries us too far, the subject itself inciting us; so let us thus make an end, lest the blame settle upon our own age. This our ancestors complained of, this we complain of, this our descendants will complain of: that morals are overthrown, that wickedness reigns, that human affairs and all that is wicked are sliding into the worse. Yet these things stand and will stand in the same place, moved only a little this way or that, like the waves which a rising tide carries farther up the shore, and which, as it recedes, it holds back within the inner mark of the beach. 10.2 At one time the sin will run more to adultery than to other vices, and chastity will burst its bonds; at another the madness of banquets will flourish, and the kitchen, that foulest ruin of estates; at another there will be excessive care of the body and a concern for appearance that betrays the deformity of the soul; at another ill-governed freedom will break out into insolence and recklessness; at another men will rush into cruelty, private and public, and into the frenzy of civil wars, by which all that is holy and sacred is profaned; one day honor will be paid to drunkenness, and to have downed the most unmixed wine will be a virtue. 10.3 Vices do not wait in one place, but, restless and at variance among themselves, they are in tumult, driving one another out and being put to flight in turn; for the rest, we shall always have to pronounce the same judgment upon ourselves: that we are wicked, that we have been wicked, and, I will add it unwillingly, that we shall be wicked. 10.4 There will be murderers, tyrants, thieves, adulterers, ravishers, sacrilegious men, traitors; below all these stands the ungrateful man, except that all these spring from the ungrateful man, without whom scarcely any great crime has come to its growth. Beware lest you commit this as the greatest of crimes; pardon it as the lightest, if it has been committed against you. For this is the sum of the wrong: you have lost a benefit. The best of it remains safe for you: you gave it. 10.5 But just as we must take care to bestow our benefits above all on those who will respond gratefully, so there are some things we shall do and bestow even if we have ill hopes of the men, not only if we judge that they will be ungrateful, but if we know that they have been so. For instance, if I shall be able to restore to a man his sons, rescued from great peril at no peril of my own, I shall not hesitate. A man worthy of it I shall defend even at the cost of my own blood, and I shall enter into a share of his danger; an unworthy man, if I can snatch him from robbers by raising a shout, I shall not grudge to utter the cry that brings him safety. 11.1 It follows that we should say what benefits are to be given, and how. First let us give what is necessary, then what is useful, then what is pleasant, and above all what will endure. But we must begin with the necessary; for that which sustains life reaches the mind in one way, that which adorns or equips it in another. In the latter a man may be a fastidious appraiser, since he can easily do without it, and of it he may say: "Take it back, I do not want it; I am content with my own." Sometimes one is glad not merely to return what one received, but to fling it away. 11.2 Of the things that are necessary, some hold the first place, those without which we cannot live; some the second, those without which we ought not to live; some the third, those without which we are unwilling to live. 11.3 Of the first stamp are these: to be snatched from the hands of the enemy, from the wrath of a tyrant, from proscription, and from the other perils which, various and uncertain, beset human life. Whichever of these we have averted, the greater and the more terrible it was, the greater the gratitude we shall earn; for the thought arises of how great the evils were from which men have been freed, and the fear that went before is a foil that enhances the gift. Yet we ought not on that account to save anyone more slowly than we can, in order that fear may lend weight to our gift. 11.4 Next to these are the things without which we can indeed live, but in such a way that death would be preferable, as freedom and chastity and a sound mind. After these we shall reckon what is dear to us by ties of kinship and blood, by use and long association, such as children, wives, household gods, and all else to which the mind has so attached itself that it counts being torn from them harder than being torn from life. 11.5 Then follow useful things, of which the material is varied and wide; here will be money, not in superfluity, but provided to a sound measure of having; here will be public office and the advancement of those who aim at higher things; for nothing is more useful than to become useful to oneself. The rest comes of abundance, and is apt to make men dainty. In these we shall aim that they be welcome by their timeliness, that they be not common, but such as few have possessed, or few within this age, or in this manner, things which, even if not precious by nature, become so by their time or place. 11.6 Let us consider what gift will most delight, what will often come before the eyes of him who has it, so that as often as it is with him, so often it may be with us. Above all we shall take care not to send useless gifts: as hunting weapons to a woman or an old man, books to a peasant, nets to one devoted to study and letters. And equally, on the other side, we shall look about lest, while we wish to send what is welcome, we send what will reproach a man with his own besetting fault: as wine to a drunkard, or medicines to an invalid. For it begins to be an insult, not a gift, in which the recipient's vice is recognized. 12.1 If the choice of giving rests with us, we shall seek above all things that will endure, so that the gift may be as little subject to mortality as possible. For few men are so grateful as to think of what they have received, even when they do not see it. With the ungrateful, too, memory comes back along with the gift itself, when it is before their eyes and does not let them forget it, but thrusts and presses its author upon them. Indeed, for this very reason let us seek more lasting gifts, because we ought never to remind men; let the thing itself rouse the fading memory. 12.2 I shall more gladly give silver wrought into plate than coined; more gladly statues than clothing, and than what brief use wears away. With few does gratitude outlast the gift; with more there are men in whose minds a present lasts no longer than in use. I, if it can be done, do not wish my gift to be consumed; let it stand, let it cleave to my friend, let it live with him. 12.3 No one is so foolish as to need warning not to send anyone gladiators or a hunting show when the public spectacle is already over, or summer clothing in midwinter, winter clothing at the solstice. Let there be common sense in a benefit; let it have regard to time, to place, to persons, since certain things are welcome or unwelcome according to the moment. How much more acceptable it is if we give what a man does not have, rather than what he has in abundance; what he has long sought and not found, rather than what he is going to see everywhere! 12.4 Let gifts be not so much costly as rare and choice, such as may make a place for themselves even in a rich man's regard, just as common fruits too, and such as within a few days will pass into distaste, delight us if they have come earlier than their season. Those things, too, will not lack honor which either no one else has given to the recipients, or which we have given to no one else. 13.1 To Alexander of Macedon, when as conqueror of the East he was lifting his thoughts above the human, the Corinthians sent envoys to offer their congratulations and presented him with the citizenship of their city. When Alexander had laughed at this kind of compliment, one of the envoys said: "To no one have we ever given our citizenship save to you and to Hercules." 13.2 Gladly he accepted the undiluted honor, and, attending the envoys with an invitation and other courtesies, he reflected, not who it was that gave him their citizenship, but to whom they had given it; and the man, given over to glory, of whose nature and limit he knew nothing, following the footsteps of Hercules and of Liber, and not halting even where these had failed, looked away from the givers to the partner of his honor, as though he held the heaven which in his most empty fancy he embraced, because he was being matched with Hercules! 13.3 For what had he in common with Hercules, that frenzied youth, whose virtue was lucky recklessness? Hercules conquered nothing for himself; he passed over the world, not coveting, but judging what to conquer, the foe of the wicked, the champion of the good, the bringer of peace to land and sea. But this man, from boyhood a brigand and a ravager of nations, the bane of his enemies no less than of his friends, who counted it the highest good to be a terror to all mortals, forgot that not only the fiercest but also the most cowardly of creatures are feared for their evil venom. 14.1 Let us now return to our subject. If a man gives a benefit to anyone whatever, it is welcome to no one; no one counts himself the guest of an innkeeper or a tavern-keeper, or the table-companion of one who gives a public feast, where one may say: "What, after all, did he confer on me? Nothing but what he conferred on that man, scarcely well known to him, and even on that man, his enemy and a most base fellow. Did he, then, judge me worthy of it? He merely indulged his own disease!" Whatever you would have welcome, make rare; everyone is content to have it counted to his own credit. 14.2 Let no one so interpret these words as if I would draw liberality back and curb it with a tighter rein; let it go forth, in truth, as far as it pleases, but let it go, not stray. One may bestow gifts in such a way that each man, even though he received with many others, does not think himself one of a crowd. 14.3 Let everyone have some token of intimacy through which he may hope that he was admitted nearer. Let him say: "I received the same as that man, but unasked. I received what that man did, but I within a brief time, while he had long earned it. There are those who have the same gift, but it was not given in the same words, nor with the same kindness in the giver. That man received it after he had asked; I had not asked. That man received it, but being one who would readily repay, one whose old age and free childlessness promised much; to me he gave more, though he gave the same, because he gave without hope of return." 14.4 Just as a courtesan will so apportion herself among many that not one fails to carry away some token of an intimate regard, so let him who wishes his benefits to be loved contrive that, while many are laid under obligation, each one nonetheless has something whereby he may set himself before the rest. 15.1 I, indeed, put no obstacles in the way of benefits; the more and the greater they have been, the more praise they will bring. But let there be judgment; for things given at random and by chance can be dear to no one. 15.2 Wherefore, if anyone supposes that, in laying down these rules, we are drawing the bounds of kindness inward and opening to it a narrower path, he has misheard our admonitions. For what virtue do we revere more? To what do we apply the goad more eagerly? Or to whom does this exhortation more suit than to us who ratify the fellowship of the human race? 15.3 What, then, is the case? Since there is no honorable force of the mind, even though it begins from a right will, unless measure has made it a virtue, I forbid liberality to play the spendthrift. Then it is a joy to have received a benefit, and even with hands outstretched, when reason leads it to the worthy, and no chance or impulse, in want of counsel, carries it just anywhere, a benefit one is glad to display and to inscribe to one's own account. 15.4 Do you call those things benefits whose author one is ashamed to confess? But how much more welcome are those benefits, and how deeply they sink into the inner part of the soul, never to depart, when they delight the one who reflects more on the giver than on what he has received! 15.5 Crispus Passienus used to say that of some men he would rather have the esteem than the benefit, and of others the benefit than the esteem, and he would add examples. "I would rather have," he would say, "the esteem of the deified Augustus, the benefit of Claudius." But I, for my part, hold that no man's benefit is worth seeking whose esteem is cheap. 15.6 What, then? Was a gift not to be accepted from Claudius? It was, but as from Fortune, which you knew might at any moment turn to evil. Why do we divide these things which are mingled together? It is not a benefit which lacks its best part, namely, that it was given with judgment; otherwise a vast sum of money, if it was not given with reason and a right will, is no more a benefit than a buried treasure. There are many things, however, which one ought to accept and not to owe.