Book 4

1.1 Of all the matters we have handled, Aebutius Liberalis, none can seem so necessary, or, as Sallust says, so to be spoken of with care, as that which is now in hand: whether to give a benefit and in turn to return gratitude are things to be sought for their own sake. 1.2 There are found men who cultivate honorable things for a reward, and to whom virtue without a fee is not pleasing; yet virtue has nothing magnificent in it if anything in it is for sale. For what is baser than for a man to reckon how much a good man is worth, since virtue neither invites by gain nor frightens off by loss, and so far is from corrupting anyone by hope and promise that on the contrary it bids him spend upon it, and is most often a matter of free gifts? One must go to it trampling on all advantages; wherever it has called, wherever it has sent, one must go, without regard for one's estate, sometimes even without any sparing of one's own blood, and never decline its command. 1.3 "What shall I gain," says he, "if I do this bravely, if I do this gratefully?" That you will have done it; nothing beyond is promised you. If any advantage chances to come your way, you will count it among the extras. The price of honorable things is in the things themselves. If the honorable is to be sought for its own sake, and a benefit is honorable, then it cannot be on any other footing, since its nature is the same. And that the honorable is to be sought for its own sake has often and abundantly been proved. 2.1 In this part we have a battle with the Epicureans, that soft and shadow-loving throng who philosophize over their banquet, in whose eyes virtue is the handmaid of pleasures, obeys them, is their slave, sees them above herself. "There is no pleasure," you say, "without virtue." 2.2 But why is it before virtue? Do you think the dispute is about order? It is the whole matter, and the supremacy of virtue, that is in question. Virtue is not virtue if it can follow; its part is the first, it ought to lead, to command, to stand in the highest place; you bid it ask for the watchword! "What," says he, "does it matter to you? 2.3 I too deny that the happy life can stand without virtue. The very pleasure which I pursue, to which I have given myself as a slave, I disapprove and condemn if that be removed. The dispute is on this one point alone: whether virtue is the cause of the highest good, or itself the highest good." That this one point be in question, do you think it a mere change of order? It is rather confusion and manifest blindness to prefer the last to the first. 2.4 I am not indignant that virtue is set after pleasure, but that it is set with pleasure at all, virtue that despises it and is its enemy and leaps back as far as possible from it, more at home with toil and pain, with manly hardships, than with that effeminate good. 3.1 These things, my Liberalis, had to be inserted, because to give a benefit, of which we now treat, belongs to virtue, and it is most base to give it for the sake of any other thing than that it may have been given. For if we bestowed in the hope of recovery, we should give to the richest man, not to the worthiest; but as it is, we prefer a poor man to a troublesome rich one. It is no benefit which looks to fortune. 3.2 Besides, if advantage alone invited us to be of use, those least of all ought to distribute benefits who most easily could, the rich and the powerful and kings who do not need another's help; and the gods, in truth, would not give the many gifts which they pour forth without intermission by day and night; for their own nature suffices them for all things and renders them full and safe and inviolable; therefore they will give a benefit to no one, if the sole cause of giving is to look to oneself and one's own advantage. 3.3 That is not a benefit, but usury, to look about, not where you may best place it, but where you may most profitably keep it, whence you may most easily take it back. And since this is far removed from the gods, it follows that they are illiberal; for if the sole cause of giving a benefit is the giver's advantage, but no advantage is to be hoped by a god from us, then a god has no cause to give a benefit. 4.1 I know what is answered at this point: "And so a god does not give benefits, but, untroubled and careless of us, turned away from the world, he does something else, or, what to Epicurus seems the greatest happiness, does nothing, and benefits no more move him than injuries." 4.2 He who says this does not hear the voices of those who pray, and of those who, with hands raised everywhere to heaven, make their vows, private and public; which surely would not be done, nor would all mortals surely have agreed in this madness of addressing deaf divinities and ineffectual gods, had we not known their benefits, now offered unasked, now given to those who pray, great, timely, dissolving by their intervention vast threats. 4.3 And who is so wretched, so neglected, who so born under a hard fate and to punishment, that he has not felt so great a munificence of the gods? Look about you at those very men who bewail their lot and are full of complaints: you will find them not wholly without a share of the heavenly benefits, and that there is no one to whom something has not flowed from that most bountiful spring. And is that little which is distributed equally to all at birth? To pass over the things that follow, dispensed in unequal measure, did Nature give little, when she gave herself? 5.1 "A god does not give benefits." Whence then come those things which you possess, which you give, which you refuse, which you keep, which you snatch? Whence these countless things that charm the eyes, the ears, the mind? Whence that abundance which provides even for luxury (for it is not only for our necessities that provision has been made; we are loved even to the point of indulgence)? 5.2 So many trees, fruitful in more than one way, so many wholesome herbs, so many varieties of food arranged throughout the whole year, that even to the idle the earth might offer her chance-grown nourishment? Now animals of every kind, some born on dry and solid ground, some in the water, some sent down through the upper air, that every part of the natural world might bring us some tribute? 5.3 These rivers, girdling the plains with the most charming windings, those others, destined to afford a road for commerce, going with a vast and navigable course, of which some in the days of summer draw a wondrous increase, that a sudden force of the summer torrent may water the dry places lying beneath a burning sky? What of the veins of warm waters for trade? What, on the very shores, of the welling-up of hot springs? You too, greatest Larius, and you, Benacus, rising with the waves and roar of a sea? 6.1 If someone had given you a few acres, you would say that you had received a benefit; do you deny that the vast expanses of lands stretching far and wide are a benefit? If someone gives you money and fills your chest, since that seems great to you, you will call it a benefit; God has dug down so many veins of metal, has sent forth from the earth so many rivers over whose beds, where they run, gold is carried; an immense mass of silver, of bronze, of iron has been buried in all places, the power of searching out which he has given you, and he has set on the earth's surface signs of the hidden riches: do you deny that you have received a benefit? 6.2 If a house is given you in which some marble gleams, and a roof brighter than gold or sprinkled with colors, you will call it no mean gift. A vast dwelling place he has built for you without any fear of fire or ruin, in which you see, not thin slabs and panels finer than the very blade by which they are cut, but whole masses of the most precious stone, all of varied and figured material, of which you marvel at the tiny fragments, and a roof gleaming one way by night, another by day: do you deny that you have received any gift? 6.3 And, though you value highly these things which you have, which is the mark of an ungrateful man, do you judge that you owe nothing to anyone? Whence comes that breath which you draw? Whence that light by which you order and arrange the course of your life? Whence the blood, by whose flowing the vital warmth is sustained? Whence those things that provoke your palate with exquisite flavors beyond satiety? Whence these stimulants of a pleasure already wearied? Whence that repose in which you rot and grow flabby? 6.4 Will you not, if you are grateful, say: "A god made for us this leisure, for he shall ever be a god to me; often shall a tender lamb from our folds stain his altar; he it is who has suffered my cattle to roam, as you see, and myself to play what I would on a rustic reed." 6.5 He is a god, not who has sent forth a few cattle, but who has sent herds throughout the whole world, who furnishes pasture to the flocks wandering everywhere far and wide, who has appointed summer pastures in place of winter ones, who has taught us, not only to sing on the reed and to set a rude and unpolished song to some measure at least, but has devised so many arts, so many varieties of the voice, so many sounds to give forth song, some with our own breath, some with breath from without. 6.6 For you would not call those things ours which we have discovered, no more than that we grow, than that the body's offices answer to it at the appointed times: now the falling of the milk teeth, now, as the years rise toward maturity and pass to a sturdier stage, the coming of manhood, and that last tooth which sets a boundary to a youth now grown. There are implanted in us the seeds of all ages, of all arts, and from his hidden place God brings forth our talents. 7.1 "Nature," says he, "bestows these things on me." Do you not understand that, when you say this, you are merely changing the name of God? For what else is Nature than God, and a divine reason implanted in the whole world and in its parts? As often as you will, you are free to address in another way this author of our affairs; and you will rightly call him Jupiter Best and Greatest, and the Thunderer, and the Stayer, who is the Stayer and Establisher, not, as the historians have handed down, from the fact that, when the vow had been taken, the line of the fleeing Romans stood firm, but because all things stand by his benefit. If you call this same one also Fate, you will not lie; 7.2 for since Fate is nothing else than an interwoven chain of causes, he is the first cause of all, on which the others hang. Whatever names you will, you will fitly apply to him names that contain some force and effect of heavenly things: he can have as many appellations as he has gifts. 8.1 Him our countrymen think to be both Father Liber and Hercules and Mercury: Father Liber, because he is the parent of all things, by whom first the force of seeds was discovered to provide for life through pleasure; Hercules, because his force is unconquered and, whenever it shall have been wearied by the works it has done, will withdraw into fire; Mercury, because with him are reason and number and order and knowledge. Wherever you turn, there you will see him meeting you; 8.2 nothing is empty of him, he himself fills his own work. Therefore you accomplish nothing, most ungrateful of mortals, who deny that you owe anything to God, but say to Nature, since neither is Nature without God nor God without Nature, but both are the same, and differ in their function. 8.3 If, what you had received from Seneca, you should say that you owed to Annaeus or to Lucius, you would not be changing your creditor, but his name, since, whether you had named his praenomen or his nomen or his cognomen, he would still be the same man. So now call it Nature, Fate, Fortune; all are names of the same god using his power in varied ways. And justice, uprightness, prudence, courage, frugality are the goods of one mind; whichever of these has pleased you, the mind pleases you. 9.1 But, that I may not hold another discussion sidelong, the gods bestow upon us very many and very great benefits with no hope of recovery, since neither do they lack what is bestowed nor can we bestow anything upon them; therefore a benefit is a thing to be sought for its own sake. In it the receiver's advantage alone is regarded; to this let us turn, setting aside our own profits. 9.2 "You say," says he, "that those to whom we give benefits are to be carefully chosen, because not even farmers commit their seeds to the sands; and if this is true, we are following our own advantage in giving benefits, just as in plowing and sowing; for sowing is not a thing to be sought for its own sake. Besides, you ask where and how you are to give a benefit, which would not have to be done if to give a benefit for its own sake were a thing to be sought, since, in whatever place and in whatever manner it was given, it was a benefit." 9.3 We pursue the honorable for no other cause than for itself; yet, even if nothing else is to be pursued, we ask what we are to do, and when, and in what manner; for through these it holds together. And so, when I choose to whom I am to give a benefit, I do this, that it may be a benefit at all; because, if it is given to a base man, it can be neither honorable nor a benefit. 10.1 To return a deposit is a thing to be sought for its own sake; yet I shall not always return it, nor in every place nor at every time. Sometimes it makes no difference whether I deny it or return it openly. I shall regard the advantage of him to whom I am to return it, and shall deny the deposit if it is going to harm him. The same I shall do with a benefit. 10.2 I shall see when I am to give, to whom, in what manner, why. For nothing should be done without reason; but it is no benefit, save what is given with reason, since reason is the companion of all that is honorable. How often do we hear this cry from men chiding their own ill-considered giving: 10.3 "I would rather have lost it than have given it to that man"! A most base kind of loss is ill-considered giving, and it is far more grievous to have given a benefit badly than not to have recovered it; for that we do not recover it is another's fault; that we did not choose to whom we should give is our own. 10.4 In my choice I shall regard nothing less than this which you suppose, from whom I am likely to recover; for choose the man who is grateful, not the man who will repay; often even the man who will not repay is grateful, and the man who has repaid is ungrateful. 10.5 My appraisal reaches toward the mind; therefore I shall pass by the rich man who is unworthy, and shall give to a poor good man; for he will be grateful in the depths of want, and, when all else fails him, his spirit will remain over. 11.1 I take no gain from a benefit, no pleasure, no glory; content to please one man, I shall give for this end, that I may do what is fitting. But what is fitting is not without choice. What sort that choice is to be, you ask? I shall choose a man upright, simple, mindful, grateful, abstaining from another's goods, not greedily clinging to his own, kindly; when I have chosen him, though fortune bestow on him nothing whereby he may return gratitude, the matter will have been managed as I intended. 11.2 If advantage and a sordid reckoning make me liberal, if I am of use to no one save that in turn he may be of use to me, I shall not give a benefit to a man setting out for diverse and distant regions, to be ever absent; I shall not give to one so afflicted that he has no hope of recovery; I shall not give when I myself am failing, for I have no time for recovery. 11.3 And yet, that you may know that to do good is a thing to be sought for its own sake, we succor strangers but now brought into our harbor, about to depart at once; to an unknown shipwrecked man we both give and build a ship in which he may be carried home. He departs, scarcely knowing well enough the author of his safety, and never about to return again into our sight, and assigns the gods to us as debtors, and prays them to return gratitude on his behalf; meanwhile the consciousness of a barren benefit delights us. What? 11.4 when we have taken our stand at the very end of life, when we order our will, do we not distribute benefits that will profit us nothing? How much time is spent, how long the matter is debated in private, how much, and to whom, we are to give! For what does it matter to whom we give, since we are to recover from none? 11.5 And yet we never give more carefully, never more rack our judgments, than when, advantages being removed, the honorable alone has stood before our eyes; we are bad judges of our duties just so long as hope and fear and that most slothful vice, pleasure, distort them. When death has cut off all things and has sent an incorruptible judge to deliver the verdict, we seek out the worthiest to whom to hand over what is ours, and we arrange nothing with a holier care than what does not concern us. But, by Hercules, then a great pleasure comes over us as we think: 11.6 "This man I shall make richer, and to this man's dignity, by adding wealth, I shall shed some splendor." If we give no benefits save when we shall recover them, men must die intestate! 12.1 "You say," says he, "that a benefit is a loan that cannot be repaid; but a loan is not a thing to be sought for its own sake." When we say "loan," we use an image and a figure; for so we say too that a law is the rule of the just and the unjust, and a rule is not a thing to be sought for its own sake. We descend to these words for the sake of demonstrating the matter; when I say "loan," it is understood "as it were a loan." Do you wish to know? I add "that cannot be repaid," because no loan but can or ought to be repaid. 12.2 So far is a benefit from being given for the sake of advantage that often, as I have said, it must be given with loss and peril. Thus I defend a man beset by robbers, that he may be allowed to pass safely; I protect an accused man struggling against influence, and turn upon myself the faction of powerful men, perhaps to incur, under the same accusers, the very stains I have rubbed off him, when I might pass over to the other side and watch others' contests in security; I go bail for one condemned, and, when a friend's goods are seized, I throw down a notice, about to bind myself to his creditors; that I may save a man proscribed, I myself face the peril of proscription. 12.3 No one who is about to acquire a place at Tusculum or Tibur for his health's sake and a summer retreat debates in what year he is going to buy it; when it is his, it must be kept up. 12.4 The same is the rule of a benefit; for when you ask what it returns, I shall answer: a good conscience. What does a benefit return? Tell me, you, what justice returns, what innocence, what greatness of soul, what chastity, what temperance; if you seek anything besides themselves, you are not seeking them themselves. To what end does the world resolve its alternations? 12.5 To what end does the sun lengthen and shorten the day? All these are benefits, for they are done to profit us. Just as it is the office of the world to wheel round the order of things, just as it is the sun's to change the places from which it rises, into which it sets, and to do these things wholesome to us without reward, so it is the office of a man, among other things, to give a benefit too. Why then does he give? Lest he should not give, lest he should lose the occasion of doing good. 13.1 To you it is a pleasure to make a poor little body of slothful leisure, and to seek a security most like to sleep, and to lie hidden under a thick shade, and to set against your most delicate thoughts, which you call tranquillity, the torpor of a flagging mind, and within the recesses of your gardens to fatten with food and drink your bodies pale with idleness; 13.2 to us it is a pleasure to give benefits even laborious ones, provided they lighten the labors of others, even perilous ones, provided they draw others out of perils, even such as will burden our own accounts, provided they relieve the necessities and the straits of others. 13.3 What does it matter to me whether I recover my benefits? Even when I have recovered them, they must be given again. A benefit regards the advantage of him to whom it is rendered, not our own; otherwise we give it to ourselves. And so many things which bring the greatest advantage to others lose their gratitude by their price. The merchant profits cities, the physician the sick, the slave-dealer his wares; but all these, because they come to another's advantage for their own, do not lay under obligation those whom they profit. It is no benefit which is put out for gain. "This I shall give and this I shall recover" is an auction. 14.1 I shall not call her chaste who, in order to inflame her lover, repulsed him, who feared either the law or her husband; as Ovid says: "She who, because it was not allowed, did not yield, yielded." Not without reason is she reckoned in the number of sinners who rendered her chastity to fear, not to herself. In the same way, he who gave a benefit in order to recover it has not given. 14.2 So then we give a benefit to the animals which we feed to be of use or for food! We give a benefit to the trees which we tend, lest they suffer from drought or from the hardness of an unstirred and neglected soil! 14.3 No one comes to the tilling of a field from equity and goodness, nor to any matter whose fruit is outside itself; to the giving of a benefit no avaricious or sordid thought leads, but a humane, a liberal one, eager to give, even when it has given, and to add new and fresh things to the old, having this one aim, how great a good it will be to him to whom it is rendered; otherwise it is base, without praise, without glory, to be of use because it is expedient. 14.4 What is there magnificent in loving oneself, in sparing oneself, in acquiring for oneself? From all these the true desire of giving a benefit calls us away, lays a hand on us and drags us toward our own loss, and abandons advantages, being most glad in the very work of doing good. 15.1 Is there any doubt that an injury is the contrary of a benefit? As to do an injury is a thing to be shunned and fled from for its own sake, so to give a benefit is a thing to be sought for its own sake. There baseness prevails against all the rewards that urge to crime; to this the very appearance of the honorable, effectual of itself, invites. 15.2 I shall not lie if I say that there is no one who does not love his own benefits, no one who is not so disposed in mind that he sees the more gladly the man on whom he has heaped many gifts, to whom the very fact of having once given is a cause for giving again. Which would not happen, did not benefits in themselves delight us. How often you may hear a man say: 15.3 "I cannot bear to forsake the man to whom I gave life, whom I snatched from peril. He asks me to plead his cause against men of influence; I am unwilling, but what am I to do? I have already stood by him once and again." Do you not see that there is in this thing a certain peculiar force which compels us to give benefits, first because it is fitting, then because we have given? 15.4 To the man for whom at first there had been no reason to render anything, we render for this reason, that we have rendered; and so far is advantage from impelling us to benefits that we persevere in protecting and cherishing useless ones, solely from love of the benefit, to be indulgent toward which, even when it has been ill bestowed, is as natural as toward wayward children. 16.1 These same men confess that they themselves return gratitude, not because it is honorable, but because it is useful. That this is not so must be proved with less labor, because, by the same arguments by which we have gathered that to give a benefit is a thing to be sought for its own sake, by these same we gather this too. 16.2 This is fixed, the point from which our proofs go out into the rest: that the honorable is cultivated for no other cause than because it is honorable. Who then will dare to make it a controversy whether to be grateful is honorable? Who does not detest the ungrateful man, a man useless to his very self? And how are you affected when it is told you, "He is ungrateful toward the greatest benefits of his friend"? As though he had done a base thing, or as though he had omitted a thing useful to himself and likely to profit him? I think you judge him a worthless fellow, who needs punishment, not a guardian; which would not happen, were not to be grateful a thing to be sought for its own sake and honorable. 16.3 Other virtues perhaps display their dignity less, and need an interpreter to say whether they are honorable. This one is set forth, and is fairer, than that its splendor should shine doubtfully or too little. What is so praiseworthy, what so evenly received into the minds of all, as to return gratitude to those who have deserved well? 17.1 To this, tell me, what cause leads us? Gain? But he who does not despise it is ungrateful. Ambition? And what boasting is there in having paid what you owe? Fear? There is none for the ungrateful; for upon this one matter we have set no law, as though Nature had provided sufficiently. 17.2 Just as no law bids us love our parents, be indulgent to our children (for it is superfluous to be impelled toward that to which we go of ourselves), as no one needs to be exhorted to the love of himself, which draws him even while he is being born, so neither even to this, that he should seek honorable things for their own sake; they please by their own nature, and so gracious is virtue that it is implanted even in the wicked to approve the better. Who is there who does not wish to seem beneficent, who does not, amid his crimes and injuries, affect the reputation of goodness, who does not put upon the very things he has done most uncontrollably some appearance of right, and wish to seem to have given a benefit even to those whom he has harmed? 17.3 And so they suffer thanks to be rendered them by those whom they have crushed, and feign themselves good and liberal, because they cannot render the reality. Which they would not do, did not the love of the honorable and of what is to be sought for its own sake compel them to seek a reputation contrary to their own characters, and to hide their wickedness, the fruit of which is craved, while the thing itself is a matter of hatred and of shame; nor has anyone so far revolted from the law of Nature and put off his manhood as to be wicked for the sake of his own mind. 17.4 For ask any one of those who live by plunder whether they would rather come by a good means to those things which they pursue by robberies and thefts: that man whose trade is to waylay and strike down passersby will choose rather to find than to snatch them; you will find no one who would not rather enjoy the rewards of wickedness without wickedness. We have this greatest gift of Nature, that virtue lets her light into the minds of all; even those who do not follow her see her. 18.1 That you may know that the disposition of a grateful mind is to be sought for its own sake, to be ungrateful is a thing to be shunned for its own sake, since nothing so much sunders and tears apart the concord of the human race as this vice. For by what else are we safe than that we are aided by mutual services? By this one thing life is better equipped and more fortified against sudden assaults, by the exchange of benefits. 18.2 Make us single, what are we? The prey of animals and their victims, the most easily shed and pleasant blood. For while to other animals there is strength enough for their own protection, and whatever was born to roam and to lead a separate life is armed, man a feeble skin girds about; no force of claws, no force of teeth has made him terrible to the rest; naked and weak, society fortifies him. Two things God gave, which make him, exposed as he is, most strong: reason and society; and so he who, if he were set apart, could be the equal of none, becomes master of all things. 18.3 Society has given him dominion over all animals; society, that he, born to the lands, was sent across into the empire of an alien element and was bidden to be master even on the sea; this has warded off the assaults of diseases, has provided supports for old age, has given solaces against pains; this makes us brave, in that it is permitted to call it in against fortune. 18.4 Take away this society, and you will sunder the unity of the human race by which life is sustained; but it will be taken away if you bring it about that an ungrateful mind is not to be shunned for its own sake, but because something is to be feared by it; for how many there are to whom it is permitted to be ungrateful in safety! In short, I call ungrateful whoever is grateful through fear. 19.1 No man of sound mind fears the gods; for it is madness to fear what is wholesome, nor does anyone love those whom he fears. You, in fine, Epicurus, make your god unarmed; you have taken from him all his weapons, all his power, and, that he might be feared by no one, you have flung him outside the reach of fear. 19.2 Him, then, fenced about by a vast and indeed inexplicable wall, and parted from the contact and the sight of mortals, you have no reason to revere; he has no material either for bestowing or for harming; set in the middle interval between this heaven and another, deserted, without a living thing, without a man, without a thing, he shuns the ruins of worlds falling above him and about him, hearing no vows nor curious about us. 19.3 And yet you wish to seem to worship him no otherwise than a parent, with a grateful mind, as I suppose; or, if you do not wish to seem grateful, because you have no benefit of his, but the atoms and those motes of yours have clustered you together by chance and at random, why do you worship him? 19.4 "Because of his majesty," you say, "and his surpassing and singular nature." Granting it to you, surely you do this drawn by no reward, by no hope; there is therefore something to be sought for its own sake, whose very dignity draws you, that is, the honorable. But what is more honorable than to be grateful? The material of this virtue lies open as wide as life itself. 20.1 "But there is," says he, "in this good some advantage too." For in what virtue is there not? But that is said to be sought for its own sake which, although it has some advantages outside it, pleases even when these are set apart and removed. It profits to be grateful; yet I shall be grateful even if it harms me. What does the grateful man pursue? 20.2 That this thing should win him other friends, other benefits? What then? If a man is going to stir up offenses against himself, if a man understands that by it he is going to gain so little that much, even of what was laid up and acquired, must be lost, does he not gladly descend into losses? 20.3 He is ungrateful who in returning gratitude looks to a second gift, who hopes when he repays. I call ungrateful the man who sits by a sick man because he is about to make his will, to whom there is leisure to think of the inheritance or the legacy. Let him do all the things which a good friend mindful of his duty ought to do: if the hope of gain hovers before his mind, he is a legacy-hunter and casts his hook. As birds which are fed by tearing bodies spy out from close at hand the flocks weary with disease and about to fall, so this man hangs over death and flies about the corpse. 21.1 A grateful mind is captivated by the very virtue of its purpose. Do you wish to know that this is so, and that it is not corrupted by advantage? There are two kinds of grateful man. He is called grateful who has returned something in exchange for what he had received; this man perhaps can show himself off, he has something to boast of, to bring forward. He is called grateful who has received a benefit with a good mind, owes it with a good mind; this man's gratitude is shut up within his own conscience. 21.2 What advantage can come to him from a hidden affection? And yet this man, even if he can do nothing further, is grateful. He loves, he owes, he desires to return gratitude; whatever beyond this you require, it is not he himself that is wanting. 21.3 He is a craftsman, even though the instruments for plying his craft are not at hand, and he is no less skilled in singing whose voice the uproar of those clamoring around does not suffer to be heard. I wish to return gratitude: after this there remains something for me, not that I may be grateful, but that I may be discharged; for often both he who has returned gratitude is ungrateful, and he who has not returned it is grateful. For as of all other virtues, so of this the whole appraisal comes back to the mind; if this is in its duty, whatever was wanting, it is fortune that errs. 21.4 As a man is eloquent even who is silent, brave even who has his hands folded or even bound, as he is a pilot even who is on dry land, because to consummate knowledge nothing is wanting, even if something hinders his using it, so a man is grateful even who only wills, and has of this his own will no other witness than himself. Nay, I shall add more: 21.5 a man is sometimes grateful even who seems ungrateful, whom an ill-interpreting opinion has handed down as the contrary. This man, what else does he pursue than his very conscience? Which delights him even when overwhelmed, which cries out against the assembly and against rumor, and rests all things on itself, and, when it has beheld on the other side a vast throng of those who think against it, does not number the votes, but conquers by a single sentence. 21.6 But if it sees good faith visited with the punishments of treachery, it does not come down from its height and takes its stand above its own punishment. "I have," it says, "what I wished, what I sought; nor do I repent, nor shall I repent, nor will fortune by any iniquity bring me to this, that it should hear this cry: 'What did I want for myself? What now does my good will profit me?'" It profits even on the rack, it profits even in the fire; and if that fire be applied to the several limbs and creep little by little round the living body, though the very heart, full of a good conscience, drip in the flame: the fire will be pleasing to him by which good faith shines forth. 22.1 Now let that argument too, though already stated, be brought back: what is the reason why we wish to be grateful when we die, why we weigh the services of individuals, why we do this throughout our whole life with memory deciding, that we may not seem to have forgotten any duty? Nothing now remains to which hope may reach forth; yet, set upon that hinge, we wish to depart from human affairs as grateful as may be. 22.2 There is, clearly, a great reward in the very work, and a vast power of the honorable to allure the minds of men, whose beauty pours about our souls and seizes them, soothed by the admiration of its light and brightness. 22.3 And many advantages spring from it, and life is safer to better men, and love and a more secure age, in keeping with the judgment of the good, attend innocence, attend a grateful mind. For Nature would have been most unjust, if she had made this so great a good wretched and doubtful and barren. But consider this: whether to that virtue which is often approached by a safe and easy road you would be willing to go even by a way over crags and rocks and beset by wild beasts and serpents. 22.4 It is not for that reason not to be sought for its own sake, because some advantage too clings to it; for generally the fairest things are accompanied by many adventitious endowments, but these they draw after them, themselves go before. 23.1 Is it doubtful that the circuit of the sun and moon, by their alternations, tempers this dwelling place of the human race? That by the heat of the one bodies are nourished, the earth is loosened, immoderate moistures are restrained, the gloom of winter that binds all things is broken, and by the efficacious and penetrating warmth of the other the ripening of the crops is governed? That to its course human fecundity answers? That the one has made the year observable by its revolution, the other the month, turning in lesser spaces? 23.2 Yet, to take away these things, was not the sun itself a spectacle fit for the eyes and worthy to be adored, even if it only passed by? Was not the moon worthy to be looked up to, even if it crossed an idle star? The world itself, as often as through the night it has poured forth its fires and gleamed with so many countless stars, whom does it not hold intent upon it? Who, while he marvels, thinks then that they profit him? 23.3 Look at those bodies gliding above in so great a company, how they hide their swiftness under the appearance of a standing and unmoving work. How much is being done in that night which you watch for the numbering and distinction of your days! What a throng of things is unrolled beneath this silence! 23.4 What a chain of fates a fixed track leads forth! Those things which you regard as scattered only for adornment are each at work. For there is no reason for you to think that seven alone run their course and the rest stand fast; we comprehend the motions of a few, but countless ones, and those drawn farther from sight, come and go, and of those that suffer our eyes, very many proceed with an obscure step and are driven on by a hidden path. 24.1 What then? Are you not captivated by the sight of so vast a mass, even if it did not cover you, did not guard you, did not foster you and beget you and water you with its breath? Just as these things, although they have first their use and are necessary and life-giving, yet their majesty fills the whole mind, so all that virtue, and chiefly that of a grateful mind, bestows much indeed, but does not wish to be loved for this; it has something more in it, and is not sufficiently understood by him by whom it is numbered among useful things. 24.2 Is a man grateful because it is expedient? Then also as far as it is expedient? Virtue does not admit a sordid lover; one must come to her with an open heart. The ungrateful man thinks thus: "I wished to return gratitude, but I fear the expense, I fear the peril, I dread the offense; I shall do rather what is expedient." The same reasoning cannot make both the grateful and the ungrateful man; as their works are diverse, so their aims are diverse from one another. The one is ungrateful, although he ought not to be, because it is expedient; the other is grateful, although it is not expedient, because he ought to be. 25.1 It is our aim to live according to the nature of things and to follow the example of the gods. But the gods, whatever they do, what do they pursue in it beyond the very reason of doing? Unless perhaps you think that they reap the fruit of their works from the smoke of entrails and the odor of incense! 25.2 See how great things they daily set in motion, how great things they distribute; with what fruits they fill the lands, with what timely winds, bearing to every coast, they stir the seas, with what rains, suddenly cast down, they soften the soil and renew the dry veins of the springs and refresh them with nourishment poured in through hidden ways. All these things they do without reward, without any advantage coming to themselves. 25.3 Let our reason too, if it does not stray from its pattern, keep this rule, that it should not come hired to honorable deeds. Let it shame any man that a benefit be venal: we have gods that are free of charge! 26.1 "If you imitate the gods," says he, "give benefits even to the ungrateful; for the sun rises even on the wicked, and the seas lie open even to pirates." At this point they ask whether a good man will give a benefit to an ungrateful man, knowing him to be ungrateful. Permit me to interpose a word, lest we be caught by an insidious question. 26.2 Take, according to the Stoic doctrine, two kinds of ungrateful men. The one is ungrateful because he is a fool; a fool is also wicked; because he is wicked, he lacks no vice: therefore he is also ungrateful. So we call all wicked men intemperate, avaricious, luxurious, malicious, not because all these are in each man great and notable vices, but because they can be; and they are, even if they lie hidden. The other is ungrateful in the common sense of the word, naturally inclined to this vice. 26.3 To that ungrateful man, who does not lack this fault any more than he lacks any other in this way, a good man will give a benefit; for he could give to no one, if he removed such men. To this ungrateful man, who is a defrauder of benefits and has fallen with his whole mind to this side, he will no more give a benefit than he would lend money to a bankrupt or commit a deposit to one who has already denied his trust to many. 27.1 A man is called timid because he is a fool: and this attends the wicked, whom undivided and universal vices surround; a man is called timid in the proper sense whose nature is afraid even of empty sounds. A fool has all vices, but is not by nature prone to all; one is inclined to avarice, another to luxury, another to insolence. 27.2 And so those err who ask the Stoics: "What then? Is Achilles timid? What then? Is Aristides, to whom justice gave his name, unjust? What then? Is Fabius too, who 'by delaying restored the state,' rash? What then? Does Decius fear death? Is Mucius a traitor? Is Camillus a deserter?" We do not say that all vices are in all men in the way that single ones stand out in certain men, but that the wicked and foolish man is empty of no vice; we do not even acquit the bold man of fear, nor even free the prodigal of avarice. 27.3 As a man has all the senses, yet not for that reason have all men sight like Lynceus, so he who is a fool has not all his vices so keen and active as certain men have certain ones. All vices are in all men, but not all stand out in each. Nature impels this man to avarice; this one is given over to wine, this one to lust, or, if not yet given over, so fashioned that his own character carries him toward it. And so, to return to my purpose, there is no wicked man who is not ungrateful: 27.4 for he has all the seeds of wickedness; yet he is properly called ungrateful who leans toward this vice. To this man, then, I shall not give a benefit. 27.5 As a man will take ill counsel for his daughter who has bestowed her on one who has insultingly and often divorced his wives, as he will be held a bad head of a house who has entrusted the care of his estate to one condemned in a suit for misconduct of business, as he will make a most insane will who has left as his son's guardian a despoiler of wards, so he will be said to give benefits most ill who chooses the ungrateful, on whom to bestow what is to perish. 28.1 "The gods too," says he, "bestow many things on the ungrateful." But those things they prepared for the good; yet they fall also to the wicked, because they cannot be separated. And it is better to be of use even to the wicked for the sake of the good than to fail the good for the sake of the wicked. Thus the things you mention, the day, the sun, the courses of winter and summer, and, in the middle, by the tempering of spring and autumn, the rains and the drinking of springs, the appointed blowing of the winds, they devised for the whole; they could not pick out individuals. 28.2 A king gives honors to the worthy, a largess even to the unworthy; the public corn both the thief and the perjurer and the adulterer receive, and, without any discrimination of character, whoever has been entered on the list; whatever else there is that is given as to a citizen, not as to a good man, the good and the wicked carry off alike. 28.3 God too has given certain gifts to the whole human race, from which no one is excluded. For it could not be that the wind should be favorable to good men, contrary to the wicked; but it was for the common good that the commerce of the sea should lie open and the kingdom of the human race be enlarged; nor could a law be laid down for the falling rains, that they should not flow off into the fields of the wicked and the dishonest. Certain things are set in the midst. 28.4 Cities are founded for the wicked as much as for the good; the monuments of genius, destined to reach even the unworthy, publication has made common; medicine shows its help even to the criminal; no one has suppressed the compositions of wholesome remedies, lest the unworthy should be healed. 28.5 In those things exact a censorship and an appraisal of persons which are given separately as to a worthy man, not in those which promiscuously admit the crowd. For there is much difference whether you do not exclude a man or you choose him. Justice is pronounced even for the thief; even murderers enjoy the peace; men recover their own who have seized another's; assassins and those who ply the sword at home the wall defends from the enemy; by the protection of the laws those are sheltered who have sinned most against them. 28.6 Certain things could not fall to the rest unless they were given to all; and so there is no reason for you to argue about those things to which we are publicly invited. That thing which, in my judgment, ought to come to someone I shall not give to the man whom I know to be ungrateful. 29.1 "Then," says he, "will you not give counsel to an ungrateful man when he deliberates, nor permit him to draw water, nor show the road to one who wanders? Or will you do these things indeed, but give nothing as a gift?" I shall distinguish this; at least I shall try to distinguish it. 29.2 A benefit is a useful service, but not every useful service is a benefit; for some are so trifling that they do not lay hold of the name of benefit. Two things must come together to make a benefit. First, the greatness of the thing; for some are below the measure of this name. Who has called a hunk of bread a benefit, or a coin of cast bronze, or the granted power of lighting a fire? And sometimes these things profit more than the greatest; yet their very cheapness, even when by the necessity of the moment they have been made necessary, takes from them their price. 29.3 Then this, which is most powerful, must be added: that I do it for the sake of him to whom I wish the benefit to come, and judge him worthy, and bestow it gladly, and reap joy from my gift; of which there is none in those things of which we were speaking; for we do not bestow them as on the worthy, but carelessly as small things, and we give them, not to the man, but to humanity. 30.1 Sometimes I would not deny that I shall give certain things even to the unworthy, in honor of others; just as, in the seeking of offices, men have preferred certain most base persons of noble birth to industrious but new men, not without reason. The memory of great virtues is sacred, and it is a joy that the good should be more, if the favor due to the good does not fall with them. What made the younger Cicero consul but his father? 30.2 What lately brought back Cinna to the consulship from the camp of the enemy, what Sextus Pompeius and the other Pompeii, but the greatness of one man, once so great that it raised high enough all his own even by his ruin? What lately made Fabius Persicus, whose very kiss even the shameless marked, a priest in more than one college, but Verrucosus and Allobrogicus and those three hundred who set one house against the enemy's onslaught for the commonwealth? 30.3 This we owe to the virtues, that we should cultivate them not only when present, but also when taken from our sight; just as they have brought it about that they should be of use not for one age, but should leave their benefits even after themselves, so we should be grateful for more than one age. This man begot great men: he is worthy of benefits, whatever he is; he gave us worthy men. 30.4 This man is sprung from excellent forefathers: whatever he is, let him lie hidden under the shade of his own. As squalid places are lighted by the reflection of the sun, so let the worthless gleam back by the light of their forefathers. 31.1 At this point I wish to make excuse for the gods to you, my Liberalis. For sometimes we are wont to say: "What did Providence mean, which set Arrhidaeus on a throne?" 31.2 Do you think this was given to him? It was given to his father and his brother. "Why did it set Gaius Caesar over the world, a man most greedy of human blood, which he ordered to flow in his sight no otherwise than if he were going to catch it with his mouth?" What then? Do you think this was given to him? It was given to his father Germanicus, to his grandfather and great-grandfather, and before these to other men no less illustrious, even if they passed their lives as private persons and the equals of others. What? 31.3 You, when you were making Mamercus Scaurus consul, did you not know that he caught the menstrual flow of his serving-maids with his mouth gaping wide? Did he himself dissemble it? Did he wish to seem clean? I shall report to you a saying of his against himself, which I remember was passed about and praised in his own presence. 31.4 To Annius Pollio, lying down, he had used an obscene word, saying that he would do that which he preferred rather to suffer; and when he had seen Pollio's brow drawn tighter: "Whatever evil," said he, "I have spoken, on me and on my own head!" This saying of his he himself used to tell. A man so openly obscene did you admit to the fasces and to the tribunal? 31.5 No doubt while you think of that old Scaurus, the chief of the senate, and bear it ill that his offspring is laid low. 32.1 It is likely that the gods do the same, treating some men more indulgently because of their parents and grandfathers, others because of the future excellence of their grandsons and great-grandsons and of a posterity far following; for the chain of their own work is known to them, and the knowledge of all things that are to pass through their hands is always plain to them; to us it comes up from the hidden, and what we think sudden comes to them foreseen and familiar. 32.2 "Let these be kings, because their ancestors were not, because they held justice and self-restraint for supreme power, because they dedicated, not the commonwealth to themselves, but themselves to the commonwealth. Let these reign, because some good man, their great-grandfather before them, bore a soul above fortune, who in civil strife, since it was so expedient for the commonwealth, chose rather to be conquered than to conquer; gratitude could not be returned to him over so long a span; in regard for him let this man preside over the people, not because he knows or is able, but because another deserved it for him. 32.3 This man is deformed of body, foul to look upon, and likely to disgrace his honors; now men will accuse me, will call me blind and rash, not knowing in what place I set the things that are owed to the highest and most exalted; but I know that I am giving this to one man, and paying to another a debt long since due. 32.4 Whence do these men know that ancestor of his, once most fugitive of glory that followed him, going to dangers with the same face with which others return from danger, never distinguishing his own good from the public? 'Where,' you ask, 'is that man, or who is he?' Whence do you know? With me are these accounts of debits and credits balanced; I know what I owe and to whom. To some I repay after a long day, to others in advance and as the occasion and the resources of my commonwealth have allowed." Therefore I shall sometimes give certain things to an ungrateful man, but not for his own sake. 33.1 "What? If," says he, "you do not know whether he is ungrateful or grateful, will you wait until you know, or will you not lose the time for giving the benefit? To wait is long (for, as Plato says, the conjecture of the human mind is difficult), not to wait is rash." 33.2 To this man we shall answer that we never wait for the most certain comprehension of things, since the exploration of truth is on a steep ascent, but we go where the likeness of truth leads. By this road every duty proceeds. So we sow, so we sail, so we go to war, so we marry wives, so we rear children; since the outcome of all these is uncertain, we approach those things of which we have believed that we may rightly hope well. For who promises a harvest to the sower, a harbor to the sailor, victory to the soldier, a chaste wife to the husband, dutiful children to the father? We follow where reason, not where truth, has drawn us. 33.3 Wait, that you may do nothing save what is going to turn out well, and may know nothing save when the truth is ascertained: life comes to a standstill, all action abandoned. Since things likely to be true, not true things, impel me to this or that, I shall give a benefit to the man whom it will be likely to be true is grateful. 34.1 "Many things," says he, "will intervene, on account of which a bad man may steal in as a good one, and a good man displease as a bad one; for deceptive are the appearances of things, which we have trusted." Who denies it? But I find nothing else by which I may govern my thought. By these footsteps must truth be followed by me; I have nothing surer; these I shall take pains to appraise as carefully as I can, nor shall I assent to them too quickly. 34.2 For so in battle it can happen that my hand directs my weapon against a comrade, deceived by some error, and that I spare an enemy as my own; but this will both happen rarely and not by my fault, whose purpose is to strike the enemy, to defend the citizen. If I shall know him to be ungrateful, I shall not give a benefit. But he has crept in, but he has imposed on me: there is here no fault of the giver, because I gave as to a grateful man. 34.3 "If you have promised," says he, "that you will give a benefit, and afterward learn that he is ungrateful, will you give it or not? If you do so knowingly, you sin, for you give to one to whom you ought not to give; if you refuse, in this way too you sin: you do not give to the one to whom you promised. Here your conscience falters, and that proud promise that the wise man never repents of his deed nor ever amends what he has done nor changes his resolve." 34.4 The wise man does not change his resolve, while all those things remain which were present when he took it; therefore repentance never comes upon him, because nothing better could have been done at that time than what was done, nothing better decided than was decided; but he comes to all things with a reservation: "If nothing shall fall out to hinder it." Therefore we say that all things succeed for him and that nothing happens against his expectation, because he presumes in his mind that something may intervene which prevents what was destined. 34.5 It is the confidence of the imprudent to promise themselves fortune; the wise man thinks of both sides of it; he knows how much room there is for error, how uncertain human things are, how many things stand in the way of plans; with suspense he follows the doubtful and slippery lot of things, and weighs uncertain outcomes against certain plans. But the reservation, without which he destines nothing, enters upon nothing, here too protects him. 35.1 I promised a benefit, unless something should fall out for which I ought not to give it. For what if my country bids me give to herself what I had promised to him? If a law shall be passed that no one do that which I had promised I would do for my friend? I promised you my daughter in marriage; afterward you proved to be a foreigner; I have no right of intermarriage with an alien; the same thing defends me which forbids me. 35.2 Then shall I break faith, then shall I hear the charge of inconstancy, if, when all things are the same as they were while I promised, I do not render the promise; otherwise, whatever is changed makes me free to take counsel anew and frees me from my faith. I promised my advocacy: afterward it appeared that through that cause a prejudgment was being sought against my own father; I promised that I would go abroad: but it is announced that the road is infested with robberies; I was about to come to the spot: but a sick son, a wife in childbed, holds me back. 35.3 All things ought to be the same as they were when I promised, that you may hold me to a promiser's faith; but what greater change can there be than if I have found you out a bad man and ungrateful? What I gave as to a worthy man I shall refuse to the unworthy, and I shall have, moreover, a reason for my displeasure, since I was deceived. 36.1 Yet I shall consider how great the matter is of which we treat; the size of the thing promised will give me counsel. If it is small, I shall give it, not because you are worthy, but because I promised, nor shall I give it as a gift, but I shall redeem my words and pull my own ear. By the loss I shall chastise the rashness of the promiser: "See, that it may pain you, that hereafter you may speak more advisedly!" As we are wont to say, I shall pay a fine for my tongue. 36.2 If it is greater, I shall not allow it to happen, as Maecenas says, that I be scolded to the tune of ten million sesterces. For I shall compare the two with each other. There is something in persevering in what you have promised; there is again much in not giving a benefit to one unworthy; yet how great is this? If it is slight, let us shut our eyes to it; but if it is going to be either a great loss or a great shame to me, I had rather make excuse once why I have refused than always why I have given. The whole matter, I say, lies in this, at how much the words of my promise are valued. 36.3 Not only shall I keep back what I rashly promised, but I shall reclaim what I gave wrongly; he is mad who keeps faith with error. 37.1 Philip, king of the Macedonians, had a soldier brave of hand, whose useful service he had proved in many campaigns, and from time to time he had given him something of the spoil for his valor's sake, and was kindling the man, whose soul was for sale, by frequent bounties. This man, shipwrecked, was cast up onto the lands of a certain Macedonian; when this was announced, the man ran up, gathered up his breath, carried him to his own villa, gave up to him his own little bed, and revived him, afflicted and half dead, for thirty days tended him at his own expense, restored him, and furnished him with money for the journey, as the soldier kept saying: "I shall return you gratitude, if only it falls to me to see my commander." 37.2 He told Philip of his shipwreck, but said nothing of the help, and straightway asked that the king give him the estates of a certain man. That certain man was his host, the very one by whom he had been received, by whom he had been healed. Many things, meanwhile, kings give, especially in war, with their eyes covered. "One just man does not suffice against so many armed desires, no one can at the same time play both the good man and the good general. How shall so many thousands of insatiable men be satisfied? What will they have, if each man has his own?" 37.3 These things Philip said to himself, when he ordered him to be put in possession of the goods he asked. The man, driven from his goods, did not, like a peasant, bear the injury in silence, content that he himself had not been given away as well, but wrote Philip a tight and free letter; on receiving which the king so blazed up that he straightway ordered Pausanias to restore the goods to the former owner, and, for the rest, to brand the most wicked soldier, the most ungrateful host, the most greedy survivor of shipwreck, with marks witnessing him an ungrateful man. 37.4 Worthy indeed he was that those letters should be, not inscribed, but carved into him, who had cast his host, like to one naked and shipwrecked, onto that shore on which he himself had lain. But we shall see what measure of punishment should have been kept; at any rate that had to be taken away which he had seized by the utmost crime. And who would be moved by his punishment? He had committed that for which no merciful man could pity him. 38.1 Will Philip give it you, because he promised, even though he does not owe it, even though he is about to do an injury, even though he is about to do a crime, even though by one deed he is about to shut the shores against the shipwrecked? It is no fickleness to depart from an error recognized and condemned, and one must frankly confess: "I thought otherwise, I was deceived." This, on the other hand, is the perseverance of a proud folly: "What I have once said, of whatever sort it is, let it be fixed and ratified." 38.2 It is no shame to change one's resolve with the circumstance. Come, if Philip had left that man in possession of those shores which he had taken by shipwreck, would he not have forbidden all the wretched the use of water and fire? "Rather," says he, "carry those letters, to be inscribed on your eyes, about within the bounds of my kingdom upon your most hardened brow. Go, show how sacred a thing the table of hospitality is; offer on your face this decree to be read, by which it is provided that it shall not be a capital crime to help the wretched with a roof. This ordinance shall be more firmly ratified thus than if I had cut it into bronze." 39.1 "Why then," says he, "did your Zeno, when he had promised someone five hundred denarii as a loan and had himself found him too little fit, persevere, though his friends advised him not to give, in lending it, because he had promised?" 39.2 In the first place, there is one condition in a loan, another in a benefit. Money, even ill lent, can be exacted; and I can summon the debtor to the day, and, if he becomes bankrupt, I shall carry off my portion; a benefit both perishes wholly and at once. Besides, the one is the act of a bad man, the other of a bad head of a house. Then not even Zeno, if the sum had been greater, would have persevered in lending. There are five hundred denarii: it is what is wont to be said, "let him spend it in sickness"; it was worth so much not to recall his promise. 39.3 To dinner, because I promised, I shall go, even if it is cold; not indeed if snow falls. I shall rise for a betrothal, because I promised, though I have not digested; but not if I have a fever. I shall go down to give surety, because I promised; but not if you bid me give surety into the uncertain, if you bind me to the public treasury. There is, I say, a tacit reservation: "If I can, if I shall owe it, if these things shall be so." 39.4 Bring it about that the same state of things be present when you exact as was present when I promised; to fail you will be fickleness. If something new has intervened, why do you wonder that, the condition of the promiser being changed, his resolve has been changed? Render me all things the same, and I am the same. We promise to appear in court, yet against those who fail an action is not granted in all cases: superior force excuses one who fails. 40.1 Consider that the same answer is given to that question too, whether gratitude is to be returned in every way, and whether a benefit is at any rate to be repaid. I ought to furnish a grateful mind; but sometimes my own ill fortune does not suffer me to return gratitude, sometimes the good fortune of him to whom I owe it. 40.2 For what shall I repay to a king, what a poor man to a rich one, especially since certain men judge it an injury to receive a benefit, and load benefits one after another upon others? What more can I do in the person of these than to wish? For I ought not for this reason to reject a new benefit, because I have not yet repaid the former. I shall receive it as gladly as it is given, and I shall offer myself to my friend as material capable of exercising his goodness. He who is unwilling to receive new benefits is offended by those he has received. I do not return gratitude: 40.3 what of it? It is no delay on my part, if either occasion is wanting to me or means. He rendered me a service, doubtless when he had occasion, when he had the means. Is he a good man or a bad one? With a good man I have a good cause; with a bad one I do not plead. 40.4 I do not think this even is to be done, that we should hasten to return gratitude even to those unwilling to whom it is returned, and press it upon them as they draw back. It is not to return gratitude to repay against his will what you have received with his good will. Certain men, when some little gift has been sent them, straightway send back another unseasonably, and bear witness that they owe nothing; it is a kind of rejection to send another at once in return and to cancel a gift by a gift. 40.5 Sometimes too I shall not repay a benefit, though I can. When? If I am going to take more from myself than I shall bestow on him, if he is not going to feel any addition by the recovery of that by whose repayment much will be taken from me. He who hastens at any cost to repay has not the mind of a grateful man, but of a debtor; and, to be brief, he who is too eager to discharge his debt owes it unwillingly; he who owes it unwillingly is ungrateful.