Book 6

1.1 Certain questions, Liberalis, best of men, are pursued only for the exercise of the wit and lie always outside life; certain others both give entertainment while they are pursued and are useful when answered. I shall furnish you the abundance of all; do you, however it shall seem good to you, either bid them be carried through, or bring them in to fill out the order of the games. Nay, even by these, if you bid them depart at once, something will have been accomplished; for even what it is superfluous to learn, it profits to know. From your face, therefore, I shall hang; as it shall advise me, I shall detain some things longer, and drive others off headlong. 2.1 It has been asked whether a benefit can be snatched away. Some deny that it can; for it is not a thing, but an action. As a gift is one thing, the giving itself another, as he who sails is one thing, the sailing another, and, although a man be sick in his disease, yet the sick man and the disease are not the same, so the benefit itself is one thing, and that which comes to each one of us by the benefit another. The former is incorporeal, is not made void; 2.2 but its material is tossed this way and that and changes its owner. And so, when you snatch it away, the very nature of things cannot recall what it has given. It breaks off its benefits, it does not annul them: he who dies has yet lived; he who has lost his eyes has yet seen. The things that have come to us can be made not to be; they cannot be made not to have been; and a part of the benefit, and indeed the surest, is that which has been. 2.3 Sometimes we are barred from the longer use of a benefit, but the benefit itself is not erased. Though nature summon all her powers to this, she is not permitted to drive herself backward. A house can be snatched away, and money and a slave and whatever it is on which the name of benefit has rested; but the benefit itself is stable and unmoved; no force will bring it to pass that this man did not give, that that man did not receive. 3.1 Excellently, it seems to me, does Marcus Antonius speak in the poet Rabirius, when he sees his fortune passing over to another and nothing left him save the right of death, and that too if he seize it quickly, crying out: "This I have, whatever I have given." Oh, how much he could have had, if he had wished! These are the sure riches, destined to abide in one place amid every fickleness of the human lot; which, the greater they have been, the less ill will they will draw. Why do you spare them as though they were your own? You are but a steward. 3.2 All those things which make you puffed up and exalted above human affairs, which compel you to forget your own frailty, which you guard with iron bars under arms, which you defend with your own blood, things snatched from another's blood, for the sake of which you launch fleets to stain the seas, for the sake of which you batter cities, not knowing how many weapons fortune is preparing against your back, for the sake of which, the bonds of kinship, of friendship, of partnership so often broken, the globe of the earth has been crushed between two contenders, these are not yours. They are in the keeping of a deposit, already, at any moment, looking to another owner; either an enemy will seize them, or a successor with the spirit of an enemy. 3.3 Do you ask how you may make those things your own? By giving them as gifts. Take counsel, therefore, for your possessions, and prepare for yourself a sure and impregnable possession of them, about to make them not only safer but more honorable. 3.4 That which you look up to, by which you think yourself rich and powerful, so long as you possess it, lies under a sordid name. It is a house, it is a slave, it is money; when you have given it away, it is a benefit. 4.1 "You allow," says he, "that we sometimes do not owe a benefit to him from whom we received it; therefore it has been snatched away." There are many reasons why we cease to owe a benefit, not because it has been taken away, but because it has been spoiled. Someone defended me on a charge, but did violence by force to my wife in adultery; he has not taken away the benefit, but by setting against it an equal injury he has freed me from the debt, and, if he has harmed me more than he had before profited me, not only is the gratitude extinguished, but liberty arises to avenge and to complain, when in the comparison the injury has outweighed the benefit; thus the benefit is not taken away, but conquered. What? 4.2 Are not some fathers so harsh and so wicked that to turn away from them and renounce them is right and lawful? Have they then taken away what they had given? By no means; but the impiety of the times that followed has destroyed the commendation of all the former service. The benefit is not taken away, but the gratitude due the benefit, and it is brought to pass, not that I should not have it, but that I should not owe it. As though someone had lent me money, but burned down my house. The loan is balanced by the loss; I have not repaid him, yet I do not owe. 4.3 In the same way this man too, who did something kindly toward me, something liberally, but afterward many things proudly, insultingly, cruelly, has set me in such a place that I am as free toward him as if I had received nothing; he has done violence to his own benefits. 4.4 A man does not hold his tenant, though the lease remains, who has trampled down his crop, who has cut down his orchard, not because he has received what he had bargained for, but because he has brought it about that he should not receive it. So a creditor is often condemned at the suit of his own debtor, when from another cause he has taken away more than he asks from the loan. 4.5 Not only between creditor and debtor does a judge sit who may say: "You lent money. What then? You drove off cattle, you killed his slave, you possess silver which you had not bought; appraisal being made, depart as debtor, who had come as creditor"; between benefits too and injuries the account is balanced. 4.6 Often, I say, a benefit abides and yet is not owed; if repentance has followed the giver, if he has called himself wretched for having given, if, in giving, he sighed, drew down his face, believed that he was losing, not bestowing, if he gave for his own sake or at least not for mine, if he has not ceased to insult, to boast, everywhere to vaunt himself and to make his gift bitter, the benefit abides, although it is not owed, just as certain debts, on which the creditor's right is not pronounced, are owed, but are not exacted. 5.1 You have given a benefit, you have afterward done an injury; both gratitude was owed for the benefit and vengeance for the injury; and neither do I owe him gratitude nor he me punishment: the one is acquitted by the other. When we say: 5.2 "I have repaid him the benefit," we do not say that we have returned that very thing which we had received, but something else in its place. For to repay is to give a thing for a thing; how should it not? Since every payment renders, not the same, but just as much. For we are said to have repaid money, although we have counted out gold for silver, although no coins have passed, but by an assignment and by words the payment has been completed. 5.3 You seem to me to say: "You waste your labor; for what does it bear upon, that I should know whether that abides which is not owed? Those are the keen trifles of the jurisconsults, who deny that an inheritance can be acquired by usage, but only the things that are in the inheritance, as though an inheritance were anything else than the things that are in the inheritance. 5.4 Rather distinguish for me this, which may bear upon the matter: when the same man has given me a benefit and afterward done me an injury, whether I ought both to repay him the benefit and nonetheless avenge myself on him, and, as it were, answer separately on two accounts, or set the one against the other and have no further trouble, so that the benefit be canceled by the injury, the injury by the benefit. For this I see done in our courts; what the law is in your school, you may know. 5.5 The actions are kept separate, nor is the formula confused between what we sue for and what is sued for against us. If a man has deposited money with me, and the same afterward has committed a theft against me, I shall both bring an action against him for theft and he against me for the deposit." 6.1 The examples you have set forth, my Liberalis, are contained by fixed laws, which one must needs follow. Law is not mingled with law, each goes its own way. A deposit has its own action, as much, by Hercules, as theft. A benefit is subject to no law, it uses me as its arbiter; I am permitted to compare between themselves how much each man has profited me or how much he has harmed me, and then to pronounce whether more is owed to me or I owe. 6.2 In those cases nothing is in our power, one must go where one is led; in a benefit the whole power is mine, I judge. And so I do not keep them separate nor part them, but I send injuries and benefits to the same judge. Otherwise you bid me at the same time both love and hate and complain and give thanks, which nature does not admit. Rather, a comparison being made between benefit and injury, I shall see whether something is even still owed to me. 6.3 As, if a man imprints other lines above our writings, he does not take away the former letters, but hides them, so an injury supervening does not suffer the benefit to appear. 7.1 Your face, to which I have handed myself over to be governed, gathers wrinkles and draws down its brow, as though I were going too far afield. You seem to me to say: "Whither do you stray so far to the right? Direct your course hither, love the shore." I cannot do more. And so, if you think enough has been done for this, let us pass to that, whether something is owed to him who has profited us against his will. This I could have said more plainly, were not the proposition bound to be more confused, that the distinction following at once might show that both are in question, both whether we owe to him who profited us while he was unwilling, and whether to him who did so while he did not know. For if a man did some good thing under compulsion; 7.2 that he does not lay us under obligation is more manifest than that any words should be spent on it. And this question will be easily settled, and any like it that may be raised, if we turn our thought as often to this, that there is no benefit save what some thought first brings to us, and that a friendly and kindly one. 7.3 And so we do not give thanks to rivers, although either they bear great vessels and run with a broad and perennial channel to carry supplies up, or, full of fish and pleasant, flow between rich fields; nor does anyone judge that he owes a benefit to the Nile, any more than hatred, if it has overflowed too much and withdrawn slowly; nor does the wind give a benefit, though it breathe gentle and favorable, nor useful and wholesome food. For he who is to give me a benefit must not only profit, but wish to. Therefore nothing is owed to dumb animals either: and how many has the speed of a horse snatched from peril! Nor to trees: and how many laboring in the heat has the shade of branches covered! 7.4 But what difference is there whether he has profited me who does not know, or he who could not know, since to each the will was wanting? What difference is there whether you bid me owe a benefit to a ship or a vehicle or a spear, or to him who, equally with these, had no purpose of doing good, but profited by chance? 8.1 A man receives a benefit unknowing, no one from one unknowing. As chance things heal many, and yet are not for that remedies, and to have fallen into a river in great cold has been to someone the cause of health, as some have had a quartan fever shaken off by flogging, and a sudden fear, by turning the mind to another care, has beguiled the suspected hours, and yet none of these, even if it has been for health, is wholesome, so certain men profit us while they are unwilling, nay, because they are unwilling; yet not for that do we owe them a benefit, that fortune has turned their ruinous designs to the better. 8.2 Or do you think I owe anything to him whose hand, when it aimed at me, struck my enemy, who would have harmed me, had he not erred? Often a witness, while he openly perjures himself, has destroyed credit even for true witnesses, and rendered a defendant, as though encompassed by a faction, an object of pity. 8.3 Some men the very power that pressed them has rescued, and judges have been unwilling to condemn for influence the man whom they were going to condemn on his cause. Yet these did not give a benefit to the defendant, although they profited him, because it is asked whither the weapon was sent, not whither it came, and the will, not the outcome, distinguishes a benefit from an injury. 8.4 My adversary, while he says contrary things and offends the judge by his pride and rashly lets the matter down upon a single witness, has raised up my cause; I do not ask whether he erred in my favor: he wished against me. 9.1 Surely, that I may be grateful, I ought to wish to do the same thing which he ought to have done to give a benefit. And what is more unjust than a man who hates him by whom in a crowd he has been trodden on or splashed or pushed where he would not? And yet what else is there to exempt him from complaint, since there is an injury in the matter, save that he did not know what he was doing? 9.2 The same thing brings it about that this man did not give a benefit, that that man did not do an injury; both a friend and a foe the will makes. How many has sickness snatched from military service! Some, that they might not run to the ruin of their house, an enemy has held by a bond to appear in court; that they might not fall into the hands of pirates, some have gained their end by shipwreck; nor yet do we owe these a benefit, because the chance is outside the sense of duty, nor to the enemy whose lawsuit saved us, while it vexes and detains. 9.3 There is no benefit save what proceeds from a good will, save what he who gave it acknowledges. Someone profited me while he did not know: I owe him nothing. He profited me when he wished to harm: I shall imitate him. 10.1 Let us return to that first man. That I may return gratitude, do you wish me to do something? He himself, to give me a benefit, did nothing! That we may pass to the second, do you wish me to return gratitude to this man, so that, what I received from one unwilling, I willingly repay? For what shall I say of the third, who slipped from an injury into a benefit? 10.2 That I may owe you a benefit, it is too little that you wished to give; that I may not owe it, it is enough that you were unwilling. For the bare will does not make a benefit, but, as that would not be a benefit if fortune had been wanting to the best and fullest will, so equally that is not a benefit, unless the will went before the fortune. For you ought not merely to have profited me, that I should for this be bound to you, but to have profited me of set purpose. 11.1 Cleanthes uses an example of this sort: "I sent two slaves," says he, "to seek and fetch Plato from the Academy. The one searched through the whole portico, ran over the other places too in which he hoped he could be found, and came home no less weary than baffled; 11.2 the other sat down by a mountebank close at hand, and, while, a vagrant and a stray, he herds and plays with the household slaves, found Plato passing by, whom he had not sought. That slave," says he, "we shall praise, who, so far as in him lay, did what he was bidden; this luckily idle one we shall chastise." 11.3 It is the will which sets duty among us; see what its condition is, that it should bind me to a debt. It is too little for it to will, unless it has profited; too little to have profited, unless it willed. For suppose that someone wished to give and did not give; I have his mind indeed, but I have not the benefit, which both the thing and the mind complete. 11.4 As to him who wished indeed to lend me money, but did not give it, I owe nothing, so to him who wished to give me a benefit but could not, I shall indeed be a friend, but not laid under obligation; and I shall wish to render him something (for he too wished it to me), but, if, enjoying a kinder fortune, I shall have rendered it, I shall have given a benefit, not returned gratitude. He will owe me gratitude; here will be the beginning, it will be reckoned from me. 12.1 I understand now what you wish to ask; you need not say; your face speaks. "If someone," you say, "has profited us for his own sake, is anything owed to him? For this I often hear you complaining of, that certain men render themselves a service and charge it to others' account." I shall tell you, my Liberalis; but first I shall divide this little question and separate the just from the unjust. 12.2 For there is much difference whether a man gives us a benefit for his own sake or also for his own. He who looks wholly to himself and profits us because he cannot otherwise profit himself is to me in the place of the man who provides winter and summer fodder for his cattle; in the place of the man who feeds his captives that they may sell the better, and fattens and rubs down oxen to make them fat; in the place of the trainer who exercises and dresses his troop with the greatest care. Much, as Cleanthes says, does trade differ from a benefit. 13.1 On the other hand, I am not so unjust as to owe nothing to him who, while he was useful to me, was so also to himself; for I do not require that he take thought for me without regard to himself, nay, I even wish that the benefit given me may have profited the giver even more, provided only that he who gave it, looking to two, gave it and divided it between me and himself. 13.2 Granted that he himself possesses the greater part of it, if only he has admitted me into partnership, if he has thought of two, I am ungrateful, not only unjust, unless I rejoice that this has profited him which profited me. It is the height of malignity not to call a thing a benefit unless it has affected the giver with some loss. 13.3 To that other man, who gives a benefit for his own sake, I shall answer: "Why, by your reasoning, do you say that you have profited me rather than I you?" "Suppose," says he, "that I cannot become a magistrate otherwise than if I shall have ransomed ten captured citizens out of a great number of captives; will you owe me nothing, when I shall have freed you from slavery and chains? And yet I shall do it for my own sake." Against this I answer: "Something there you do for your own sake, something for mine: 13.4 for your own, that you ransom; for mine, that you ransom me; for it is enough for you, to your advantage, to have ransomed any persons whatever. And so I owe, not because you ransom me, but because you choose me; for you could have attained by the ransom of another the same thing that you attain by mine. You share the advantage of the matter with me, and you receive me into a benefit that is to profit two. You prefer me to others; this whole thing you do for my sake. 13.5 And so, if the ransom of ten captives were going to make you praetor, but we were only ten captives, no one of us would owe you anything, because you would have nothing to charge to anyone's account, set apart from your own advantage. I am no envious interpreter of a benefit, nor do I require that it be given to me alone, but to me as well." 14.1 "What then?" says he; "if I had ordered your names to be cast into the lot, and your name had come out among those to be ransomed, would you owe me nothing?" 14.2 Nay, I should owe, but little; what this is, I shall tell. Something there you do for my sake, that you admit me to the chance of ransom; that my name comes out, I owe to the lot; that it could come out, to you. You gave me access to your benefit, the greater part of which I owe to fortune, but this very thing to you, that I could owe it to fortune. 14.3 Those I shall wholly pass by whose benefit is hireling, who, in giving, reckon, not to whom, but at how much they are going to give, which is wholly turned in upon itself. A man sells me grain; I cannot live unless I buy it; but I do not owe him my life, because I bought it. 14.4 Nor do I weigh how necessary that was without which I should not have lived, but how thankless, that I should not have had it unless I had bought it, in carrying which the merchant did not think how much aid he was going to bring me, but how much gain to himself. What I bought, I do not owe. 15.1 "In that way," says he, "you say that you owe nothing to a physician either beyond his little fee, nor to a teacher, because you have counted out something. And yet for all these among us there is great affection, great reverence." Against this it is answered that certain things are worth more than they are bought for. 15.2 You buy of a physician a thing beyond appraisal, life and good health; of a teacher of the good arts, liberal studies and the cultivation of the mind; and so to these is paid, not the price of the thing, but of their labor, that they serve us, that, called away from their own affairs, they have leisure for us; they take a fee, not for their merit, but for their occupation. 15.3 Yet another thing, truer, can be said, which I shall presently set down, if first I show how that may be refuted. "Certain things," says he, "are worth more than they were sold for, and for this you owe me something extra for them, although they were bought." 15.4 First, what does it matter how much they are worth, when on the price it has been agreed between buyer and seller? Then I did not buy that at its own price, but at yours. "It is worth more," you say, "than it was sold for"; but it could not be sold for more. But the price of each thing is according to the time; when you have praised them well, they are worth so much, for which they could not be sold dearer; therefore he owes the seller nothing who has bought well. 15.5 Then, even if those things are worth more, yet there is no gift of yours therein, since they are appraised, not from their use or effect, but from custom and the market price. 15.6 What price do you set on the man who crosses the seas and, through the midst of the waves, when the land has receded from sight, cuts a sure path, and, foreseeing coming storms, when all are secure, suddenly bids the sails be furled, the tackle let down, and stands ready against the onset and the sudden assault of the gale? Yet for so great a service the freight pays the reward! 15.7 At how much do you reckon, in a wilderness, a lodging; in the rain, a roof; in the cold, a bath or a fire? I know, nevertheless, at how much I shall enter an inn to obtain these things! How much does he render us who shores up a tottering house and, with incredible art, holds suspended a tenement gaping with cracks from its very foundation! Yet at a fixed and slight price the propping is hired. 15.8 A wall renders us safe from enemies and from sudden incursions of robbers; yet it is known, when a workman is about to raise those towers as bulwarks for the public security, how much he earns by the day. 16.1 It would be endless, if I should hunt out more widely the examples by which it may appear that great things cost little. What then? Why do I owe something more to a physician and a teacher, and not discharge my debt to them with a fee? Because from physician and teacher they pass over into friends, and lay us under obligation, not by the art which they sell, but by a kindly and familiar good will. 16.2 And so to a physician, if he does no more than touch my hand and sets me among those whom he walks round, prescribing without any feeling what is to be done or avoided, I owe nothing more, because he sees me, not as a friend, but as a commander. 16.3 Neither have I cause to revere a teacher, if he held me in the herd of his pupils, if he did not think me worthy of his own and peculiar care, if he never directed his mind upon me, and, when he poured out into the midst what he knew, I did not learn but caught it up. What is it, then, for which we owe much to these? 16.4 Not because what they sold is worth more than we bought, but because they rendered something to ourselves. That physician weighed more anxiously than was necessary for a physician; he feared for me, not for the fame of his art; he was not content to point out remedies: he also applied them; he sat among the anxious, he came at the suspected times; no service was to him a burden, none a loathing; 16.5 he heard my groans not unmoved; in the throng of his many callers I was to him the chief care; he had leisure for others only so far as my health permitted: to this man I am bound, not as to a physician, but as to a friend. 16.6 That other again, in teaching, bore both toil and weariness; besides those things which are said in common by teachers, he instilled and handed on some things, by encouraging he raised up a good disposition, now by praises he gave heart, now by admonitions he shook off sloth; 16.7 then a talent lying hid and lazy he drew out, laying his hand, so to speak, upon it; nor did he grudgingly dispense what he knew, that he might be the longer necessary, but desired, if he could, to pour over the whole: I am ungrateful, unless I love him among my most welcome ties. 17.1 To the dealers in the most sordid crafts too we have added something above the appointed sum, if their work has seemed to us more zealous; and to a pilot and a workman of the cheapest wares and one who hires out his hands by the day we have sprinkled a gratuity. But in the best arts, which either preserve or adorn life, he who thinks he owes nothing more than he bargained is ungrateful. 17.2 Add, that the handing on of such studies mingles minds; when this has been done, to physician as to teacher the price of his labor is paid, that of the mind is owed. 18.1 When Plato had crossed a river by boat and the ferryman had exacted nothing of him, believing this to be done in his honor, he said that the ferryman had a service laid up with Plato; then a little after, when he carried over one man and another free of charge with the same diligence, he said that the service was no longer laid up with Plato for him. 18.2 For that I may owe you something for what you render, you ought not merely to render it to me, but as to me; you cannot for that reason dun anyone, because you scatter it among the people. What then? Will nothing be owed you for this? As from one man, nothing; with all I shall pay what with all I owe. 19.1 "Do you deny," says he, "that he gives any benefit who has carried me free of charge by boat across the river Po?" I do deny it. He does some good, he gives no benefit; for he does it either for his own sake or at any rate not for mine; in short, not even he himself judges that he gives me a benefit, but he renders it either to the commonwealth or to the neighborhood or to his own ambition, and for this he expects some other advantage than what he is to receive from individuals. "What then?" 19.2 says he, "if a prince shall give the citizenship to all the Gauls, immunity to the Spaniards, will individuals owe nothing on this account?" Why should they not owe? But they will owe, not as a benefit proper to themselves, but as a part of a public one. "He had," says he, "no thought of me at that time at which he profited the whole; 19.3 he did not wish to give me the citizenship in particular nor direct his mind upon me; so why should I owe to him who did not single me out for himself, when he was going to do what he did?" 19.4 In the first place, when he thought to profit all the Gauls, he thought to profit me too; for I was a Gaul, and, even if not by my own, yet by a public mark, he comprehended me. Then I too shall owe him, not as a proper, but as a common gift; I, one of the people, shall pay, not as for myself, but contribute as for my country. 19.5 If anyone lends money to my country, I shall not call myself his debtor nor profess this debt, either as a candidate or as a defendant; yet toward the discharging of it I shall give my portion. So of that gift which is given to all I deny that I am the debtor, because to me indeed he gave it, but not for my sake, and to me indeed, but not knowing whether he gave to me; nevertheless I shall know that something is to be paid by me, because it has come to me too by a long circuit. It must have been done for my sake, to lay me under obligation. 20.1 "In that way," says he, "you owe nothing to the moon or the sun; for they are not moved for your sake." But since they are moved for this, that they may preserve the whole, they are moved for me too; for I am a part of the whole. Add now, that our condition and theirs is unlike; 20.2 for he who profits me, in order that through me he may profit himself, has not given a benefit, because he has made me the instrument of his own advantage; but the sun and the moon, even if they profit us for their own sake, yet do not profit us for this, that through us they may profit themselves; for what can we bestow on them? 21.1 "I shall know," says he, "that the sun and the moon wish to profit us, if they could be unwilling; but they are not permitted not to be moved. In short, let them stand still and interrupt their work." See in how many ways this is refuted. He wishes no less who cannot be unwilling; 21.2 nay, it is the greatest proof of a firm will that it cannot even be changed. A good man cannot fail to do what he does; for he will not be good unless he does it; therefore neither does the good man give a benefit, because he does what he ought, but he cannot fail to do what he ought. Besides, there is much difference whether you say: 21.3 "He cannot fail to do this," because he is compelled, or: "He cannot be unwilling." For if it is necessary for him to do it, I owe the benefit, not to him, but to the compeller; if it is necessary for him to will it for this reason, because he has nothing better to will, he compels himself; so, what I should not owe him as to one compelled, I owe him as to one compelling. 21.4 "Let them cease to will," says he. At this point let that occur to you: Who is so mad as to deny that to be a will for which there is no danger of ceasing and of turning to the contrary, when, on the other side, no one ought so much to seem to will as he whose will is so sure that it is eternal? Or, if he too wills who can straightway be unwilling, will not he seem to will into whose nature it does not fall to be unwilling? 22.1 "Come now," says he, "if they can, let them resist." This is what you say: "Let all those bodies, set apart by vast intervals and disposed for the guardianship of the whole, desert their stations; by a sudden confusion of things let star rush upon star, and, the concord of things broken, let the divine bodies slide into ruin, and let the close-knit fabric of the swiftest speed forsake in the midst of its course the alternations promised for so many ages, and let those bodies which now go and return by alternate, fitting poises, tempering the world evenly, be burned up by a sudden conflagration, and out of so great a variety be dissolved and all go into one; let fire possess all things, which then a sluggish night seize upon, and let a deep abyss swallow up so many gods." Is it worth so much, that you may be confuted, that these things fall to ruin? They profit you even against your will, and those things go for your sake, even if there is for them another and prior cause. 23.1 Add now, that no external things compel the gods, but their own will is to them an eternal law. They have decreed what they would not change; and so they cannot seem about to do anything though they were unwilling, because, whatever they cannot leave off, they have willed to persevere in, nor does it ever repent the gods of their first resolve. 23.2 Without doubt they are not permitted to stand still and revolt to the contrary, but for no other reason than that their own force holds them in their purpose; nor do they abide through weakness, but because it pleases them not to stray from the best, and it is decreed to go thus. 23.3 But in that first constitution, when they were ordering the whole, they looked to our affairs too and took account of man; and so they cannot seem to run their course and unfold their work only for their own sake, because we too are a part of the work. We owe, therefore, both to the sun and to the moon and to the other heavenly bodies a benefit, because, even though there are nobler purposes for which they rise, yet they aid us, who are bound for greater things. 23.4 Add, that they aid us of set purpose, and therefore we are laid under obligation, because we did not fall into the benefit of those who knew not, but they knew that we, who receive these things, would receive them; and although they have a greater purpose and a greater fruit of their own action than to preserve mortal things, yet for our advantages too, from the beginning of things, the divine mind was sent ahead, and that order was given to the world that it might appear that care for us was not held among the last things. 23.5 We owe our parents devotion, and many had not come together in order to beget. The gods cannot seem to have been ignorant of what they were going to effect, when they at once provided for all nourishment and aids, nor through carelessness did they beget those for whom they were begetting so many things. Nature thought of us before she made us, nor are we so slight a work that we could have escaped her. 23.6 See how much she has permitted us, how the condition of human dominion is not confined within men; see how far it is allowed bodies to range, which she has not bounded by the limit of the lands, but has sent into every part of herself; see how much minds dare, how they alone either know the gods or seek them, and, with the mind raised on high, accompany things divine: you will know that man is no tumultuary and unconsidered work. 23.7 Among the greatest of her things nature has nothing in which she may more glory, or at least nothing for which to glory. How great a madness it is to make a controversy with the gods about their gift! How toward those will this man be grateful, to whom gratitude cannot be returned without expense, who denies that he has received from those from whom he is at this very moment receiving, who both will ever give and never receive? 23.8 But how great the perversity, to owe a man nothing for this reason, because he is kindly even to one who denies it, and to call the very continuance and seat of benefits a proof of one giving by necessity! "I do not wish it! Let him keep it for himself! Who asks him?" and add to these all the other utterances of a shameless mind. He deserves no less of you, whose liberality reaches even you while you deny it, and of whose benefits this very one is the greatest, that he is going to give even to one who complains. 24.1 Do you not see how parents force the tender infancy of their children to the endurance of wholesome things? Their crying and struggling bodies a careful tenderness fosters, and, lest an untimely liberty distort the limbs, they bind them straight, to come out straight, and presently inculcate liberal studies, fear being applied to the unwilling; at the last, a bold youth, if it follows too little, they bend, even by compulsion, to frugality, modesty, good morals. 24.2 To young men too, and now their own masters, if they reject remedies through fear or intemperance, force and severity are applied. And so the greatest of benefits are those which we have received from our parents while we either did not know or did not wish. 25.1 To these ungrateful men, who repudiate benefits, not because they are unwilling, but lest they should owe, similar, on the opposite side, are the over-grateful, who are wont to pray for some misfortune to those to whom they are bound, some adversity, in which they may prove their feeling mindful of the benefit received. 25.2 Whether they do this rightly and with a dutiful will is asked; whose mind is most like to those who burn with a perverse love, who wish their mistress exile, that they may accompany her, deserted and a fugitive, who wish her poverty, that they may give the more to one who longs, who wish her sickness, that they may sit by her, and, whatever an enemy might wish, the lovers vow. And so the issue of hatred and of insane love is nearly the same. 25.3 Some such thing befalls these men too, who wish their friends misfortunes which they may remove, and come to a benefit through an injury, when it were better even to do nothing than to seek a place for a service through crime. 25.4 What if a pilot should ask of the gods the most hostile tempests and storms, that his art might become more welcome through peril? What if a general should pray the gods that a great force of the enemy, poured about his camp, might fill the trenches by a sudden onset and tear up the rampart while the army trembled and plant their hostile standards in the very gates, that with the greater glory he might succor things weary and overthrown? 25.5 All these lead their benefits in by a detestable road, who call the gods against the man whom they themselves are going to aid, and wish him laid low before he is raised. It is the inhuman nature of a perversely grateful mind to wish against him whom you cannot honorably fail. 26.1 "My vow does him no harm," says he, "because I wish at once both the peril and the remedy." This is to say that you sin not nothing, but less than if you wished the peril without the remedy. It is wickedness to drown that you may drag out, to overthrow that you may raise up, to shut in that you may let out. It is no benefit to put an end to an injury, nor was it ever a service to have taken away that which the very man who took it away had brought. 26.2 Do not wound me rather than heal me. You can win gratitude if, because I am wounded, you heal me, not if you wound me that I may need healing. A scar never pleased except by comparison with the wound, which we rejoice has so closed up that we would rather it had not been. If you wished this for one of whom you had no benefit, the vow was inhuman; how much more inhumanly do you wish it for one to whom you owe a benefit! 27.1 "At the same time," says he, "I pray that I may be able to bring him aid." First, that I may catch you in the very middle of your vow, you are already ungrateful; I do not yet hear what you wish to render him, I know what you wish him to suffer. You imprecate upon him anxiety and fear and some greater evil. You wish that he may need aid: this is against him; you wish that he may need your aid: this is for you. You do not wish to succor him, but to discharge your debt: he who hastens thus wishes to be discharged, not to discharge. 27.2 Thus, what alone in your vow could seem honorable, the very thing is base and ungrateful, to be unwilling to owe; for you wish, not that you should have the means of returning gratitude, but that he should have the necessity of imploring it. You make yourself the superior, and, which is impious, you send to your feet one who has deserved well. How much better to owe with an honorable will than to discharge the account by an evil reckoning! 27.3 If you denied what you had received, you would sin less; for he would lose nothing save what he had given. As it is, you wish him to be subjected to you, to be called down, by the loss of his goods and a change of his estate, to this, that he may lie below his own benefits. Shall I think you grateful? In the presence of him whom you wish to profit, make your vow! Do you call that a vow which can be divided between a grateful man and an enemy, which you would not doubt that an adversary and a foe had made, if the last words were left unsaid? 27.4 Enemies too have wished to take certain cities, that they might preserve them, and to conquer certain men, that they might pardon them; nor for that are the vows not hostile, in which the gentlest comes after the cruelty. 27.5 In short, of what sort do you judge those vows to be which no one will wish to succeed for you less than he for whom they are made? You deal most ill with him whom you wish to be harmed by the gods, to be succored by you, and unjustly with the very gods; for you lay upon them the harshest parts, on yourself the humane ones; that you may profit, the gods shall harm. 27.6 If you set on an accuser, whom you would afterward remove, if you entangled him in some lawsuit, which you would presently dissolve, no one would doubt of your crime. What difference is there whether this be attempted by fraud or by vow, save that you seek for him more powerful adversaries? There is no reason for you to say: "What injury, then, do I do him?" 27.7 Your vow is either superfluous or injurious, nay, injurious even if void. Whatever you do not effect is the gift of the god, but an injury whatever you wish. It is enough; we ought to be angry with you no otherwise than if you had succeeded. 28.1 "If vows," says he, "had availed, they would have availed for this too, that you should be safe." First, you wish me a sure peril under an uncertain aid. Then suppose both certain: that which harms is the first. 28.2 Besides, you know the condition of your vow, but the tempest has caught me in doubt of a harbor and of protection. How great a torment do you think it is, even if I shall receive aid, to have needed it? Even if I shall be saved, to have been in terror? Even if I shall be acquitted, to have pleaded my cause? The end of no fear is so welcome that a solid and unshaken security is not more welcome. 28.3 Wish that you may be able to repay me a benefit when there shall be need, not that there should be need. If what you wish were in your own power, you would yourself have done it. 29.1 How much more honorable is this vow: "I wish that he may be in that estate in which he ever distributes benefits, never needs them; that the material he uses so kindly, of bestowing and aiding, may follow him; that he may never have lack of benefits to give nor repentance of those given; that nature, of itself inclined to pity, humanity, clemency, may be roused and provoked by a throng of grateful men, whom he may both have and not be forced to make trial of; that he himself may be implacable to none, and there be none for him to appease; that fortune may persevere toward him with so even an indulgence that no one can be grateful to him save in his own conscience." 29.2 How much more just are these vows, which put you off to no occasion, but make you grateful at once! For what hinders the returning of gratitude in prosperity? How many things there are through which, whatever we owe, we can repay even to the fortunate! Faithful counsel, assiduous intercourse, courteous talk and pleasant without flattery, ears careful if he wish to deliberate, safe if to confide, the familiarity of intimate living. No one has prosperity placed so high that a friend is not the more wanting to him, because nothing is wanting. 30.1 That sad occasion is to be removed from every vow and driven far off. That you may be grateful, is there need of angry gods? Do you not perceive that you sin even in this, that it goes better with him toward whom you are ungrateful? Set before your mind the prison, chains, squalor, slavery, war, want; these are the occasions of your vow. If anyone has dealings with you, he is dismissed through these! 30.2 Why do you not rather wish him, to whom you owe most, to be powerful and blessed? For what, as I said, hinders you from returning gratitude even to men endowed with the highest felicity? Of which a full and varied material will meet you. What? Do you not know that a debt is paid even to the wealthy? 30.3 Nor will I distract you against your will. Granted that opulent felicity has shut out all things, I shall show you of what thing the lofty pinnacles labor in lack, what is wanting to those who possess all: namely, the man who shall tell them the truth and rescue a man, stupefied among liars and by the very habit of hearing soothing things in place of the right brought to ignorance of the truth, from the consent and concert of falsehoods. 30.4 Do you not see how, liberty extinguished and good faith bowed down into servile compliance, they are driven to the precipice? 30.5 While no one advises or dissuades from the conviction of his own mind, but there is a contest of flattery and one duty of all friends, one strife, who shall most charmingly deceive, they have been ignorant of their own strength, and, while they believe themselves as great as they hear, they have drawn on superfluous wars, destined to bring all things into peril, have broken a useful and necessary concord, and, following an anger which no one recalled, have drunk the blood of many, about at last to shed their own; 30.6 while they maintain things untried as sure, and think it no less base to be bent than to be conquered, and believe those things perpetual which, brought to the summit, most of all totter, they have shattered vast kingdoms above themselves and their own; nor have they understood that, on that stage gleaming with empty and quickly dissolving goods, they themselves ought to have looked for nothing but adversity from that very time at which they could hear nothing true. 31.1 When Xerxes declared war on Greece, there was no one who did not urge on his swollen mind, forgetful of how perishable were the things it trusted. One said that they would not bear the news of war, and at the first rumor of his coming would turn their backs; 31.2 another, that there was no doubt that by that mass not only could Greece be conquered, but be overwhelmed; that it was rather to be feared lest they should find the cities empty and deserted, and, the enemy having fled, vast solitudes be left, with nowhere for them to exercise such forces; 31.3 another, that the nature of things scarcely sufficed him, that the seas were too narrow for his fleets, the camps for his soldiers, the plains for deploying his cavalry, the sky scarcely wide enough for hurling weapons with his whole host. 31.4 When in this fashion many things were bandied from every side, which might rouse a man mad with too high an esteem of himself, Demaratus the Lacedaemonian alone said that that very multitude, in which he pleased himself, undisciplined and unwieldy, was to be feared by its leader; for it had not strength, but weight; that things beyond measure can never be governed, nor anything that cannot be governed endure long. 31.5 "On the very first mountain," said he, "the Lacedaemonians, thrown in your way, will give a proof of themselves. Those so many thousands of nations three hundred will delay; fixed firm in their tracks, they will guard with their arms the strait committed to them, will block it with their bodies; all Asia will not move them from their place; that so great threat of war and the onset of well-nigh the whole human race rushing on the fewest will stay. 31.6 When nature, with her laws changed, shall have carried you across, you will stick fast in the path, and, reckoning the future losses, when you have computed at how much the narrows of Thermopylae have cost you; you will know that you can be put to flight, when you know that you can be held back. 31.7 They will indeed give way to you in many places, like a torrent swept away, whose first force flows down with great terror; then here and there they will rise up and press you with your own forces. 31.8 It is true, what is said, that the array of war is greater than can be received by these regions which you have determined to assail, but this thing is against us. For this very reason Greece will conquer you, because she does not contain you; you cannot use the whole of yourself. 31.9 Besides, the one safety in affairs, you will not be able to meet the first assaults of things and bring aid to the failing, nor to prop and steady what is sliding; you will be conquered long before you feel that you are conquered. 31.10 But there is no reason for you to think that your army cannot be withstood for this, because its number is unknown even to its leader; nothing is so great that it cannot perish, for which a cause for its destruction is born, though all else be quiet, out of its very greatness." 31.11 The things which Demaratus had foretold came to pass. Three hundred bade the man who was driving on things divine and human and changing whatever had opposed him to stand still, and the Persian, laid low here and there throughout all Greece, understood how far a mob differs from an army. And so Xerxes, more wretched from shame than from loss, gave thanks to Demaratus, because he alone had told him the truth, and permitted him to ask what he wished. 31.12 He asked to enter Sardis, the greatest city of Asia, borne in a chariot and wearing his tiara upright on his head; this was granted only to kings. He had been worthy of the reward before he asked it; but how pitiable a nation, in which there was no one to tell the king the truth, save one who did not tell it to himself! 32.1 The deified Augustus relegated his daughter, unchaste beyond the reproach of unchastity, and made the scandals of the imperial house public: adulterers admitted by troops, the city ranged over in nocturnal revels, the very forum and the rostra, from which her father had brought forward the law on adulteries, pleasing to the daughter for her debaucheries, a daily concourse at the statue of Marsyas, since, turned from an adulteress into a harlot, she sought the right of every license under an unknown paramour. 32.2 These things, as much to be punished by the prince as to be kept silent, because the baseness of certain things falls back even upon the avenger, he, too little master of his anger, had made public. Then, when, time having intervened, shame had come into the place of anger, groaning that he had not pressed down in silence those things which he had so long not known, until it was base to speak of them, he often cried out: "None of these things would have befallen me, if either Agrippa or Maecenas had lived!" So hard is it, for one possessing so many thousands of men, to replace two. 32.3 Legions were cut to pieces and at once enrolled anew; a fleet was shattered and within a few days a new one sailed; the public works were ravaged by fire, and better ones rose in place of those consumed. For the whole of his life the place of Agrippa and Maecenas stood empty. What? Shall I think that men like them were lacking, to be taken up, or that it was his own fault, because he preferred to complain than to seek? 32.4 There is no reason for us to think that Agrippa and Maecenas were wont to tell him the truth; who, if they had lived, would have been among the dissemblers. It is the way of a royal disposition to praise things lost, to the reproach of things present, and to give the virtue of telling the truth to those from whom there is now no peril of hearing it. 33.1 But, to bring myself back to my purpose, you see how easy it is to return gratitude to the fortunate and those set in the highest of human wealth. Tell them, not what they wish to hear, but what they will always wish to have heard; let a true voice sometimes enter ears full of flatteries; give useful counsel. Do you ask what you can render the fortunate? 33.2 Bring it about that he does not trust his own felicity, that he may know it must be held by many and faithful hands. You will have conferred no little on him, if you shake out of him the foolish confidence in a power that will ever abide, and teach him that the things chance has given are unstable and flee with a greater speed than they come, and that men do not go back by those stages by which the summit was reached, but that often between the greatest fortune and the last there is no interval? 33.3 You do not know how great is the price of friendship, if you do not understand that you are going to give much to him to whom you have given a friend, a thing rare not only in households but in the ages, which is nowhere more lacking than where it is believed to abound. What? 33.4 Do you think those registers, which the memory or the hand of nomenclators scarcely contains, to be those of friends? Those are not friends who beat at the door in a great column, who are sorted into first and second admissions. 34.1 This is an old custom with kings and those who counterfeit kings, to sort out the people of their friends, and it is proper to pride to set a great value on the entrance and the touch of one's threshold, and to give it as an honor that you may sit nearer his door, that you may set foot first within the house, in which thereafter are many doors that shut out even those received. 34.2 Among us, first of all, Gaius Gracchus and presently Livius Drusus established the practice of separating their throng and receiving some in secret, others with many, others all together. And so these men had first friends, had second ones, never true ones. 34.3 Do you call him a friend whose greeting is appointed by rule? Or can the good faith of one lie open to you who enters not through doors grudgingly opened, but glides in? May that man arrive at the freedom of speaking out, whose common and public word, shared even with strangers, "Good morrow!" is not let forth save in its own order? 34.4 To whichever therefore of these you come, whose greeting shakes the city, know, even though you have noticed the streets beset by a vast crowd and the ways blocked by troops passing to and fro, that nonetheless you come to a place full of men, empty of friends. 34.5 A friend is sought in the heart, not in the hall; there he must be received, there retained, and stored away in the feelings. Teach this: you are grateful. 35.1 You think ill of yourself, if you are useless save to the afflicted, if in good fortune you are superfluous. As you bear yourself wisely both in doubtful and in adverse and in glad things, so that you handle the doubtful prudently, the adverse bravely, the glad with moderation, so in all things you can show yourself useful to a friend. His adversities you will neither forsake nor wish for; many things, even if you do not wish them, in so great a variety, will fall out to furnish you material for exercising your good faith. 35.2 As he who wishes someone riches in order that he himself may bear a part of them, although he seems to wish for him, looks to himself, so he who wishes a friend some necessity which he may dispel by his help and his good faith, which is the part of an ungrateful man, prefers himself to him, and esteems it worth so much that the other be wretched, that he himself may be grateful, for this very reason ungrateful; for he wishes to unburden himself and be freed of a heavy load. 35.3 There is much difference whether you hasten to return gratitude in order to repay the benefit, or in order not to owe it. He who wishes to repay will fit himself to the other's convenience and will wish a fitting time to come for him; he who wishes nothing else than to be himself discharged will desire to arrive at this by any means whatsoever, which is the part of the worst will. 35.4 "This haste," says he, "is of one too grateful!" I cannot express this more plainly than if I repeat what I said. You do not wish to repay the benefit you have received, but to escape it. You seem to say: "When shall I be rid of this? By whatever means I must labor not to be bound to this man." If you wished to pay him from his own, you would seem far from grateful. This which you wish is more unjust; for you curse him and with a dire imprecation devote his sacred head. 35.5 No one, as I think, would doubt of the savagery of your mind, if you openly imprecated upon him poverty, captivity, hunger, and fear; but what difference is there whether this be the voice of your vow or its force? For you wish some one of these. Go now and think this to be the part of a grateful man, which not even an ungrateful one would do, who only came, not all the way to hatred, but only to the denial of the benefit! 36.1 Who will call Aeneas dutiful, if he had wished his country to be taken, that he might snatch his father from captivity? Who will set forth the Sicilian youths as good examples to children, if they had wished that Aetna, burning beyond its wont, should hurl down an immense force of fires and be set ablaze, about to give them the occasion of showing their devotion by their parents being snatched from the midst of the conflagration? 36.2 Rome owes Scipio nothing, if he nursed the Punic war that he might end it; nothing to the Decii, that they saved their country by their death, if they had first wished that the utmost necessity of affairs should make a place for their most valiant self-devotion. It is the gravest infamy for a physician to drum up work; many, who had increased and inflamed diseases that they might heal them with the greater glory, have not been able to disperse them, or have conquered them only with great suffering to the wretched. 37.1 Callistratus, they say (so at least Hecaton is the authority), when he was going into the exile into which a state seditious and intemperately free had driven many along with him, when a certain man wished that the Athenians might have the necessity of restoring their exiles, abhorred such a return. 37.2 Our Rutilius more spiritedly, when a certain man was consoling him and saying that civil arms were at hand, that it would shortly come to pass that all the exiles should return: "What evil," said he, "have I done you, that you should wish me a worse return than my going forth? I would rather my country should blush at my exile than mourn at my return!" That is no exile of which no one is more ashamed than the condemned man himself. 37.3 As those preserved the duty of good citizens who were unwilling that their household gods should be restored to them by a common disaster, because it was better that two should be afflicted with an unjust evil than all with a public one, so he does not preserve the feeling of a grateful man who wishes one who has deserved well of him to be overwhelmed by difficulties which he himself may remove, because, even if he means well, he prays ill. It is not even a defense, much less a glory, to have put out a fire which you yourself had kindled. 38.1 In certain states an impious vow has held the place of a crime. At Athens, certainly, Demades condemned a man who sold the things necessary for funerals, when he had proved that he had wished for great gain, which could not fall to him without the death of many. Yet it is wont to be asked whether he was deservedly condemned. Perhaps he wished, not to sell to many, but to sell dear, that what he was going to sell might cost him little. 38.2 Since his trade consists of buying and selling, why do you drag his vow to one side only, when the gain is from both? Besides, you may condemn all who are in that trade; for all wish the same, that is, within themselves they wish it. You will condemn a great part of mankind; for to whom is there not gain from another's misfortune? 38.3 The soldier wishes for war, if for glory; the dearness of corn raises the farmer; the number of lawsuits stirs up the price of eloquence; a heavy year is in the physicians' profit; corrupted youth enriches the dealers in delicate wares; let no roofs be harmed by any tempest, by any fire: the workman's trade will lie idle. The vow of one man has been caught out; it is like that of all. 38.4 Or do you not think that Arruntius and Haterius and the rest who have professed the art of legacy-hunting have the same vows as undertakers and funeral-furnishers? Yet these do not know those whose deaths they wish for; these long for every most intimate friend, from whom, on account of friendship, there is the most hope, to die. By the others' loss no one lives; these every man who delays drains; they wish, therefore, not only to receive what they have earned by a base servitude, but also to be freed from a heavy tribute. 38.5 And so there is no doubt that these more truly wish what was condemned in the one man, men to whom whoever is going to profit by his death harms by living. Yet the vows of all these are as well known as they are unpunished. In short, let each man consult himself and return into the secret of his own breast and inspect what he has silently wished. How many vows there are which it is a shame to confess even to oneself! How few which we could make in the presence of a witness! 39.1 But not everything that is to be blamed is also to be condemned, as is this vow of a friend, which is in hand, who misuses a good will and falls into the very vice which he shuns; for, while he hastens to show a grateful mind, he is ungrateful. This he says: 39.2 "Let him fall back into my power, let him need my favor, let him not be able without me to be safe, honorable, secure, let him be so wretched that whatever is repaid him is in the place of a benefit." This, with the gods listening: "Let domestic snares encompass him, which I alone may be able to crush; let a powerful and grievous enemy press him, a hostile crowd and not unarmed; let a creditor urge him, an accuser." 40.1 See how fair you are! You would wish none of these things, if he had not given you a benefit. To say nothing of other and graver wrongs you commit, in returning the worst for the best, this at least you do amiss, that you do not wait for the fitting time of each thing, since he sins as much who does not follow as he who anticipates. As a benefit is not always to be received, so it is not at any cost to be repaid. 40.2 If you repaid me when I did not desire it, you would be ungrateful; how much more ungrateful are you, who compel me to desire it! Wait! Why are you unwilling that my gift abide with you? Why do you bear it ill that you are laid under obligation? Why do you hasten, as with a harsh moneylender, to seal an even account? Why do you seek a quarrel with me? Why do you set the gods upon me? How would you exact, who repay thus? 41.1 Before all things, therefore, Liberalis, let us learn this, to owe benefits securely and to watch for occasions of repaying them, not to make them with our own hand. Let us remember that this very craving of freeing ourselves at the first possible time is the part of the ungrateful; for no one gladly repays what he owes against his will, and what he does not wish to be with him he judges a burden, not a gift. 41.2 How much better and juster to have the services of friends ready at hand and to offer, not thrust them upon us, nor to judge ourselves in debt, since a benefit is a common bond and binds the two together! Say: "I will in no way hinder your gift from returning to you; I wish that you may receive it cheerfully. If necessity threatens either of us, and it is given by some fate that either you should be compelled to receive a benefit or I to accept a second one, let him give rather who is wont to. I am ready: 'There is no delay in Turnus'; I shall show this spirit as soon as the time comes; meanwhile the gods are witnesses." 42.1 I am wont, my Liberalis, to note this feeling in you, and as it were to lay my hand on you, fearing and seething, lest you should be too slow in any duty. Anxiety does not become a grateful mind; on the contrary, the utmost confidence in oneself and, from the consciousness of true love, all anxiety dismissed. It is as much a reproach to say "Take it back" as "You owe me." Let this be the first right of a benefit given, that he who gave it choose the time of receiving it back. "But I fear lest men speak the worse of me." He acts ill who is grateful to fame, not to conscience. You have two judges of this matter, the one whom you ought not to fear, and yourself, whom you cannot. "What then? If no occasion shall intervene, shall I always owe?" You shall owe; but you shall owe openly, but you shall owe gladly, but with great pleasure you shall gaze upon what is laid up with you. He repents of a benefit received who is vexed at one not yet repaid. Why should the man who seemed to you worthy that you should receive from him seem unworthy that you should long owe to him? 43.1 They are in great error who believe it the part of a vast mind to bestow, to give, to fill the lap and the house of many, since these things are sometimes done, not by a great mind, but by a great fortune; they do not know how much greater and more difficult it sometimes is to receive than to pour out. For, to take nothing from the other, since both, when done by virtue, are equal, it is of no less a mind to owe a benefit than to give it; and indeed the former is more laborious than the latter, by as much greater diligence as what is received is guarded than what is given. 43.2 And so we must not be in a flutter how quickly we may repay, nor run forth unseasonably, because he sins as much who in his own time fails to return gratitude as he who in another's hastens to. It is laid up with me for him; I fear neither in his name nor in mine. It is well secured for him; he cannot lose this benefit save with me, nay, not even with me. I have given him thanks, that is, I have repaid. 43.3 He who thinks too much of repaying a benefit thinks that the other thinks too much of receiving it. Let him show himself ready for either. If he wishes to receive the benefit back, let us return and repay it gladly; if he prefers that it be kept with us, why do we dig up his treasure? Why do we refuse the guardianship? He is worthy that he should be permitted whichever he will. As for opinion and fame, let us hold them in such a place that they ought, not to lead, but to follow.