Book 7

1.1 I wish you, my Liberalis, to be of good cheer: "Land is in our hands"; I shall not here hold you with a long song and by roundabout ways and lengthy preludes. The remaining matters this book brings together, and, the material being exhausted, I look about, not for what I am to say, but for what I have not said; yet you will take in good part whatever is left over there, since it has been left over for you. 1.2 If I had wished to flatter myself, the work ought to have grown little by little, and that part to have been reserved for the end which anyone, even when sated, would crave. But whatever was most necessary I heaped into the first place; now, if anything has escaped, I gather it up. Nor, by Hercules, if you ask me, do I think it much to the purpose, where the things have been said that govern morals, to follow out the rest, devised not for the cure of the mind, but for the exercise of the wit. 1.3 For Demetrius the Cynic, a man great in my judgment, even if he be compared with the greatest, was wont to say excellently this, that it profits more if you hold a few precepts of wisdom, but those ready at hand and in use, than if you have learned many indeed, but have them not within reach. 1.4 "As," said he, "he is a great wrestler, not who has learned thoroughly all the holds and grips, whose use against an adversary is rare, but who has exercised himself well and diligently in one or two and watches intent for their occasions (for it matters not how many he knows, if he knows enough for victory), so in this study many things delight, few conquer. 1.5 Though you know not what cause pours forth the ocean and recalls it, why every seventh year sets a mark upon a man's age, why the breadth of a portico does not keep its proportion for those looking from afar, but the farthest parts close into narrows and the intervals of the columns at last join, what it is that separates the conception of twins but joins their birth, whether one union is divided into two or they were conceived as often, why those born together have diverse fates and stand apart by the greatest spaces of fortune, between whose births there is the least interval: it will not much harm you to have passed over what it is neither permitted nor profitable to know. Truth, wrapped up, lies hidden in the deep. 1.6 Nor can we complain of the malignity of nature, because the finding of nothing is difficult save of that of which the one fruit, when found, is to have found it; whatever is to make us better and blessed she has set either in the open or close at hand. 1.7 If the mind has despised the things of chance, if it has raised itself above fears nor with greedy hope embraces the infinite, but has learned to seek riches from itself; if it has cast out the dread of gods and men and knows that not much is to be feared from man, nothing from god; if, a despiser of all those things by which life is tormented while it is adorned, it has been brought to this, that it is clear to it that death is the material of no evil, the end of many; if it has consecrated its mind to virtue and thinks level whithersoever she calls; if, a social animal and born for the common good, it regards the world as the one home of all, and has opened its conscience to the gods and ever lives as though in public, fearing itself more than others: that mind, withdrawn from the storms, has stood on solid and serene ground and has perfected a knowledge useful and necessary. The rest are the amusements of leisure; for it is permitted to a mind now drawn back into safety to run out to these things too, which bring to the wits cultivation, not strength." 2.1 These things our Demetrius bids us hold with both hands, as it were, with full confidence, these never to let go, nay, to fasten them and make them a part of ourselves, and by daily meditation to be brought to this, that wholesome counsels offer themselves of their own accord, and everywhere and at once are at hand when desired, and that without any delay there comes that distinction of the base and the honorable. 2.2 Let him know that there is no evil save what is base, no good save what is honorable. By this rule let him distribute the works of life; to this law let him both refer all things and judge most wretched of mortals, in whatever wealth they shall gleam, those given over to belly and to lust, and those whose mind grows torpid in idle leisure. Let him say to himself: "Pleasure is fragile, brief, exposed to disgust, the more greedily it is drunk the sooner falling into its contrary, of which one must straightway either repent or be ashamed, in which there is nothing magnificent or that befits the nature of a man next to the gods, a base thing, coming by the service of vile or shameful members, foul in its issue. 2.3 That is a pleasure worthy both of a human being and of a man, not to fill the body nor to gorge it nor to provoke desires, whose safest state is rest, but to be free from disturbance, both that which the ambition of men wrangling among themselves shakes, and that intolerable one which comes from on high, when the gods have been believed on the report of rumor and we have appraised them by our own vices." 2.4 This pleasure, even, fearless, never about to feel weariness of itself, that man enjoys whom we are at this moment shaping, skilled, so to speak, in things divine and human. He rejoices in the present, hangs not upon the future; for he has nothing firm who is inclined toward uncertain things. And so, exempted from great cares that wrench the mind, he hopes or craves nothing, nor sends himself into doubt, content with himself. 2.5 And, lest you think him content with little, all things are his, not as Alexander's were, to whom, although he had stood on the shore of the Red Sea, more was lacking than that by which he had come. Not even those things were his which he held or had conquered, while Onesicritus, sent ahead as a scout, wandered on the ocean and sought wars on an unknown sea. 2.6 Was it not plain enough that he was poor, who carried his arms beyond the bounds of nature, who flung himself, with blind greed, headlong into a deep unexplored and immense? What does it matter how many kingdoms he has snatched away, how many he has given, how much of the earth he weighs down with tribute? So much is lacking to him as he craves. 3.1 Nor was this the vice of Alexander only, whom a fortunate rashness drove along the footsteps of Liber and Hercules, but of all whom fortune has goaded by filling them. Run through Cyrus and Cambyses and the whole line of the Persian kingdom. Whom will you find for whom satiety set a bound to empire, who did not end his life in some thought of advancing further? Nor is this strange; whatever falls to greed is utterly swallowed and buried, nor does it matter how much you heap upon that which is insatiable. 3.2 The wise man alone is he whose all things are, and not to be guarded with difficulty. He has no envoys to be sent across the seas, nor camps to be measured out on hostile banks, no garrisons to be set in well-placed forts; he has no need of a legion nor of squadrons of cavalry. As the immortal gods rule their kingdom unarmed and have the guardianship of their affairs from on high and from tranquillity, so this man performs his duties, however widely they extend, without tumult, and, most powerful and best, looks down on the whole human race beneath him. You may laugh: 3.3 it is a thing of vast spirit, when you have ranged in mind over the East and the West, by which even the remote and the regions shut off by solitudes are penetrated, when you have beheld so many living things, so great an abundance of things which nature pours forth most bountifully, to send forth this voice of a god: "All these are mine!" So it comes that he craves nothing, because there is nothing outside the all. 4.1 "This very thing," you say, "I wished! I have you! I want to see how you may extricate yourself from these snares into which you have fallen of your own accord. Tell me. How can anyone give to the wise man, if all things are the wise man's? For that too, which one gives him, is his own. And so a benefit cannot be given to the wise man, to whom whatever is given is given out of his own; and yet you say that a gift can be given to the wise man. And know that I am asking the same about friends too. You say that all things are common to them; therefore no one can give anything to a friend; for he gives him what is common." 4.2 Nothing forbids a thing to be both the wise man's and also his who possesses it, to whom it has been given and assigned. By the civil law all things are the king's, and yet those things whose universal possession belongs to the king are parceled out among individual owners, and each several thing has its own possessor. And so we can give the king both a house and a slave and money, nor are we said to give him out of his own; for to the king belongs the power over all, to individuals the ownerships. 4.3 We speak of the territory of the Athenians or the Campanians, which then the neighbors mark off among themselves by private boundaries; and the whole field belongs at any rate to some commonwealth, then each part is reckoned to its own owner; and therefore we can give our fields to the commonwealth, although they are said to be its, because they are its in one way, mine in another. 4.4 Is there any doubt that a slave with his savings belongs to his master? Yet he gives his master a gift. For a slave does not for that reason have nothing, because he is not going to have it if his master is unwilling that he have it; nor is it for that reason no gift, when he gave it willing, because it could have been snatched away, even if he had been unwilling. 4.5 How shall we prove all things to be the wise man's? For now it is agreed between us two that all things are the wise man's; that which is in question must be gathered, namely, how the material of liberality remains over toward him whose all things we have granted to be. 4.6 All things are the father's which are in the hands of his children; yet who does not know that a son too gives something to his father? All things are the gods'; yet we have both set a gift before the gods and cast a coin to them. It is not for that reason not mine, what I have, if mine is yours; for the same thing can be both mine and yours. 4.7 "He," says he, "whose prostitutes they are, is a pander; but all things are the wise man's; among all things prostitutes too are his; therefore the prostitutes are the wise man's. But he is a pander whose the prostitutes are; therefore the wise man is a pander." Thus they forbid him to buy, for they say: 4.8 "No one buys his own thing; but all things are the wise man's; therefore the wise man buys nothing." Thus they forbid him to take a loan, because no one pays interest for his own money. There are countless things by which they quibble, though they understand most perfectly what is said by us. 5.1 For I so say that all things are the wise man's that nonetheless each man has his own dominion over his own things, just as under the best king the king possesses all things by his sovereignty, individuals by their ownership. The time will come for proving this matter; meanwhile this is enough for this question, that I can give to the wise man that which is in one way the wise man's, in another mine. 5.2 Nor is it strange that something can be given to him whose the whole is. I have hired a house from you; in this something is yours, something mine: the thing is yours, the use of your thing is mine. And so you will not touch the fruits when your tenant forbids it, although they are born on your estate, and, if the price of corn is dearer, or there is famine, "alas, in vain you will look at the great heap of another, born on your own land, set on your own land, about to go into your own barns." 5.3 Nor will you enter my hired lodging, though you are its owner, nor will you lead off your slave, my hireling, and, when I have hired a carriage from you, you will receive a benefit if I permit you to sit in your own vehicle. You see, therefore, that it can come to pass that someone, by receiving what is his own, receives a gift. 6.1 In all those cases which I have just related, each of the two is owner of the same thing. How so? Because the one is owner of the thing, the other of the use. We say that the books are Cicero's; the same Dorus the bookseller calls his own, and both are true. The one claims them as their author, the other as their buyer; and rightly are they said to be of both, for they are of both, but not in the same way. So Titus Livius can receive or buy from Dorus his own books. 6.2 I can give the wise man what is mine man by man, though all things are his; for, although by a royal manner he possesses all things in his consciousness, but the ownership of the several things is scattered among each individual, he can both receive a gift and owe and buy and hire. 6.3 Caesar has all things, his privy purse only his private and own; and the universal things are within his empire, his proper ones in his patrimony. What is his, what is not, is inquired without diminution of his empire; for even that which is adjudged as another's belongs to him in another way. So the wise man possesses the universe in mind, his own by right and ownership. 7.1 Bion now gathers by arguments that all men are sacrilegious, now that none is. When he is about to hurl all from the rock, he says: "Whoever has taken up and consumed and turned to his own use that which is the gods', is sacrilegious; but all things are the gods'; therefore whatever anyone takes up, he takes up the gods', whose all things are; therefore whoever takes up anything is sacrilegious. 7.2 Then, when he bids the temples be broken open and the Capitol be plundered with impunity, he says that no one is sacrilegious, because whatever is taken up is transferred from that place which was the gods' into that place which is the gods'. 7.3 To this it is answered that all things are indeed the gods', but not all are dedicated to the gods; that sacrilege is marked in those things which religion has ascribed to a divinity. So too the whole world is the temple of the immortal gods, alone indeed worthy of their amplitude and magnificence: yet the profane is distinguished from the sacred; not all things are permitted in a corner on which the name of a shrine has been laid which are permitted under the sky and in the sight of the stars. The sacrilegious man cannot indeed do an injury to a god, whom his own divinity has set beyond the reach of a blow, but he is punished because he did it as though to a god: opinion, ours and his own, binds him to the penalty. 7.4 As, then, that man seems sacrilegious who takes away something sacred, even if, wherever he has transferred what he had stolen, it is within the bounds of the world, so a theft can be committed against the wise man too; for there will be taken from him, not of those things which he has universally, but of those of which he is inscribed as owner, which serve him man by man. 7.5 That other possession he will acknowledge; this he will be unwilling to have, if he can, and will utter that voice which a Roman general uttered, when, for his valor and his good service to the commonwealth, there was being decreed to him as much land as he could plow around in one day: "You have no need," said he, "of a citizen for whom there is more need than for a single citizen." How much greater a man's part do you think it was to have rejected this gift than to have earned it! For many have taken away the bounds of others; for himself no one ever set them! 8.1 Therefore, when we look upon the mind of the wise man, master of all things and sent through the universe, we say that all things are his, while, as for this daily right, if circumstance so demands, he will be assessed by the head. There is much difference whether his possession is appraised by his mind and greatness, or by his rating. 8.2 To have universally these things of which you speak he will abominate. I shall not bring forward to you Socrates, Chrysippus, Zeno and the rest, great men indeed, indeed the greater because in the praise of the ancients envy does not stand in the way. A little before I brought forward Demetrius, whom the nature of things seems to me to have produced for our own times, that it might show neither that he could be corrupted by us nor we set right by him, a man of perfected wisdom, though he himself deny it, and of firm constancy in the things which he has proposed, but of an eloquence such as befits the most valiant matters, not artificially arranged nor anxious about words, but, with a vast spirit, following out his subjects as the impulse carried him. 8.3 To him I do not doubt that providence has given both such a life and such a faculty of speaking, that there should be lacking to our age neither an example nor a reproach. If some one of the gods should wish to hand over to Demetrius our possessions to be held, under a fixed condition that it should not be permitted to give them away, I should affirm that he would repudiate it and say: 9.1 "I indeed do not bind myself to that inextricable load, nor send this unencumbered man down into the deep dregs of things. Why do you bring to me the evils of all peoples? Which, even if I were going to give them away, I would not receive, since I see many things which it would not become me to give. I wish to set before my sight those things which dazzle the eyes of nations and of kings, I wish to behold the prices of your blood and of your lives. 9.2 Set before me the first spoils of luxury, whether you will spread them out in order or, as is better, give them in one heap. I see the tortoise-shell wrought with scrupulous distinction, and the shells of the foulest and most sluggish animals bought at vast prices, in which that very variety which pleases is colored, by drugs laid beneath, into the likeness of the true. I see there tables and wood valued at a senator's rating, the more precious the more the tree's misfortune has twisted it into many knots. 9.3 I see there crystal, whose fragility kindles its price; for the pleasure of all things among the unskilled grows by the very peril by which it ought to be driven away. I see murrhine cups; no doubt luxury would have cost too little, unless men pledged one another, in capacious gems, with what they were to vomit up. 9.4 I see pearls, not single ones matched to single ears; for now the ears are trained to bear a burden; they are joined together, and on top of these others are set, two by two. The female madness had not heaped enough upon men, unless two or three patrimonies had hung from single ears. 9.5 I see silken garments, if they are to be called garments, in which there is nothing whereby either the body or finally modesty can be defended, in which, when she has put them on, a woman will scarcely clearly swear that she is not naked. These are fetched at a vast sum from nations unknown even to our commerce, that our matrons may show no more of themselves in the bedchamber even to adulterers than in public. 10.1 "What are you doing, avarice? In the dearness of how many things your gold has been outdone! All those things which I have related are in greater honor and price. Now I wish to review your riches, the ingots of either metal, at which our greed grows dim. 10.2 But, by Hercules, the earth, which brought forth whatever was going to be useful to us, has dug these things down and sunk them, and, as upon things noxious and destined to come forth into the midst for the bane of nations, she has lain with her whole weight. I see iron brought forth from the same darkness as gold and silver, that there should be lacking neither an instrument for mutual slaughter nor a price for it. 10.3 And yet so far these things have some material; there is something in which the mind can follow the error of the eyes. I see there warrants and bonds and securities, empty images of having, certain shadows of a laboring avarice, by which it may deceive a mind rejoicing in the opinion of empty things. For what are these things, what is interest and the ledger and usury, save names sought beyond nature for human greed? 10.4 I can complain of the nature of things, that it did not hide gold and silver deeper, that it did not lay on them a weight greater than could be dragged out: what are those tablets, what computations and time made venal and bloodstained interest? Voluntary evils hanging upon our own institution, in which there is nothing that can be set before the eyes, that can be held in the hand, the dreams of an empty avarice. 10.5 O wretched, if anyone is delighted by a great account-book of his patrimony and by vast spaces of lands to be tilled by men in chains, and by immense herds of cattle to be pastured through provinces and kingdoms, and by a household greater than warlike nations, and by private buildings surpassing the spaciousness of great cities! 10.6 When he has well looked around upon those things by which he has disposed and poured out his riches, and has made himself proud, let him compare whatever he has with what he craves: he is poor. Dismiss me and give me back to those riches of mine. I know the kingdom of wisdom, great, secure; I so have all things that they are all men's." 11.1 And so when Gaius Caesar gave him two hundred thousand sesterces, he laughingly rejected it, judging it not even a sum worth boasting of for not having accepted it. Ye gods and goddesses, with how petty a spirit did he wish either to honor or to corrupt him! Testimony must be rendered to that excellent man; 11.2 I heard a vast thing said by him, when he marveled at the madness of Gaius, that he had thought he could be bought for so much. "If he had resolved to tempt me," said he, "he ought to have made trial of me with the whole empire." 12.1 Therefore something can be given to the wise man, even if all things are the wise man's. Equally nothing forbids, when we say that all things are common to friends, that something be given to a friend. For all things are not common to me with a friend in the way they are with a partner, so that one part be mine, another his, but in the way that children are common to father and mother, who, when they are two, do not each have one apiece, but each two. 12.2 First of all, I shall now bring it about that, whoever he is who calls me into partnership, may know that he has nothing in common with me. Why? Because this fellowship is only among the wise, among whom is friendship; the rest are no more friends than partners. 12.3 Then, things are common in many ways. The knights' seats are the property of all the Roman knights; yet in them the place which I have occupied becomes my own; if I have yielded this to anyone, although I have yielded a common thing, yet I seem to have given something. Certain things are certain men's under a fixed condition. 12.4 I have a place in the knights' seats, not to sell, not to let, not to dwell in, only for this, that I may watch; therefore I do not lie if I say that I have a place in the knights' seats. But when I have come into the theater, if the knights' seats are full, I both by right have a place there, because it is permitted me to sit, and have it not, because it is occupied by those with whom I have a common right to the place. 12.5 Think that the same happens among friends. Whatever a friend has is common to us, but it is the property of him who holds it; I cannot use these things while he is unwilling. "You mock me," you say; "if what is my friend's is mine, let me be allowed to sell it." It is not allowed; for neither the knights' seats, and yet they are common to you with the rest of the knights. 12.6 It is no proof that a thing is not yours for this reason, because you cannot sell it, because you cannot consume it, because you cannot change it for the worse or the better; for that too is yours which is yours under a fixed condition. 13.1 [a gap occurs in the text here] ...I received, but at any rate not less. Not to draw it out longer, a benefit cannot be greater; the things through which a benefit is given can be greater and more numerous, into which finally good will may pour itself and so indulge itself, as lovers are wont to do, whose more frequent kisses and closer embraces do not increase love, but exercise it. 14.1 This question too, which comes next, was settled in the earlier books; and so it will be touched on briefly; for the arguments which were given to others can be transferred to this. It is asked whether he who has done everything to repay a benefit has repaid it. 14.2 "That you may know," says he, "that he has not repaid it, he did everything to repay it; it appears, therefore, that that was not done whose doing he had no occasion to do. And he too has not paid his creditor the money who, in order to pay it, sought everywhere and did not find it." 14.3 Certain things are of such a condition that they ought to furnish the result; for certain others it is in the place of the result to have tried everything to effect it. If he has done everything to heal, the physician has performed his part; the orator, even when the defendant is condemned, has his eloquence's duty discharged, if he has used all his force; the general's praise is rendered even to a defeated leader, if both prudence and industry and bravery have performed their offices. 14.4 He has done everything to repay the benefit; your good fortune stood in his way; nothing harder befell to make trial of true friendship; he could not make a gift to the rich, sit by the healthy, succor the fortunate: he has returned gratitude, even if you have not received the benefit. Besides, this man, ever intent upon it and awaiting the time for this matter, who has spent much care, much diligence upon it, has labored more than one to whom it has fallen to return gratitude quickly. 14.5 The example of the debtor is unlike, for whom it is too little to have sought the money, unless he has paid it; for there the bitter creditor stands over his head, who suffers no day to set without gain; here the most kindly one, who, when he has seen you running about and anxious and troubled, says: "Send this care from your breast; cease to press hard upon yourself as a nuisance. I have all things from you; you do me an injury if you think that I desire anything more; most fully has your spirit reached me." "Tell me," says he, "if he had repaid the benefit, you would say that he had returned gratitude; therefore is he in the same place who has repaid and who has not repaid?" On the contrary, set this now: if he had forgotten the benefit received, if he had not even tried to be grateful, you would deny that he had returned gratitude; but this man has worn himself out day and night and renounced all his other duties, intent upon this one and busied with it, that no occasion might escape him; therefore will they be in the same place, he who has cast off the care of returning gratitude, and he who has never withdrawn from it? You are unjust, if you exact the thing of me, when you see that the will was not wanting. 15.1 In short, suppose that, when you had been captured, I, having borrowed money, my goods pledged for the creditor's security, had sailed in a winter so savage, along shores infested with robberies, having measured out whatever of perils even a peaceful sea can bring; that, all the solitudes traversed, while I sought those whom no one did not flee, I came at last to the pirates; and another had already ransomed you: will you deny that I have returned gratitude? Even if in that voyage I lost, by shipwreck, the money which I had contracted for your safety; even if I myself fell into the chains which I wished to strike off from you, will you deny that I have returned gratitude? 15.2 But, by Hercules, the Athenians call Harmodius and Aristogiton tyrant-slayers, and the hand left by Mucius on the enemy's altar was as good as Porsenna slain, and virtue ever struggling against fortune has shone forth even short of effecting the work proposed. He has rendered more who, following the fleeting occasions, has caught at one and another by which he might return gratitude, than he whom, without any sweat, the first occasion made grateful. 15.3 "Two things," says he, "he rendered you, the will and the thing; you too owe him two." Rightly would you say this to one who returned you an idle will, but to this man, who both wills and tries and leaves nothing untried, you cannot say it; for he renders both, so far as in him lies. 15.4 Then number is not always to be made even with number; sometimes one thing avails for two; and so into the place of the thing succeeds a will so ready and eager to repay. But if the mind without the thing avails not for returning gratitude, no one is grateful toward the gods, on whom only the will is bestowed. "To the gods," says he, "we can render nothing else." But if to this man too, to whom I owe the returning of gratitude, I can render nothing else, what is the reason why I should not be grateful toward a man by that whereby I bestow nothing more upon the gods? 16.1 If, however, you ask what I think, and wish to seal the answer, let this man judge that he has received the benefit back, let that man know that he has not repaid it; let this man release the other, let that man hold himself bound; let this man say: "I have it," let that man answer: "I owe it." 16.2 In every question let the public good be our aim; excuses must be cut off from the ungrateful, to which they may not be able to flee back, and under which to hide their denial. "I have done everything." Do it even still. What? 16.3 do you judge our ancestors to have been so imprudent that they did not understand it to be most unjust that the same place be held by him who took the money he had received from his creditor to lust or the dice, and by him who by fire or robbery or some sadder chance lost another's goods with his own? They received no excuse, that men might know that good faith must at all events be kept; for it was better that even a just excuse should not be accepted from a few than that some should be tried by all. You have done everything to repay; 16.4 let this be enough for him, too little for you. For as that man, if he suffers a strenuous and zealous service to pass for void, is unworthy that gratitude be returned to him, so you are ungrateful, unless to him who accepts a good will in full payment you owe the more gladly, because he releases you. Do not snatch at this nor make it your plea; nonetheless seek occasions of repaying. Repay to that man because he asks it back, to this because he remits it; to that because he is good, to this because he is bad. 16.5 And therefore there is no reason for you to judge that this question concerns you, whether one ought to repay a benefit received from a wise man, if he has ceased to be wise and is turned to evil. For you would repay a deposit too, which you had received from a wise man, even to a bad man; you would repay a loan. What is the reason why you should not repay a benefit too? Because he has changed, shall he change you? What? 16.6 If you had received something from a man when sound, would you not repay it to him when sick, since we always owe more to a sick friend? And this man too is sick in mind; let him be helped, let him be borne with. Folly is a sickness of the mind. 17.1 This must be distinguished, that it may be the better understood. There are two benefits: one which no one save the wise man can give to the wise man; this is the absolute and true benefit; the other vulgar, plebeian, of which there is exchange among us, the unskilled. 17.2 Of this there is no doubt that I ought to repay it to the other, of whatever sort he is, whether he has turned out a murderer or a thief or an adulterer. Crimes have their own laws; a judge sets such men right better than the ungrateful man. Let no one make you bad because he is so. To a bad man I shall fling the benefit, to a good man I shall repay it, to this because I owe it, to that lest I owe it. 18.1 Concerning the other kind of benefit there is doubt, which, if I could not receive save as a wise man, neither can I repay save to a wise man. "For suppose that I repay: he cannot receive it back, he is no longer capable of this thing, he has lost the knowledge of using it. What, if you bid me throw back the ball to one who stays where he is? It is foolish to give anyone what he cannot receive." That I may begin my answer from the last: I shall not give anyone what he cannot receive; I shall repay, even if he cannot receive it back. For I cannot lay anyone under obligation save the receiver; I can only be freed, if I have repaid. Will he not be able to use it? Let him see to that; the fault will be his, not mine. 19.1 "To repay," says he, "is to have handed over to one about to receive. For what? If you owe someone wine and he bids you pour it for him into a net or a sieve, will you say that you have repaid it? Or will you wish to repay that which, while it is repaid, perishes between the two?" 19.2 To repay is to give that which you owe, to him whose it is, when he is willing. This one thing must be rendered by me. That indeed he should keep what he received from me is now of further care; I owe him, not the guardianship, but the good faith, and it is far better that he should not have it than that I should not repay it. 19.3 And I shall repay to a creditor about straightway to carry to the meat-market what he has received; even if he assigns to me an adulteress to whom I am to count it out, I shall pay it; and, if the coins which he will receive he will pour into his own lap with his garment ungirt, I shall give them. For the thing must be repaid by me, not, when I have repaid it, guarded and watched over; I owe the guardianship of a benefit received, not of one repaid. While it is with me, let it be safe; for the rest, although it slip from the receiver's hands, it must be given to one asking it back. I shall repay to a good man when it is convenient, to a bad man when he demands it. 19.4 "Such a benefit," says he, "as you received you cannot repay him; for you received it from a wise man, you repay it to a fool." No; I repay him such as he can now receive it back, nor does it happen through me that I repay worse than what I received, but through him, to whom, if he shall return to wisdom, I shall repay such as I received; while he is among the wicked, I shall repay such as can be received from him. 19.5 "What? if," says he, "he has become not only bad, but savage, but monstrous, such as Apollodorus or Phalaris, will you repay this man too the benefit which you had received?" So great a change in a wise man nature does not suffer. He has not fallen from the best into the worst; he must needs keep, even in his wickedness, traces of the good; never is virtue so far extinguished that it does not imprint surer marks on the mind than any change can erase. 19.6 Wild beasts reared among us, if they have broken out into the woods, retain something of their former tameness, and are as far from the gentlest as from the true wild beasts that have never suffered a human hand. No one falls into the depth of wickedness who has ever cleaved to wisdom; he is dyed too deep to be wholly washed out and to pass over into an evil color. 19.7 Then I ask, whether that man be savage in mind only, or whether he break forth also into the public ruin? For you set before me Phalaris and another tyrant; of whom, if a bad man have within himself the nature, why should I not repay him his benefit, that I may have nothing more of right in common with him? 19.8 But if he not only rejoices in human blood, but feeds upon it; if he exercises an insatiable cruelty in the tortures of all ages, and rages, not from anger, but from a certain greed of savagery; if before their parents' faces he butchers the children; if, not content with a simple death, he wrenches them and not only burns those about to perish, but cooks them slowly; if his citadel is ever wet with fresh gore, it is too little not to repay this man a benefit! Whatever there was by which he cleaved to me, the bond of human right, severed, has cut away. 19.9 Had he indeed rendered me some service, but were bearing arms against my country, he would have lost whatever he had earned, and to return him gratitude would be held a crime. If he assails not my country, but is grievous to his own, and, set apart from my people, harasses and tears his own, nonetheless so great a depravity of mind makes him, if not my enemy, yet hateful to me, and prior and weightier with me is the account of that duty which I owe to the human race than that which I owe to a single man. 20.1 But although this is so, and from that time all things toward him are free to me, from the time at which, by corrupting all right, he has brought it about that nothing toward him should be a wrong, yet I shall believe that this measure is to be kept by me, namely, that, if my benefit to him is neither going to give him greater forces for the common destruction nor to confirm those he has, but it is going to be such as can be repaid him without public ruin, I shall repay it. I shall save his infant son; 20.2 what does this benefit harm any of those whom his cruelty tears? Money which may keep a satellite in pay I shall not supply. If he shall desire marbles and garments, that with which his luxury is furnished will harm no one; soldiers and arms I shall not furnish. 20.3 If, as a great gift, he shall ask stage-craftsmen and harlots and such things as may soften his ferocity, I shall gladly offer them. To one to whom I would not send triremes and bronze-beaked ships I shall send pleasure-boats and barges with cabins and other playthings of kings wantoning on the sea. And if his sanity shall be wholly despaired of, with the same hand I shall give a benefit to all and repay it to him; since for such characters the issue is a remedy, and it is best for him to depart who is never going to return to himself. 20.4 But such wickedness is rare and always held in the place of a portent, like a gaping of the earth and the eruption of fire from the caverns of the sea; and so let us withdraw from it, let us speak of those vices which we detest without horror. 20.5 To this bad man, whom I can find in any forum you please, whom individuals fear, I shall repay the benefit which I received. His wickedness ought not to profit me; what is not mine, let it return to its owner. Whether he be good or bad, what does it matter? I should sift that diligently, if I were not repaying, but giving. 21.1 This place calls for a story. A certain Pythagorean had bought from a cobbler boots, a great matter, not for ready money. After some days he came to the shop to repay it, and, when he had long knocked at the door, which baffled him, there was one who said: "Why do you waste your labor? That cobbler whom you seek has been carried out, has been burned; which to us perhaps is grievous, who lose our own forever, to you least of all, who know that he will be born again," jesting at the Pythagorean. But our philosopher carried home the three or four denarii with no unwilling hand, shaking them from time to time; then, when he had reproached himself for this secret pleasure of not repaying, understanding that the little gain had smiled upon him, he returned to the same shop and said: "He lives for you; repay what you owe." Then through the chink, where the joint of the door had loosened, he inserted the four denarii into the shop and threw them in, exacting of himself a penalty for his wicked greed, lest he should grow used to another's goods. 22.1 What you owe, seek to whom you may repay it, and, if no one demands it, dun yourself. Bad or good, it concerns you not; repay and accuse. You have forgotten how duties are divided between you: to him forgetfulness was bidden, to you we enjoined remembering. Yet he is mistaken who thinks that, when we say that he who gave a benefit ought to forget, we are shaking out for him the memory of a thing, especially a most honorable one; we prescribe certain things beyond measure, that men may come back to the true and their own. When we say: 22.2 "He ought not to remember," we wish this to be understood: "He ought not to proclaim it nor boast nor be burdensome." For some tell the benefit they have given in all circles; this they speak when sober, this they cannot contain when drunk, this they thrust upon strangers, this they commit to friends; that this excessive and reproachful memory might subside, we bade him who gave it forget, and, by bidding more than could be rendered, we counseled silence. 23.1 As often as there is too little confidence in those whom you command, more must be exacted than is enough, that as much as is enough may be rendered. In this all hyperbole is stretched, that by a falsehood it may arrive at the truth. And so that poet, when he said: "Who would outstrip the snows in whiteness, the winds in their courses," said what could not be, that it might be believed how great was the utmost he could do. And he who said: "More unmoving than these rocks, more violent than a river," did not think that he would persuade anyone that anything is as unmoving as a rock. 23.2 Hyperbole never hopes as much as it dares, but affirms incredible things, that it may reach credible ones. When we say: "Let him who has given a benefit forget it," we say this: "Let him be like one who has forgotten; let the memory of it not appear nor obtrude." When we say that a benefit ought not to be asked back, we do not wholly take away the asking back; 23.3 for often the bad need an exactor, even the good an admonition. What then? Shall I not show the occasion to one who is ignorant of it? Shall I not disclose to him my necessities? Why should he either lie that he did not know, or grieve? Let admonition sometimes intervene, but a modest one, which neither demands nor summons to law. 24.1 Socrates, in the hearing of his friends, said: "I would have bought a cloak, if I had the money." He demanded of no one, he admonished all. There was a rivalry as to from whom he should receive it; why should there not be? For how little it was that Socrates received! But it was much to have been the man from whom Socrates received. Could he have chastised them more gently? 24.2 "I would have bought a cloak," said he, "if I had the money." After this whoever made haste gave too late; he had already failed Socrates. On account of bitter exactors we forbid the asking back, not that it should never be done, but that it should be done sparingly. 25.1 Aristippus once, delighted with a perfume, said: "Ill befall those effeminate fellows who have brought into ill repute so pretty a thing." Likewise it must be said: "Ill befall those wicked and troublesome four-fold prosecutors of their own benefits, who have abolished so pretty a thing, admonition among friends!" Yet I shall use this right of friendship and shall ask a benefit back of one of whom I would have asked it, who will take it as a second benefit that he was able to repay. 25.2 Never, not even complaining, shall I say: "Cast on the shore, in want, I took him up and, mad, set him in a share of my kingdom." That is no admonition, it is a reproach; this is to bring benefits into hatred, this is to bring it about that to be ungrateful is either permitted or a pleasure. It is enough and more than enough, with submissive and friendly words, to recall the memory: "If I have ever deserved well of you, if anything of mine was ever sweet to you." Let him in turn say: "Why should you not have deserved well? Cast on the shore, in want, you took me up." 26.1 "But we accomplish nothing," says he; "he dissembles, he has forgotten: what ought I to do?" You ask a thing most necessary, and in which it becomes us to round off this material, namely, how the ungrateful are to be borne. 26.2 With a calm mind, gentle, great. Let one never so inhuman and forgetful and ungrateful offend you that yet it does not delight you to have given; let injury never drive you to these words: "I wish I had not done it." Let even the misfortune of your benefit please you; he will always repent, if you do not even now repent. There is no reason for you to be indignant, as though something new had befallen; you ought rather to wonder if it had not befallen. 26.3 One man labor deters, another expense, another peril, another a base shame, lest, in repaying, he confess that he received, another ignorance of his duty, another sloth, another occupation. Look how the immense desires of men ever gape and demand; you will not wonder that there no one repays, where no one has received enough. 26.4 Who of these is of so firm and solid a mind that you may safely deposit benefits with him? One is mad with lust, another is the slave of his belly; another is wholly given to gain, whose sum, not whose ways, he regards; another labors with envy, another with blind ambition rushing upon the swords. Add the torpor of the mind and its decay, and, contrary to this, the agitation and perpetual tumults of an unquiet breast; add an excessive esteem of self and a swelling, insolent because of the very things for which he is to be despised. What shall I say of the stubbornness of those who lean toward perverse things, what of the fickleness ever leaping somewhere else? 26.5 Add to this headlong rashness and fear, never about to give faithful counsel, and a thousand errors in which we are rolled: the boldness of the most timid, the discord of the most intimate, and, a public evil, to trust the most uncertain, to disdain things possessed which there had been no hope of attaining. Among the most unquiet passions do you seek the quietest thing, good faith? 27.1 If a true image of our life shall occur to you, you will seem to yourself to see the face of a city at the very moment of capture, in which, all respect of modesty and right laid aside, force is in council, as though the signal had been given for confounding all things. They abstain not from fire, not from sword; crimes are loosed from the laws; not even religion, which has covered suppliants amid hostile arms, is any hindrance to those rushing on plunder. 27.2 This man plunders from the private, this from the public, this from the profane, this from the sacred; this breaks open, this leaps over; this, not content with a narrow road, overturns the very things by which he is barred, and comes to gain by ruin; this lays waste without slaughter, this carries spoils in a bloody hand; there is no one who does not bear off something from another. In this greed of the human race, oh, you have been too forgetful of the common fortune, who seek, among the plunderers, one who repays! 27.3 If you are indignant that men are ungrateful, be indignant that they are luxurious, be indignant that they are avaricious, be indignant that they are unchaste, be indignant that the sick are deformed, that the old are pale! It is a grave vice, this, it is intolerable, and one that disunites men, that rends and scatters the concord by which our weakness is propped; but it is so common that not even he who complains of it has escaped it. 28.1 Consider with yourself whether, to all to whom you owed, you have returned gratitude, whether no duty has ever perished with you, whether the memory of all benefits accompanies you. You will see that things given you as a boy slipped away before adolescence, that things bestowed on you as a young man did not endure into old age. Some things we have lost, some we have flung away, some have gradually gone out of our sight, from some we have turned our eyes. 28.2 To excuse to you our weakness, the memory in the first place is a fragile vessel and does not suffice for the throng of things; it must needs let go as much as it takes in and overwhelm the oldest with the newest. So it has come about that with you the nurse's authority was least, because the following age set her benefit further off; so it has come about that you had no reverence for your teacher; so it has fallen out that, busied about a consular election or a candidate for the priesthoods, the canvasser for your quaestorship fell away. Perhaps the vice of which you complain, if you sift yourself diligently, you will find in your own bosom. It is unjust to be angry at a public crime, foolish at your own; that you may be acquitted, pardon. 28.3 You will make him better by bearing with him, certainly worse by reproaching him. There is no reason for you to harden his brow; let him, if there is any modesty left, keep it. Often a doubtful modesty has been broken by the louder voice of one reproaching. No one fears to be what he already seems; when he is caught, his shame is taken from him. 29.1 "I have lost a benefit." Do we say that we have lost what we have consecrated? Among things consecrated is a benefit, even if it has answered ill, well bestowed. That man is not such as we hoped; let us be such as we were, unlike him. The loss was not made then: it appeared. The ungrateful man is not dragged forth without shame to us, since indeed the complaint of a benefit lost is a sign of one not well given. 29.2 So far as we can, let us plead his cause with ourselves: "Perhaps he could not, perhaps he was ignorant, perhaps he is going to do it." A slow and wise creditor has made certain debts good who has borne with and by delay nursed them. The same must be done by us; let us nourish a languishing good faith. 30.1 "I have lost a benefit." Foolish man, you do not know the times of your own loss! You lost it, but when you gave it; now it has been made plain. Even in those things which seem in the lost, moderation has profited most; as the vices of bodies, so of minds, must be handled gently. Often that which could have been unraveled by patience has been broken off by the violence of one dragging. What need of evil words? What of complaints? What of pursuit? Why do you free him? Why do you release him? If he is ungrateful, he now owes nothing. 30.2 What reason is there to exasperate the man on whom you have conferred great things, so that from a doubtful friend he becomes an undoubted enemy and seeks a defense for himself in our ill repute, nor is the word lacking: "I know not what it is, that he could not bear the man to whom he owed so much; there is something beneath it"? There is no one who, by complaining, has not, even if he has not stained, yet spattered the dignity of his superior; nor is anyone content to feign trifles, since by the greatness of his lie he seeks credit. 31.1 How much better is that road by which the appearance of friendship is preserved to him, and, if he should wish to return to soundness, even friendship! Persistent goodness conquers the bad, nor is anyone of so hard and hostile a mind toward what should be loved that he does not love the good even in their injury, to whom he has begun to owe this too, that he has not with impunity failed to pay. To these things, therefore, bend your thoughts: 31.2 "Gratitude has not been returned to me; what shall I do? What the gods do, the best authors of all things, who begin to give benefits to one ignorant of them, and persevere with the ungrateful. 31.3 One charges them with carelessness of us, another with injustice; another flings them outside their own world and leaves them idle and dull, without light, without any work; another calls the sun, to which we owe it that we have divided our time between labor and rest, that, not plunged in darkness, we escape the confusion of an eternal night, which by its course tempers the year and nourishes bodies, calls forth the crops, ripens the fruits, some stone or a chance ball of fires, and anything rather than a god. 31.4 Nonetheless, after the manner of the best parents, who smile at the curses of their infants, the gods do not cease to heap benefits on those who doubt of the author of benefits, but with an even tenor distribute their goods through nations and peoples; having drawn the one power, to be of use, they scatter the lands with seasonable rains, move the seas with their breath, mark the times by the course of the stars, soften the winters and summers by the interposition of a gentler breath, and, calm and propitious, bear with the error of slipping souls. Let us imitate them; 31.5 let us give, even if many things have been given in vain; let us give nonetheless to others, let us give to the very men with whom the loss has been made. No one has been deterred by ruin from raising houses, and, when fire has consumed our household gods, we lay foundations on the ground still warm, and cities swallowed up again and again we entrust to the same soil; so persistent is the mind toward good hopes. By land and sea human works would cease, unless it pleased men to try again things ill attempted. 32.1 He is ungrateful: he has done an injury, not to me, but to himself; I made use of my benefit when I gave it. Nor for that reason shall I give a pledge, but more diligently; what I have lost in this man, I shall recover from others. But to this very man I shall give a benefit a second time, and, like a good farmer, by care and cultivation I shall conquer the barrenness of the soil; the benefit perishes for me, the man perishes for mankind. It is not the part of a great mind to give a benefit and lose it; this is the part of a great mind, to lose it and give.